Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social ⋅ 10h
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net ⋅ 2d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social ⋅ 3dDavid M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
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yes about joe indeed
Dotty getting slapped in the face by the dong of consequences instead of the boobs.
the boobs of self-indulgence
Boobs of engagement.
John Wick 5: The Boobs of Rules vs The Dong of Consequences
(or is that the ballerina movie?)
not sure if it just my being autistic or what, but I just don’t expect songs these days to have easily discernible lyrics by default XD
That’s why I look uo lyrics a lot. (I was terribly disappointed to leatn “One Armed Scissor” was about the singer and a bandmate dealing with drug addiction on the road and not about a disaster aboard a spaceship called the One-Armed Scissor.)
I’ve definitely looked up lyrics to find I was mishearing part of it, decided my version was better, ad kept imagining it that way when I listened.
THIS!!!
Disney’s Hercules’s Hades has a scene where he flares for a moment, then says “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m cool, I’m fine.” Except I remembered it as “I’m cool, I’m cool, I’m fine, I’m cool,” which I thing rolls off the tongue way better.
Same
If anyone wants some excellent songs about disasters on spaceships, have I got an album for you:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ3GeijUxGio1EGIDFHpN-k7HrWVR5OHM
Neat!
Old filk. Nice.
I’ve got a couple of those songs, though I’ve never seen the original album.
An excellent album of disaster and drama!
A title like that makes me think of an amputee lesb.
I think even for people who can easily make out lyrics it’s just easy to not think about them enough to actually perform the work of interpretation. Lot of times when we’re listening to music that’s not all we’re doing.
I thought Britney Spears was singing “when I’m not with you, I use my mind” for literal years. It remains my headcanon, but the inferior “lose my mind” bothers me if I ever hear it, haha.
I’m just gonna put this link here for the group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder
What? Oh pft. Shirley that stuff doesn’t have _anything_ to do with Joyce. Or us. Shirley.
(*casually nudging my entire teen years’ music collection under the bed)
Adding APD to the list of stuff I’ve never heard about, hits very close to home and wish I’d learned about 20 years ago.
🧓Back in my day we had to play the cd or tape over and over with a group of friends, one acting as secretary and writing what the others heard, and occasionally debating the various possible iterations of lyrics based on sound, context and rhythm. Sometimes factions would go to war on the school ground over the lyrics to Hang Em High
(this is hyperbole, but MCT did also bring out the passion)
I think I blew my partner’s mind when I told them that most cds came with a little book that had the lyrics on them tucked in the front with the albulm art. Apparently not everyone disassembles their cd cases out of boredom/curiosity I guess?
I mean, I went looking for them because I grew up with album sleeves that had the lyrics on them, followed by lyric sheets folded into the cassette cases, so it seemed a natural evolution, but I can see where someone younger might not have knows such things were even there.
There’s a fun scene in Jumping Jack Flash where Whoopi Goldberg’s character is listening to the titular song like that, on vinyl, as part of an attempt to guess someone’s password. At one point she pleads, “Mick, speak English.”
I mean, I like listening to Rammstein to get into a workout mood, and can mostly get the gist of it even though I don’t speak German (though I did eventually look up English translations).
Tangent: Because English is three languages in a trench coat (Latin, German, and French). And French/Spanish/Italian are basically just Latin evolved, so Between my native English and high school Latin, I can almost understand French and Spanish … but not the versions of them spoken in the southern US, Mexican Spanish is different from what they speak in Spain, and Cajun … is like that but twice, i.e. Quebecois is to French what Mexican is to Castilian, and Cajun is to Quebecois as Quebecois is to Parisian, if that makes sense.
Haitian Creole is a trip for this. Not so much in terms of how it sounds- honestly I can’t make hide nor hair of when my colleage or my students speak it- but written down. There wil be words that look like they almost make sense, and then I realize they’re French words written phonetically by someone with a very different pronunciation than what I’m used to.
Yay! for linguistic fun!
I love your analogy about Parisian -> Canadian -> Quebecois -> Cajun that is perfect.
Actually I understand what you mean. Those are all creoles, Quebecoise is closest to the base language of French, hell we even call Cajun Creole, Mexican Spanish is a Creole of the Spanish of southern Spain and the various native languages of the area.
United States English is also a Creole, but not to the extent of Cajun.
I generally refuse to get into any music with lyrics by default, mostly because I find it distracting, but also because I insist on actually thinking about the lyrics before I adopt the song as something I like.
My only exception to this has been Persona music, because Lotus Juice has pointedly stated that their songs are nonsense no matter how coherent it sounds. (And I still twitch every time Backside of the TV raps out “who the richest / Mother Teresa” and sometimes skip the song at that point.)
That’s part of why I like folk music so much, the lyrics actually matter to the enjoyment of the song, you’re supposed to actually listen and understand, and as a trained singer, if I cannot actually understand what words are being sung, it negatively impacts my impression of the song and band because clearly the singer can’t sing. That’s why I dislike listening to The Pogues despite loving covers of their original music performed by bands with actually competent singers, because their singer sounds like he’s drunkenly slurring at all times and it just seems like such an absolute waste of otherwise really good music.
Lyrics have always been important to me. It’s odd to listen to a somg if I can’t understand the lyrics. I do try with some foreign languages though, these days.
Shane was drunkenly slurring most of the time, but damn he was good at it.
Another giant hit that was originally recorded when the singer was drunk was In a Gada Da Vita. Or as originally written In The Garden of Eden. I prefer the 17 minute version.
TBH I think discerning lyrics is a skill, like anything else. I used to be terrible at it, and my audio comprehension is pretty bad generally, but I make a really concerted effort to understand them when it’s a song I like, and it does get easier. Also, learning how specific singers phrase things helps a ton. Once you recognize their vocal patterns, the vowel sounds they’re partial to, where they emphasize words both syllabically and in musical phrases, etc, it gets easier to figure out what they’re saying in songs you don’t know.
I grew up trying to figure out what the hell Eddie Vedder and Hootie were saying, nothing fazes me anymore
Now I’m mumblin’!
And I’m screamin’!
And I don’t know
What I’m singin’!
