you’ll never watch your life slide out of view

For this week’s Friday Feedback, I want Five Different Versions Of The Same Thing.

To get us started, I select the song “Common People” by Pulp.

First, here’s the original music video:

Second, here’s a short comic by Jamie Hewlett illustrating the lyrics:

Third, here’s William Shatner, Ben Folds and Joe “Into The Night” Jackson covering the song on the Tonight Show:

(Sweet tapdancing Christ, Joe Jackson looks like Gollum fucked Abe Sapien)

Fourth, here’s Chris Sims’ Photoshop of an Archie Comic strip:

And Fifth and Finally, here’s a personal anecdote about the song:

Not this past Wednesday but Wednesday a week, I hit up karaoke at the Asgard - voted Boston’s best karaoke in the Phoenix - as per usual. I covered Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” with Rachel V. for my first song and, for lack of inspiration, fell back on “Common People” for my second.

As a sop to irony, I usually sing it in the style of Shatner / Jackson, as pictured above: a staccato, querying monotone for the first verse and a half, then a bolt-upright trill for the remainder of the song. So I’m sitting on the corner of a table, nursing half a shooter of Jameson and murmuring into the mic, when I think I hear someone say: this song sucks.

It doesn’t ruffle me; nothing ruffles me when I’m putting on an act. But if you’re going to hate on the current singer in karaoke - a favorite pastime of mine, don’t get me wrong - you never do it loud enough for them to hear you. Sure enough, I hear it again a few seconds later: boo. Terrible song.

A woman in her late thirties, early forties stands at a table at about my ten o’clock. I suspect she came with the larger and equally drunk party that monopolized the mic earlier in the evening. I remember one intoxicated night hag faking a grind on one of our friends while he sang, after stumbling up to the DJ booth to put in her own request. Those folks had left half an hour ago, or so I thought. Apparently two of them remained.

Boo. What an awful song.

Maybe she just dislikes Shatner’s delivery, I thought - shocker, I know - so I went out of my way to sell the hand-off. “But … but she didn’t understand,” I mumbled. “SHE JUST SMILED AND HELD MY HA-A-AND!” I took off like a rocket.

This song sucks!

Despite the gentle pleading of her hopefully sober friend, she continued to repeat the same three or four criticisms every few seconds, in increasingly louder tones. Clearly she wanted more than to make her opinion known, since everyone within three tables knew it by now. She chanted her condemnation like a litany against taste and soul. Protect me from my betters, she seemed to say.

Boo. Terrible song.

She spit that last one during the four-bar keyboard solo that made up the bridge. “Thank you, ma’am,” I told her, looking her dead in the eye.

No, it’s — you’re good, the song sucks …

“No, thank you. Really. I appreciate it. You’re a big help.”

Four, three, two, one, and, “Sing along with the common people! Sing along and it might just get you through! Laugh along with the common people!”

I strutted up to the edge of her table, pointing right at her face. At 6′5″, my armspan covered half the distance between us. “Laugh along with them while they’re laughing at you! And those stupid things you do! ‘Cause you think being poor is coo-oo-ool!” She didn’t seem any more conscious of it than anything else I did; maybe she was that drunk. But I wasn’t doing it for her benefit.

Returning to my corner of the stage, I chanted the song’s abbreviated close (”I want to live with common people like you”) into a slow, steady crescendo. Applause, handshakes, high-fives. Then I hit the road.

Your turn. If your Five Different Versions of the Same Thing are also media-heavy, feel free to post them in your own blog and link to them in the comments.

pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by

For this week’s Friday Feedback, I want Songs That Tire You After The First Forty-Five Seconds:

My top picks:

Enter Sandman - Metallica. That mildly dissonant riff, followed by the pounding drums after a few measures, really ramps up my adrenaline. Then the song becomes, well, the foundation of every metal song for the next 20 years, and I lose interest. Bonus points: James Hetfield may be a cool motherfucker, but in this video he’s everything that’s wrong with the 80s. “Say a prayer / just for once / or I’ll tow your truck / from the Arby’s parking lotttttt-TA!”

Sweet Child of Mine - Guns ‘n Roses. Really? Can you get that excited to hear Axl Rose sing? Really? Admit it - this song coasts off of enthusiasm after Slash rocks us all the way out in the first minute. It never really reaches those heights again until the “Where do we go-wo” part near the end.

