blathering nonsense (about) lyrics

In my second-to-last BNL post (at least until they release another album, that is!), we're up to their most recent regular studio album, Barenaked Ladies Are Men, effectively adding one consonant to their previous title and coming up with a whole new release! I don't know if this was their intent, but I tend to look at this album as the B-sides to the last one, and there are some great ones on here. (But of the two, I still prefer Barenaked Ladies Are Me, myself.)

This is another album which has a song that I highlighted in a previous BNL post, before I got all chronological about it. What a Letdown is a fantastic, rockin' song that simply had the perfect title to describe how I was feeling when I found out Steve had left the building, as they say. Another winner of the I-LOVE-that-title contest is Why Say Anything Nice, which follows that line with "When you can say nothing at all." Genius. Then there's Angry People, which has the happiest little doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo's popping up in the background, in that contradictory style that their lyrics and music so often exhibits, creating a song that you find yourself bee-bopping around to when you realize that the words are not at all cheery. Finally, there's the song that when I first heard it, I was really confused... it sounded like Steve, but it just sounded so... different. I LOVED it, but it took a bit for me to mesh it with the truckloads of other Steve-lead-vocals songs that are in my heart. I Can I Will I Do has secured its place there, and it provides some of my favorite lyrics ever in:

If good intentions pave the road that gets me through
Then I've got a six-lane highway
And I intend to someday
Do all the things I say I can and I will and I do

And now for the grand unveiling of the top song...


Album: Barenaked Ladies Are Men
Year of Release: 2007
Song: Fun & Games
Words & Music by Ed Robertson & Steven Page

We sent in the army
They sounded alarms we
Saw it coming from a mile away.
We kept it off radar
Because we had to say our
Intentions were to save the day.

Why did you fail to see?

It was a gag
It was all for a laugh
And they were shocked and they were awed
and they were blown in half

Fun and games
We're just pulling legs
We knew this barrel of fun
Would be a powderkeg

We kept it all long-range
and made a regime change
You'd have thought it would have been a gas
But when it got ugly
We sat around smugly
Because you bought our little joke en masse
Don't look at me that way

It was a gag
It was all for a laugh
We knew your sons and daughters
Would be blown in half

Fun and games
We're just pulling legs
We knew this barrel of fun
Would be a powderkeg

Put a smile on
We're the ones that you selected
Leave that dial son
Because we just got re-elected
In a while our
Bill of rights will be rejected

and all the blame will be deflected
the forests will be unprotected
the nation's poor will be neglected
creation myth is resurrected
a new salute is genuflected
a gallup poll will be respected
gallows pole will be erected
all this will go undetected

While you all slumbered
We sat and crunched numbers
Of all the causalities we could afford
There's no need to draft them
You could hear us laugh then
The poor and black all need the room and board
Did I say that out loud?

It was a gag
It was all for a laugh
And now our very nation has been blown in half

Fun and games
We're just pulling legs
We knew this barrel of fun
Would be a powderkeg

Oh yeah....

Way back in May of 2007, I blogged about my frustrations with the Bush Administration's actions in starting the war in Iraq, along with their repeated insistence of its necessity and usefulness. A bunch of bull. I said it back then, and it bears repeating:

May 26, 2007: "I don't think the reality of the current administration's planning of this war over the last few years truly matches the overt horrible intentions that the song portrays, but that's the beauty of satire. Take enough reality and spice it up with a good measure of exaggeration (I don't think it needed all that much in this case), and you've got yourself a worthy depiction. It's much better to listen to (as BNL once again coordinates the words with interesting varying sounds-- like the marching feet subtly heard in the background), but read it through and you start to get the point."

This is one amazingly powerful statement rolled into a song. It is worth listening to every so often just to remind myself what a gigantic mess that whole thing was (and still is, unfortunately), and reinforces my already rock-solid opinion of the misplaced values of the previous administration. A sad chapter in our country's history, indeed.

Well, these BNL posts aren't meant to be all political, but this one was worth noting the significance of that song for me. Next week brings us to the guys' only children's release, and the last album that they will have created as a party of five.


Until next time,