Now I love the first three songs on Gold, but, honestly, when the album starts I’m really just waiting for “You’re Mean” to play. The pop hooks on this thing, the layered guitars, all of it just sends a dopamine rush to my head. This was the first song that really showed JM’s love of New Wave and I loves me some New Wave. It was also a sign of things to come with JM’s stylistic changes in the future. And I was hooked and ready for the things which had not yet come to pass. And maybe that is the mark of a near perfect song.
It’s a strange thing to find something to write about a song everyday. Even with a band you love, you are going to run into songs that just measure up to “meh” on your internal meter. Still though, you have to find something to write about. When a “meh” song is what is queued for the day, I find that these tend to be my longer posts. I put more of my own story in to fill the gaps, I suppose. Now faced with a song that I love beyond all measure, I don’t have a lot to say. I could talk about the lyrics. Lord knows I’ve known mean people and I’ve been mean myself but I just can’t focus on those stories with all these feel good vibes pounding in my ears.
I actually tried to construct a story to tell for this song which involved me doing an automatic grocery pickup. Have you done those things yet where you make your order online and all you have to do is show up at the store and they put all your shit in the car for you? I love it, particularly as it relates to Wal-Mart because 1) walking through Wal-Mart strains my introvert soul and 2) I know Wal-Mart will actually have to keep employees to fill these orders.
The downside to this is substitutions for items they don’t have in stock. And what are the items that they never seem to have in stock, you may ask? Just what every gay girl needs: iced coffee and cat litter deodorizer. These things are constantly out of stock. Knowing this and knowing that “You’re Mean” was my song for the day, I set up a grocery order. My thinking was that when they showed up to my car door to tell me that they had no iced coffee or cat litter deodorizer, I could respond in song with:
You’re mean
So it seems
You’ve got everything
But the one I need
I could then report the results in my post. But dammit, I had a perfect order. No substitutions. The one time I needed them to fail me, they came through. Bastards. They’re mean.
A Song a Day 