"My paragraph alone is worth five mics. A 12-song LP, that's 36 mics."

April 18, 2007 3:06 PM

The 15 most outrageous claims in pop music history.
posted by jbickers (85 comments total)

Hoo boy. Cracked needs some work on those features.
posted by josher71 at 3:14 PM on April 18, 2007

This was dumb.
posted by oddman at 3:19 PM on April 18, 2007

Throw-away goofball lines from throw-away artists from throwaway eras.

Truly, this is the best of the web.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 3:20 PM on April 18, 2007

Yeesh. Cracked wouldn't know what a metaphor was if it made love to their tonic and gin.
posted by blucevalo at 3:20 PM on April 18, 2007 [2 favorites]

That was the shittiest attempt at humor I have ever read on the whole series of tubes.
posted by mckenney at 3:26 PM on April 18, 2007

Outraaageous. Cutting Edge. ExtrEEEEEme even.
posted by 2sheets at 3:26 PM on April 18, 2007

actually, willie dixon was the one who claimed he could "eat more chicken than any man ever seen", not jim morrison or howlin' wolf

way to show musical ignorance there, buddy
posted by pyramid termite at 3:26 PM on April 18, 2007

Cracked really hit the skids without John Severin, huh?
posted by Smart Dalek at 3:28 PM on April 18, 2007

About as funny and insightful as the bored jerk next to you in the car making fun of whatever's on the radio. "What? Chicken? How much chicken do you think Jim Morrison really ate, maybe he's in Guinness! Hyuck!"
posted by buriednexttoyou at 3:29 PM on April 18, 2007

I read that and thought some 16 year-old probably wrote it.

Oh wait, they probably did...
posted by Mach3avelli at 3:30 PM on April 18, 2007

5 "I can double my density from 360 degrees to 720 instantly."

Canibus, "Funk Master Flex Freestyle"
Holy shit. There are so many things wrong with this that it really speaks for itself. This line is so adorably dumb, it makes us want to chuck Canibus under the chin like a little kid, muss up his hair, and give him a big lollipop.

But not if he's talking about wave density...
posted by delmoi at 3:31 PM on April 18, 2007

Pop music?
posted by Elmore at 3:40 PM on April 18, 2007

I thought there were rules here. Are they more like guidelines, then?
posted by Nabubrush at 3:41 PM on April 18, 2007

Wow, jbickers.... try again.
posted by jonson at 3:43 PM on April 18, 2007

I liked them better as a Mad Magazine ripoff.
posted by InfidelZombie at 3:44 PM on April 18, 2007

Morrison makes the outrageous claim that he, apparently, can eat more chicken than anyone. Unless, by "chicken," he really meant "acid," this is fairly hard to believe.

W-e-e-e-l-l-l-l, it's possible the Lizard King had another cut of white meat in mind....
posted by rob511 at 3:45 PM on April 18, 2007

Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face

Okay, so do the Eagles not understand that hotels do not have FACES? Were their drugs that good? I mean, dude! How creepy would that be? If you just drove up to the Beverly Hills Hotel and it had, like, big huge eyes just kinda staring at you like "Hey there! So you wanna stay in my big face?" I mean, creepy, right?
posted by miss lynnster at 3:45 PM on April 18, 2007 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: So you wanna stay in my big face?
posted by buriednexttoyou at 3:49 PM on April 18, 2007

I've never read Cracked before, so I decided to flip through their archives to see if it was give the boss's intern son a byline day over there when they published this article, but it seems like everything is this bad. Something Awful is better executed than this.
posted by mmcg at 3:49 PM on April 18, 2007

I've seen a lot of chicken, my friends. A lot of chicken.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:57 PM on April 18, 2007

Okay, so do the Eagles not understand that hotels do not have FACES?

why not? ... did ron wood throw a tv set through the window?
posted by pyramid termite at 3:57 PM on April 18, 2007

No. Just no.
posted by MarshallPoe at 4:02 PM on April 18, 2007

Seriously, though - I don't remember Cracked using words like "fucking" and "dong" when I was a kid. Is this progress?
posted by Nabubrush at 4:04 PM on April 18, 2007

Generally bad. But it did include this gem: 'Not to be a wet blanket about corpse-fucking, or anything.' which definitely made me chuckle.

