There are certain things you can determine from taking all song lyrics literally.

One thing for example, is that love has become worth less and less as the years have gone by. In 1964 for example, The Beatles sang that money ‘can’t buy [one] love’. Cynics may protest that the song’s also about the fact that they don’t actually have any money. Therefore how can they offer fair experimental research without even attempting to utilise money for the purposes of finding love? Of course, at the time, The Beatles weren’t exactly going through that many ‘dry patches’ so in this instance even without scientific experimentation, and the kind of irrevocable proof that comes with it, I’ll choose to believe them and go with it.

As I say, this was the case in 1964, a nice ideology to live your life by it might seem. Even if you’re poor it doesn’t matter, you can still find love. What The Beatles however, probably didn’t realise at the time, was that this was an unfair assumption. Just because money couldn’t buy love, it didn’t mean nothing else could. What exactly were they saying? That all you need to get love is to be a nice, genuine, warm-hearted person? Fuck off! I’ll take the money crap but that’s just stupid. If money can’t buy you love, what’s the next item on the partner shopping list? Looks. So whilst it is a nice sentiment to promote the belief that poor people have feelings, and indeed anything to offer the world. The suffix is only not to worry, as long you’re fit. We can legitimately determine then, that The Beatles were campaigning that ugly people should be without love.

This is a view point I’m sure many absconded from, but it was only brought up in music after nine long, ugly years when Dr. Hook admittedly sang that they weren’t ‘trying to buy [love]’, but that they were ‘pretty ugly guy[s]’ in The Millionaire. Nevertheless, they may not have assumed they could buy ‘love’ per se, but if it happened by accident, well that was just fine. The line ‘I don’t mind if you love me for my money’ clearly shows that the world was changing. Changing for the better (if you’re a rich ugly guy).

Over the next 17 years, The Beatles became suddenly popular thanks to Mark David Chapman, whereas Dr. Hook mainly bled into the non-conscious of a growing youth of music lovers. The [fascist] Beatles’ inspired ideal of love only for the sexy, had made a meteoric rise through the hearts and minds of all the sexy people around at the time, whilst uggos of the eighties were made to feel inadequate despite their masses of money.

Not until 1992 did things start to change again when The Barenaked Ladies released the song If I had $1,000,000. This was truly a new era, an era where the rich uglies could once again fight off the oppression of The [fucking] Beatles and pay some goldigger a couple of quid to give them a blow job. ‘Finally’, the collective population of Birmingham cried. They weren’t shy about it either The Barenaked Ladies, listing all the boastful things they’d be able to buy. Unlike Dr. Hook, the heroes of 90s pop unabashedly included the line ‘if I had a million dollars I’d buy your love’. Dr. Hook admitted they probably couldn’t and therefore wouldn’t try to pay for love, but it’d be nice if you’d consider the transaction. But without The [goddam] Beatles in their way, it’s clear The Barenaked Ladies felt proud enough of their ugliness and their money to instruct someone to love them, as they have in their possession, up from and including $1,000,000.

This theory being soundly proven, you might ask what the future, or prey even the present, hold. After all, we’re another 17 years on from 1992.  In ’64 there was no amount of money imaginable that could buy love. As we now know, the unimaginable figure of $1,000,000 can easily buy shedloads of the stuff, it’s clear the residents of 1964 simply had no imagination, unable to think of a number big enough. In ’75, $1,000,000 was enough to think about it. Perhaps not full blown love, but enough for a few years of shit marriage, followed by a lengthy and expensive divorce. Then in ’92, it seems just the one million is all of a sudden more than enough. The price of love isn’t only not able to increase at the same rate of inflation, it’s actually fallen in price itself, and may continue to do so what with the recession.

It’s a sound theory, as who really had $1,000,000 in the sixties? A lot less people than these days. Perhaps in the future, people will spend $1,000,000 on a sandwich. You’ll be able to pick up love in the service station along with your petrol. Right next to the Slim-Fast.

Lost in Literal Translation – Brought to you by James Wormald -