Since Daniel Drezner is Rihanna-blogging, I think it’s worth noting that “Shut Up And Drive” is both my kind of poetry and a somewhat surprising hip hop homage to New Order. The poetry front: metaphors can be confusing. But not Rihanna’s. I think I understood that when she opined about umbrellas, she was talking about a protective form of togetherness. But consider this:
“I'm a fine-tuned supersonic speed machine/With a sunroof top and a gangster lean”
Or this:
“Got all the drive but a whole lot of boom in the back/You look like you can handle what’s under my hood”
I’m pretty sure that in “Shut Up and Drive,” Rihanna is comparing herself to a car, and the rest of the lyrics, I think, vindicate my claim. It has a nice consistency and I rather prefer the directness to sorting through, say, an Ode to a Nightingale:
“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet/Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,/But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet/Wherewith the seasonable month endows”
Give it a read, and you tell me what Keats is alluding to. I think he’s sad. But that’s me - “the dull brain perplexes and retards,” as even Keats will tell you.
I’m actually not a big Rihanna fan – first time I heard her
was on a JetBlue flight from San Francisco (love the cable television in every
seat). “Shut Up And Drive” was on, and
I thought: they’re remixing “Blue Monday”
and setting it to a bunch of young people dancing in an AutoZone. Cool though that was, I wondered about the intellectual
property issues. Are Gordon Summer Bernard Sumner and
his aging cronies in New Order profiting from this? Or can they only enjoy the respect they are
getting from this particular Carribean songstress?
Whatever the answer, I’ll hope for a May-September tour – perhaps with “Shut Up and Drive” being the showstopper both acts can play – in 2008.
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1. Posted by David Zaring on August 24, 2007 @ 20:04 | Permalink
Geez, apropos the vague Sting misreference, I'm beginning to believe that you people don't even read my posts to the end.
2. Posted by Miss Anne Thorpe on August 26, 2007 @ 15:19 | Permalink
Some where in America, a bubble just burst. You see, I imagined professors going home at night and alphabetizing their stamp collections or annotating the Economist. Fair and deserved? Of course not, but life was easier when I lived in that fantasy. Maybe it's helps perpetuate the us vs. them thing--if you bite it in a professor's class, it's easier to take if you think he's disconnected and impractical. Or maybe it's for the same reason we don't want to see our parents makeout--you prefer to think that their whole world revolves around you. Either way, my world took a turn today and I'm not sure I like it. New Order won't be the same.
3. Posted by David Zaring on August 26, 2007 @ 15:47 | Permalink
Oh dear. You certainly shouldn't start imagining that professors are cool. I assure you that the remainder of my record collection consists entirely of Renaissance madrigals.
4. Posted by Miss Anne Thrope on August 26, 2007 @ 17:26 | Permalink
I wasn't going to go as far as "cool," but references not only to Renaissance madrigals but also to records helps put me back in the proper frame of mind. And for the record, I think Keats is talking about death.
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