{"id":5437,"date":"2011-01-20T16:56:05","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T20:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=5437"},"modified":"2011-01-20T23:08:19","modified_gmt":"2011-01-21T03:08:19","slug":"phil-collins-ding-a-ling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/phil-collins-ding-a-ling\/","title":{"rendered":"Phil Collins, Ding-A-Ling."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Guilty of one too many ding-a-lings?<\/p><\/div>\n

We know there is a solid history of nonsense syllables in popular music, from Mairseydotes<\/em> and Ragmop<\/em> to Ob-La-Di<\/em> and De Doo Doo Doo<\/em>. Some of this usage is intentional or wordplay, but some of it is basically lazy lyric writing by a composer, who can’t seem to find better words to replace the ones that were ad-libbed.<\/p>\n

On this front, is there any greater offender than Phil Collins<\/strong>? I know that ABACAB<\/em> is a reference to musical structure, but let’s dispense with that lame defense because ABACAB is not a word. What is a “Paperlate” and a “Sussudio?”<\/p>\n

I recall an interview with Paddy MacAloon<\/strong>, the man behind Prefab Sprout. He relayed a conversation he had with Paul McCartney<\/strong> about the song, “The King Of Rock and Roll,” which has the chorus lyric: “Hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque,” which is really intended to be a parody of mindless pop song lyrics. The irony was that this was Sprout’s big hit, thus McCartney told MacAloon that the song was his “My Ding-A-Ling” and that every songwriter gets to have one “My Ding-A-Ling.”<\/p>\n

Thus, Phil Collins, in writing at least three nonsense songs, has vastly overshot his “My Ding-A-Ling” quota, which I believe is grounds for charging him with a Rock Crime<\/a><\/strong>, and surely he’s guilty of others. But the Cocteau Twins<\/strong> aside, is there anybody more guilty of lazy, nonsense, my-dingalinging than Phil Collins?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We know there is a solid history of nonsense syllables in popular music, from Mairseydotes and Ragmop to Ob-La-Di and De Doo Doo Doo. Some of this usage is intentional or wordplay, but some of it is basically lazy lyric writing by a composer, who can’t seem to find better words to replace the ones […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342,20],"tags":[319,204,1014],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}