Thursday, April 28, 2011

Dear Bruno Mars

I say this out of love. Well, out of tolerance, I guess. My three-year-old knows every word of "Just The Way You Are" and I work with teenage girls, and I appreciate the message of that song. So I'm not totally hating on you.
But...
I just saw tonight's American Idol. I have to say, there's a fine line between "keeping it real" and a disturbing amount of oversharing. There's also a fine line between clever lyrics and insanely stupid lyrics. Your new song is miles beyond both of those lines, and not on the "good" side. A song about being lazy and sitting around all day has the potential to be funny or cutesy, but it also could apparently very easily be super gross. Forget the inherent lack of musicality in lyrics about you lounging around in a Snuggie or with your hand down your pants (and if you readers don't believe me, listen to the song, I am not joking--those are actual lyrics), lets keep a little mystery, Bruno. Your demographic is largely composed of young women who listen to your music while secretly pretending they have a chance to date or marry you someday (whether you are already married, gay, or anything else on the spectrum is irrelevant to these teenage fantasies), and you want to keep them interested so they keep buying records.
Keeping them interested entails pretending you will always love and adore them as if it is your first date. It keeps no one interested if you give them a delightful little preview into what a Saturday afternoon somewhere around year seven of your marriage would look like. Far to much reality! Stick to telling them their laugh is sexy and their eyes make the sun look as if it isn't shining, or whatever you sang in that first song, my three-year-old is in bed so I can't ask her. Even though I totally despise it personally, you can even stick to songs with freakishly violent and gruesome lyrics about how you'd die various ways for your love for no apparent reason (and even though she won't return the favor). I'm assuming the young woman you are singing to in that one has a lot of enemies that you would have to catch grenades, take bullets, and do all sorts of other self-sacrificing things for her, but I know girls love that sort of melodramatic, over the top, and frankly disturbing kind of romance. Case in point: the Twilight series.
**Just out of curiosity, what good does it actually do to "catch a grenade" for someone? I mean, assuming you were standing next to them, which you would be in order to be close enough to catch it, wouldn't you just both blow up? Doesn't that seem like a bad call in which no one wins? I've wondered that for a while now.
Anyway, in short, while we all know the guilty pleasure of sticking a wad of Kleenex up a nostril when we have a runny nose and don't want to keep wiping it, or whatever your nasty lazy (or sick) day vice is--but there's a reason it isn't the stuff of musical wooing. There's also a reason women don't let their boyfriends see them in full blown period mode until they've got a rock solid relationship--help a girl out and return the favor.
On the other hand, I guess no one could accuse you of a bait and switch if you told them all your disgusting habits well in advance. If you ever got to a first date after laying it all out there. That's a big if.
One last thing...I'm not hating on the Snuggie either. In fact, by the final verse, when you sang about strutting around without it (or a shower I'm assuming), I'd never missed a Snuggie so much. Ewwww, Bruno. Just, ewww.

1 comment:

Alison said...

I heard this song recently and it made me totally hate him. And then I vaguely recalled you writing about this song and then the stars aligned I remembered to try and find it while actually sitting at the computer. So, yeah, I agree with you. Who on earth is he trying to impress by singing that song?