You Can Be My Black Kate Moss Tonight

Don't song lyrics make you laugh? Especially the ones by these R&B and rap artists who steal a riff from a popular song so were are lured by it's familiarity. Fast forward 15 seconds and we have to frantically change the radio station because ho's, bitches, and the N-word seem to flow more freely than Kanye's political rants. If I want to buy your CD, that's my choice. Don't tell me who to vote for, you over-paid, over-blinged 20 year-old jackass. And if your song has more swear words than normal ones so your radio edit is bleeped out silence, maybe you should reevaluate. The teens will think you are just as cool if you talk normal, you know.

Some R&B music used to be clean but still cool enough to play in your Walkman. (It wasn't always the Ipod.. Remember those huge, 5-pound Walkmans with the cassette players?) Now that I teach dance to 4th and 5th-graders that requires music outside of my ballet comfort zone, I tend to get laughed at alot. "Miss Molly, what the heck is THIS music?!" What, you've never heard of Depeche Mode, Erasure, Abba, or the soundtrack from Xanadu? I challenge you to try to pick a hip hop song that's appropriate for kids to dance to (which really means their parents won't call and file a complaint with your boss and the NAACP because there were racial slurs a-plenty. Too bad their child was singing the lyrics better than the original artist AND knew the entire dance from the video. But I'm sure they never heard it AT HOME before...)

After hitting my last birthday, I have begun to feel old. Now all my friends who are older than me will probably give me a swift kick in the ass but it's true. And not being to relate or even understand today's music doesn't make me feel better. Have you tried to listen to the bullshit on the radio lately? It's crap!! This will elicit some "old geezer" resonses, I'm sure but I absolutely HATE "Soulja Boy". Makes no sense and the dance is retarded. "She moves her body like a cyclone"???? Really? Are you sure you're not so wasted on your fifth bottle of Cristal that the whole room is moving like that cyclone, Tupac? And thank you Nicole "I've Had So Much Plastic Surgery My Nose Looks Like My Labia" Sherzinger, for making my kids ask exactly WHAT it is you can do in "I'll Do Anything You Like". Dressing like a freak prostitute and performing lapdances with your pussy posse doesn't really leave much room for suggestion. My question for you is what WON'T you do? Sex with a corpse? Bestiality? I know the men who get perma-wood while watching her could give two shits. We know what they do to her song.

Now music from the good old 80's was sort of cheesy but it was fun and didn't really offend anybody. Imagine trying to sit with your grandma and listen to a 50 Cent or DMX song. How the fuck would you explain that? "Grandma, let me try to explain who his "homies" are and why he wants to "bust a cap in their asses"." The music from the 80's was stupid but I loved songs like "Safety Dance". Dumb and clean, like a liturgical dance at church. (You know you think it's queer when the fat girls prance around with their limited dance abilities in metallic tarps on Sunday..) The band Dexy's Midnight Runners, who sang "Come On Eileen", looked like freaks in their overalls with no shirts. They all looked like they had been living as hobos hopping trains and hadn't showered in a month. But wasn't that a damn good song? Even Madonna kept it cleaner and toned down once upon a time. For her next tour I think she might just perform an actual orgy with a herd of goats and strap on light-up Kaballah dildos. She can only top herself so many times at this age.

Music is all relative, I suppose. Some of it can stand the test of time. Much of the bullshit we hear today will be long forgotten once we have grandkids. There are certain songs that will forever be emlazened in my mind and heart for different reasons....I remember "Somebody" by Depeche Mode and desperately wanting a cute boy to ask me to dance. I remember this big-nosed sophomore at Forest Hills Central lip-synching to "Bad Medicine" by Bon Jovi. I bought this song, even though I hated Bon Jovi, just to think about McSchnoz and his dance moves. I remember "Winter" by Tori Amos being a break-up song with a particular guy who broke my heart. I still like the song, it reminds me that I've grown. I remember songs like "Avalon" by Bryan Ferry, "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred (another really inane song that still makes me laugh..), and "Freedom" by Wham. Man, I loved George Michael when he and Andrew Ridgely were a duo. Now all he sings about is man-love and pickle smoking. And he's a big lush. Poor George. There are some awesome old techno songs, that my brother, Andy, will recall listening to at a piss-ass "industrial" bar near Detroit. "Dildo", "James Brown is Dead", "Out of Control"....If you were born after 1984 you are asking what in the hell I am talking about. I don't blame you for being a baby or even an unfertilized egg when all this momentous music was being created. You have just gotten the shaft with your generation. Pretty soon concerts will cost as much as braces for our kids. Son of a bitch. All I can say is, everybody wang chung tonight...