Life on the Fourth Floor


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Or Should I Just Keep Eating Biscuits?

Posted 02:47 (GMT) 9th April 2008

I've written a lot this year about cinema and advertising and now I set my sights on the music industry and I shall spare no-one in my ruthless purge. This could be quite controversial, since I am not discerning/picky enough to have developed a terribly sophisticated taste in music. I'm not one of those people who are able of enjoying things 'ironically', people who have managed to kill that childish part of their minds which simply likes or dislikes what it hears based on wanting to dance to it or finding the words funny. I have had conversations with men and women who have sneered at bands such as Muse. I just can't speak to that. These are not some crappy manufactured artless teenagers, these guys are fucking Muse. To turn your nose up at Muse shows a level of discernment bordering on stupidity. It's like meeting someone who only eats meat and I can't get my head around it.

My relationship with the songs I listen to is just that, a relationship - these are songs I am in love with. That first listen is like meeting for the first time which leads to immediate attraction or repulsion. If I like a song I will get to know it better, learn all the words, listen to more by the same artist and I will sing that song in the shower for the rest of my life. When I first heard 'Inches and Falling' by The Format it was love at first listen. Something in that song's composition has tapped into a primal, uncontrollable part of me and lodged itself there. I can't explain how it happened, it is simply a part of me now. I have the same relationship with 'Love Shack' by the B-52s and 'Bad Day' by REM. I have internalised the majority of Bowling for Soup's discography in much the same way. Now, I don't know if The Format are a 'good' band. I don't know if I'm 'supposed' to like them. I don't know what genre they're in, whether they are considered a guilty pleasure or powerful artists I should feel proud of knowing. I don't know if they're corporate sell-outs or indie mavericks. Frankly, I don't give a shit. I love being in love with 'Inches and Falling' and that's as far as my interest extends. I'm like a child.

But that makes me hesitate for talking about songs I hate. To anyone who has the same relationship with songs as myself, what I'm about to say about certain songs is going to hit as close to home as if I was insulting a spouse. So, before we begin, please forgive me and bear in mind what I said before about not being a conisseur. My mind has two settings: love and hate. And whilst there are songs I have instantly fallen in love with there are also songs I have instantly hated. Here is one of them: 'Chasing Pavements'.

I don't care what anyone says, this song is a piece of shit. Actually, this isn't just about 'Chasing Pavements', it's about songs not making sense in general. And I'm not talking about 'I Am the Walrus' here. I'm talking about songs with awful shitty lyrics. The majority of people I'm sure don't pay attention to the words of a song but I'm one of those people for whom the words are important. I don't know if it's because I'm a writer or what - I just like song lyrics to make sense.

Enter 'Chasing Pavements', which you can listen to here if you're feeling masochistic. It's by a woman called simply "Adele", which I find sort of offensive since she really isn't famous enough to just be a first name. Anyway, Adele is supposed to be a soul singer from London but how she's supposed to put any soul into gibberish lyrics I don't know. There's only so much emotion you can pack into nonsense. Instead we get a sort of pseudo-artful warbling, the musical equivalent of baige paint.

So, moving onto the lyrics, which I had to look up because her diction isn't particularly crisp. Perhaps she's embarrassed by what she's reading out. The verses are promising enough, aside from the line "If I'm wrong I am right", which is blatantly false however you look at it but what the hell we'll let it slide. The biggest problem in the verses is that whilst their words acutally make sense on paper, Adele can't convey any of that meaning vocally (which you would think is the job of a singer). The line "This ain't lust I know this is love, but..." comes out as "This ain'luss IIIIIeeeIIIIeeeeIIIeee know thiiiiisyluh - bah!" which isn't anything. Play the video back. It's 22 seconds in. Have you listened? I'm right, aren't I? She sounds like someone putting on a bad Italian accent. It's like she left the house in a hurry and forgot the consonants. She's like the aliens from Galaxy Quest who can't accurately approximate human speech.

Then she hits us with the chorus: "Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements even if it leads no where? Or would it be a waste even if I knew my place? Should I leave it there? Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements even if it leads nowhere?" she croons and presumably we're meant to wipe tears from our eyes over the heartache of it all. But what the fuck is chasing pavements? Eh?

Basically, the song is about a woman in love with someone and she doesn't know what to do. She knows she needs to tell the other person if she is to end up with them and she knows it ain't lust. There are feelings of resolve mingled with feelings of hesistance - "Should I leave it there?" she muses. Well that's just lovely, where does the pursuit of pavement fit into all this?

"Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements?" In the context, we could assume that giving up would be not telling the other person she loves them and forgetting about it. So, chasing pavements would be....the opposite of giving up - although there is a possibility that even this will not lead anywhere. So really she's fucked. But that's as much as we can infer: "Should I give up or... not?"

