A Real Communication Flair, Part 3

 

How we Use (and Abuse) Language

 

            One of the thought-provoking aspects of human nature and interaction portrayed in Sparks’ songs is what we reveal about ourselves in the language we choose to communicate or conceal our feelings or intentions. Although the scenarios depicted are sometimes bizarre or humorous, the situations are nevertheless profoundly relatable, with insights that really resonate. All human nature is there. It really does seem that there is a Sparks song for every situation. How many times a day do you think, ‘that reminds me of a Sparks song…’?

As we know, the listener is often challenged to read between the lines. The satirical ‘Suburban Homeboy’, (Lil’ Beethoven, 2002), for example, is a song that is both humorous but with a serious subtext, typical of Sparks. It satirises a middle-class white man who wants to seem trendy by adopting street-wise language habits and interests, thus throwing a spotlight on the issues of social and racial stereotyping and cultural appropriation. These class and race issues are glaringly apparent in the narrator’s self-promoting boasting (‘I say ‘Yo Dog!’ to my pool-cleaning guy’), which reveals that he is both socially insensitive and unaware of the absurdity of his over-the-top posturing. His status and lifestyle are both transformed (in his eyes) and revealed to us by the artificial performative use of language: he has a ‘suburban ho’ by his side, wears cornrows (from Amazon) and listens to rap music and Farrakhan, but his suburban home context is actually one of golf, car detailing and an Oxford and Cambridge mentality. Like the young guy in ‘Popularity’, he aspires to an image which is at odds with the truth, no matter, in this case, how hard he tries to assert it. The jaunty delivery and melody emphasises his misplaced self-satisfaction and encourages ridicule.

The use of language to obscure, confuse or avoid is tackled in ‘So Tell Me, Mrs Lincoln, Aside From That How Was The Play’ (Hippopotamus 2017). The old joke in the title itself illustrates the theme of the avoidance of discussing a subject that the speaker finds painful or embarrassing by chatting about something totally different and potentially both irrelevant and insensitive. This time, we share the point of view of the listener in an (unheard) one-sided conversation in which, it seems, much is said but little communicated. He is irritated by the speaker’s prevarication and the flow of conversation that is clearly ‘always the subtext, never the text’, as his interlocutor will not get to the point ‘always the surface, never the heart’. Is the narrator expecting the ending of a relationship, or what? He fidgets, ‘nodding my head like a bobblehead doll’, and his mind wanders while the conversation meanders on, ‘stalling without strategic intent’. He is clearly doomed to ‘miss the bus’ in more ways than one: ‘what lies underneath it all?’. The anonymous speaker’s avoidance strategy is transparent, yet we are left wondering why the frustrated narrator does not intervene. Why is he so passive? Perhaps he too wants to avoid confronting the truth? This has clearly happened before, and his attitude (‘Don’t interrupt, you’ll just cause a fuss’) suggests that he is to an extent complicit in the failure to get to the heart of the matter. We have probably all been there at one time or another.

A different scenario between couples is at the heart of ‘Something for the Girl with Everything ‘ (Propaganda 1974), in which it is fear of what speech might communicate that is at issue. Unlike the narrator of ‘So Tell Me Mrs Lincoln’, this guy takes drastic steps to buy his girl’s silence, inundating her with gifts, because she knows about his past (‘she knew you way back when you weren’t yourself’) and he fears revelations that might incriminate him.  All the gifts are aimed at impeding speech or memory: sweets (‘Don’t try to talk my dear/Your tiny little mouth is full’), a car (‘I hope it takes you fast and far’) with a loud engine (‘Nobody’s gonna hear a thing you say’), and other gifts ‘that aid amnesia’. When unavoidable, her power of speech is strictly controlled (‘say no more than just hello’) and her speechlessness explained as shyness because ‘of late she’s been quite speechless’. What might seem generosity in the title line is gradually revealed as sinister and self-serving behaviour by a lover wracked with anxiety and guilt, a mood aptly represented by the frenetic pace of his words and the music, which end on that dramatic high note.   This is one of those songs which offers another level of meaning, prompting the listener to imagine a number of possible back stories to this couple’s relationship.

 The recent ‘i-Phone’ (A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, 2020) depicts a more wide-ranging communication problem, as various scenarios from history are marshalled to illustrate a very contemporary source of annoyance. Humour lies in the anachronistic evocation of situations in which Adam and Eve and Abraham Lincoln are forced to rage ‘Put your fucking i-Phone down and listen to me’ in order to make themselves heard. The third example is the forlorn wife of the developer of the i-phone himself, Steve Jobs, who sobs that she can not communicate with her mega-busy husband. This song may also be intended to allude to the annoyance many artists feel at seeing a sea of phone screens held up during live performances. Sparks, of course, are very polite, but if this song is performed live at the upcoming concerts, perhaps we should take notice!

In ‘Piss Off’ (FFS, 2015), the narrators (in this case both Russell and Alex Kapranos of Frantz Ferdinand) are annoyed by the unrelenting conversation of people who like the sound of their own voices, recommending forthright measures to get rid of them. The insistence of meaningless social chitchat is captured in the lines : ‘It’s inexplicable/ But still they’re eager to explain/ It’s inapplicable/ But they’ll apply it all the same/ It’s irrefutable/ But still their arguments remain’, the elegance of which is contrasted with the firm and unequivocal ‘Piss Off’, as social norms and the chatterers are shown the door. Sung with gusto, that’s certainly getting right to the point! The disillusioned speaker wants to engage with the outside world (’fantasise, socialize, harmonize’) but is turned off because ‘all the voices sound beyond repair’. He foresees a future in which culture has become reduced to ‘football and cheap alcohol’, but at least he will be able to add to his colourful ‘portfolio of epithets and cheerios’ to rid himself of nuisance visitors that distract him from his own world. This is humorously straight-talking advice on the value of a socially unacceptable register of language when social language itself has become merely performative and valueless.  Perhaps it was conceived as a useful concert finale for when over-excited fans keep calling for more encores!

Next up: metaphors and more.