In fact, I think that may have just become my non-sequitur of choice.
posted by quin at 4:07 PM on April 18, 2007

You know what's weird? I am an adult who hasn't read Cracked in 15 years, and I usually skip all the one-link posts where people just say "meh" in the comments, and yet -- I thought this was really funny. So here's to you, jbickers.
posted by escabeche at 4:09 PM on April 18, 2007

How is it that this didn't make the cut?

And no Chuck D in the "20 Worst Rhymes" article either...

Easy on the wall, but hard on the panel
A fool smokes Kools 'cause he chokes on Camels

posted by Opposite George at 4:15 PM on April 18, 2007

This post was brought to you buy the guy who thought "bird flu!!!" and a song about farting were funny.
posted by DU at 4:18 PM on April 18, 2007

Cracked, the MAD competitor/copycat, went under, and "reinvented" itself (read: someone bought the name) as a Lad Mag alongside FHM and Maxim.
posted by mendel at 4:19 PM on April 18, 2007

This is the all-new resurrected Cracked, right? They've been doing this for about six months I think. Everything I've read there so far just seems a little off. Like it could be funny if it were done right but it's just a little bit tone deaf, or a bit off target. Maybe the kids dig it. (Although I find it hard to believe the kids would give a flying fuck about Bel Biv DeVoe. What, was that 1992?)
posted by mr_roboto at 4:20 PM on April 18, 2007

Oh, the dragon's balls were blazin' as I stepped into his cave
I sliced his fucking cockles with my long and shiny blade

Personally I find this one a little suspect. Given certain well-known facts of reptilian anatomy, he'd have to have been looking awfully closely to detect any blazing, and you're just not going to have time for that and cockle-slicing too.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:22 PM on April 18, 2007

...I thought this was really funny. So here's to you, jbickers.
posted by escabeche

I quite literally LOLed at this link too.

I don't know why no one else found it funny. Maybe unnaturally long scrotums is not a funny topic anymore?

That being said, arguing about what's funny is like arguing about good music. Pointless and doesn't enhance my enjoyment of either.
posted by eurasian at 4:28 PM on April 18, 2007

This is pretty high on the list of the 15 worst lists of 15 worst things.
posted by Citizen Premier at 4:30 PM on April 18, 2007

If you enjoy things in this vein that are actually somewhat funny, try John Moe's Pop-Song Correspondences.
posted by staggernation at 4:36 PM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Cracked was barely funny before they sucked all the life juices out of it and reinvented it.

Now? Now I'm going to have to go listen to a bunch of funereal dirges to lift my spirits. Thanks!
posted by loquacious at 4:42 PM on April 18, 2007

I'm curious, is there a way to mark a post as an anti-favorite?
posted by eyeballkid at 4:45 PM on April 18, 2007 [3 favorites]

Wolfdog, was that from this?
posted by Nabubrush at 4:47 PM on April 18, 2007

Greensleeves was all my joy
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
And who but my lady greensleeves.

Are we to believe that this lady was a heart? Ladies aren't hearts. And she was made out of gold? Why was this lady-heart made out of gold? And why would a golden lady-heart have sleeves?
posted by Flunkie at 4:48 PM on April 18, 2007

How sad. That was the -most- outrageous claims they could get? If you're considering Canibus pop, why not something like his, "I've got plans to push the planet in front of Haley's Comet"? Or better yet, the entire battle between Big Daddy Kane and Dolomite ("I'll eat up railroad iron and shit out steel") etc.

Sigh.
posted by yeloson at 4:49 PM on April 18, 2007

Oh, c'mon! Ragging on Cracked is like shooting monkeys in a barrel.
posted by oncogenesis at 4:50 PM on April 18, 2007

This reminds me how much I miss the old, decent Mad magazine ripoff Cracked instead of this really lame Maxim ripoff.
posted by champthom at 4:54 PM on April 18, 2007

Why are these monkeys in a barrel? Monkeys don't live in barrels. Monkeys live in jungles.
posted by Flunkie at 4:54 PM on April 18, 2007

I think the FPP needs to be fixed, because the link goes to a page that isn't funny or interesting at all.
posted by davejay at 5:00 PM on April 18, 2007

"I've got the world on a string, I'm sitting on a rainbow..."

