Tuesday, 8th February 2005.

Goo-goog a joob

"Of course, no one knows what it's about..."

We were sitting in the lounge, and Prefab Sprout were singing The King Of Rock And Roll. Mike sat reclined in the rocking chair, as the cat buzzed around his feet, hoping for food or at least a little affection. (He received plenty of the latter.) Emily was parked next to me, having recently got off the phone. On either side of us, the speakers buzzed: "Hot dog, jumping frog / Albuquerque..."

You can blame Alison. Some time ago, she and Jonathan loaned us season one of Spaced, but it was only last week that it reached the top of the TV dinner schedule: when it comes to watching DVDs during dinner, we make a rule to try not to have more than two sitcoms on the go at once. The King Of Rock And Roll features in the housewarming episode; Daisy is seen dancing to it at the beginning of the evening.

I had failed to even notice this - the only song I remember from that episode was The Power Of Love - and thought nothing of it until Saturday evening. We were at a ceilidh at the Catholic school where Kirsten was a dinner lady - my wife had even been mistaken for her during the course of the evening, by several giggling girls who wondered if they were sisters. The interval arrived, and the organisers served a light ploughman's meal with a choice of either hot dogs or buttered rolls with cheese.

Mike had rejoined us in the hall clutching his plate in one hand and a large bun in the other, when Emily started to sing "Hot dog, jumping frog / Albuquerque..."

I recognised it but couldn't place it. "What's that?"
"I'm not sure. But it was in Spaced the other night. Daisy was dancing to it."
There was a pause. Then I tried the song myself, desperate to recall the artist, hoping to jog my memory. "Hot dog, jumping frog / Albuquerque..."
"That's going to be bothering us all evening now, isn't it?"

And indeed it did. In fact, it bothered us for a good while - both in terms of non-identification and its irritating catchiness. Never mind the fact that we didn't have a clue about context; where did it come from? It seemed that every five minutes or so one of us (usually me, tell you the truth) would break a momentary silence with the repetition of the same five words, occasionally with a slight adjustment: "Hot log, humping dog / eats beef jerky...". And so on. It wasn't until Sunday that a kindly spod put us out of our misery, and newly informed, I rushed to look through my eighties compilations to find it.

And now we were in a state of relative calm, some time later, post-cod-and-chips, post-Karate Kid II, with the stereo blaring. "I'm the king of rock and roll..."

"Yes, I agree it makes no sense," I said. "But lots of songs are like that."

Prefab Sprout faded away, and in came They Might Be Giants.
"There, now. Explain this."
"This?" said Mike. "Ah, this one's a classic."
"I quite agree. But what's it about? It makes absolutely no sense."
"Come on," said Emily. "It's about wanting to be part of someone's life."
"So he's the canary?"
"Right."
"And the birdhouse is just a little space inside her where he can live and be part of her soul?"
"Exactly!" said Mike. "It's pretty obvious, really."
"Well then, riddle me this, Batman," I said. "What on earth is all that stuff about Jason and the Argonauts?"

Mike paused, as if remembering something. "That's about...his past."

I'd be the last one to suggest that meaning was necessary for the enjoyment of a song. I Am The Walrus, one of the most famous examples ever of an apparently meaningless lyric, has frequently had meaning dumped upon it where none truly exists: Lennon, anxious to move away from having his lyrics closely scrutinized for their intellectual content, responded by writing a song about nothing. This doesn't stop corruptchristianity.com from describing it as "a drug song", but despite the presence of obvious antiestablishment concepts, along with knocks at the police and even organised religion, it would be foolish to even attempt to scrutinize these lyrics too closely.

Oh, the weariness of overly elaborate interpretation, and how guilty am I of this! That said, it can be fun to analyse to death. Case study: Ewan and I spent years not having a clue what Money For Nothing was about - my only excuse is that we were young and naive - and, having had the penny drop, compensated for this hideous oversight by looking for meaning wherever possible. Ewan, for example, became convinced that Bohemian Rhapsody was a lament about AIDS written years before it was actually discovered (the "gun against his head" line carrying a horrendously phallic image) and that Mercury's most famous composition eerily foreshadows his own demise - an event that was not to occur until some sixteen years after Queen finished the Night at the Opera album.

For my part, I figured out that the guy in Every Breath You Take (a song I always hoped to play during the end credits to my version of The Collector) was bordering on the obsessional long before Sting himself described it as "a really evil song about wanting to own someone", but it didn't stop Puff Daddy et al. producing their appalling cover to honour the death of the Notorious B.I.G. I'll Be Missing You was delivered without a trace of irony, and I wondered if the re-interpreted chorus was intended as a deliberate spin, turning the would-be stalker into a devoted monk: "Watch us as we pray for you / Ev'ry day we pray for you". It could be, of course, that they knew exactly what the original was really about, and merely thought that a new interpretation would breath a quite unnecessary freshness into what is already probably the finest song ever written. But I suppose that my hatred of any hip-hop that tries to be heartfelt and moving (it's like cutting a techno-metal number about the Care Bears - it might have novelty but it's using the medium for entirely the wrong reasons) means that I'm always going to be naturally sceptical.

No, in the wake of reading too deeply perhaps we're better left with ambiguity or, if possible, utter simplicity. Disgusted with what I saw as a quite hideous misinterpretation of Gordon Sumner's finest, I turned my attentions to other areas. I have yet to fully understand The Mighty Quinn, although I think it's about a need for social acceptance and jealousy; it's Arnold Rimmer when Ace Rimmer turns up. But while heartfelt depth and layers of imagery can produce wonderful things (Eels, Paul Simon, anything from Blood on the Tracks), being too sincere and serious can also have disastrous results (anything by Phil Collins). And while I whine and whinge on an alarmingly regular basis about the state of pop music and the bland tedium of instantly forgettable lyrics that say nothing at all, I keep having to remind myself that at the opposite end of the spectrum sits the grotesque behemoth that is the spectre of Emerson Lake & Palmer. And it's at moments like this that I find myself surprisingly grateful for a little mundane gibberish.

Of course, the fact that some lyrics are apparently meaningless does not mean that they are any less likely to stick in your head. On Sunday morning we had a service in St Barnabas', which would have been interesting were it not for the fact that the half-hour sermon was about the pastor's vision for the church: a new vision, incorporating both long-term members (people who live there) and short-term members (students). His plan sounded vaguely interesting, and I wish them well, but in what was admittedly an introductory talk he barely moved beyond abstracts, and to be honest it's hard to get really excited about something that you're not going to be involved in at all. I tried very hard to concentrate, but couldn't avoid constantly looking at my watch - and by the time of the prayers, I have to confess I was completely distracted and thinking about possible numbers for an up-and-coming concert that I'm trying to plan.

Chastened by the worship leader's plea to throw off distractions and worries, I tried once more to concentrate, and listened to the Clannad-esque synth that formed the background music for her eulogy. I was this close to getting back to a reasonable state of concentration, when I suddenly became aware of an internal drum machine - and this time it wasn't the headache. I tried to block it out, but it wasn't going anywhere. Appalled at my lack of self control but by now fully resigned to my fate, I sat there and listened to the interminably creepy line, repeated over and over again inside my head: "Hot dog, jumping frog / Albuquerque..."