By Jim Hagarty
1996
Pop singer Kim Stockwood’s on to a real good thing. The jerk. No, I don’t mean she’s a jerk (although who isn’t these days, in somebody’s eyes?) I mean she’s discovered the marketability of the concept of the jerk and even the value of the very word itself.
While the rest of us are being rude as drunken pirates to each other all day long in stores, schools and on the highways and dishing out all this misery absolutely free of charge, the chart-topping recording “artist” has decided to be up front with her feelings and her language and is riding her bluntness, honesty and yes, rudeness, all the way to the rock ‘n’ roll bank.
In her latest hit song, Stockwood gets down to basics with this chorus: “You jerk! You jerk! You are such a jerk! There are other words, but they just don’t work.” She then goes on to advise others who run into people who do them wrong to forgo all the niceties and diplomacies of the language and deliver the same verbal roughing up. And to make sure the annoying one doesn’t miss any part of the message with the first two declarations, the third one oughta do it: “You are SUCH a jerk!”
To those who might cringe at what this latest direction in pop songwriting might mean for the future of polite discourse and harmonious relations between humans, all I can say is, get in the ’90s. Somebody pissed off old Kim there and she has a right to make a couple of mill fighting back.
Ah, but you ask, whatever happened to the poetry of the pop artists of the past who predicted Your Cheatin’ Heart would tell on you, who admitted they were Crazy for feeling so lonely and who pined for Yesterday when their loved one fled the relationship?Weren’t those writers much better at tugging at our heartstrings and making us feel sorry for them at the same time? Didn’t their words make us melancholy and grieve for the eternal spiritual torment of human love, won and lost?
The short answer is, no. The long answer is, not at all. Subtlety and nuance are archaic concepts in this all-hang-out age. The Willie Nelsons and Buddy Hollys and Paul McCartneys of the past were simply sugar-coatin’ dreamers who could have just as easily satisfied their creative potentials writing greeting card verse or Christmas songs as penning songs about emotional pain and suffering. No, those guys had it all wrong. Instead of writing that I’m So Lonely I Could Cry, Hank Williams should have sang, a la Kim Stockwood: I’m So Lonely, You Crummy Piece of Dryer Lint, I Could Bulldoze Your House Down. Instead of writing that he was Crazy for feeling so blue, Willie Nelson should have whined, I’m Crazy for ever thinking you were anything but a low-down smelly piece of cattle refuse. And the Beatles should have sang, rather than Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away: Yesterday, I didn’t know that you were SUCH a vile and swollen-red bunyon on the dirt-encrusted foot of life.
Some uncharitable critics of Ms. Stockwood have suggested the refrain of the song which was eventually recorded differed markedly from earlier versions she had written, such as: “You jerk. You jerk. You are such a jerk. There are other words, but they wouldn’t hurt” and “You jerk. You jerk. You are such a jerk. I could write better songs but I’d have to work.”
Personally, I think the song is great. In fact, I can’t get it out of my head these days. Where I use to walk down the street singing You Are My Sunshine or Love Me Tender or And I Love You So, I now sing You jerk. You jerk. You are SUCH a jerk. It makes me feel so happy to wander along muscially kicking butt all day.
Nevertheless, too much of a good thing is just too much and if the jerk song really catches on, look for a whole busload of Kim Stockwood imitators to flood the airwaves with similar versions of the same number, such as “How can you sleep, when you’re SUCH a creep?” and “It’s hard to take that you’re SUCH a snake.”
But a musical bridge has been crossed and burned and with the success of You Jerk, can we ever go back to The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face? I, for one, hope not because this brave new world is just so much more frank and interesting.
Isn’t it?
Of all the forms of artistic expression in the last 20 years, pop music has been about the last to discover the value of “in your face.” Sure, there have been charming little musical ditties like Love Stinks, She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft, You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Houndog and You’re So Vain, but they were more clever than crude. Somehow, the impression is strong that Stockwood really means the words she’s singing.
And as there are many worse things to call a person than a jerk, can we expect some of those more severe acid-tongued word pictures to start poisoning the airwaves soon as well?
Let me see. What sort of rhymes with glass pole?