We’re so loud and incoherent
Boy this oughtta bug your parents!
Yeah!
Oh this is NASTY work, Willis, absolutely well done.
I can’t judge her due to how long it took me to get, oh, Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark” is about depression. In my defense, the music video REALLY has zero to do with the meaning of the song.
To be fair, Dio loves writing about a lot of varied themes with differing levels of hidden meaning in his rather creative lyrics.
You thought it was shallow musical lyrics, BUT IT WAS ME, DIO!
+1
If you want songs where the music deliberately clashes with the lyrics, listen to Susan Vega. You get he nicest, upbeat sounding music to lyrics about devastating topics. Ever really listened to „My name is Luca?“ just don‘t ask me … ran into a door again, …
I will never recover from that synthwave cover of Komm, Susser Todd.
**bops** “I know – I know I’ve let you down…”
Played on the hacked symphonic concert hall:
https://youtu.be/gPNrjFlq8CM?si=NJ4w_KzTryiY5s4H
One of my favourite things to do is to inform people that Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” is actually about masturbation, and when they don’t believe it, recite the chorus back to them slowly and watch the realization dark across their face.
“Rock Me like a Hurricane” for me. I knew it was a bangin’ song, but woo the actual lyrics.
Genie In A Bottle is… quite topical for this comic of late. It’s about the girl getting “one rubbed out” first, before sex.
Which set the tone for most of her songs involving her crotch.
Not quite as topical, but Hotel California is about killer robots (if you only go by the lyrics).
Nuh uh! It’s clearly about zombie vampires.
Yeah I don’t think they’re literally meant to be Robots in that one.
There is one line about being programmed, but nobody dies. Not even the beast, despite being stabbed.
It’s about beasts, clearly. Or possible an overdose leading to nightmares and possibly hell.
I thought it was about the music (or even the entire entertainment) industry.
You make a compelling case.
Your interpretation is backed by Word of God, so…
Good ol’ Like a Prayer – the themesong for Blowjob Cat
“Your Love” by the Outfield is about a guy cheating on his lady and man that killed a lot of the joy of it for me.
Allow me to help bring some of the joy back to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LQS0mqaRVU
I feel sorry for anyone who actually thinks Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” is a patriotic song.
“‘Every Step You Take’ is such a romantic song!”
Aw… he’s watching me… from afar… every single day… watching every word i say… every…bond i break… every… smile i… fake… oh god…
The fascinating thing about this is that even Sting wasn’t quite aware at first what he was writing. His intention was to write a sweet love song, but this was after his divorce (and during the cold war), and he soon came to realise the song had twisted into something sinister and controlling.
And then he kept it like that!
The song is an excellent depiction of, and warning about, stalkers. Kind of a theme song for the big bad wolf in the Little Red Riding Hood stories.
The slight variation he did for ‘Spitting Image’ was pretty good and quite scary
R.E.M.’s “The One I Love”.
Other people: “Aaaawww… ‘This one goes out to the one I love…’ That’s so sweet!”
Me, stuck on the REST of the lyrics: “Yeah… sure… sweet. Absolutely.” (cries)
You mean the Stalker’s Anthem?
Will fully admit that I only paid attention to a few lines as a kid and assumed it was a Christian song. Like, from the POV of God.
you probably shouldn’t
Bruce (I’m from NJ, I get to call him Bruce) has another song, Glory Days, that’s supposed to be all about a guy and his friends who peaked in high school and spend all their time reminiscing instead of living, but you watch the music video and a good chunk of it is a guy playing baseball with his kid so the whole thing seems way healthier than I think Bruce intended.
Sometimes the music video can shift the whole meaning – but which is intended?
Glory Days is a true story. Sadly, the baseball player, Joe DePugh, died in April at age 75.
The song that’s about not going solo?
nope
The one that always amuses me/pisses me off is how advertisers use “Lust For Life” to advertise everything from cruise trips to banks. Sure, a song about struggling with heroin addiction and the way the recording industry screws over musicians is appropriate there…
I am also reminded of a story in 1984 that Reagan’s reelection committee wanted to use “Pink Houses” by John Cougar Mellencamp as their election theme, and how later, McCain’s committee went ahead and used it without permission. I’m sure that had they actually read the lyrics, they might not have been so enthusiastic about a song that is about how the American Dream is a hollow lie.
Oh, and “Angel” by Sara McLoughlin. The ASPCA ads were her own idea, sure, but how many of the Xtian teens and soccer moms actually get that the ‘angel’ in question is a syringe full of heroin?
One could go on and on, really, but enough of that for now.
GM used Eminence Front by The Who (a song about putting up false appearances) in an ad campaign for GMC trucks (which are just slightly dressed-up Chevrolet trucks).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf6z_O3IqZc
And Volkswagen once used “Roman P” by Psychic TV in a spot. I was watching TV one night when it came on…my jaw nearly hit the floor when I heard the music. A song that was written about an accused child molester being used for a car ad (I will let you do the research to reveal the subject’s name)! That same ad company also did a Nike ad featuring The Butthole Surfers and William Burroughs!!!
Which part of the chorus? I looked up the lyrics out of curiosity, says “I’m not planning on goin solo” right there.
I genuinely thought the song was about a guy whose partner would leave in the morning before they could bang again, but I just looked the lyrics up again and no, Nono is right, it’s about masturbation. But I was also partially right, except it’s about a guy whose partner is masturbating when she wakes up in the morning instead of waking him up to fuck. Which really only screams to me that he’s bad enough in bed that she just gets herself off because she wants to orgasm and she knows he’s not going to make it happen
Wake me up before you go-go: “let me know before you go to town on yourself.”, because he’s not planning on going solo otherwise, and he wants to see them “hit that high”.
It’s not solely about masturbation, but he’s clearly propositioning the other part to make it a duo activity rather than having them enjoy their own.
All you have to do is ignore literally all the other lyrics!
But something’s buggin’ me
Something ain’t right
My best friend told me what you did last night
Left me sleepin’ in my bed
I was dreamin’ but I should’ve been with you instead
So, the singer’s partner was masturbating with his best friend, and he’s just upset he wasn’t involved? Hey, maybe this should be Joyce’s relationship song!
