Let it rock

Oh how we all love pop music. Whether driving our grindage at Shooter's (properly pronounced Shoot-uh's! The exclamation point is a must), bumpin in our car or listening to it on our iPod (I try not to tell other people, but I love listening to Katy Perry on my iPod), pop music can offer something different at any time of the day. In the confusing times that we live in, the lyrics to popular music can be useful to help us reflect on our own feelings. So I am going to try to decipher some here.

The top song on the Billboard Hot 100, Flo-Rida's masterpiece "Right Round" (featuring Ke$ha), has a chorus that rings so true in the recession. The song is based on a sample of the Dead or Alive classic "You Spin Me Right Round (Like a Record)" that our generation only knows because of the MeatSpin viral video (if you haven't heard of MeatSpin, don't ask. Trust me, you don't want to know). Flo-Rida puts the song into a modern context. "You spin my head right round, right round/When you go down, when you go down down." Clearly, Flo-Rida is bemoaning the confusing nature of our economic times. As the economy goes down, down, our heads are spinning around and around.

Now at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, "Crack a Bottle" by Eminem featuring Dr. Dre and 50 Cent, is a typical Eminem-style lyrical masterpiece. The chorus, "So crack a bottle/let your body waddle/Don't act like a snobby model/you just hit the lotto," seems like a nonsensical conglomeration of random syllables that have a slant rhyme. He is actually singing, however, about the movie "Wall-E". Wall-E, as a clean-up robot, cracked a lot of bottles. The futuristic humans all waddle and act snobby towards the robots. Then the plant that Wall-E and Eva find is the metaphorical lotto! At least that's how I read it.

Everything Soulja Boy Tell 'Em performs is an astounding work of art. His current No. 9 hit, "Kiss U Thru The Phone" featuring Sammie, has a charm that is above anything I could further explain in a column. I implore all of you to listen to the song. It could change your life.

Katy Perry's timeless "Hot 'n Cold," is a stronger political statement than her pro-homosexual marriage hit "I Kissed a Girl." The song begins with a critique of a few of the major presidential candidates of the past few years. "You change your mind/Like a girl changes clothes" is an obvious allusion to the flip-flopper tag applied to John Kerry in 2004, while "Yeah, you PMS like a..." is criticizing John McCain's temper. "And you always think/Always speak cryptically" shows her skepticism of President Barack Obama's eloquence and rampant elitism in his oral style. The chorus ("You're hot 'n you're cold") rings back to the nature of campaigns and the daily swings in polling popularity based on news cycles. The song is obviously about all the problems in campaigning. It definitely isn't an angsty love ballad.

My favorite, and the most pertinent to all of our lives is "I Love College" by Asher Roth. He sings about everything in college, except the whole learning part. Asher sings, "drink my beer and smoke my.../with my good friends is all I need." Roth isn't singing about his Van Wilder-style party boy lifestyle, he is protesting the irrelevance of grammar in the modern college. My favorite nugget of wisdom is, "time isn't wasted when you're getting wasted." I won't even spin that one-I just like it. Roth proceeds to discuss his lessons from college, telling students to be wary of leaving your shoes on when you pass out or be careful of date raping girls who are too drunk-valuable lessons. Yet he also tells people to wear two condoms. Don't listen to that. The Centers for Disease Control says that is dumb. I guess Asher Roth proves that not every pop song has the depth of a Flo-Rida.

Billboard Hot 100 hits can often be identified as poetic social and political commentaries. So when you start bumpin to the tunes of T.I., Kanye or Britney over spring break, think about the lyrical implications of each song. Listen to what the artists are trying to convey, what they want to say with the song. Then quickly forget that point and just move your body to the beat.

Drew Everson is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Friday.