April 1, 2022

"Follow and Fave Me" by Sharky Bae Jepsen (online crush anthem)

What better follow-up to the previous post than another parody of a Carly Rae Jepsen song, while still adapting it to our entirely-online era. This time it's set to the tune of "Call Me Maybe", also from the early 2010s manic phase of the excitement cycle that our inspiration, Vtuber idol Gawr Gura, is so fond of. Original lyrics here. I made it for a slightly older life stage, sometime after graduating college, as opposed to the high-school or college tone of the original.

I imagine this in her voice, appealing to all girls who have ever gone boy-crazy online (or girl-crazy: there's only one male term, and by now I think "chad" gets applied to girls as well). Unlike the earlier example, though, I don't think she's sung this one for a karaoke stream. Unless she felt a little urging from her fanbase to sing it for the next one... :)

Fun fact: Carly Rae Jepsen is only 5'2, perfect hummingbird short-girl energy for an uninhibited, bouncy, boy-crazy anthem. Gura's a shawty herself, so she'd have no problem channeling that persona. Neither would a certain former imaginary gf, but always-current special fren, hehe.

Let the dances of the mating season begin!

Pronunciation guide: to fit the rhythm in the chorus, "follow and fave" is "follow 'n' fave". Same with "try to engage" -- "try t' engage". In the verses, the lines start off unstressed, then stressed, so "after" is "af-TER". Only exception is the last line of the 1st verse, where stress is on "BUT I've PINNED...", since the unstressed word "me" is up at the end of the previous line, in a broken rhyme.



* * *


I sub'd and turned on that bell
So hyper, can't even spell
Why can't this be IRL?
And now I've pinned your page

I've never fallen so quick
Do anything for your click
Hope I don't post like a pick me
But I've pinned your page

Your karaokes
Lit memes, schizoposting
Content overflowing
Where you think you're scrollin', baby?

Hey, I just read you, and this may date me
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me
It's hard to outright @ you, baby
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me

Hey, I just read you, and this may date me
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me
And all the other boys try to engage me
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me

You touch my face through the screen
Take me outside my routine
And now I feel seventeen
After you pinned my page

Inspired to give it my all
A full account overhaul
All other loves uninstalled
After I pinned your page

Your karaokes
Lit memes, schizoposting
Content overflowing
Where you think you're scrollin', baby?

Hey, I just read you, and this may date me
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me
It's hard to outright @ you, baby
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me

Hey, I just read you, and this may date me
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me
And all the other boys try to engage me
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me

Before you brightened my timeline, I'd been so down bad
I'd been so down bad, I'd been so down down bad
Before you brightened my timeline, I'd been so down bad
Come claim your crown, chad, no longer down down bad

It's hard to outright @ you, baby
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me

Hey, I just read you, and this may date me
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me
And all the other boys try to engage me
But here's my tumblr, so follow and fave me

Before you brightened my timeline, I'd been so down bad
I'd been so down bad, I'd been so down down bad
Before you brightened my timeline, I'd been so down bad
Come claim your crown, chad, so follow and fave me

12 comments:

  1. Another partial one, after rewatching her Kesha covers. May land a little more on the spicy side of her palate, but I can totally see her singing this for / about her fans. The in-joke is that she and her fans are pretty chill and cozy, while the tone of the Kesha song is, like rap, boastful and badass.

    In the 1st line, "Gawr" rhymes with "are," as most of them pronounce it (although I think she intended it to rhyme with "power"). Anyway...

    We're partying with Gawr, Gawr, g-g-g-Gawr
    Come over 'n' fill the jar, jar, j-j-j-jar
    This ain't some edgy LARP, LARP, l-l-l-LARP
    Crustacean avatars
    We are who we are

    We're feeding e-girls chum, chum, ch-ch-ch-chum
    Not begging for a crumb, crumb, cr-cr-cr-crumb
    The meal's always yum, yum, y-y-y-yum
    Crustacean avatars
    We are who we are

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pre-chorus for that same Kesha parody. Seiso-posters can have a little yabe, as a treat.