Alternatively, maybe all the references to going dancing together are actually about going dancing together?
Yeeeah, I also had a peek at the lyrics and I think you’re reaching so hard you should consider taking Pedro Pascal’s marvel role.
Cherry Pie by Warrant I think is the one song where you hear the lyrics and you go “oh yeah this is about fucking” without even finishing it, let alone another second listen.
TBF… It kind of IS. Honestly, I have to ignore the lyrics when this song, or Winger’s “Seventeen” or when “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” come on the radio. All three of them are WAY too catchy for songs about having sex with minors.
Rolling Stones’ “Brand New Car” definitely doesn’t try to convince anyone that it is about an automobile.
my favorite genre of music is sad love songs with lively music that are classics on wedding dance floors
Legends tell of a bride walking down the aisle to “The Funeral” by Band Of Horses.
Some people really aren’t listening.
When my mother re-married, one of the songs they danced to was “YMCA”. My uncle and I had a chuckle at that.
I once presided over a handfasting, and in classic Discordian fashion, we did everything to mock convention. The groom’s processional was “Darth Vader Imperial March”; I tried to convince the bride to use “Reptile” by Nine Inch Nails for hers. but she felt that was going a bit too far. The ceremony also featured an impromptu chorus of “Sit On My Face (And Tell Me That You Love Me)”.
Now I am imagining someone queuing up one of They Might ‘anti-love songs’ such “Don’t Let Start”, “Sleeping in the Flowers”, or (best one of all) “Lucky Ball and Chain” at a wedding reception and not a single guest notices the lyrics.
That having been said, I have a deplorable fondness for Filk music, and well, there are so many songs to choose from… hehehehehe.
The best ones are the ones who choose to have “Rains of Castamere” played as the bride walks down the aisle. Just to watch the people who knew in advance try to keep a straight face as everyone else suddenly goes all Catelyn and realizes what’s being played.
All hail Eris!
Kallisti!
“ a deplorable fondness for Filk music”
Gronk? Does not compute. What could possibly be deplorable about this?
Then listen to the happy bouncy beat of ABBA singing SOS. Then look at the words and listen to the wrist-slitting Portishead cover.
I genuinely heard a radio request show where someone sent in their “feel-good” playlist, and it included “I Don’t Like Mondays”. Um, what?
What? Who DOESN’T have a song about a girl who shot up her school in their list of “feel-good” music?
Yikes.
It wasn’t even her school – it was an elementary school visible from her bedroom window. (My wife used to live in that neighborhood.)
Back in the ’90s, I had one of those “As seen on TV!” CDs, called “Love Songs”. Among the tracks it offered:
Meat Loaf – Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad
REO Speedwagon – Take It On the Run
Billy Paul – Me and Mrs. Jones
Those are just the ones I remember, but the entire album was like that. Almost like someone gave the songs a superficial listen, or saw the word “love” in the title, and said “Yep, that’s a beautiful song about the glory of love.”
“Good Riddance” by Green Day for funerals.
Joyce is so me, it’s why so many of my favorite songs and music I listen to are instrumental soundtracks to music.
*movies not music fuck.
I mean, presumably they are also the soundtracks to music.
I’m imagining that the alt-text mentions “Komm, Süsser Tod” because Dorothy is strangling Joe in her mind in panel 3
No, she’s just thinking about her ex-boyfriend, “Sweet Todd,” who really made her “Komm”.
Plays the Bach original on the hacked church pipe organ:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komm,_s%C3%BC%C3%9Fer_Tod,_komm_selge_Ruh
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3z61sWitBb0
And the ORIGINAL original (on pipe organ):
https://youtu.be/U_lcWj4DZWI
Hur hur hur… “Pipe.” “Organ.”
(“Pipe” is French for “Blowjob,” which brings new meaning to the Magritte painting, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”)
(See, e.g.:
Zach Weinersmith’s take on Magritte
https://smbc-wiki.com/index.php/2013-12-12 )
Huh. I’m not gonna lie. I fully assumed that the End Of Eva one was the original version of this piece.
“What a disgusting feeling. Your grip strength, versus this neck? I’m embarrassed for both of us.”
“No wonder Danny was so miserable before, THIS was the hand that jobbed him? Pathetic!”
Jesus Christ.
Nay, it was Jesus’ father who had a hand on Job
The demographic crossover in these comments is irreproducible.
It all comes tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down
Dorothy, after “laundry” with Joyce:
“I’m so fucked up.”
One time I got curious, and went looking.
(It will probably not surprise you that) I quickly came to the conclusion: “Wow, even the porn of this is seriously messed up.”
I’m very about lyrics in songs and seem to pay attention to them more than many other people. This makes the experience of hearing some popular songs come on in public spaces uncomfortable.
I’m also very about the lyrics. If I can decipher them lol
No idea what words half the things being growled at me in metal songs are, but I’m still into that kind of music
Yeah, how easy people pick up on lyrics is going to be pretty song dependent.
How fast are they singing, how complex are the lyrics, how clearly are they singing them, lot of factors that can impact comprehensibility.
I had a brief and torrid affair with electroswing, and hoo-boy some of those lyrics have aged like fine milk.
Yeah. Sometimes I’ll be in a public space, hear some kind of refrain, freeze, and have to replay it in my head because my brain will be going, “That makes no sense,” or “That’s kinda an evil sentiment”. Then I have to reboot and stop caring about stuff I can’t control again.
That kind doesn’t bother me as much as when I’m, like, in a grocery store going, “So we sure are listening to a song about breath play, huh”
What song is this? I wanna know, in case it comes on while I’m buying carrots and Monster Energy.
I’ll never forget loading up my tray in a college cafeteria while ‘Timothy’ played on the speakers overhead.
It’s always a good laugh when easy listening stations/playlists at businesses include Steely Dan. “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies” in particular sounds very cheery, until you realize it’s about a child molester.
Game for the commenters (or at least those of you comfortable sharing)
For any song that you didn’t quite catch the meaning of at first, what did you think it was about, and what do you now think it is about?
I could never figure out what The Windmills of My Mind was supposed to represent, but I finally realized it’s a Zen-adjacent counter-critique of the paradoxes of logical empiricism.
