Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Sam asked me where my examination of Busted lyrics was in the last entry. Here’s my answer:

Busted: A lyrical dissection of the sociocultural themes and intraconsciousness displayed within the piece “What I Go To School For”

When considering Busted, you must first examine their unique dichotomy - the metaphor they embody so well. A pop band holding guitars may initially seem like some cheap marketing gimmick, some half-arsed way of appealing to the guitar-based counter-culture that exists in music. It’s cool to be an outcast, and Busted bring that coolness to the mainstream,while managing to remain self-aware. The guitars that they brandish so competantly are merely held rather than played. In a way, the guitars represent the group, mere instruments directed in a semi-meaningful fashion in the direction of the public by those holding them - in this case the record companies - while providing little input of their own other than to look and sound cool; the notes the guitars play aren’t their own - a reality echoed by the fact that Busted’s philosophies and attitudes are no more their own than the sounds the guitars mime to.

So, having considered the unique artistic position displayed by Busted, we must now examine the art. Busted are again unique to pop. Their work is a new kind of meta-pop, each song is a simultaneous paradigm and parody of the genre wrapped in an almost post-ironic sense of internal description. The state of the art hasn’t been this good since Andy Warhol was shot at.

Consider their song, “What I Go To School For”. Blink 182 would kill for lyrics like this, but Busted have had them literally given to them, the joke being, of course, that the lyrics to the song require the intelligence of a 12 year old to figure out - whoever wrote these for Busted was clearly mocking such sophomoric bands as blink 182 and their pop-punk peers, saying “Look, I’m going to take your brand of humour and make it into a top 10 hit with the stroke of a pen, and without playing a note!”

Her voice is echoed in my mind/I count the days till she is mine
Can’t tell my friends cos they will laugh/I love a member of the staff

Talk about sense of rhythm. You can practically hear the song as you read the lyrics. I tell you, Shakespeare and Wordsworth would’ve killed to get this level or linguistic excellence. Iambic pentameter indeed. Of course, the lyrical content is just as important - as ever, Busted simultaneously mock and embrace the subculture of being outcasts - where the lamented S Club and Steps might have encouraged everyone to “Reach for the stars” or told them that “there’s not a cloud in the sky“, Busted identify with the other half of everyone, the part that feels different from other people. Of course, again, you have a hallmark of Busted’s self-awareness - “Staff” and “Laugh” clearly don’t rhyme, but it’s the half-unrhyme of the line that serves the overall tone of the group, things aren’t what they seem, Busted are being made to do things that don’t fit with themselves for the sake of getting an overall result.

“I fight my way to the front of class/To get the best view of her ass
I drop a pencil on the floor/She bends down and shows me more.”

An interesting stanza in the poetry of Busted. Subtle acknowledgement to the american influences of music are slipped in - the deliberate omission of the definite article when invoking the noun “class” brings things in line with the accepted US standard, in the UK you would expect to “fight your way to the front of the class”. The next part brings things back home though, with the famous Busted social commentary never far from their songs (clearly their song “Year 3000″ tackles current society head on with the delightful mixture of parody and irony Busted always display). The teacher, it would seem, is lowering herself to the protaganists level in order to show them “More [pencils]”. Initially a confusing line, but taken in a social context we can see Busted are saying how modern schooling insults the intelligent - the teacher lowers themselves rather than raises the pupil - those who are capable do not learn, they are simply fed the same information again and again (this information being the metaphorical pencils discussed herewith).

That’s what I go to school for/Even though it is a real bore
You can call me crazy/I know that she craves me
That’s what I go to school for/Even though it is a real bore
Girlfriends I’ve had plenty/None like Miss Mackenzie

Again, Busted and their social awareness. The repetition in the first and third lines achoes again the state of examinations, whereby information is merely memorised and parroted rather than understood. Again, the final line displays the half-rhyme seen earlier, a hallmark of their ironic performances evident many times again throughout the song. As the piece progresses, its lyrics become more and more tenuous, a sad but true indication of the pop music model, whereby things are initially good and slowly deteriorate towards to end of the pop career.

That’s what I go to school for/That’s what I go to school for

Again, repetition.

So she may be thirty-three/But that doesn’t bother me
Her boyfriend’s working out of town/I find a reason to go round

“Thirty-Three” a clear reference to the Smashing Pumpkins song of the same name - obvious because of Billy Corgan’s influence on Busted’s work - probably because it contains the line “I know I’ll make it, love can last forever” which is especially relevant to the overall narrative of the piece. And again, the half-rhyme Busted slip into each verse as a persistant reminder of their nature.

I climb a tree outside her home/To make sure she is all alone
I see her in her underwear/I can’t help but stop and stare

A probable reference to the music industry. The act of elevating yourself above normal civilians in order to join the media as a famous person, climbing the metaphorical tree of success, until you get to the top and discover the harsh reality - the initial inferrence of the song may suggest that things look good, but when taking into account that the “woman” (industry) is well past prime, the truth is that things look worse than they seemed down on the ground, with layers obscuring the truth.

Everyone that you teach all day knows you’re looking at me in a different way
I guess that’s why my marks are getting so high
I can see those tell-tale signs telling me that I was on your mind
I could see that you want it more when you told me that
I’m what you go to school for/I’m what you go to school for

An interesting technique employed at this critical juncture of the song - redundancy. Tell-tale signs tell the protaganist something. A tale, perhaps? one wonders what else they would do. Of course, what might initially might appear to be an absolutely brain dead way of making the line fit the music, Busted’s track record leads us to examine deeper. Perhaps the redundancy is an indication of the outcome of the approaching content - the relationship between the protaganist (outcast sub-culture) and the (music industry) lies exposed and suddenly things look bad - repetition in this case represents the final throes of many bands - maybe a failed attempt to recapture the past or some bad cover versions - and redundancy is indeed on the cards, as the final verse suggest:

She’s packed her bag, it’s in the trunk/Looks like she’s picked herself a hunk
We drive past school to say goodbye/My friends they can’t believe their eyes

A final americanism (”trunk”) serves to tie together all the themes of the song for the final verse. The protagist is still outcast, the music industry has chosen something new (though obviously outside the context of the song this would be a new fad rather than the protaganist) and the return to school is merely to say goodbye, not to reflect on what has been learn or gained, but simply to dismiss - as occurs with modern education. The song draws to a close with the fadiug of the guitars, which again represent the Band, as Busted recognise that their career will finally draw to a close with the slow fading of their popularity much as the sound of the guitars finally and ultimately fades into silence making way for what is almost certainly, a vastly inferior song.