There Is No Word For Kiss
April 24, 2013 2:27 PM   Subscribe

At long last you can finally hear Six Pence None The Richer's 1997 hit "Kiss Me" the way it was intended to be heard, in the original Klingon.
posted by The Whelk (37 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is wonderful, I can't favorite this enough.
posted by selenized at 2:31 PM on April 24, 2013


Amazing. I'm sending this to the many* friends I have that both love Star Trek and would recognize this song.

A couple of weeks ago I was meeting a friend for lunch, along with one of her friends who she wanted me to meet. Kiss me played while I was there waiting for them. I mentioned this to them as a "oh hey remember that song from back when we were younger" deal. Except they didn't remember it from the name, so I was forced to sing the chorus...and yeah they're like 25 or a bit younger and just don't know it at all. That was embarrassing. Especially my efforts to imitate the voice.

* 2? 1? At least 1.
posted by Lemurrhea at 2:36 PM on April 24, 2013 [2 favorites]


Woman singing awesomely in Klingon = happy.
Realizing that the song was released 15 years ago = sad.

PS It's "sixpence", all one word, as in the coin.
posted by Jehan at 2:40 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]


Icheckedtheresnospeicalwrodforthatdrum [sic]

Depends on what you mean by special, but there's definitely a Klingon word for that style of drum in general. Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, written by Marc Okrand, creator of the Klingon language, tells us that the word for a drum with an animal skin stretched over one end is DIr 'In. A drum with a skin on both ends is an 'o'lav. In a few bits of the video you can see that it only has a skin on one side, making it a DIr 'In.
posted by jedicus at 2:41 PM on April 24, 2013 [8 favorites]


I don't want to say your favorite band sux, but.. please kill me.
posted by MuffinMan at 2:42 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]


One of my favorite little factoids is that Sixpence None The Richer was part of the fold of bands which former CCM artist Steve Taylor had a direct hand in for a while. The list also includes Chagall Guevara, Chevelle, The Newsboys, and LA Symphony.
posted by hippybear at 2:48 PM on April 24, 2013


That was awesome.

In case anyone missed it: Klingon Style.

Though that's, y'know, less realistic because they've got the TOS and TNG uniforms mixed together.
posted by XMLicious at 2:50 PM on April 24, 2013 [4 favorites]


This aligns with exactly none of my interests.

I really love it.
posted by xingcat at 2:53 PM on April 24, 2013 [3 favorites]


Though that's, y'know, less realistic because they've got the TOS and TNG uniforms mixed together.

It was obviously made during the time of Trials And Tribble-ations.
posted by hippybear at 3:03 PM on April 24, 2013 [4 favorites]


Realizing that the song was released 15 years ago = sad.

You'd think they'd be a little bit richer by now. That's just poor planning.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:07 PM on April 24, 2013 [6 favorites]


It was translated by Robyn Stewart, Chris Lipscombe, Christopher Kidder-Mostrom, Jeremy Cowan, and Ali Kidder-Mostrom of The Klingon Christmas Carol.

I know these guys and have seen that show.

The Klingon Christmas Carol is a full two-act adaptation of Dickens into both the tlhIngan language and mindset, following the cowardly miser SQuja' as three avatars of Kahless* help him rediscover his warrior spirit. After a few vigorous bat'leth duels, the play ends triumphantly with SQuja's proposal to sponsor tiny tImHom's warrior training, so that they might undertake the Rite of Ascension together.

*In one of the few in-jokes slipped into a surprisingly straight-faced show, the Emanation of Kahless Past is the only Klingon not wearing prosthetic forehead ridges.
posted by Iridic at 3:22 PM on April 24, 2013 [10 favorites]


Now that I'm thinking about it, I believe the world is finally ready for a mashup of 'Kiss Me' and Deep Blue Something's 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'. Get on it.

I think you're confused about what a mashup is. A mashup is when you put together two DIFFERENT songs.
posted by DecemberBoy at 3:37 PM on April 24, 2013 [14 favorites]


This filled a hole in my soul I wasn't aware existed.
posted by MaritaCov at 4:06 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]


I heard this song in a CVS a few years ago and it occurred to me that it actually reads really well as an achingly sweet story of two young lesbians in love, even if that apparently wasn't the intention. That stuff about how you should wear "those shoes" and "your flowered hat" does make more sense that way... unless the "you" in the song is a crossdresser, which is a pretty awesome read of the song, too. (But if we eliminate the girl/crossdresser options, it's pretty baffling. She's telling her cisgender boyfriend to wear his fancy shoes and flowered hat?)

"yeah they're like 25 or a bit younger and just don't know it at all."