“Sunflower” (the one from “Into the Spider-verse”). I thought that it was about a guy helping a girl find her way. Turns out he’s just being nasty about her because she refuses to go out with him.
I thought Janet Jackson’s “Escapade” was “Ice Capedes” For YEARS. I still think it flows better my way…
My most embarrassing one is that it took me a couple listens to pick up that “Jenny was a Friend of Mine” was about an outright murder and not just a break-up. I have no idea how that happened, because the song is not subtle.
It took me a couple years to realize Hall and Oates’ “Maneater” wasn’t about an actual man-eating tiger like my mother told me. Song’s still amazing, of course.
I don’t know, I kind of like your mom’s reading. Think about how entertaining it would be to watch a dude getting stalked by a huge tiger to that song. That’s peak Coliseum content.
Uh, I thought the windmill in all the small things was a sex move, not a person?
Oh and I have no idea why I thought the lyrics to that one song were “Let’s Get [It Started]”
“Let’s Get It Started” is the censored version. So you didn’t imagine that; you probably heard it on the radio.
I had no idea this was a thing. After I read this, I looked it up, and they really just had a song called “Let’s Get [R-slur]ed”.
I kinda prefer that version…
No no, he fucked a windmill. The song recounts the singer’s only experience with psychedelic drugs, during which he stumbled onto a mini golf course, spied one of the little windmills, and mistook it for a beautiful woman who was inviting him over for a shag. Fortunately, the staff that night were bored off their asses and when they discovered him naked and going for another round, they gently guided him away from the windmill, gave him his clothes, gave him some nachos, and let him use their phone to call a buddy to come pick him up. That’s a true story, probably.
I continue to believe that “Drop Dead Gorgeous” by Republica is about the singer’s ex-boyfriend Nige.
Not quite the same thing, but when I was wee Mum used to sing me the lines:
Oh, come with me, my little one, and we will build a farm,
And grow us grass and apples there, and keep all the animals warm.
Years later she told me it was Leonard Cohen, and I was like “Really? Because it’s sweet and calming and not horribly depressing.” And she said “Ah. Well, the next bit goes…”
(And yes, I know those aren’t quite the right lyrics, but they’re the ones she sung.)
Lullabies can also be dependent on the music and rhythm more than the words. I used to sing my kids to sleep with Barenaked Ladies’ “Tonight Is teh Night I Fell Asleep At the Wheel” and Queensryche’s “Silent Lucidity” (a lovely, soothing little tune about using dream control to exert mind control).
My favorite version of this is songs that are boppy and fun in their original style, but absolutely break my heart when they’re slowed down and sung sweet. Specific examples being Take On Me and What Is Love.
I just learned to correct lyrics from Sly and the Family Stone are “Thank you falltineme be mice elf agin”. I never realized it was a Christmas carol about elven mice.
“Go your own way” by Fleetwood Mac, I always heard the chorus as “Go your own way, don’t go away.” Then I looked it up and learned the official lyrics read “Go your own way, go your own way.” Then I learned about the divorce informing the song and now I’m sure I heard it right from the beginning and he’s really telling the wife he doesn’t want her to go away (though she can), but they wrote the lyrics that way to keep it deniable.
I definitely had a period as a preteen, where I felt clever for now fully realizing that nearly every rock song was about sex. I would report this to my mom, frequently, because I have the social grace of a walnut.
To this day, I still don’t know how she kept a straight face that “Rock the Casbah” was a song about knocking boots. She’s not worldly, so maybe she also didn’t know how wrong I was? But yeah, that was one of my best confident mistakes of all time.
I’m sorry, Mom. I was never schooled on 20th century North African geopolitics!
Joyce, I have so much trouble reading you these days. I’m so confused lol.
Jeses taught her to love everyone so she’s in love with everyone simultaneously, or at least the one she’s with.
Jeses is now the plural of Jesus.
I thought the plural was “Jesi”. Have I been casing, objecting, and subjecting wrong? :O
There’s a road in a distant grove
Where the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can’t be with the one you love
Love the one you’re with.
Panel 4 Joyce is also SUPER cute. No wonder Dorothy and Joe have fallen in love with her, who could resist that face?
I dunno, an orthodontist?
She’s so real for this. The thing I do when I am hearing a song for the first time is look up the lyrics to read ahead of the song so that I’ll know “how” to hear the words…
Hold on I need to go look up the lyrics
‘kay yeah this is funny and depressing
Relieving to know I’m not the only one who almost can’t parse song lyrics at all and has to look up lyrics on the internet and memorize them to actually “hear” them properly.
Also might explain why I end up listening to so much instrumental music. Case in point, I’ve been binging the new Mario Kart soundtrack on YouTube for a whole week. GodDAMN they cooked.
For sure, I am completely unable to parse song lyrics as language. No matter how hard I am trying those sounds are just more music. This is even true of songs I am singing myself, so I must “know” the words to sing them but it’s like the singy part of my brain and the talky part are unable to have any connection. And I love to sing!
I weirdly can’t enjoy instrumental music with rare exceptions.
Call of K’Tulu by Metallica doesn’t have any references to R’lyeh or the great squid god destroying us all so it’s epic fail.
Damn, whoever said The Only Exception was about Joe was spot-on.
I’ve got songs in my collection I’ve been listening to for 20+ years and still don’t know all the lyrics, even after having read them multiple times. Also the last two panels are me and more than a little hip-hop. I think that’s part of why I like Nujabes’s work so much, the vocalists he had on his tracks weren’t afraid to say “fuck” but they weren’t raging misogynists in 85% of their lyrics.
Yay. (I mean, it’s about multiple things here, I think, but the connection to Joe is what stood out to me most when it first came up.)
One of my mom’s favorite songs is “Come On Eileen,” and even after all these years, including a time when she tried to read the lyrics along with the song, she can’t understand most of it.
I mean, I don’t think she’s alone in that. I’ve seen a lot of people say that song’s hard to understand.
Ooo, I don’t find it hard to understand (but I’m an older millennial nzer, so raised with a lot of different British Isles accents), but it’s peak “this is so fun to sing but you’re fucking creepy, bro”.