    Getting pics in our replies
    Dakis drippin' as though alive
    Meme-ing kings, so kekified
    So let's go-oh-oh (Let's go!)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just realized the meaning of "chum" is confusing between the normie and Gura-fandom audiences. I'm not using it as a euphemism for "cum" in those lyrics -- it's not that spicy.

    It means the speaker's crew is into the thrill of the hunt for girls, not begging for pussy. So they put bait in the waters for their intended prey.

    "The meal" could be either the bait (how else would you lure in your prey unless it were yummy?), or the meal that the prey provide to the hunters once they're caught (why would you hunt something that tasted yucky?).

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Call Me Maybe" has a unique rhythmic mismatch between the vocal and the instrumental lines. Perhaps one key reason why everyone loves it so much, why it doesn't sound like just any old pop song.

    I didn't notice it consciously until I started re-writing the lyrics. "Hmmm, why are there only 3 stresses in the 1st line of the pre-chorus? Whatever, I'll just slip a 4th one in there." But then when I read from the end of the verse into the start of the pre-chorus, it didn't fit after all.

    That's because in the verses, the rhyming syllables are not on the 4th instrumental beat -- they're actually on the 1st beat of the next lyrical line.

    The very 1st instr beat of the verse is lyrically silent. Then the rhyming syllable lands on the 1st instr beat of the next line, and that continues on through the last line. Each lyrical line robs or borrows a stress from the following instr line.

    That resolves in the 1st line of the pre-chorus, where there are only 3 stressed syllables, and the final, rhyming syllable lands on the 4th instr beat of the same line -- as in most songs. It doesn't have 4 stresses, with the final one carrying over into the next instr line.

    This slightly out-of-phase nature of the vocals and instruments makes it sound like there's a lot of tension throughout each lyrical line, and that it lands with a thud in the next line. Kind of like someone with stubborn legs, struggling to lift their foot, and it only lands too late.

    It doesn't feel like marching to a military cadence, or any standard dance format. It's like your legs won't obey you, you command them, and when they finally give in, it's too late to matter. Or like dragging along a disobedient child who's gone limp.

    Great way of conveying her internal struggle, trying to will herself into approaching her crush, but her body and mind only going along stubbornly and heavy-footedly. And without saying so overtly, but having the musical structure itself reflect that inner state.

    Can't think of any other song where the lyrical and instrumental rhythms are out of phase like this, off the top of my head. Please chime in if you do.

    ReplyDelete
  5. There's another unique rhythmic approach in the chorus. It's not the out-of-phase thing, since the rhyming syllable of the vocals lands on the 4th beat of the instr line, as is standard.

    But there's a vocally silent 1st beat, or 1st and 2nd beats, before the vocals come in later in the line. You can hear it easier by saying something like "BUMP" when there's a beat that has no words. (Underlined "I" to show it's stressed.)

    [BUMP] HEY, _I_ just MET you

    [BUMP bu-BUMP] and THIS is CRA-zy

    [BUMP bu-BUMP] but HERE'S my NUM-ber

    [BUMP bu-BUMP] so CALL me MAY-be

    Same structure for the second 4 lines of the chorus. And it's not just the percussion that lands its heaviest pulse on that beat -- the strings motif lands here as well.

    So it's like a call-and-response between the instruments and the vocals -- but where the first one, the call, is from the instruments, and the response is the vocals. Usually we'd think the vocals, the person singing, would come first, and the instruments would respond to her.

    But here, the instruments are acting first, to give her a kick in the butt, and she responds to their motivation. Like when a girl can only talk to a guy if her friends literally give her a shove toward him on the dancefloor. She can't just will herself into walking over to him all by herself.

    As in the previous comment, this is a great way of conveying her internal predicament in pure musical structure, without having the lyrics say so overtly.

    This reversed call-and-response thing may be more common in songs, than the out-of-phase thing mentioned before. But I still can't think of examples off the top of my head.

