Relaxing on the Disco Stick

I've been making somewhat of an effort the last year or so to get Little Smoot to be interested in current music. When I was growing up I had very little interest in music, even though I had aspirations of becoming a radio DJ, and I think it was definitely costing me "cool points," socially speaking.

Remembering my own cluelessness when it came to music, I figure it'll help Little Smoot to get into music so she's up on these things. For a good while, the only music she really knew was church hymns, and strangely enough that doesn't automatically put her into the Club of Cool Kids at school.

I've been making a point of listening to B-94, our local Top 40 station, any time we're in the car. And we both enjoy getting to know the latest music, and we both sing along with most of the songs, which is fun. Since it seems that at any given moment, there are merely 5 current, popular songs, it's easy to remember them since they get played to death.

The only bad thing is that many of today's songs are getting more and more blantant with lyrics that aren't exactly appropriate for 10-year-olds, and they're causing some awkward questions from the back seat.

Back in my era, the 80s (yes, that's 1980s, not the 1880s, thank you), we had plenty of sexually-fueled songs, but they were at least somewhat disguised by mysterious lyrics. Take Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood for example. The lyrics are confusing enough that it's easy for a naive person to not know what he's talking about, even though the song is, for all intents and purposes, a three-minute orgasm.

Unfortunately, things are getting a little less murky in the lyrics nowadays. Thank you very much, Lady Gaga, for your new song, LoveGame. She sings over and over again about her desire to "take a ride on your disco stick." No innuendo there, no sir!

Of course Little Smoot asked me the other day what, exactly, a disco stick might be. So I had to start floundering around for an answer: "Uh, well, back in the 70s, Disco was a popular form of music, you see... and there was this magical stick... and Disco was pretty annoying and people danced to it while wearing really funny clothes..." blah blah blah. I was hoping to babble long enough that she'd forget the original question while I was talking myself in circles.

Actually, more accurately, I was kinda hoping a deer would jump out in front of me so I'd have a valid reason to abruptly change the topic, but you can never catch a break like that when you need one.