Yeah, my mom’s pretty good with accents (at least in comparison to my dad and some friends of hers for whom she’s had to do English-to-English translations), but combine it with song and she gets lost.
I do find it a harder song to understand, but I get most of it when listening by now.
Yeah I think it’s a song where comprehending the individual lyrics actually detracts from the vibe.
joe and walky gonna end up in a situationship sooner rather than later at this rate, and honestly i hope they never talk about it or answer any questions any of their extended friend circle have
Dorothy: Hey guys. Sorry we’re late, we were doing laundry.
Joyce: It’s ok. I am “laundry”.
Dorothy: OMG Joyce, no!
Joe and Walky: Haha our girlfriends are banging eachother.
I feel like there’s like a dozen steps between where they are now and that, so I’m curious what the logic behind it is.
Manifest destiny.
Yes comment sections of comics, the prime place for facts and logic, and rarely rarely if ever funny takes.
I don’t recall asking for facts, just an elaboration.
Walky and Joe are gonna end up spite dating each other to get back at Joyce and Dorothy and never actually end up breaking up. Danny can only watch in horror as reality warps and folds in on itself in new and increasingly unpredictable ways that seem to solely happen to fuck with him.
Joe walking up to Danny like “Is there a not racist way to say Eskimo Bros, because we are now.”
I need you to know it’s almost 4 am and I laughed out loud at this. Thank you X’DDD
Joyce, have you considered watching lyrics videos?
Link her to misheard lyric videos and hope she doesn’t parse the title before watching the video.
I’m pretty much like this too, the music/melody is more important. So many times people have told me so-and-so song is great, I listen, and I’m eh, this isn’t, and then they tell me how meaningful the song is. Then I’m just left, eh, but the music is so EHHHHHH, I can’t even begin to listen to the lyrics.
WDYM that music isn’t just about vibes?
Lyrics have vibes!
Your mom gas vibes!
“Comfortably Numb” is such a cheerful, feel-good song!
Everything on The Wall is so cheery, so delightful, so feel-good! Just one big hours-long warm-and-fuzzy experience!
I’ve rarely felt more Joyce like. A girl I had a crush on in high school was a big REM fan, so I picked up the 12″ of “The One I Love” to transcribe the lyrics for her. After the twentieth or so replay of the record, the intent of the song hit me between the eyes and boy howdy did I find another REM song to gift her the lyrics to.
Here again for the Evangelion reference.
I really bet Dorothy wishes she could turn back time… On the topic of Lyrics and the Alt Text that certainly have no connection to any characters on screen, Komm Susser Tod was actually one of the first songs i really dissected, i was averse to listening to “real music” as a kid because it was what everyone else liked and for some inscrutable reason that meant it was “cringe” i first watched Eva when i was 13 or so and wanted to know what that “hey jude” song was all about but i was genuinely too embarrassed to listen to it in case someone caught me listening to anything with lyrics. I was genuinely too ashamed to listen to THE BEATLES. It took until i was about 15 to actually listen to anything other than video game music and even then i made sure absolutely nobody caught me.
“This song I caressed your face to last night reminds me of my boyfriend” is a dagger to the heart for sure.
I love it, we’re all getting emotionally wrecked by events in the laundry room this Saturday
…chapter title drop!
Joyce Brown: The Remake (and the Threequel)
Dumbing of Age Book XV – HRMP.
Dorothy x Joyce supremacy
I’ve got some kind of word processing disorder on top of the autism so I’ll be listening to my favorite song for the 200th time that day and then go “ohhhh, *that’s* what they’re saying!”
I’ll helpfully inform you that auditory processing disorders are often part of autism rather than in addition to. Welcome to the “What? What? Oh hahaha totally.” club.
Suzanne Vega, “Luka”
The melody is a bop!
The lyrics are about domestic abuse!
….
so are people still mad at me for calling Joyce comphet or
It isn’t comphet if she actually has sexual and romantic attraction to Joe.
I actually wanna expand on this because Joyce might be one of the least comphet character in this comic. She has had sexual and romantic attraction to the following men:
Joe (she’s carried feelings for him from the first week when he asked her out on a date, obviously their friendship has been a bit up and down but ultimately their romance is a culmination of months of build up)
Ethan (he’s gay, he’s the one engaging in comphet with HER, but SHE thought he was very attractive and even had the closest thing Joyce can have to a sex dream about him)
Jacob (also basically a male Dorothy but you know how it is)
Tristan (definitely a young girl crush, she never persued a relationship with him but did follow him around, bike by his house, and just had pretty basic young teen fee-fees for him).
I wanna say there’s more, I could be wrong, but just because Joyce is beginning to realize she has feelings for Dorothy doesn’t mean any feelings she had for the above men were suddenly just comphet.
I mean this in the nicest way possible, “comphet” does not mean that someone cannot be attracted to men. It means they refuse to properly process the ways in which they are attracted to or are attractive to members of the same gender. Joyce liking men does not negate her bisexuality, but her pretending her bisexuality doesn’t exist and attributing the obvious flirt on Dorothy’s end as ‘being about Joe’ shows an unconscious bias on her part towards refusing to acknowledge Dorothy’s and/or her own feelings. That is what I am saying, not that Joyce is a flaming lesbian that hates boy-things.
See how Dorothy is rationalizing her own bisexuality as being a trauma response. That is explicitly untrue and is an active, concentrated effort on her part to deny her own and other women’s feelings. Dorothy is *actively* choosing compulsory heterosexuality. Joyce, while not being as conscious or obvious about it, is showing several of the same signs of repression that Dorothy is.
Thanks for being nice. I’m not trying to imply that completely doesn’t mean not attracted to men, cause I’m attracted to men and I def had completely. I guess for me what made it comphet is that I tried to force myself to be with guys I didn’t find attractive because I was ‘supposed to be with guys’ rather than a real desire which Joyce does show.
Joyce and Dorothy both are repressing and denying their attraction to each other and to women, like you said it’s more conscious for Dorothy than Joyce but you know what? If you say that’s comphet I’m just gonna default to your judgement and I won’t comment on it anymore. Maybe I just don’t know these definitions anymore, shit be changing all the time.
