Contributed by:
Karen Ward Gilbert/YourHub.com
Article Contributed on: 7/12/2006 11:46:09 AM
George Thorogood and the Destroyers -- of "Bad to the Bone," "Move It On Over," and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" fame - have been around for 30 years.
Which means, unfortunately, I've been meant to suffer this aural groin-kick nearly my entire life. (It may or may not be kosher for women to use the term "groin-kick". Jury's out on this one.)
I probably first heard "Bad to the Bone" when it "took the world by storm" (according to the band's official
Web site) in 1982. I hated this song then (at the impressionable age of 8) and I continue to hate it now. It's the worst of the above-mentioned trifecta.
The song's grating intro (you can hear it those seven notes now, can't you?) has trained me to automatically cringe because I know what's coming next: Unbearably stupid lyrics and unadulterated male bravado.
To wit:
"I broke a thousand hearts, before I met you
I'll break a thousand more baby, before I am through
I wanna be yours pretty baby, yours and yours alone
I'm here to tell ya honey, that I'm bad to the bone"
This, only after George manages to stutter:
"B-B-B-B-Bad to the bone
B-B-B-B-Bad
B-B-B-B-Bad..."
It's one thing if George's speech is impaired thanks to a couple bourbons (or scotches or beers) but it's clearly another if the line is just that: A (sad) Pick-up Line. No girl I know wants a piece of that.
Look, first he boasts about breaking all these hearts, then he tells some poor, witless woman he wants to be her one and only? What woman would want to date a man who (allegedly) is destroying the lives of thousands of chicks on the side? Clearly, this guy just doesn't get it.
And while I'm at it, what does it mean, exactly, to BE "bad to the bone"? "Bad" how? And so "bad" the badness runs deep, all the way to his very skeletal core? Is that as "bad" as bad gets? Furthermore are we to understand "bad"as "good"? (Just as some might argue "maybe" means "no"?)
George, you're losing me here.
While I realize the 18-35-year-old-women-seeking-lifelong-relationship demographic likely wasn't George's target audience -- the inexplicable overexposure of the band's horrific radio/commercial/movie-soundtrack-favorites reach every last den of humankind.
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