    ReplyDelete
  6. To visualize the out-of-phase rhythms of the vocals and instruments, here's the lyrics with the [BUMP] representing that initial instr beat with no words. There's a bit of syncopation in the vocals, where some of the capitalized words below start a bit before the stressed beat, but they do include and land on that stressed beat. Notice how the rhyming syllables are all shifted from the end of the intended line, to the start of the following line, where they land with a thud.

    [BUMP] i THREW a WISH in THE

    WELL. don't ASK me I'LL nev-ER

    TELL. i LOOKED to YOU as IT

    FELL. and NOW you're IN MY

    WAY.

    At the end of a verse, that "WAY" is already taking up the 1st beat, so the first line of the pre-chorus only has 3 stressed syllables, to put the vocals and instruments back into phase with each other:

    WAY. YOUR STARE was HOLD-ing

    Since the heavy-footed out-of-phase thing has been resolved, the pre-chorus feels a lot more bouncy and marching, standard dance stuff. This reflects her shift from being unable to move herself, to working up the courage to talk to him, even if she is going to need the kick in the pants from the instruments during the chorus.

    And those kicks in the pants keep repeating during the chorus -- it's not just one-and-done -- so it's almost like she keeps involuntarily falling back away from him out of fear / anxiety, and needs to be given a shove after each little clause that she manages to force out of her lungs.

    (Or maybe it's like slapping yourself in the face, or hitting yourself in the chest, to psych yourself up, like a one-woman pep rally. But same reasons -- you can't just will yourself into going over there, and need to feel physically moved into approaching your crush.)

    It's a nice spin on the theme of boy-craziness -- she's not just horny and homing in on her target, all aggressive and determined and confident. She can barely even get out a few words at a time, before needing another shove to continue her delivery. It's an internal back-and-forth that she just can't help struggling with. Great way to convey coyness specifically, not mere horniness.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Come for the seiso, stay for the yabe, stay longer for the applied music theory lesson. Hehe.

    I never studied theory, BTW. But if you're a musical person, and a physical / corporeal person, you can't help but notice these things if you're examining a rhythm. It's just that I normally am not studying them, but grooving along to them.

    On that note, here's an earlier post on the use of complex, 5-beat rhythms in Balkan pop music (seems to be mainly Bulgarian, and from Thrace in particular). Unlike the usual 2, 3, or 4 beats. And how it stems from the relationship between music and dance.

    https://akinokure.blogspot.com/2020/05/complex-rhythms-are-simple-when-danced.html

    Never noticed it consciously until I tried dancing to it -- not easy to do when there's that asymmetry, between the light 2-beat unit and the heavy 3-beat unit. If you're used to dancing to symmetrical 4-beat lines, it throws you off.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Memories of a more corporeal age.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l6ohS-BMrDI

    ReplyDelete
  9. I feel sorry for Zoomers, who never got to experience danceclubs. Now they're in their 20s or late teens, and everything has gone virtual instead of IRL, so any potential visit to a club has to be a virtual one. Maybe hanging out in a dance stream on Twitch, or watching / uploading to TikTok.

    Obviously bad for guys, who will never know what it feels like for 4+ girls to run up in your space, surround you, and start grinding their bodies against you on all sides. Or you breaking into their little friend circle, and them grinding on you in the center. Club girls love rewarding a risk-taker like that, especially if he's the type who girls blurt out "omg you're so hot, can we dance with u????!!?!"

    But hot guys in Gen Z can only get lewds & nudes from girls online, which is just masturbation material, not an actual hot, sweaty bod pressing itself against yours, radiating mating-season pheromones throughout your personal space.

    Yeah, they can go on the apps and set up a fuck buddy situation, but earlier generations did that, too, whether online or IRL.

    I'm talking about if you don't want to be a total degen and get riddled with thousands of STDs by fucking any cute girl who wants you. There used to be an exciting middle ground -- dancing and/or some making out in a club, or maybe a house party.

    You could go through a LOT more girls that way, anyway, if you were just looking to feel as many nice asses in your lap as possible during a weekend. As many dilated pupils staring into your own as possible. As many ripe bellies pressing against yours.