Also sorry my autocorrect kept changing comphet to completely
It’s not yiur fault, i think megan just gave a very specific definition of wgat conphet means.
What aspect of putting “The Only Exception” on a play list for her is “obvious flirt”? At least that wouldn’t apply to any romantic song.
How does the song fit any of these characters better than Joe?
Like I agree there’s comphet denial going on here in general, but that song could have been written about Joe.
Yes, because saying someone is compulsory is basically calling them a slaver.
Is this a sitcom reference?
You can’t hear the laugh track?’
So… I don’t think you know what comphet means. Or slaver. Or compulsory.
But I wish you a lotta luck in your search.
I mean this in the not-nicest way possible, but learn what words mean.
I mean I’m not mad at you for being wrong
A bit annoyed at the bi-erasure you’re engaging in though
I mean, to be fair, comphet does affect bisexual people too. I don’t think this is what Megan means (though I don’t know for sure) but it’s super possible that Dorothy is NOT Joyce’s first non-male crush, and she hasn’t had the words or ability to identify that for herself due to growing up surrounded by comphet.
I don’t think it’s necessarily bi-erasure to acknowledge that no matter where you are on the rainbow, you grew up in a world that told you there was one option for your attraction, and anything else was “just being really close friends” or “practicing”.
There’s also this sense I have that MOST words to describe how society and culture interact with the rainbow end up being compromised in the sense that they’re used in harmful/hurtful ways, too, just by the nature of people being people. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear of folks who’ve only heard “comphet” used in a “bi-erasure” way rather than a bi-folk-are-affected-too way.
Perversely reminded of a relative who naively used “gold star lesbian” for herself, but in a strictly “never dated anyone male-identified” sense rather than the anti-trans sense one sees mostly these days.
Yeah, I am personally shocked at how often people read “comphet” and think I am implying there are only monosexual attractions. Nowhere ever did anyone claim that Joyce is either into men or women with no overlap or in between. I am claiming Joyce is denying her own leanings towards women due to past indoctrination by the church and societal expectations. You know. Like compulsory heterosexuality. This is a very easy concept to grasp.
That’s really part of the problem — it’s very easy to hear “comphet” and understand it to me “she isn’t really into men” since it does get used that way.
You’re also crossing over with the shipping debate, a bit — it’s very easy to hear “comphet” in this context and think “Oh, so you don’t think Joeyce is real, eh? Wanna fight?”
Another part of the response is Joyce spends a lot of this strip talking about Joe, so when you respond by saying “comphet”, it sounds like you mean that itself is her comphet. That she’s only bringing him up because of that conditioning.
Even that use of “gold star lesbian” is kind of gross. Implying both bi women and lesbians who comphet ketp from figuring it out at first are inferior to those who get a “gold star”.
Oh, no doubt. It’s one of those things where you could sort of understand how someone might use it in a joking/minimizing way (“I figured out I was a lesbian before I started dating — I get a gold star!”) and I’m pretty sure that’s how this relative was using it, as she was pretty horrified to consider its use as an anti-trans or otherwise insult.
Consider that term is often misused to dismiss the possibility of bisexuality, like you are doing now, then i guess yes.
Ah, yes, I must have forgotten Joyce is an out bisexual who is fully cognizant of Dorothy’s advances, and her deflecting such romantic/sexual connections towards a man is an active choice on her part because she has absolutely no unconscious biases or *compulsory heterosexual leanings* whatsoever. Apologies for such a dire misinterpretation of the text, I am the evil, false bisexual woman who does not know her own experiences.
I’m honestly not convinced Joyce *is* bisexual. She has never, to my knowledge, exhibited any generalized attraction to women. She is very clearly attracted to Dorothy, particularly, but none of what seems to make her attracted to Dorothy are her feminine characteristics – that attraction seems to be more about Dorothy-as-Dorothy than anything else. Unless I’ve missed something.
I think that’s different than, say, Billie or Dan, who are clearly just straight up bisexual. But maybe I missed something.
Speaking as someone who is a very “straight with fewer than five specific men I’m attracted to”, I’ve been reliably informed by my partner that’s still some flavor of bi/pan.
Looking at Billie’s boob and saying “I could be safe and warm forever”
There are other examples but i fell that is the most important one.
I don’t know what any of that have to do with tge original statement calling Joyce comphet.
It was pretty clearly a response to you saying Megan was “dismissing the possibility of bisexuality”. If you wanted them to elaborate on the original statement you could’ve like, asked.
I suspect I’m better off not googling this.
Same.
comphet? Nah definitely google it, it’s not an unsafe term or anything, just a word for the way a lot of societies work (presuming straightness and othering anything but straightness… or worse punishing it).
It’s a mash up of compulsory heterosexuality, and very often gets used around women who are sapphic but never thought of their romantic feelings for women in a romantic light because they weren’t fully aware that was an option for them/at all. (example: women who realize they were actually crushing on their high school bestie and not just experiencing a really really close friendship)
Absolutely diabolical thing to say to the girl you almost kissed while listening to that song
Yeah wtf, my heart would have shattered a little if I was Dorothy.
And yet, the song really does fit Joe more than anything with Dorothy and Joyce.
I was just thinking this — everyone we’ve seen Joyce in a “dating” context with has pretty much been something done for ulterior motives or for appearances’ sake or something similar. Joe IS “the only exception” in that she’s actually dating him because she likes him romantically.
I guess. In a way. That would really just be Ethan, right? Or the first date with Joe.
But she dated Ethan because she liked him romantically – before she knew he was gay.
I think Dorothy meant for it to be about Joyce.
I’m sure she did and the divorced parents bit fits, but not much otherwise. Other than the other meaning of “the only exception” being the only exception to being straight, which isn’t in the song at all.
But most of it doesn’t fit Joyce – Joyce isn’t scarred from her parents fighting so that she rejected the idea of romance until she met the “only exception”. That’s much more Joe than either Dorothy or Joyce.
“Watch this, Lis. You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half.”
Semi-charmed Life was in the trailer for some Disney movie because someone didn’t listen closely enough. Explict sex references and drug addiction set to a very merry beat.
… Yeah, this is very accurate for my own autism.
