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Monday 22 October 2018

Day 178: Who taught you meteorology?

“Thunder only happens when it’s raining,” sings Stevie Nicks in Fleetwood Mac’s inimitable 1977 hit Dreams. But the truth is that thunder does not only happen when it’s raining. That is not how thunder works, Stevie Nicks! In actual fact dry thunderstorms are a major cause of wildfires in the American Southwest, occuring when mid and upper level moisture, drawn into the region from the subtropics, forms convection currents in the intense summer heat, producing cloud to cloud and cloud to ground lightning! At least according to the /askscience Reddit, which I trust a damned sight more than a band whose most famous work is the hearsay and conjecture filled album Rumours.

A trifling mistake, though, you say? Well it turns out that the more you look, the more you find that popular music is riddled with such factual inaccuracies, spurious and oftentimes slanderous statements furthered by irresponsible artists lost in the avaricious pursuit of poetry and rhyme. Here are the first ten examples I found. You don’t want to know how deep this rabbit hole leads…

1. “The change has come, she’s under my thumb...” - Under My Thumb, The Rolling Stones - Now, people can’t fit under other people’s thumbs, even when the thumbs belong to that famously beef-handed cockerel-man Mick Jagger. Unless there exists a race of faerie folk that Jagger has been keeping locked in mason jars in his garage, trading crusts of bread and another day’s supply of oxygen for spoonfuls of the creatures’ magic dust, which the preening septuagenarian imbibes to provide him with the requisite energy to continue his campaign of printing red lips on pieces of tat and selling them at disproportionately marked-up prices as an alternative to writing any good music since 1978. Is that what you’re telling us, Mick Jagger? Is it?

2. “We could be married, and then we’d be happy…” - Wouldn’t it Be Nice, The Beach Boys - No, The Beach Boys. No, it wouldn’t be nice. You would not “hold each other close the whole night through.” You would lie in bed pretending to read on your Kindle while actually seething with fury about how your wife undercut the punchline to your story at dinner with the McCallisters earlier in the evening, screeching in that moronic tone of hers, “No you didn’t! You only thought of that in the car later!” without even a basic grasp of the demands of storytelling and entertaining a crowd. Meanwhile, your wife would pretend to be reading on her phone, while actually scanning the Instagram feed of the bloke from her office who regularly works out (your three press-ups once a month don’t count) and holds her gaze in the coffee room in a way that makes her feel like an object of more allure than the comfy yet de-elasticated winter socks you've started picturing when you think of her face. And then you both turn away from one another and fall into another lonely, dissatisfied slumber. Because that’s what marriage is, isn’t it?

3. “I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song, I’m twenty-two now, but I won’t be for long…” - A New England, Billy Bragg -  Billy. I'm a big fan. But are you telling me you took a break of a year between writing the first and second lines of this breakout hit? I like the lines and all, they’re good lines, but it’s no wonder you’ve never achieved the heights of pop success with a productivity rate like that. Get the content out, Billy, or YouTube's algorithm is going to eat you alive.

4. “There are nine-million bicycles in Beijing, that’s a fact…” - Nine Million Bicycles, Katie Melua - Katie. Katie, Katie, Katie. I love you. I love your mellifluous name. I love how unperturbed you look about being dragged by your ankles away from a quiet picnic with your lover and across the entirety of the globe. But no one knows how many bicycles there are in Beijing. Do us all a favour and admit that your song is fake news. This declamation as unquestionable certainty of something about which we can at best only hazard a loose guess is precisely the kind of irresponsible songwriting that I’m talking about. You’re paving the way for Trump and the return of fascism, Katie Melua. I hope you know that.

5. “What’s my age again, what’s my age again?” - What’s My Age Again?, Blink 182 - I mean, you say your age is 23, right there in the song. But those Dickie’s board shorts and primary-coloured sweat bands aren’t fooling anyone, Mark Hoppus. You’re the oldest man alive. You’re even older than Mick Jagger. You’re even older than Tom Delonge, whose head is staying the same size while his face gradually shrinks into nothing. Even in 1999 you were old. Now it’s just pathetic. Put on an M&S sweater and learn how to do cryptic crosswords and let it go. You'll feel so much better.

6. “Played it till my fingers bled, was the summer of ‘69…” Summer of ‘69, Bryan Adams - In these lyrics Canada’s answer to Ryan Adams, Bryan Adams, claims to buy an electric guitar, learn to play, form a band, hang out at the drive-in, and fall in love, all in the summer of 1969. But during the summer of 1969 Bryan Adams was nine years old. Now, I’m not saying that one of his bandmates didn’t quit the band, while the other got married - I’m just questioning Ottawa’s matrimony laws that led to a primary school child making it to the altar.

7. “Well I stand up next to a mountain, and I chop it down with the edge of my hand…” Voodoo Child (Slight Return), Jimi Hendrix - That didn’t happen, Jimi. You took some bad acid and rolled your trousers down to your socks and squirmed on the grass shouting “Earthworm Jim doesn’t need his spacesuit to have a good time”. It was embarrassing for all of us, and we try not to talk about it. Please stop bringing it up.

8. “You don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on… You don’t have to be rich to be my girl…” - Kiss, Prince - The artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince was romantically linked with many women over his lifetime, including Madonna, Kim Basinger, Carmen Electra, and a sixteen-year-old dancer to whom he became a guardian until she turned nineteen, at which point he put her on birth control and threw her in the sack. All of these women were either beautiful, rich, or both. Words are easy, Prince. We can all say things. It's your actions that count.

9. “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?” - Ironic, Alanis Morissette - Anyone who thinks rain on your wedding day is ironic has obviously never spent much time in the UK over the summer months. “Isn’t it a depressing inevitability?” more like.

10. “I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear…” This Charming Man, The Smiths - No you wouldn’t, Morrissey. Who do you think you’re kidding? Fresh wardrobe or no, you’d stay in your room and eat four bags from a six-bag multipack of Lidl-brand pickled onion “Monster Claws”, scroll way further than the acceptable amount down the Facebook photos of that girl you used to work with, and write in your journal about how you’re not racist but you just reckon that all Chinese people have weirdly malicious eyes. The same as you do every night, Morrissey. We’ve got your number.

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