This song calls you on the telephone, its voice too rough with cigarettes. It got a little too drunk and won’t shut up about the perpetual and far reaching influence of T-Rex on a variety of genres, but you just can’t stay mad! For our second installment of Perfect Songs, we induct “You Better You Bet” by The Who from the Album Face Dances.
There’s a vague Linklater type of thing happening with these lyrics. It takes us for a wayward stroll on the minutiaenic route of modern love with all its ordinariness, absurdity, tenderness, and ass slapping. I just made up the word minutiaenic (pronounced like min-ooh-she-ann-ic) you’re welcome. We see little slices of life like, “Your dog keeps licking my nose and chewing up all those letters,” and, ”I know I've been wearing crazy clothes and I look pretty crappy sometimes.“ Then you have some good old fashioned vulnerability with, “Knowing I’m so eager to fight can't make letting me in any easier.” But the genius of these lyrics is the simple little line that’s repeated 800 times…
“When I say I love you, you say, ‘You bettahhhh!!!!!’”
There’s also some vague musical theater flavor to the whole song, but these lead vocals are too unhinged for Broadway or even off it. The grit of the delivery is really what makes the song. We’re not looking for technical perfection or the calculated, rehearsed, and exactingly replicated vocal quirks of musical theater. Remember what makes a perfect song? Feeeeeelings, yes, correct. For our purposes, specifically, my feelings. And my feelings look a little crappy sometimes, what can I say.
It’s a bit longer than the average banger, but not one of the 337 seconds is wasted. The intro is what I call a bricklayer (I just came up with that, I’ve never actually said it). We start with the stroke of a single low octave piano key, then the instrumentation and background vocals come in layer by layer until the lead vocals kick the door open with jazz hands and big Betelgeuse energy. The undead bio-exorcist with jokes, not the largest visible supergiant star of spectral type M1-2. That first piano note is an ellipses. You bettah get ready, it says. And after a pretty thorough rundown of the situationship at hand through a classic verse/pre-chorus/chorus/bridge structure, we don’t get the pervasive radio fadeout (the laziest of ellipses). Instead, we are handed a question mark with the closing guitar chord. It’s a decorated indie rom-com-dram kind of ending. Love isn’t about knowing the answer, it’s about asking the question, baby!
I'm Not Into Your Passport Picture,
<3 Tonya
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