Song Lyrics That Make No Sense

This week, a bit of an odd one. While browsing the iTunes store for music to download with my new voucher I came across some songs that served as a reminder of everything that is wrong with the world.

As an aside, don't worry: you didn't miss any important event like a birthday or anniversary. I use vouchers to keep better track of my music spending than a debit card. Just thought I'd put it out there so you're not frantically scrabbling around for a greetings card that says "sorry it's late" or something. Don't send it. You'd in fact either be incredibly late or incredibly early depending on how you look at it.

Anyway, here's one that sent me into a proverbial shit-fit.

Beyoncé - If I Were A Boy

Read the full lyrics Here

This is one of those songs that pisses me off for a couple of reasons, and it doesn't take long before the lyrics serve to wind me up.

"If I were a boy
Even just for a day
I’d roll outta bed in the morning
And throw on what I wanted then go"

Ok, so if Beyoncé were a boy she would wake up, put on clothes and leave the house. Would she even remark upon the fact that she had become a male overnight? Is this not something worthy of even mild surprise? I certainly feel that if I were to wake up to find that I had become a female of the species (which, as popular 1990s band Space would tell you, is more deadly than the male), I'd be pretty fucking amazed.

Apparently, it seems, if Beyoncé Knowles woke up one day and found that she had become a male, complete with genitalia, she wouldn't even be fazed enough to have a little rummage with her newly-acquired nads. Wouldn't she even just be curious as to how it happened? Would she not be concerned that there was a phantom surgeon nearby transplanting danglers onto random R&B musicians? Would she phone around to Mary J. Blige and ask "Mary, have you woken up with a fresh pair of happysacks?" I don't think she bloody would!

Anyway, she's got more that she reckons she'd do as well.

"Drink beer with the guys
And chase after girls
I’d kick it with who I wanted
And I’d never get confronted for it.
Cause they’d stick up for me."

Has she even seen a bloke in a pub? That is nothing like what we do. Clearly the young lady has never been into a pub with a group of blokes who are ridiculing one of their mates for banging an ugly girl. Maybe in Beautiful People Land, where Beyoncé lives, everyone is beautiful (as the name goes some way to suggesting) and wouldn't have to worry about such things. Not so in the UK, where we have Susan Boyle making a name for herself. She's talented, I grant you, but still: would you? Really?...

Anyway, after this whinge, she goes into the chorus and the general gist of the song.

"If I were a boy
I think I could understand
How it feels to love a girl
I swear I’d be a better man"

Right, so what she's essentially saying here is that by being a girl, she would thus have perspective from a girl's point of view and as a result be more understanding of how it feels to love a girl. Except it wouldn't, would it? Unless the girl was a complete narcissist (and believe me, I'm not writing that off as a possibility), you wouldn't know how it felt to love a girl as a girl unless you were a lesbian. Last time I checked, Beyoncé was married to Jay-Z, the distinctly non-female rapper, thus she has no frame of reference unless Jay-Z had become a girl the night before in a similar vein.

Besides, it's a pointless statement to say "oh, well I'd understand girls better because I've been one", because that's true of trannies as well. Aside from that, it'd be exactly the same in the other direction, as in guys would understand guys better. I grant you, if all the girls are as stoic as Beyoncé when it comes to the sudden presence of genitals, then maybe the guys might be a little behind: I can imagine that guys might struggle to get their heads round the concept of possessing a vagina for a little longer.

She goes on, as if that wasn't all bollocks enough.

"I’d put myself first
And make the rules as I go
Cause I know that she’d be faithful
Waitin’ for me to come home"

Now there's a fatal flaw here, isn't there? She's running down men left right and centre, but all the while she does she is being a massive hypocrite, as she's one of the members of Destiny's Child, one of these American trash pop bands that give women a massive attitude and turn them into proper gobby bitches, all the while blissfully unaware of the double standards that their songs promote. Oh, be an independent woman, but go out with a man you obviously don't trust enough to not suspect him of cheating on you any time he goes out.

That whole R&B/pop mentality of "Oh, I'm a woman and you are a man thus I am faithful and you are not" rears its head in many American pop songs. Take for instance Ain't No Other Man by Christina Aguilera. Now, it's an all right song as it goes, but the message is that she's massively loved up on this bloke and yet is fucking a bunch of other guys. Oh, but wait, she doesn't want the guy she's loved up on to have any lovers, as she wants him to know that he is her property. Now some purists and feminist nutbags will argue that girls should be allowed to sleep around without stigma of being 'easy' if they so choose, and I agree. However, it should be one rule for everyone, not just the same rule flipped around. Equality means just that.

Back to Beyoncé though, the worst thing about this song is the last chorus, as it sort of defeats the point somewhat.

"But you’re just a boy
You don’t understand
Yeah you don’t understand
How it feels to love a girl,
Someday you'll wish you were a better man"

So wait, after this supposedly poignant and thought-provoking (but in actual fact bollocks - you can't argue the science above) message that girls are more understanding of what it'd be like to be a guy rather than vice versa, actually it turns out that she's just having a stupid immature argument with her bloke and has just decided to deride him by saying that he's completely deficient because he can't imagine what it'd be like to be a girl who is a bloke loving a girl. Piss off Beyoncé, you confusing bitch! Go back to gyrating your posterior in revealing outfits while talking about female empowerment, you tool.

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C.S.I. NEW YORK: COMPLETE SERIES SIX GIVEAWAY

Starring Gary Sinise as Mac Taylor, the head of the New York City crime lab, the sixth season in the NY-based branch of executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer's C.S.I. franchise has exploded onto DVD in this box set featuring all twenty-three gripping episodes.

A Chicago native, Mac had gotten his police job as the result of his bravery under fire as a U.S. Marine; and like most of the major CSI characters, he harbored quite a few personal demons, most of them stemming from the death of his wife in the Twin Towers on 9/11. Taylor's team of forensic specialists included Stella Bonasera, an outspoken female cop who'd pulled herself up from a murky background; Don Flack, Yonkers-born scion of a family of cops; Mac's protégé Danny Messer; Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Sheldon Hawkes, a Harlem native who'd graduated from college at eighteen and became a licensed surgeon at twenty-four; and flirtatious, streetwise forensic analyst Aidan Burn.

Thanks to our friends at Momentum Pictures Home Entertainment, we've got two copies of C.S.I. New York Season Six to give away! For your chance of winning, please send your name and full postal address to csinewyorkgiveaway@yahoo.co.uk before midday on Monday 27th September. The first two entries pulled out of the electronic hat will win a free copy each.