I did some research into the meaning of this phrase, in case I was just being ignorant. I wasn't.

It turns out I'm not the first person to ask these probing questions of this song but no two people can agree on a definition. One guy thought it meant chasing after someone you love but then they disappear and you're left "chasing the pavement", as it were. But that can't be right, since Adele herself says pavement-chasing may lead nowhere, which implies that it also might lead somewhere i.e. the person you love has not already fucked off. Q.E.D. Some othe guy thought "pavement" was gay slang for "the butt", which means chasing pavements is a euphemism for playing the field. But that's not right either, since Adele isn't playing the field - she's decided upon one person (the adressee of this little number) with whom she is in love, not lust. So that reading's out the window, too. Another person said they didn't know what it meant but suspected it had something to do with hopscotch. Honestly, that answer's as likely as any of the others.

My friend Neil said chasing pavements was when you look at the pavement whilst walking along. So Adele's choice in that case is between giving up and walking around dejectedly in the hope that it leads somewhere. I think not, Neil.

In fact, chasing pavements doesn't mean anything. It's not a metaphor, it's not anything. There are always phrases and ideas in songs that merely hint at a more profound meaning but leave the reader to fill in the blanks. That way the song can speak to more people. If I said "talking in bed ought to be easiest" you can decide for yourself what I'm trying to say; it might mean nothing to you or it might mean everything. "Chasing pavements" goes one further - by meaning fuck all it can mean anything your imagination wants it to mean. As I hope I have already illustrated, everyone has their own idea of what it's supposed to mean. Personally, I think it's about a professional pavement-hunter who stalks through a gritty urban wilderness tracking down paving slabs using only her senses and her gut instincts, fuelled by adrenaline and fear, living on the edge, chasing pavements. Have fun making up your own meaning!

Why does the meaning of one phrase matter so much? Well, it's the whole fucking song! The question of whether Adele should keep chasing pavements or give up is repeated a total of nine times. It's one of those songs with no third verse so to fill up the time they just repeat the chorus again and again. And the pavement question is repeated twice in the chrous! Then there's the refrain, in which she repeats the question again before launching back into the chorus. Nine times! Plus, it's the only part of the song you can actually make out. They even called the song 'Chasing Pavements'. You may have noticed a distinct pavement theme running through the equally confusing video. This is what the song is about. That's all they've got to say. And it doesn't make any sense!

Can somone give me one reason - and I'm not being rhetorical, e-mail me with the reason - why they didn't just have her sing "Should I give up or should I tell you that I love you?" because that's what the rest of the song is about. It doesn't rhyme with anything - there's no reason for it to be there. You could replace the phrase "chasing pavements" with "eating biscuits", "shooting badgers" or "tasting nametags" and have no impact on the song's meaning. Isn't that sad? Isn't annoying that they beat you over the head with that question ad nauseum - the pavementent conundrum - and it doesn't even mean anything?

It's not a real song, not really. It sounds like it is on the surface but it's just a weird mutant copy of a real song, a creepy doppelganger. Utterly alien, utterly impenetrable. Compare the lyrics to 'Chasing Pavements' with the lyrics to 'Must I Paint You a Picture?' by Billy Bragg. Both songs are about love, both make heavy use of metaphor and both pose rhetorical questions in their choruses. But whilst one is hollow and meaningless, the other is profound and earnest. Billy Bragg's metaphors actually mean something. Now, the Bragg song doesn't make perfect sense in a day-to-day kind of way. If I called you a "little black cloud in a dress" you'd probably take a few steps backwards and maybe leave the room but we can see what he's getting at. If I said "most important decisions in life are made between two people in bed" you can decide for yourself what I'm trying to say. There is a certain language of songs which allows them to play with words in unexpected ways - it's one of the reasons why I find them so appealling. But there is a line. And 'Chasing Pavements' has crossed that line. As I said before, it is a piece of shit. A piece of shit on the pavement of life. Now that's a real metaphor.

EDIT:

Posted 09:18 (GMT) 27th February 2012

I still think this song's lyrics are terrible, but Eg White the man who wrote this song went on to write 'Hurricane Drunk' by Florence + the Machine which you should be able to listen to here and which is one of my favourite songs, with superb lyrics that completely make sense despite being chock full of metaphor. So yes, his other song is awful. But no, I can't stay mad at him. Go listen to 'Hurricane Drunk' for an example of how imagery in a song's lyrics can be used to describe an experience better than flatly stating the reality of the situation ever could. Notice how, aside from the title, drunkenness is never explicitly mentioned. Also know that you are listening to the sound of redemption. Chasing pavements indeed...

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