Hot’lanta - Allman Brothers Band. Starts off really strong, then descends into the unidentifiable mish-mash of every jam session. Better than the Grateful Dead, at least.

Now that I’ve made my half-assed attempts at music criticism, I’d like to hear yours. What songs never live up to the promise of their first few seconds? List a song that’s not even worth downloading off iTunes so long as there’s a free sample. Take your shot.

white people - do the humpty hump, just watch me do the humpty hump

As a helpful service to our readers, I give you a list of Ten Hip Hop Songs White People Can Sing At Karaoke, No Problem:

(10) In Da Club (radio edit) - 50 Cent. To sanitize this club anthem for radio airplay, Dr. Dre surgically removed all references to “n—as” and most references to drugs. This makes for the occasional awkward stretch (50 sees Xzibit in the cut and observes a moment of silence) but no one will hear it over the tinny blare of most karaoke speakers. You can also earn some instant street cred by changing it up for the original hardcore lyrics if you know them, while still avoiding anything racist.

(9) Regulators - Warren G and Nate Dogg. This song celebrates two elements of street culture which white people have no problem appropriating - carrying unlicensed firearms and picking up women for one-night stands. Plus, it boasts that smooth Michael McDonald hook. Michael McDonald resonates with Caucasians on a genetic level, meaning this song will bring any crowd to its feet.

(8.) Poison - Bell Biv Devoe. Most people don’t actually know this song as well as they think they do, as illustrated by the mumbles you hear about midway through verse two. But everyone recognizes the drum break. And everyone knows never to trust a big butt and a smile; big butts are Serious Business.

(7) Hey Ya - Andre 3000. Does “Hey Ya” count as a hip hop song or a pop song, technically? Dre wrote the music himself, rather than sampling it, and he sings rather than raps. Additionally, the song studies different themes than traditional hip hop subject matter, including a rather mature questioning of whether a modern relationship can survive OH WAIT HERE COMES THE CHORUS SHAKE IT LIKE A POLAROID PIK-CHA!

(6) Gangsta’s Paradise - Coolio. Every person in America, white, black or otherwise, started out as an angry teenager. If you spent your teenage years between 1990 and 2000, you remember Coolio asking for something to learn but “nobody’s gonna teach [him].” This song comes from the 1995 movie Dangerous Minds, though nothing else worth remembering did.

(5) Mama Said Knock You Out - LL Cool J. “Don’t call it a comeback,” yells LL Cool J, coming to us from an era when most of us hadn’t even heard of him to begin with (come on - tell me with a straight face you listened to LL before “The Booming System”). This song requires good flow, excellent delivery and exceptional breath control - it’s a tiring four minutes and fifty-eight seconds.

(4) Shoop - Salt ‘n Pepa. Ladies, I did not forget you. We can all thank Salt ‘n Pepa for reminding us that girls can ogle just as well - and just as graphically - as guys can. Bring all your friends to the mic and get a round of applause if you know even half the words. Fellas, you can horn in on the spotlight if you know the male part. While we all frown on calling black people “n—as” during karaoke, no one minds if you talk about “sounding like a retard.” I mean, who’s gonna complain - the retards?

(3) The Humpty Dance - Digital Underground. The least serious song on the list. Karaoke draws its appeal from clowning around: getting up on stage and acting drunk and stupid looptid with a mic in hand. So what better song for karaoke than a song so ridiculous that its author only felt comfortable singing it in a Groucho Marx pimp costume? Speaking from experience: never point the mic out to the audience for shout-outs (i.e., “I’m the one who said …”). They never expect it.

(2) Gin and Juice - Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. “I know what you’re doing, Professor,” you might be saying. “You’re just listing the least offensive rap songs ever, right?” Joke’s on you, smart-ass - “Gin and Juice” is a karaoke standard. White people enjoy smoking endo and drinking gin; the song speaks to them on a comfortable level. And the unspoken subtext about the culture of violence and poverty created by the War on Drugs which makes such a hedonistic lifestyle an aspiration, rather than an occasional detour? Man, save that shit for “187.” This is a party song.

(1) Baby Got Back - Sir Mix-a-Lot. I have never seen a black person sing this song live. Ever.

For this week’s Friday Feedback: what’s a song that crosses gender, racial, sexual or cultural boundaries that you still feel comfortable singing?