    Not to mention the ego validation -- you didn't have to actually fuck them to get the ego boost from them running up and throwing themselves at you. Talk about grinding out your stats, you could level up so much just in a single night in an IRL space.

    That doesn't carry over into online flirting. Unless a girl willingly thrusts herself into your personal space, it's purely hypothetical whether she really wants you or not. Getting nudes online just doesn't give that much of a heady, intoxicating ego boost. It's just amateur porn material, boring and not corporeal.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The same goes for the poor Zoomer girls, though. Their predecessors got a much greater boost of validation by going out IRL and putting themselves out there on real, physical display.

    It's too safe to just hide behind an online connection and get likes and thirsty DMs. You don't feel like you earned it. Plus, what you're getting is far diluted from what their predecessors got -- a Millennial girl in a club in 2008 was getting a hot guy locking eyes on her eyes, abs grinding into her lower back, bulge pressing into her buns, "that hot guy smell" clouding her entire head...

    Aside from being a more intoxicating sensation, it's a greater investment on his part -- it costs a lot to make a move like that on a girl IRL, whereas it's totally free and easy to send a thirsty DM or like her post.

    So online, the girl can only conclude that she's appealing enough to get thirsty DMs from randos in India -- not exactly the most impressive trophy to put on the ego mantle. Hot guys approaching her in a club -- or even the average-looking ones -- damn, I must have something special if these guys are willing to "spend" that much social capital, when they could get shot down. Getting frozen out after sending a thirsty DM is no sweat off your back, so it's not a costly investment.

    And girls know that -- it's like getting a bunch of quarters thrown at you if you were dancing for money, instead of hundred-dollar bills.

    It would be better for both sexes to just return to the club, but that would require leaving online for IRL, and that's just not happening. Sad. I'd love to go back myself, but who would even show up? No one shows up anywhere IRL any longer. I've never seen public spaces more deserted, even though "covie's ovie". Same with the utter failure of "hot vax summer" last year, lol.

    The fabric of the real world has been shred to pieces, and it's not getting woven back together any time soon.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I always come back to this Charli XCX video for a reminder of how soaring-through-space the early 2010s were (with the late 2000s serving as the warm-up for them). In case people are confused about the formative early 20s atmosphere for the Red Scare Dasha cohort.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cOt-xFU8Y

    When I started figuring out the 15-year excitement cycle, during the late 2010s, I knew we'd eventually get out of the vulnerable touch-me-not phase by 2020, but I didn't realize that during this restless warm-up phase, everything would be virtual instead of IRL.

    I just wanna go back to the clubs and dance with girls. I don't care if they don't play new music, because new music is dead. I don't care if '80s night is over, and it's '90s night instead -- still tons of high-energy dance classics from that ancient era as well. "Be My Lover" by La Bouche -- I'd kill to be able to go hog-wild on the dancefloor when that one came on! Rewind to the early 2010s for that matter.

    Anything other than everyone being online forever, especially when they're all itching for some interaction.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ah, all-butter croissants, and chocolate-filled croissants, on clearance in the bakery section, the only way to counteract triple-digit inflation...

    Another reason to only shop the fresh sections of the supermarket. The processed stuff meant to sit on shelves / in freezers for months will never go on clearance for its best-by date approaching.

    In a good world, where the Democrat party didn't steal the 2020 election, we wouldn't have all this insane inflation. But since that's where we are, we have to adapt or starve. You can't afford fresh ingredients or freshly prepared items these days, but you can still afford pretty-fresh food. Just refrigerate it, or cook it ASAP.

    That may be a lower quality item, for a same price as before, once it goes on clearance. But the alternative is an even lower quality item -- shelf food -- for sky-higher prices that never come down on clearance.

    Still waiting to see if the economic crisis will finally break the back of the lamb conspiracy. Whatever cartel controls lamb production, NEVER allows its stuff to be put on sale by retailers, let alone clearance, unlike literally every other kind of meat. Only lamb I've ever seen on sale is from very local small producers, who only sell to one particular chain of supermarkets. So it has nothing to do with the product itself, but the agribusiness cartel that monopolizes sheep meant for butchering.

    ReplyDelete

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