Welcome to being the old person in the room. It happens so much sooner than you'd expect. I find that I can hardly even look at a site like Buzzfeed, because every other link is like, "Remember when we were little, how awesome Hey Ya was?" HEY YA HAPPENED LIKE 20 MINUTES AGO! SHUT UP!
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:37 PM on April 24, 2013 [9 favorites]


can we talk about the fact that the first clip in the background montage is the opening from Gladiator because the first clip in the background montage is the opening from Gladiator and I think that's FANTASTIC.

also I'm sad that this video's existence is two and a half years too late to be played at a thematically-relevant wedding between two of my friends
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 4:53 PM on April 24, 2013


I'm not entirely sure but I think this may conflict with the band's Christian roots.

"Kiss Me" was hugely controversial among a certain set of CCM enthusiasts at the time, who apparently were too young to remember Amy Grant or too stupid to have learned from her.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:57 PM on April 24, 2013 [2 favorites]


In one of the few in-jokes slipped into a surprisingly straight-faced show, the Emanation of Kahless Past is the only Klingon not wearing prosthetic forehead ridges.

...we do not discuss it with outsiders.
posted by Spatch at 6:59 PM on April 24, 2013 [5 favorites]


I heard this song in a CVS a few years ago and it occurred to me that it actually reads really well as an achingly sweet story of two young lesbians in love, even if that apparently wasn't the intention

This was actually my reading of it when I first heard it - which was when I was about thirteen years old. I was only very vaguely aware of homosexuality at the time, and that moment - realizing that this was a girl singing to another girl about heartachingly sweet love (which, at that age, was a pretty significant concept to me) was a huge eye-opener and probably a formative moment in my understanding and acceptance of queer matters.
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:05 PM on April 24, 2013 [2 favorites]


Now that I'm thinking about it, I believe the world is finally ready for a mashup of 'Kiss Me' and Deep Blue Something's 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'. Get on it.

What you're looking for is the Worst Song Medley. You're welcome!
posted by furiousthought at 7:20 PM on April 24, 2013


Sixpence None the Honor, though? Shouldn't it be Sixpence The Unforgettable or *looks it up* jav DarSeq pagh mIp [six darseks not rich]
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:50 PM on April 24, 2013


Oooh, can I share one of my favorite Youtube videos where Aziz Ansari uses Kiss Me in a "shittiest mixtape contest" and has to roam around Manhattan blasting the songs from a boombox? If only this version existed back then.
posted by hampanda at 9:58 PM on April 24, 2013 [2 favorites]


Twee 1990s pop is WITHOUT honor. The only honorable human music is DEATH METAL. Purveyors of less honorable forms of music shall know the dishonor of spending eternity in Gre'Thor, which is the fate of all cowards and pop singers.
posted by DecemberBoy at 11:18 PM on April 24, 2013 [2 favorites]


hippybear: "One of my favorite little factoids is that Sixpence None The Richer was part of the fold of bands which former CCM artist Steve Taylor had a direct hand in for a while. The list also includes Chagall Guevara, Chevelle, The Newsboys, and LA Symphony."

Man, I have to say - I still love that one Chagall Guevara album they managed to put out before breaking up. I've got the cassette somewhere, worn down after hundreds of playings, although thankfully it's now on Spotify so I don't even have to hold on to the bootleg electronic copy I've been using for the past few years. "Violent Blue" is one of those anthems that so shaped and informed my youth that listening to it now carries all these echoes of past days, and I can't even tell where the quality of the music stops and the emotional resonances begin - and suddenly I'm a kid again, believing all of it exactly the same way with all my might, and... well.

Anyway, Chagall Guevara was clearly an odd project for Steve, an attempt to make the band dynamic work and then push it as far as it could go, and I get the feeling he ended up feeling both conflicted and joyous at being part if it, even if it was destined to be short-lived. The fact that it wasn't a strictly "Christian" band (and I think half the members weren't) was part of this. Fun fact: a few years later, on his great solo album Squint (which sadly turned out to be his last studio effort) Steve wrote and recorded a rather cryptic little tune which is supposedly about his experience in Chagall Guevara.
posted by koeselitz at 11:27 PM on April 24, 2013


DecemberBoy: "Twee 1990s pop is WITHOUT honor. The only honorable human music is DEATH METAL. Purveyors of less honorable forms of music shall know the dishonor of spending eternity in Gre'Thor, which is the fate of all cowards and pop singers."

Well, black metal is honorable, too. So here is a black metal cover of "Kiss Me."
posted by koeselitz at 11:33 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]


hippybear -- holy crap, the Newsboys. such sudden awkward memories of their music being classed as "hard evil devil-implanting rock*" by my parents*.

strange tangent about that aside, I absolutely love this video. I think it's awesome how the singer got SO into the music -- and I just about died laughing when the Bird of Prey showed up, bad fades and all. I know that the "original" Klingon wasn't as fleshed out as it is now... I'm assuming it went through the same process that Elvish [Quenya and Sindarin both**] went through after the explosion of Middle Earth fandom, which is that the fans took Tolkien's original work and the base word roots and expanded it. What I've always wondered, though, is how that process works. Ah well, to google it is, then.

