Really Makes You Think

The expression “really makes you think” is something that I’ve been using ironically, but I don’t think that anyone else thinks it’s funny, or maybe no one knows I’m joking when I say it. How could something force you to think? I usually say it after someone saying something like “all those stars are so far away”, or something really cliché like that, so it seems kind of obvious that I’m joking. But I think I’m just making people think I’m stupid. Now this is making me think!
Anyway, top 40 radio is on in the office all day, and here are some songs that have been making me think:
1. Let's Make love in The Club by Usher: this song is about how Usher wants to “make love in this club” and he doesn’t “care who’s watching”. The situation as I understand it is that a girl he’s dancing with really wants to make love in the club, and he needs some convincing, but if she “keeps this up” then she might really get to make love in the club with Usher. But it never explicitly says she wants to make love in the club, it’s just kind of an implicit understanding that she does. It’s kind of heroic and comforting of him to make love to her, especially because she’s stressed that “her baby left school”. Just a little charity sex.
2. Wanna Be Startin' Something by Michael Jackson featuring Akon “I met her on a walkway/Stared as she walked by/She turned back at me sideways/Said ‘I can’t help but ask’/Do you wanna be starting something?” First of all, what the hell kind of walkway is this? Is it like a moving walkway in an airport? Or like a boardwalk, maybe? The walking side of a bike path in a public park? Second, she can’t help but ask if he wants to get with her? He is staring, so I don’t think she has to excuse her question by saying she “can’t help” but ask it. And who says they “can’t help but ask” anymore? Is this song based on a Jane Austen Novel? And third, the question “do you wanna be starting something?” could easily be misconstrued to mean “do you want to fight me?” If the world’s cutest boy (PS) asked me if I wanted to be starting something, I would run away. Anyway, they go back to her place and he wishes he “could tell you what (he) saw/Sexiest woman in a negligee” Umm, I think you just told me, then. They “hit it off until the dawn”. I think this song could be a pick-me-up for guys who stare at women in the hopes that they can be starting something. It’s their version of “Don’t Stop Believing”. Hold onto that feeling!
3. Take You There by Sean Kingston “We can go to Bahamas/Sip pina coladas/Shorty, I can take you there/Or we can go to the slums/Where killers get hung/Shorty, I can take you there” The whole song is based on the premise that this guy is asking where his girlfriend wants to go: the Bahamas or the slums? Hmm, tough one. He won’t think less of her for choosing the Bahamas; “Baby, it’s up to you, it’s whatever you like”. He is “known in the ghetto”, so and it’s where he’s from, but he has no problem with not taking her home. So it’s not a question of their relationship getting serious and he needs to take her home. It’s literally just her choice between pina coladas or watching killers get hung. The refrain says “Or we could go to a place you would like/the beach…welcome to paradise”, so he knows that she would like the beach. And the “or” before “a place you would like” shows that he knows that she doesn’t like the slums. So why is he even asking this question?

This is how I spend my days. This is the way I live.