Songs We Hate, Volume What to the Ev: The O'Kaysions, "Girl Watcher"
No video link 'cause it screws up the blog formatting, and you can find it easily enough if for some unfathomable reason you care to!
For some damn reason, I've heard this song twice on the oldies station in recent weeks, and given that I only ever listen to it on short drives, you've gotta figure they've played it much more than that. This has the honor of being the only song where, when I hear it, I think, why the hell is this even extant? Totally insipid music, what--if we're being generous--we could describe as not-so-charmingly retrograde lyrics--what is there for anyone to like? With previous Songs We Hate--"Wonderful Tonight," "Take a Letter Maria," "You Can't Be too Strong"--I'm capable of understanding why other people like them, even if they offend my sensibilities. But this? I got nothin'. And it's not as though The O'Kaysions (what an awful band name) are famous for anything else that would buoy this up (I had no idea what the artist was called until I looked them up for this entry). I mean, okay, preserve it for sociological reasons, but don't play it on the radio, fercrissake. This is the biggest problem with nostalgia culture: the inability to accept that a good part of the pop culture ephemera of your youth simply wasn't very good, and therefore doesn't need to be fetishistically elevated to "classic" status. A prime example of that is those fucking awful Paul Murry/Carl Fallberg Mickey Mouse serials they used to run in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories; another is, well, this.
And mind you, "not-so-charmingly retrograde" is a very generous description of the lyrics. To wit:
Hello there, female
My my but you do look swell
Could you please walk
A little slower
I wonder if you know
That you're putting on a show
Could you please walk
A little closer
I mean JESUS CHRIST. I think it's the use of the word "female" that elevates (?) this from "creepy stalker" to "probable serial killer." Stop playing it, classic rock radio, unless you're really gunning for quotation marks around the first two of those words.
For some damn reason, I've heard this song twice on the oldies station in recent weeks, and given that I only ever listen to it on short drives, you've gotta figure they've played it much more than that. This has the honor of being the only song where, when I hear it, I think, why the hell is this even extant? Totally insipid music, what--if we're being generous--we could describe as not-so-charmingly retrograde lyrics--what is there for anyone to like? With previous Songs We Hate--"Wonderful Tonight," "Take a Letter Maria," "You Can't Be too Strong"--I'm capable of understanding why other people like them, even if they offend my sensibilities. But this? I got nothin'. And it's not as though The O'Kaysions (what an awful band name) are famous for anything else that would buoy this up (I had no idea what the artist was called until I looked them up for this entry). I mean, okay, preserve it for sociological reasons, but don't play it on the radio, fercrissake. This is the biggest problem with nostalgia culture: the inability to accept that a good part of the pop culture ephemera of your youth simply wasn't very good, and therefore doesn't need to be fetishistically elevated to "classic" status. A prime example of that is those fucking awful Paul Murry/Carl Fallberg Mickey Mouse serials they used to run in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories; another is, well, this.
And mind you, "not-so-charmingly retrograde" is a very generous description of the lyrics. To wit:
Hello there, female
My my but you do look swell
Could you please walk
A little slower
I wonder if you know
That you're putting on a show
Could you please walk
A little closer
I mean JESUS CHRIST. I think it's the use of the word "female" that elevates (?) this from "creepy stalker" to "probable serial killer." Stop playing it, classic rock radio, unless you're really gunning for quotation marks around the first two of those words.
posted by GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. at 4:33 PM