For a significant duration, I believed the lyrics to Katy Perrys “I Kissed A Girl” were:
“I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry ChapStick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my good friend don’t mind it”
I thought it was about someone kissing their friend, surprised by the joy it brought them, their one concern being that their good friend won’t feel bad about it. I felt happy, to find a song about that kind of empathetic joy.
Also, I have on multiple occasions asked teachers and authority figures why they switched radio stations, only to find out later that the lyrics were [Explicit Content].
Honestly veery different to here where i live, songs wwith very explicit lyrics are almost the norm and people don’t see to care if kids hear them.
Yeah, this is part of why my rules for adding student requests to a class playlist were “I will need to look up the lyrics beforehand, no I won’t just take your word for it, even if I don’t think you’d lie.” (With exceptions for instrumental music, obvs.)
That’s why I look up the lyrics of music I like.
Also why one should Never Do That and do their own covers with their preferred lyrics like the radio edits of black eyed peas.
Simply become the next Weird Al Yankovic is all.
I relate to Joyce on this too, even for songs I’ve listened to a lot, sometimes I still have to look up the lyrics so I know what a song is about.
Being german and growing up with a lot of english-language music around you will fucking ruin your ability to understand lyrics.
i’m fluent now and i still only ever remember songs by what they sound like. i can sing most songs i’ve ever listened to but i have to use nonsense lyrics that *sound* correct.
Wait, why is Dorothy introducing Joyce to Paramore and not the other way around? Paramore, at least in their early albums, was definitely considered “Christian Alternative Rock.” In the early 2000s, they were definitely heavily lauded as one of the most successful crossover bands Christian/Secular. I saw them in concert at an event sponsored by a whole bunch of youth groups in the area! I feel like they’re right up Joyce’s alley! They’re (along with Relient K and a few others) basically the 2000s DC Talk!
Joyce’s mom seems like the kind of person who’d wanna vet the songs she lets Joyce listen to, so even if it’s a very popular Christian band, the fact that it’s newer might mean Carol never gave it a chance and figured the Christian music she loves is good enough to share with Joyce!
Keep in mind that Joyce also wasn’t allowed to watch certain Disney movies if it seemed like the moral was too anti-obey your parents no matter what. Also no ‘eastern religion’ so no Star Wars or TMNT.
Yeah, Carol probably didn’t let her kids listen to, like, Five Iron Frenzy, either.
I know plenty of people who weren’t allowed to listen to Paramore, but I feel like none of them were allowed to listen to DC Talk either. But. With the sliding time scale, at this point. Like Thag says, we could assume that DC talk was popular when her mon was a teen and therefore was allowed, but newer stuff wasn’t
Well, sliding timescale is also a factor. Do Paramore still have that cultural position in the 10s and 20s?
I think it did in the 10s, but I’m really too old to answer that question. I can ask my baby sister about the 10s. As for the 20a… my kids know Paramore, but that’s because I play it.
Misheard lyrics are very ooollldd.
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray,
And the Lady Mondegreen
…are not quite the right words here. There is no Lady Mondegreen.
I’ve come to understand the first three lines were by an unknown probably Scotsman, the last by Sylvia Wright aka Lady Mondegreen.
Interesting…got a source link?
She was repressing the fact the Earl got laid on the green. Whether this was as a young man or after he was dead is a mater of interpretation.
For the involvement of Sylvia Wight see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen .
Okay, so the order was asking Dorothy for help in these matters multiple times, the laundry incident, asking for more help, Dorothy making her the playlist, Joyce hearing this song in particular (possibly getting inspired by the name) and initiating things with Dorothy, the date with Joe, the handky-panky with Joe and Wall Squishing, Happy Trees (not important), Dorothy’s fugue and Walky, Joyce and Becky, Joyce realizing she had sex with Dorothy, Joyce listening to the song for hours, Joyce only then realizing the lyrics and associating them with Joe, Joyce telling everyone she meets about having sex with Dorothy, Dorothy being a ninja, this fun conversation with Dorothy.
Is that the correct order of events? I believe so. If so, she was probably associating this song with Dorothy (and thinking about Dorothy being her only exception) long before she understood the lyrics and started to associate it with Joe (and her being Joe’s only exception).
I’m not sure how much Joyce was thinking about the song words during that sequence – even the repeated chorus. She’s not phrasing it here as if she misunderstood what it was about and changed her read of it from relating to Dorothy to relating to Joe after figuring them out.
Gotta say ive been super loving the art style lately . very fun expressions and angles and all that good stuff!!! Even playing with line weight in the fourth panel
And of course joyce w her hair up lets me imagine what she’d look like with short hair, which is to say SUPER CUTE !!!
She looks good shorted up.
omg your icon… perfect
There was a TV show where a father and his teen daughter slowly realized, while singing their favorite song together, what ‘Afternoon Delight’ was all about.
This is why I prefer to sing ‘Witch of the West Mare Land,’ which makes no bones about it. Luckily the Witch stops being a centaur when the knight catches her, or things would have become…complicated.
Arrested Development, and it was an uncle and niece!
And then also an aunt and nephew
I think that you’re meant to interpret those lines as just a fancy way of saying she was riding a horse
I reject your reality and substitute my own
Okay, but all Dorothy’s brain is registering is that, while they’re both dressed in the colours of the lesbian flag, Joyce is saying Joe is “the only exception.”
To be fair, that’s kinda how I responded when was first exposed to a clean copy of “Immortal Corrupter.” Before then, what I’d heard was a beyond-bootleg live version and a video version that looked like a kinescope of The Box (ask your parents, kids).
Same.
Well. I’m completely, 100% baffled. I have no idea what is going on. I’malso not particularly surprised.
But my offering is a class of kids about 10 years old (mostly boys) singing (beautifully) 6 months in a leaky boat, and thinking it was a song about spending 6 months …. in a leaky boat.
So now you are all confused, hopfully.
*clap clap* *clap clap*
Lucky just to keep afloat
That… *is* what the song is about, pretty much? It’s about the journey to NZ from England. Maybe it’s not *just* about that (it’s also about the singers struggles with a nervous breakdown, supposedly), but I’d wager the kids heard the Wiggles version, which really is just about that?
