Romantic, My Foot!

I’d never heard of a singer called Milow until a few days ago. A radio station played a song of his whose lyrics caught my attention.

Milow, whose real name is Jonathan Vandenbroeck, is a Belgian singer-songwriter who is quite popular in Belgium and the whole of Europe. But well, let’s skip the artist details and go straight to the matter – the lyrics.

source

Parts of the lyrics in question:

“I often wish that you had feathers
I'd keep you in a giant cage
All day long I'd sit and watch you “

“I wish you were a little slower
Not just slow but paralyzed
Then I could plug you into a socket
So you could never run away”

Ok, these are obviously song lyrics. Let’s see how this sounds in prose. Say, a letter from a guy to his girl.

Dearest,

I want to keep you with me all the time. I don’t ever want to be separated from you. I sometimes think it would have been better if you were a bird. A pet in my sole possession. I would lock you up in a giant cage, so that you’d be trapped and couldn’t leave even if you’d wanted to. I’d sit outside and keep watch to make sure you don’t try anything funny.

Or even better, I wish you were paralyzed. That way I wouldn’t even have to worry about you going anywhere, because you wouldn’t be able to move at all. Wouldn’t that be great?

See how much I care for you and want you to be mine? Doesn’t this make you want to stay with me forever??

Yours,

xx

My my, now isn’t that romantic.

Is this supposed to be a declaration of love? I know for sure that I, for one, would definitely not appreciate anyone dedicating this song to me. It’s just … morbid. I reckon it’s meant to be funny, and not to be taken seriously. Once you get used to it and ignore the creepy bits, the song is enjoyable enough. I listened to a few more of Milow’s songs, and they’re not bad either. But the music videos, now that’s a whole different story. They’re creative, funny … and slightly disturbing.

However, in this era of Lady Gaga, Nicky Minaj, and many other artists with ‘creative’ (read – crazy) videos, Milow is mild. And of course, in today’s world of obscene, crude, tasteless songs and their accompanying music videos being abundant, Milow, in comparison, is just (trying to be?) humourous. Now I’m just contradicting myself here...

 

Not weird. Not weird at all. (source)

Strangely enough, Milow’s You And Me (In My Pocket) makes me think of R. L. Stein’s Goosebumps series. I wonder why…?

For the curious, here’s the song.