All of The Lights, Kanye West

Core Philosophy: Foucaultian belief in power of  the very state of being observed  to motivate individual self regulation and self discipline of the observed

Offending Lyrics:


[Kanye West]
Something wrong
I hold my head
MJ gone...our n-gga dead!
I slapped my girl, she called the feds
I did that time and spent that bread
I'm heading home, I'm almost there
I'm on my way, heading up the stairs
to my surprise, a n-gga replacing me
I had to take 'em to that ghetto university


[Chorus]
all of the lights
cop lights, flash lights, spot lights
strobe lights, street lights
(all of the lights, all of the lights)
fast life, drug life
thug life, rock life
every night
(all of the lights)


[Rihanna]
Turn up the lights in here, baby
extra bright, I want y'all to see this
turn up the lights in here, baby
you know what I need, want you to see everything
want you to see all of the lights


[Kanye West]
Restraining order
can't see my daughter
her mother, brother, grandmother hate me in that order
public visitation
we met at Borders
told her she take me back
I'll be more supportive
I made mistakes
I bump my head
courts suck me dry
I spent that bread
she need a daddy
baby please, can't let her grow up in that ghetto university




[Chorus]
all of the lights
cop lights, flash lights, spot lights
strobe lights, street lights
(all of the lights, all of the lights)
fast life, drug life
thug life, rock life
every night
(all of the lights)


[Rihanna]
Turn up the lights in here, baby
extra bright, I want y'all to see this
turn up the lights in here, baby
you know what I need, want you to see everything
want you to see all of the lights




[Fergie]
Unemployment line, credit card declined
did I not mention I was about to lose my mind?
(my mind, my mind, my mind)
and also was about to do that line
okay, okay, you know we going all the way this time
(this time, this time, this time)
we going all the way this time
(time, time, time, time)
we going all the way this time


we going all the way this time
we going all the way this time


Turn up the lights in here, baby
extra bright, I want y'all to see this
turn up the lights in here, baby
you know what I need, want you to see everything
want you to see all of the lights

Depressing translation, in light of philosophical lens:

Turn up the lights. Go ahead, shine them in my eyes. I'll confess. I need to confess, because I can't keep doing this shit. I need you to see me. I need to be exposed. Maybe you can help me. Just look. Just look at me. (No, I'm not trying to show you my dick, for fuck sakes. -Not yet,anyway. The night is young.) Maybe, through your eyes, I can have myself reflected back at me. Maybe I can see who I am. Maybe I can gain some control. Maybe I can become the man I want to be for my child,  quiet my demons, stop this spin out. I just need you to help make me real. I just need you to expect something from me. 

Freudian Lyric Slip (In My Head, Jason Derulo)

True Lyric:

In my head, I see you all over me.

In my head, you fulfill my fantasy.
In my head, you'll be screaming ohhhh
In my head, it's going down.
In my head, it's going down.In my head, Yeah, In my head, Oh yeah.


Offending Lyric:

In my head, I see you all over me.
In my head, you fulfill my fantasy.
In my head, you'll be screaming no.
In my head, its going down.
In my head, its going down.
In my head. Yeah. In my head. Oh yeah.

Google has revolutionized our lives. In the fall of 1998 a young Kim could be found sitting next to the radio waiting for Changes by Tupac to come on so she could write down the lyrics and give them to her 7th grade boyfriend, Anthony. Soon after, a young Anthony could  be found practically shitting himself with excitement upon receipt of said lyrics. This was before Google meant anything to anybody, and if song lyrics were to be found on the internet, little Denverites apparently didn’t know anything about it. Now Google has become our window to a seemingly infinite supply of  any kind of information we want (porn), but it can also be a window into our very own souls.  And someone's soul just got a bit rapey.

Most of the time people will betray their own inner sickos on the internet via overly personal blog/vlog postings, “leaked” photos of their genitals, or shitfaced angry rantings urging people to kill themselves left in the Justin Bieber youtube video comments. This time, an anonymous pop lyric posting with just one misheard word revealed the dark and evil sexual fantasies of the poster.

The one word that makes the difference between a faithful rendering of  this pop song and an unfortunate revelation of a possibly subconscious tendency toward rapeyness is, of course,  the ever popular in rape discussion,  word “no.” No means no means no, Mr. sketch fuck of a lyric poster. This Freudian Lyric Slip becomes all the more terrifying when you actually sing along to the song using the word “no” in place of the gleefully drawn out word “oh.”