This may be the first DoA page i’m bookmarking for the comments section so i can come back and find lyrical dissonance pieces.
Literalist Joyce cutting through the metaphor read like butter
I’m surprised how much i like this strip.
Recently, I’ve felt like the way things were going really did a disservice to Joe- essentially that his purpose in the narrative was only to help Joyce overcome intimacy issues and then get swept aside so that Joyce could be withe Dorothy, her One True Love. One of the reasons was that Joyce seemed to almost completely forget about him anytime she was talking to Dorothy.
It’s a weirdly reverse Bechdel test I’ve set up here, but I’m glad it happened
Wow, turns out Becky got off easy when it comes to Joyce, crusher of lesbian hearts. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this girl?
I mean… a lot of things. Have you not been here for the whole rest of the comic?
Actual response: I know SO many lesbians and bi ladies in real life who have run into issues because their ostensibly-straight or straight-leaning friends were culturally/socially inclined to be affectionate with platonic friends in a way that most people would take as flirty/romantic.
I’m expressly NOT saying that’s definitely what’s happening here, I’m saying it’s possible/plausible that (for example) Joyce didn’t mean the same thing by the face-touch that Dorothy thought she did.
Joyce explicitly invited Dorothy to “do laundry,” an activity she has contextualized out loud as sex.
And now here we are, with a strip that indicates that some of the “romance” might not have been.
Two things seem clear to me:
– Joyce, at least, is not certain about what she actually wants here
– more relevantly to my point, Joyce hasn’t given any indication that there’s a whole lot of “romance” in how she sees Dorothy, separate from the “laundry”.
Ding ding ding
The thing is, Joyce has already acknowledged that things with Dorothy are more than platonic – this isn’t oblivious heterosexuality, it’s disaster lesbianism with a splash radius that falls mostly on the other women, those unfortunate enough to fall for her powerful lesbotic wiles.
Like, I can understand it a bit – she’s kind of doing the same things Dorothy was doing trying to drown out her attraction to women by banging Walky. But Joyce is doing this in such a strange way, drowning romantic rather than physical attraction, and because she has no filter with Dorothy she’s doing it in the most heartbreaking way possible. I understand, but good god Joyce, go easy on these poor women – like I said, at this point it’s moving beyond obliviousness.
lol Dorothy wasn’t drowning her attraction to women writ large in banging Walky?? She does and has always genuinely loved him, she (subconsciously or otherwise) was trying to avoid confronting her attraction specifically to Joyce by returning to the comforting embrace of someone she knows she loves and can rely on to be a stable source of comfort and affection.
Not absorbing song lyrics, is that an autistic thing too? I’m like that. Until I sit down and listen to a song with the lyrics in front of me, it all just kind of washes over me. The music may be nice, but the words are just noise.
It might be — it’s not one I have, but thinking about it, that might be because I got into folk in at an early age, and not only do folk singers generally enunciate better (except the ones who really, really don’t), but the lyrics are often more interesting than the average pop song.
I’d probably be happier if I didn’t — there are some songs where the lyrics upset me so much that I have to switch radio stations. I still can’t believe Rod Stewart got away with releasing a “‘No’ means ‘keep asking'” anthem in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-One.
I attributed it to my ADHD, but I’ve heard there’s quite a bit of comorbidity between autism and ADHD.
I never understood all those people around saying they learned their English from songs… Come on, no way that’s how you learn the language, you just memorize the list of vocabulary and then have sine fun doing the grammar math!
*have some fun.
Turns out turning off the autocorrect doesn’t always work in my favour
I mean, Schoolhouse Rock was a pretty good way of learning things.
At one point, I had every single Schoolhouse Rock episode memorized. Those things were awesome.
It was the only way i learned that an adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or else it modifies another adverb.
That snippet of “No more kings” is about to be important again.
It takes conscious effort for me to not sing the Preamble.
I thought people learned English by playing RPG
Is this referencing Neon Genesis or is there another Kom susser tod song?
From context, I’m guessing this is referencing NGE. As I recall, not a particularly uplifting song.
The music itself is pretty upbeat. The lyrics are (I think) about suicide.
does she know
In the before times, we listened to Light my fire. Honky Tonk women. Brown sugar. Even Norwegian wood might well be about arson.
As long as there have been songs, they’ve been about sex and violence.
But LPs came with lyrics so that was nice.
Joyce is a lot like my mom, in that regard. She rarely notices what the lyrics are, even when they’re properly enunciated. Occasionally, she gets interested enough to look up the lyrics, then there’s about a 50/50 chance of her being horrified about what the song she’s been listening to on repeat for the last two weeks is actually saying.
Victory lap for me and my joejoyce playlist that has contained this song for this very same reason for 3 years now. Shameless self plug: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4hsLk9oBgOZ2TdKbK7nQbv?si=itwMnn2jTZeRrwPxJ8ziBA&pi=uLGOfp-YR1Sz-
omg perfect icon for me. i too am an insane lesbian
That’s why I have so many instrumentals in my playlist
Look, if you’re going to listen to a song 37 times you don’t need to pay that close attention the first two or three. Unless you’re telling people about it. Which is why you have to prioritse by listening to ONLY that song a few dozen times in a row.
This all makes sense to me.
i relate way too well to the Joyce of those last two panels
Songs Joyce didn’t get would be hilarious as a game.
“Wait, Born in the USA isn’t a patriotic anthem?”
Genuinely, introduce this woman to earnest butt rock. Crush 40 would change her life.
This reminds me of a national rock song that i loved as a kid and i was listening to it again when i was like 14 and my dad said “you know this song is about cocaine, right?” And my world shattered
Song still rules tho
Was it a song by Eric Clapton?
That would definitely be the best punchline to that set up.
OK, the lyrics being about Joe actually makes more sense and is honestly kind of sweet. Hell, some of it actually fits Joe more than Dorothy. But they still need to talk about these feelings because otherwise something bad will probably happen. (And by something bad, I mean cheating. Dorothy and Joyce getting together would be great if it wouldn’t result in both of them breaking someone else’s heart in the process.)
This would be a really great time to go back and read the first few days of the comic.