I mean, hey! What kind of long-ass string* does this person have? And where would you PURCHASE string that long? And how the heck can you sit on a rainbow? Unless you're a leprechaun? In which case why are you worrying about putting a string around the world when you should be busy counting your gold? I mean, weird, right?

*(Long ass-string?)
posted by miss lynnster at 5:05 PM on April 18, 2007

Bryan Adams is not a robot, people—he poops

Ok, ok, so SOME things he does just for himself. But, you know, everything meaningful he does is for me, right?
posted by arcticwoman at 5:09 PM on April 18, 2007

I laughed, yet I'm in a country with very little sarcasm. I pity your lives, naysayers, for being too full of intellectual bitterness to appreciate this humour. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go watch Turma do Didi.
posted by iamck at 5:11 PM on April 18, 2007

A few of them did make me honestly laugh out loud, but less than half. The others were just weak.
posted by MrBobaFett at 5:11 PM on April 18, 2007

lol butts.

What? I'm advancing the discourse.
posted by Kwine at 5:32 PM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

It was worth trudging through the crap to get to the few gems.

If only there were some sort of filter where people would list all the good jokes and others would rail against the poster as if the bad jokes are his fault. Oh well.
posted by supercres at 5:36 PM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Curtain Rise.

A room. There is a can upon a table. Enter /me.

/me turns over can.

Can: "MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!"

Applause.

Curtain.
posted by mr_book at 5:37 PM on April 18, 2007

Hmm. I was expecting a reference to being bigger than God. Or even being a golden god. But instead I get stupid commentary on stupid rap lyrics? For shame.
posted by A dead Quaker at 5:44 PM on April 18, 2007

The Red Man example is especially dumb. It's obvious that he offers a very competitive wholesale rate on his paragraphs.
posted by invitapriore at 6:01 PM on April 18, 2007

It was worth trudging through the crap to get to the few gems.

Exactly. Reading the whole thing took 5 minutes and the funny ones made me laugh enough to make it through the lame ones intact. To wit:

"Is she unattractive? If so, you never should have smacked it up, flipped it, and rubbed it down in the first place. You knew that going into this."

Heh. I LOL'd.
posted by GuyZero at 6:29 PM on April 18, 2007

Oh, those silly negroes!

What will they think of next?
posted by flarbuse at 6:46 PM on April 18, 2007

Why are these monkeys in a barrel? Monkeys don't live in barrels.

Okay, okay, teenagers then! Happy now?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:03 PM on April 18, 2007

This was very bad. However, I do feel the urge to point out that the Redman and Canibus lyrics are referencing 5 percenter philosophy, hence the references to 36 and 360 degrees.
posted by anansi at 7:12 PM on April 18, 2007

Sad thing is, Jay Pinkerton (editor of the new Cracked, I think) is pretty funny a lot of the time (on his own site). Some of his comic mashups in particular are pretty good. The humor is juvenile, but funny.

This particular piece, not at all. It just didn't feel like much effort went into it, and the take-downs weren't good. You're telling me the lamest line from any Billy Joel song is "making love to his tonic and gin?" C'mon.
posted by maxwelton at 7:27 PM on April 18, 2007

Y'all are some tough customers, here.
posted by brain_drain at 7:28 PM on April 18, 2007

> Y'all are some tough customers, here.

THIS....IS.....METAFILTAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:41 PM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Hey, when did Fark ripoff MeFi's page design?

Oh. Never mind.
posted by The Deej at 8:08 PM on April 18, 2007

Nothing from Sting? Then it is nonsense. None of these compete with:

I resolve to call her up, a thousand times a day.

Fucking hell. That'll get old pretty quickly. If she says no to your marriage proposal the first 500 times, I'd say you're onto a loser, Sumner.

or

Walked out this morning
Dont believe what I saw
A hundred billion bottles
Washed up on the shore

Really? Every single man, woman and child on the planet sent you at least 15 messages each, Sting? And they all reached you? On your desert island? After you sent out a single bottle?

Still, it certainly puts his "I can have sex for 3 days" claims into perspective. He probably means 3 or 4 minutes or so.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:57 PM on April 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh, and while I'm here: I'M ON CRACKED AND I COULD OVERTHINK THE RHYMES OF G'S.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:04 PM on April 18, 2007

This would've worked far better as just a list of the lyrics. I mean, "I eat more chicken than any man ever seen" is funny as hell. The lame attempt at snark is just shitting the lily.
posted by infidelpants at 9:43 PM on April 18, 2007

Why are these monkeys in a barrel? Monkeys don't live in barrels.

flapjax at midnite : Okay, okay, teenagers then! Happy now?