We all hope that this Freudian Lyric Slip was a simple revelation of BDSM dom fantasy. Just in case, however, we should all take a knee and pray. Hard.  This individual clearly has a love of pop music and he’ll  probably be on his way to the club right now if he isn’t already there, clean shaven, pop collared, heavily cologned and with ruphenol emboldened determination to see his darkest fantasy fulfilled.

Blow, Ke$ha

Core Philosophy: Fascination with the sublime (esp. Burkean), an aching for destruction

Offending Lyrics, revealing core philosophy:

Drink that Kool-Aid
Follow my lead
Now you're one of us
You're coming with me...

It's time to kill the lights
And shut the DJ down
(This place about to)
Tonight we're taking over
No one's getting out...

This place about to blow, blow
This place about to blow, blow
This place about to blow, blow
This place about to blow, blow
This place about to...

We're pretty and sick
We're young and we're bored...

It's time to lose your mind
And let the crazy out...

Depressing translation, in light of philosophical lens:

We're pretty bored. We're pretty and bored. We're bored because we're pretty.  We're bored because we're young and alive. (People probably think that we're bored for the sake of it. We're not.)

We just wanna be on the edge of something. We just wanna feel alive. We wanna let go. We wanna fuck it all up. We wanna lose everything. Prettiness is fleeting. Beauty is contained, bounded and meaningless. We want to see the edge. Then we wanna see over it. We wanna lose our minds. We wanna tear things apart. We wanna blow the world apart, lose ourselves,be a part of something much much bigger. We wanna drink the Kool-Aid. Fuck it. We wanna die.

Almost.

Because we're bored. And bored with being bored. And bored with being pretty. And bored with being boring (and maybe even more bored with coughing up  those glitter globs post Ke$hian oral coitis). And that's the sickness of the human condition.

Give Me Everything, Pitbull

Offending Lyric, revealing core philosophy:

"Tonight. I want all of you tonight
Give me everything tonight
For all we know we might not get tomorrow
Let's do it tonight
I want all of you tonight
Give me everything tonight
For all we know we might not get tomorrow
Lets do it tonight "

Core Philosophy:
Hedonism (esp. Egyptian,Carvakan)


Depressing translation, in light of philosophical lens:

Death can come at any moment. This would be no problem if I had a deep and abiding faith in God or an afterlife, but I don't (even if I claim to). If I did, the fact that I might die tomorrow wouldn't be much motivation for action in my life, especially action that defies God himself and spits in the face of what are widely believed to be his wishes for me in my life. I would have an eternity of perfect bliss to look forward to and wouldn't compromise it for anything. Life would be a meaningless pit-stop on the way to heaven, or at most a divine test of my moral fiber and the strength of my faith. But, again, I don't have a deep and abiding faith. The very idea of my impending death, then, does compel me to act. I assume that it compels others as well. Because I truly believe that after death comes an eternity of nothingness and that there really is no God, I begin to understand that the moral fabric of my society is relativistic and ultimately meaningless in the face of the boundless empty blackness of death and eternity. Its purpose is to facilitate the functioning of society as the short-lived machine that it is.  I shouldn't be bothered with this meaningless system of rules. This doesn't mean I am not bothered with it. Most of the time I am, because I am a part of the aforementioned machine and this system of rules and morals helps me facilitate whatever semblance of a life I've haphazardly put together, mostly by accident, hurtling through space on this mass of fire, water and rock. But since I am also aware that it is all a construct, I need not have any reverence for it at all, nor constantly obey it if I choose not to. With an endless nothingness fast approaching, sometimes I want to abandon the prison of the constructs meant to facilitate my slow race toward the edge of existence. Sometimes, I want to feel alive. I want to feel in control. Don't you, baby? Don't you feel the same? I know you do. I fucking know it. What I'm trying to say, baby, is let's get monster blitzed and sloppy fuck in the handicapped bathroom stall of the men's room of this vacuous, booming, ill-lit, overpriced, sticky-floored nightlcub (it's more roomy in there), so we can obtain some relief from the constantly gnawing fear of death that quietly haunts us daily. Let's forget about the tragedy that will eventually meet us all, if only for a few brief minutes (and they will be brief), tonight.