The Sub-Cum-Con Project.

Some of you have written to express concerns that we appear to have slowed in our ongoing endeavor to prolong obscurity. Not to worry! We are back, this time with the first of what promises to be a needlessly drawn out series entitled Sub-Cum-Context: Behind the Mask of Today’s Pop Lyrics. An expository spin on the tired trend of musical biographies, the Sub-cum-Con project will uncover exciting new ground by biographializing not the songwriter but the lyrics themselves.

The concept arose out of a mescaline-enhanced late-night conversation we had with a potted houseplant in front of our apartment building. We had been enjoying a delicious menthol cigarette and contentedly humming “Back On The Chain Gang” when the houseplant remarked that he knew the tune from somewhere but couldn’t quite place it. Soon enough, conversation had eased into the manner in which a song possessES a life of its own – one that exists quite outside of the artist who performed it. If, we posited, a specific song is able to contain a certain sense of life, then it must also possess life history, and, even more interestingly, life issues. With this hypothesis in hand, we eagerly donned the analytical lens and went in search of life-containing lyrics. What we found there, between these well-loved lines, is breathless and revealing. The first example is below. [note: a bold typeface signifies original lyrics; emergent subtext is in regular font]


from Lean On Me orig. composed & performed by Bill Withers

Sometimes in our lives / We get sores that look like hives / We all have pain / We all have sorrow / And it hurts like a mo’foh / But, if we are wise / We don’t go for our gun because / We know that there’s always tomorrow / So just call on me brother, when you need a hand / Then we can bring up the topic, of painful pustule glands / We all need somebody to lean on / We both remember that night, when “Lean on” was code for “Rub against nude” / And now / I just might have a problem that you’d understand / We were trashed but did not think, we’d end up on the motel room floor / And now it hurts like me johnson, got slammed in a door / We all need somebody to lean on / Like we are trying in vain, to pee out a mel-on / We all need somebody to lean on