---
*yeah, anything with a beat that wasn't played by an orchestra was pretty much automatically dumped in this category. they are... weird about music, massive understatement of the year.
**Yes, I'm that kind of nerd.
posted by gloraelin at 11:50 PM on April 24, 2013


I don't want to say your favorite band sux, but.. please kill me.

Would you like me to kill you out of the bearded barley, beneath the milky twilight, or down by the broken treehouse?
posted by themanwho at 12:41 AM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


It's too bad they all died when their plane crashed into that other plane carrying Frente, landing on the set of Dawson's Creek, destroying the cameras that were going to be used to film the Matrix sequels.

Yep. Too bad.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:40 AM on April 25, 2013 [2 favorites]


hippybear -- holy crap, the Newsboys. such sudden awkward memories of their music being classed as "hard evil devil-implanting rock*" by my parents*.

I remember the Newsboys being relentlessly anodyne. Then there was Audio Adrenaline, whose big hit was basically pissing all over other religions, and Geoff Moore, who sold several different shirt designs promoting that one song they wrote about evolution being a lie. You could tell they were all for the same song, and not for multiple songs about evolution, because they all had that catchphrase from the song's chorus about how "no scientist is gonna make a monkey out of me" or something like that. Noxious, noxious, noxious.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:11 AM on April 25, 2013


And then, of course, there were the musicians who did nothing but upbeat jesus-loves-me-everything's-great songs -- because if you had jesus, well, that meant everything was automatically peachy! There was no depression, physical illnesses were all easily healed from, you never had problems with your friends or coworkers...

except wait, gee... major suicidal depression plus chronic pain plus horrible coworker relationships... hm, I wonder why it was that I left christianity and never went back...? oh, my, it couldn't be that nothing ever got better with god, could it?!

[bitter, party of one...]

right, anyway. Yeah, CCM is kind of an insular world, and the self-referential media and swag got old pretty fast. A lot of stuff was marketed at junior/high schoolers, with the idea that they would wear it to school and be a ~witness for god~ -- but honestly, the stuff was so horrible it's a wonder they sold any at all, ever. Especially, like, the horrible ripoffs of the Lord of the Rings becoming what... the Lord of the Kings? ridiculous stuff like that. So damn cheesy.
posted by gloraelin at 4:18 AM on April 25, 2013


If I never see a "Have You Considered the [LORD is formatted like the Ford logo] Lately?" t-shirt again it'll be too soon.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:48 AM on April 25, 2013


...the fans took Tolkien's original work and the base word roots and expanded it. What I've always wondered, though, is how that process works. Ah well, to google it is, then.

A useful keyword is "conlang". A noted resource is zompist.com, website of MeFi's own zompist.
posted by XMLicious at 6:08 AM on April 25, 2013


...the fans took Tolkien's original work and the base word roots and expanded it. What I've always wondered, though, is how that process works.

In the case of Klingon, the fans actually have very little to do with it. The linguist Marc Okrand invented the language for The Wrath of Khan, laying down a basic grammar and a small fund of vocabulary. He's administered Klingon ever since, adding words and grammatical contingencies to the corpus as demanded by new Trek movies, episodes, novels, board games, and Dickens parodies.

In the case of this last, the Klingon Christmas Carol playwright wrote a scene in which the avatar of Kahless Present lifts the hem of his robe to display two children named Apathy and Corruption. There being no existing Klingon words for these concepts, the playwright submitted a request to Okrand, and Okrand sent him back an e-mail containing the two newest words of tlhIngan Hol .
posted by Iridic at 8:05 AM on April 25, 2013 [4 favorites]


Klingon almost helps this song. Almost.
posted by little mouth at 8:09 AM on April 25, 2013


Curses for mentioning Audio Adrenaline! I now have Big House stuck in my head. I was such a huge fan when I was in middle school. I am proud that my deeply Christian younger self had the sense to roll her eyes at Geoff Moore's Evolution.
posted by MaritaCov at 8:17 AM on April 25, 2013


I believe this song was written by the lead guitarist, who was (is?) married to the singer, towards, for or about her (however that should work out).

But if it really does it for you that it be about a lesbian relationship I don't think I'd try and stop you.
posted by Poppa Bear at 11:34 AM on April 25, 2013


I believe this song was written by the lead guitarist, who was (is?) married to the singer, towards, for or about her (however that should work out).

You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress? Kinky.
posted by Gordafarin at 12:05 PM on April 25, 2013


The linguist Marc Okrand invented the language for The Wrath of Khan, laying down a basic grammar and a small fund of vocabulary.

Yes, I bought the Conversational Klingon instructional cassette for the love of my life back when it was first released. He went on to be a hardcore Star Trek LARPer as part of a Klingon starship somewhere in Texas in the years after we broke up. It was odd to come across photos of him in full makeup and garb while looking for his obituary.
posted by hippybear at 12:32 PM on April 26, 2013


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