Listen, we need to talk about the state of rock and roll lyrics. ‘Cause it’s not good. And I’m talking specifically rock and roll, not pop, so for the time being we can ignore things like “The Glamorous…the Glamorous Glamorous The Glamorous…the Flossy Flossy” and “Once you pop lock drop it for me maybe we can roll,” neither of which make any bloody sense at all.
No, I want to focus on things like Hinder’s new song “Better Than Me,” which is a song about how the author’s girlfriend could probably find a better lover than he, which almost certainly true because it contains the following lyrical masterpiece:
I really miss your hair in my face
And the way your innocence tastes
Which is the stupidest thing to appear on the airwaves since Max Headroom. How exactly, Hinder, would you describe the taste of innocence? Is it tangy? DOES IT HAS A FLAVOR? Or is it more that you are completely an idiot?
(Don’t get me started on “Hinder” as a band name; it’s never been adequately explained to me how it’s pronounced, so either it’s “Hynder,” which may or may not be a juvenile reference to, you know, a Snoop Doggy Dogg album, or it’s “Hinder,” as in the band is “hindered” from producing good songs because of their staggering suckitude.)
Let’s compare it to an example. In the mid-80s, U2 released an album entitled “The Joshua Tree,” which is widely considered to be in the top 10 of best rock albums of all time. Before you protest “Hey man, making a comparison to some of the best lyrics of all times is totally specious, dude, that’s totally unrad,” I’m not planning to compare “Better Than Me” to, say, “Where The Streets Have No Name” or “With Or Without You;” I’m going to go with “Bullet The Blue Sky.”
Just the title is bad ass; it takes two rather strong images, bullets and blue skies, and combines them in a way that doesn’t make any sense and YET IT TOTALLY MAKES PERFECT SENSE. And when you examine the lyrics, you find gems such as:
See the face of fear running scared in the valley below
and the entire bridge, which is lengthy, but bear with me:
This guy comes up to me
His face red like a rose on a thorn bush
Like all the colors of a royal flush
And hes peeling off those dollar bills
Slapping them down
One hundred, two hundred
And I can see those fighter planes
And I can see those fighter planes
Across the mud huts where the children sleep
Through the alleys of a quiet city street
Take the staircase to the first floor
Turn the key and slowly unlock the door
As a man breathes into a saxophone
Through the walls we hear the city groan
Outside its america
Outside its america
And Bono’s not even SINGING, he’s just TALKING, over weird ethereal angry guitar noises, and you’re saying “*(#&$ YES BONO I TOTALLY SUPPORT WHATEVER IT IS YOU’RE SINGING ABOUT” which apparently was just him complaining about the US intervening in the El Salvador Civil War, which I don’t even remember happening. The end result: mass panic and confusion.
The end result of listening to “Better Than Me” is that I want to read about how all the members of Hinder ended up living under a freeway underpass.
YOU are the idiot. The “innocence” he is referring to are her “private parts”. Get it? So to answer your question, “innocence” tastes a bit salty, and sometimes smells a bit like fish.