“ADMIT IT!” This Song Is Way Too Catchy!

Happy Tuesday, readers! Turnip here! After having a pleasant Columbus Day off (unless you’re like me and have a job that doesn’t give a hoot about National Holidays) I hope this Tuesday has been a bit less painful than the last. If not… don’t worry, the worst is over!

Maybe my choice for top sing along is really more of a “speak along,” but it’s a song too good to pass up. I’ll set the stage for you, readers, as to how I came to know this incredibly quirky tune:

It was 9^th grade biology class. I had befriended a girl with an awesome sense of music, and each morning we would swap our favorite songs and artists of the day. We had been in an animated discussion about the futility of hipster culture (you know how all teens go through that philosophical stage) when, out of nowhere, she recited this:

“Despite your pseudo-bohemian appearance and vaguely leftist doctrine of beliefs, you know nothing about art or sex that you couldn’t read in any trendy New York underground fashion magazine! Prototypical nonconformist, you are a vacuous soldier of the thrift store Gestapo! You adhere to a set of standards and tastes that appear to be determined by an unseen panel of hipster judges!”

I know what you’re thinking. Wow. I don’t know what any of those words mean. As a 14-year-old-girl, neither did I. To this day I credit “Admit It!” by Say Anything with teaching me more words in the span of 6:22 minutes than any High School English class I’ve ever taken (way to go, America). As the song progresses, the lyrics get wordier and wordier, so much so that our 9^th grade English teacher teased he could make an entire vocabulary test off the song when we convinced him to listen.

(TURNIP'S NOTE: I picked this video specifically for the cat memes... I can haz cheezburger?)

The introduction is all about passing judgment on hipster culture. With lines like, 

“Go analog, baby, you’re so postmodern!”

and 

“You spend times sitting in circles with your friends pontificating to each other”

 frontman Max Bemis denounces not only the stereotypical cool kids of high school culture but also those “out-of-the-box” types with a similar higher-than-thou attitude. However, the conclusion to the song includes a wildly unexpected twist. Bemis admits to listeners 

“Let me tell you this: I am shamelessly self-involved” 

and

“I worry about how this album will sell because I am convinced it will determine the amount of sex I will have in the future”. 

The song’s meaning is complex: We are all judged, yet we are all passing judgment. Furthermore, we are all unbearably shallow. The secret to fulfillment, he suggests, is to be

“proud of my life and the things that I have done”.

This is the beauty of Say Anything, a band that very same friend and I would see live four years later and, to our greatest disappointment, not hear “Admit It!” like we wanted to. Regardless, a decent amount of their songs are inundated with just as much self-mockery and lyrical intricacies. Known better for songs like “Wow! I Can Get Sexual Too” and “Alive With The Glory Of Love”, the band started up in 2000 and broke into the American Rock scene by 2005, touring with similarly popular artists Hellogoodbye and Saves The Day. Lead singer Max Bemis is the only surviving original member of the band; evidently, he’s the formula for success as he’s gone through 8 other members so far but has increased his band’s global popularity. I’m sure he’ll do just fine with his car and his guitar… and the millions he must be making as a world-famous musician.

If you enjoyed “Admit It!” as much as I did, go check out “Admit It Again!”, a sister-composition of that song we all had to pull out a dictionary for to fully comprehend.

Enjoy The Week, Veggie Heads!