You keep teenagers in barrels too? And the police said I was the only one.

I got so tired of hearing terms like 'psychopath' and 'a true menace to society' that I just decided to leave that place.

Now I keep the youngsters at bay, just to keep the noise down. I mean, those constant voices can be such a drag.

/kicks a barrel and tells a young'in to shut the hell up or I'll weld the top close.
posted by quin at 10:45 PM on April 18, 2007

go ask Paul exactly what the fuck a real estate novelist does, because we're pretty sure that profession doesn't exist.

This line is so adorably dumb, it makes me want to chuck the writer under the chin like a little kid, muss up his hair, and give him a big lollipop.
posted by Firas at 10:56 PM on April 18, 2007

Not only can you not bang a tonic and gin, it's a GIN AND TONIC. That's outrageous!
posted by ORthey at 11:08 PM on April 18, 2007

Not only can you not bang a tonic and gin, it's a GIN AND TONIC.

Actually, ORthey, in New York it's a Gentrification and Tonic.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:15 PM on April 18, 2007

"That ‘real estate novelist’ line burned the hell out of me. I got out of real estate right after..."
posted by miss lynnster at 11:32 PM on April 18, 2007

mr_roboto: Everything I've read there so far just seems a little off. Like it could be funny if it were done right but it's just a little bit tone deaf, or a bit off target.

Well, to paraphrase my man Thoreau, there are a thousand hacking at the branches of unfunny to one who is striking at the root!

Although the examples, snarking and general writing can all use modifications, I think the problem with this starts off with the whole concept of "outrageous claims."

Now, if they'd started off as "The Ten Lamest Boasts in Pop History", picked entirely different lyrics, and then randomly attacked the artists rather than pedantically picking on the claims, then we might have something.

But actually I guess I have to revert my claim, the general writing is really what's lacking. Their idea of a slam on R. Kelly is to quote that he "thinks about it every night and day" and comment "sounds like that's getting out of hand for you there".

(I did, admittedly, find one bit funny—"Is she unattractive? If so, you never should have smacked it up, flipped it, and rubbed it down in the first place. You knew that going into this.")
posted by Firas at 11:32 PM on April 18, 2007

Holy fuck was that atrocious.

This should immediately be converted into a live act so as to permit violent public feedback.
posted by dreamsign at 12:55 AM on April 19, 2007

The 5 Most Obviously Drug-Fueled TV Appearances Ever was pretty funny.
posted by afu at 2:45 AM on April 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Haha stupid rap music lolz.
posted by cillit bang at 6:21 AM on April 19, 2007

When Cracked was getting ready to do their relaunch, one of their editors approached me and asked if I'd like to write anything (they liked some of the stuff I'd had on McSweeney's). I was jazzed. I mean, Dan Clowes got his start with Cracked.

But the pitch process was the worst I've ever gone through. My first round of jokes were political (they'd told me they wanted to be topical); but those foundered because they thought their audience wouldn't know who Pat Robertson and Newt Gingrich were. We mean more pop-cultural, they said, so I came up with jokes centered on Smokey and the Bandit and the second-tier Transformers who got stuck transforming into combat-useless stuff like boom boxes. Wouldn't be the sorts of things their audience could relate to, they said. In the end, I could just never figure out who it was they were trying to reach, and we all just sort of drifted off. Which was ok by me, really; I was getting more and more uncomfortable with basing things on pop culture)

I did come up with a couple of ideas that I really liked when brainstorming for them, though
posted by COBRA! at 7:13 AM on April 19, 2007

COBRA! That 00* bit is golden.
posted by Dr-Baa at 7:29 AM on April 19, 2007

Thanks!
posted by COBRA! at 7:55 AM on April 19, 2007

I've had a handful of things I wrote up on the Cracked site. COBRA! is right - they are kind of obsessed with hitting this murky and undefined pop-culture nostalgic niche (remember Snorks! LOL! WHAT WERE THEY?!?!?!). I gave them a Cliffs Notes interpretation of a Mystikal song once, which ended up getting some of the highest ratings on the site. Still, they were concerned that most people wouldn't know the song. To make up for it, they suggested I do another one based on something more familiar, like an 80s movie or something.

