‘Baby Baby Oh Whoa Baby Baby…’
I’ve always quite liked music of The Carpenters. Sure, they could be a bit cheesy, but my, that girl had a voice that was as effortlessly smooth as silk.
However there’s one song of theirs that I detest; I wonder if you can guess which it is? That’s right, it the one with the lines ‘don’t you remember you told me you loved me baby/ baby baby baby baby oh baby…’.
Yes, this is a cunting for the use of the word ‘baby’ by songwriters. It’s nothing new of course. Turn the clock back a hundred years or more and you’ll find the likes of ‘and I’d like to be your sister, brother, dad and mother too, pretty baby…’ **.
It’s such a useful little word for a songwriter. It can be fitted in very easily, and that’s the trouble I suspect. It’s usefulness is such that’s become ubiquitous over the years, the lyricist’s cliché of clichés. Even songwriting greats of the modern era such as Dylan and Lennon and McCartney couldn’t avoid falling into the ‘baby’ trap at some point.
Okay, maybe I’m being a bit idiosyncratic with this one. It’s just that the funny thing is, in all my years on this mortal coil, I can honestly say that I can’t recall ever hearing a person use the term when speaking to another. Neither can the wife, or any friend I’ve mentioned this to whenever we’ve been discussing music. Yet it comes up time after time in so many songs that it really gets on my bloody nerves.
I guess I could put up with one or two ‘baby’s in a song, but too many and it just becomes intolerable. I give you exhibit one for the prosecution, that tuneless little nerk Justin Bieber, who seems to be going for an entry into The Guinness Book of Records for use of the word ‘baby’ in his song entitled, er, ‘Baby’…
YouTube.
Of course, Bieber really knows how to gild the lily. Throw some ‘oh oh whoa oh oh oh’s and plenty of ‘uh huh’s into the mix, and round it all off with some baseball capped buffoons jigging away like demented gay ferrets, and you’ve got pubescent girls by the thousand moistening their panties and parting with their cash. So perhaps it’s simply the case that ‘baby’ pays.
Oh baby baby oh baby baby oh yeah yeah hit me baby one more time. Classic.
** I say steady on; you can get done for that.
Nominated by : Ron ‘baby’ Knee