The Chase is on. Or isn’t not?

thewanted432
These guys are most pleased that you decided to arrive.

When at work at my high powered job, often is the case where I hear the same song two to four times in a given shift.  This gives me all the time that I need to hear and memorize every lyric for every song that is currently in the playlist.  I should note for posterity that is awesome hearing the same songs over and over day after day.  Maybe that goes without saying, but I digress.  The end effect is that I take listening to these songs to a different level where I begin to subconsciously critique the hell out of them.  Its not like I am some great songwriter or am part of the Billboard staff. (However that all works. I suppose I could have quickly researched it but it was easier to make a couple of sentences in parentheses explaining my ignorance.)

20120419_inq_o-clark19z-g
My musical evaluations are not as respected as Dick Clark’s were.

 

As I am attending to my important work that obviously needs complete and undivided attention, I question the lyrics to these songs in my head.  I then spread the cheer of slighted comments to the overwhelming joy of my fellow associates.  Since they appreciate my insight and humor so much I figured that I would also indulge the entire Internet (that doesn’t know this site exists) in my life changing explanations of pop music.

I have a few songs that I really love to yammer on about, but throwing them into one piece  would just take away each from their own glory.  So the first song in this series is going to be “Chasing the Sun,” by The Wanted.  Until I find out differently I am going to reference azlyrics.com for my lyrics simply because it is currently at the top of the Google listing.

lifehouse
They’ve been hanging by a moment for over a decade.

The Wanted and their songs are meant to be ear candy, and are as pop as pop can be.  The goal may not necessarily be to stand the test of time, making epic music well into the next decade.   Of course that is what I thought about Lifehouse and here we have them 12 years later stronger than ever.  Whatever.  The song in question today that I have heard so much about, or roughly 200 times in the past 2 months has a very catchy chorus.  I am really just going to pass over the verses because of their lack of consequence.  There are two specific pieces that should really bug not just some people, but everyone in existence.

“We’ll never grow old again.”

Really.  I probably don’t need to point out the contradictory nature of this line.  I don’t care how youthful the woman in question is making the members of the group feel, if you have already grown older there is no turning back the age that one has become. Perhaps the lyrics are just meant to be clever or express some deep emotion, but again this is just a pop song and I highly doubt future scholars will rank this with the works of Aristotle.

Aristotle
It’s uncertain if he would download The Wanted onto his iPod.

That brings us to the even more annoying part of the song.

“We refused to run.

We’ve only just begun.

You’ll find us chasing the sun.”

yul-brynner-as-rameses-in-the-ten-commandments
He refused to let Moses’ people go, then he did, then he retracted and went after them. The the equivalent nature of this song was alive in 1956.

Okay, so never mind that these words really don’t make any coherent sense in the context of the song when combined with each other, let us just take them at face value.  Again could this be any more of a contradiction where you would be hard pressed to guess the age of a human who wouldn’t find it blatantly so.  When one suggests that they have discontinued to move at a quick pace (like running) one would figure that they are going to be entering a relatively stationary phase.  Now when that person or group has come right out and said that they REFUSE to engage in an act of briskly moving along for whatever reason (fatigue, making a stand, they would rather walk) one would think that is is the definitive action that they are taking.

The next line lends credence to all of this.  They have only just begun to do whatever it is that they feel they are doing (its pretty ambiguous) that it seems they are serious about not running away from whatever it is they are running for or from (again not sure what that is).

kevin-johnson-mayor-nba
Kevin Johnson’s not refusing to run benefited him. He ran both on the basketball court and for Mayor. Plus, he was on the Phoenix Suns, so he already had that covered.

However, they then drop the bomb that they are going to be chasing the sun!  Doesn’t one need to run in order chase!?!  So have they stopped running so that they can get into a car to drive quicker in their quest towards whatever the “sun” is in reference to?  Did they refuse to run from something else to save their energies to chase another goal?  Is there a difference between not facing your past and racing toward something the future holds, in which you neither see what is going on in the present nor achieving victory in life? What is the reward for catching up to the sun?  Again don’t you need to run in order to chase!?

 

There is no conclusion to any of this since the song in question has not been brought forward as a literary treasure, and probably won’t be anytime soon.  Its a fun song for some people  to listen to, and it had a hand in The Wanted performing for ABC on New Year’s Eve.  So there’s that.

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