Karm-Huh?

I will now excercise my right to stage an uneducated bitch about songs that make no lyrical sense. Granted, even the most celebrated artists can get their cogs rusted when pinning together a musical sentiment. In crafting the next heart-stopping hit lyrics are often bent, stretched and welded into place to cut down syllables, rhyme a phrase or match a beat. In many cases we choose to ignore the masking tape and turn a blind eye to a complete lack of cohesion for the sake of an awesome hook or infectious bass line. We tend to be less forgiving when a not-so-celebrated artist uses the same lyrical tactics to take a swing at being mysterious, and instead find themselves in a big fat spotlight of ambiguity.

Today’s example: Use of the concept ‘Karma’ to signify any level of discomfort, confusion, heartache or morality. Can someone please invest in a dictionary? Dissecting both the musical Genius and Joke alike, the following is a listing of my Top 5 Karm-huh? songs.

5 – Karmacoma (Massive Attack)

I love this song. This is because I feel positively cool listening to it. You try singing along with Tricky, cutting off the ends of your words as you pluck away at invisible base strings, and tell me you don’t feel like Bob Marley. With this in mind you can imagine I was especially crushed when years ago I realised the lyrics weren’t, “Calm a coma, ya make it roam-a.”, but were in fact “Karmacoma, Jamaica’ aroma.” I was devastated. My heroic super-team had somehow managed to dodge the boundaries of meaning, making even less grammatical sense than I. At what point was karma lost in coma? Would karma awake again? When did karma relocate to Jamaica? Should someone tell Richard Gere? Being at a highly impressionable age, I wasted no time in seeking an explanation; some kind of loose thought pattern that might explain this jargon chorus! My findings were less than satisfying: “Deflowering my baby, aiyee my baby me. I must be crazy, see I’m swazy.” ...I’ll give my spell check a rest and move right on to what really had me confused: “When there’s trust there’ll be treats. And when we funk we’ll hear beats.” Perhaps this was some kind of promise of post-trust candy? Or the act of funking? An after party? It was a lot to grapple with, and my tender brain just wasn’t up to the challenge. Feeling a little swazy myself, I settled on concluding that when you’re as cool as these guys you probably don’t need to worry about perfecting sentence structure. Or the English language.

4- Karma Wheel (Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas)

I still maintain that this song should have trumped Aerosmith for the title of the Armageddon film theme song. This thing is epic. Sammy’s rock guitar pulling slowly at screeching notes over dramatic, thumping tom-tom fills, not to mention a ‘Change The World’ motto that’s almost cheesy enough to match Bruce Willis’ slow mo strut into a space craft. It could have been beautiful. Undoubtedly the executive producers for the film only overlooked Sammy Hagar on account of the extreme monotony of his repeated lyric, “Roll the karma wheel, roll that karma wheel.” Or perhaps it was the incessant rhyming? “Head in a hole...out of control.”, “Seems so real, this karma wheel”, and my personal pick, “Edge of depression, no need for compression” all evade any real meaning at all, because the listeners are stuck on one tiny detail from the opening of the song: What the hell is a karma wheel?

3 – Karma’s Payment (Modest Mouse)

In their song Karma’s Payment, Modest Mouse tell us the tale of their participation in an uh-oh-down-low time in the United States, beginning on June 14th. Minithin pills caused them two days of sleeplessness, followed shortly by a car crash. The group then proceed to travel via road down to California, and signed themselves into some sort of Karma Payment Plan – presumably to cover the damages of the prior night’s car collision. Unfortunately, their financial problems continued when they realised their radiator was busted. In several drug induced conversations with an anonymous car mechanic, Modest Mouse inform the repairman they are on the Karma Payment Plan, which interestingly also paid for the speed they then consumed at the mechanic’s house. The mechanic is interested in this limited offer and asks Modest Mouse if he, too, could sign up for the Karma Payment Plan as he had an outstanding deed to repay. After the nice man offers to fix their car, the group (rudely) take off and return for their van the next day. Again, they manage to plug the Karma Payment Plan. Modest Mouse then proceed to LA for some more substance consumption. But here’s the best part – the song concludes with the lyrics “I can’t tell you, it’s a long story.” WE KNOW. YOU JUST TOLD US.

2 – Karma Chameleon (Culture Club)

"I’m a man without conviction. I’m a man who doesn’t know how to sell a contradiction. You come and go. You come and go.
Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon.”
The person who deciphers what the shit this song is about deserves a commemorating public holiday in their favour.

1 – Karma Police (Radiohead)

For fear of being lynched upon next exiting my home, I’ll buffer this one by acknowledging the song is a classic. Radiohead themselves are most likely the divine deity upon which all spiritual harmony is based, and therefore the very concept of Karma should be theirs to do with what they will. Even so, take a moment to decipher these lyrics: “Karma Police, arrest this man... Karma Police, arrest this girl... This is what you get when you mess with us. This is what you get when you mess with us.” Is it just me, or is anyone else a little threatened by that? Now, my tentative critique isn’t probing musical content at all, but rather aims to address a vast misunderstanding of the song. Clearly Radiohead know what they’re doing – Karma Police is wonderfully crafted and has a typically effortless focus. Not surprisingly, Radiohead do understand the notion of karma. ...A little too well, perhaps? I can’t help but feel that the song’s swell of emotion allied with a culmination of chanting “I lost myself” is too easily dismissed as a foreboding tale of social conduct. I actually think the boys know exactly what they’re saying, void of any subtext at all. There may of course be some undiagnosed psychosis brewing within the group, however it is my belief that Radiohead legitimately own the karma police. Don’t say you weren’t warned.