In their defense, the guys that I have dealt with there were super cool and I do think that some of the articles are genuinely funny. Their internet-related articles go over swimmingly with the Digg crowd.
posted by hypocritical ross at 8:07 AM on April 19, 2007

That last sentence completely negated my point. Crap.
posted by hypocritical ross at 9:09 AM on April 19, 2007

Nothing from Sting? Then it is nonsense. None of these compete with:

I resolve to call her up, a thousand times a day.

Fucking hell. That'll get old pretty quickly. If she says no to your marriage proposal the first 500 times, I'd say you're onto a loser, Sumner.

There are 24 hours in a day, or 1440 minutes. Doctors recommend that we get eight hours of sleep a night; most of us are too busy for that, though. I would say that, given his extreme and ongoing emotional upset re: the song's subject, it is reasonable to expect that Sting is sleeping only about five hours a night (or 300 minutes). With 1140 minutes at his disposal, Sting need only resolve to call her up and ask her if she'll marry him in some old-fashioned way once every 1.14 minutes per waking day to make good on his claim. (He doesn't have to actually make the call, which would -- I agree -- be patently impossible.)While such activity could only be the product of an obsessive-compulsive personality in desperate need of treatment, it is not outside the realm of human capability.

I can only hope that, at some point in the past two and a half decades, Sting eventually received the help he needed.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:44 AM on April 19, 2007

Well, not to give Sting a break or anything (me, I'm hoping Stewart Copeland beats him into a coma onstage), but I always read that line as him making (and breaking) the resolution a thousand times, not resolving to call a thousand times.
posted by COBRA! at 9:48 AM on April 19, 2007

Well, not to give Sting a break or anything (me, I'm hoping Stewart Copeland beats him into a coma onstage), but I always read that line as him making (and breaking) the resolution a thousand times, not resolving to call a thousand times.

Agreed. That would be preposterous!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:01 AM on April 19, 2007

Oh man. While we're on the topic:

#I saw an angel.
[...]
She was with another man.
But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'Cause I've got a plan.

And then:

#
[I]t's time to face the truth,
I will never be with you.

Jeez! Hell of a plan, Casanova.

Also:

#Put the f*****g mic on!
'How the hell did they record that ?'
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:19 AM on April 19, 2007

I'm curious, is there a way to mark a post as an anti-favorite?

I guess you'll have to favourite every post except this one.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:21 AM on April 19, 2007

thanks, staggernation!
posted by minda25 at 11:29 AM on April 19, 2007

No Blue Oyster Cult? Ridiculous.

Consider "Burning For You."

First, I was only 11 in 1981. Leaving aside the question of why they'd go public with their pedophilic desires, how and why would they have become aware of my existence? I had not, at the time, done anything worthy of note, was not published, and had never appeared on any electronic media. Were they monitoring my parents? Any system of amateur surveillance finely-grained enough to track me back then should have left some obvious signs of its existence.

Second, are we to believe that they were actually self-immolating? Photographs taken after the studio sessions for Fire of Uknown Origin don't show any obvious burn scars on the band, though I suppose that it's possible that they received really excellent treatment and reconstructive surgery.

Also, if they were in fact burning for me, this should have been apparent in their singing and playing. I mean, burning is, normally, painful. Had they actually been burning, this should have been evident in strained vocals, missed notes on the guitar, and screaming. For that matter, the sounds of the fire itself should be at least faintly audible on the tapes, but the best analysis I and the NSA can perform does not reveal it.

Also also, if they had been burning for me, surely some news article somewhere would have recorded this. A band setting themselves aflame in order to attract the attention of an 11-year-old boy living on an air base in Germany should certainly have at least appeared in local papers.

In short, BOC, I call your bluff. I do not believe that you are now or have ever burned for me.

Next up: Did Bad Company really feel like making love to me in 1975? Or were they just teases?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:31 AM on April 19, 2007

Next up: Did Bad Company really feel like making love to me in 1975? Or were they just teases?

Well, it's pretty clear that when they thought about you, they thought about looooooooo-oove. But I guess we don't know what kind.
posted by COBRA! at 11:45 AM on April 19, 2007

I've seen a lot of chicken, my friends. A lot of chicken.

I told you I was in the bathroom.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:11 PM on April 19, 2007