- Simpsons characters still had souls!
- Biggie and Tupac weren't pretending to be dead!
- Sonic the Hedgehog was so awesome he starred in two cartoon shows simultaneously!
...and, for a brief moment, somewhere between the New Kids On The Block era of boy bands, and the Backstreet Boys era of boy bands, mainstream pop music wasn't abysmal.
There was Nirvana! There was Pavement! There was Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day totally not looking like a weird mash up of Gary Numan and Liza Minnelli!
And there was Blur! If we're being generous!
What am I saying? Blur was great. Maybe not as great as Nirvana, but certainly better than that other British band. You know...those guys.
Blur was the band that brought us "Song 2" (woohoo), and a music video starring a carton of milk (see below).
Blur also brought us "Girls & Boys", a song which contains the fitting lyric: "Love in the 90s is paranoid". There is also, in the same song, a lyric for our own decade: "Avoiding all work, because there's none available." Truly timeless.
However, for this post, I shall concentrate on the chorus of "Girls & Boys". It goes as follows:
Girls who are boys
Who like boys to be girls
Who do boys like they're girls
Who do girls like they're boys
Always should be someone you really love
Come again?
At first glance, the only intelligible part is that last line. That's clearly sarcasm. The lead singer of Blur is sneering at you for being such a pervert. The bastard.
Lucky for you, I couldn't sleep last night, so I worked out the rest.
Girls who are boysHm...that's pretty easy. That's a boi (thanks, urbandictionary!). As in "Brooklyn Boihood". As in "what I could be comfortably defined as if I weren't so standoffish and socially awkward".
Let us continue.
Who like boys to be girlsHuh. Well, that's a feminine male-type person, possibly in drag.
Who do boys like they're girlsPegging!
Who do girls like they're boysThat one's a little harder. Maybe it's like giving a blowjob to a strap-on? Not that I have ever contemplated such a thing, or sought out books and online fiction on the subject.
Let's pause at this moment for a sing-along.
That was fun, wasn't it? So...anyway...now that we have worked out who is involved, and what is going on, let us examine who is doing what to whom.
Girls who are boys
Who like boys to be girls
Who do boys like they're girls
Who do girls like they're boys
Always should be someone you really love
There is definitely a lot of pronoun confusion going on here, and not of the usual kind!
One way of looking at it is, that the aforementioned boi, who is into feminine males, likes to engage in pegging, while the feminine male partner (we'll call him "the femme" from now on) enjoys giving blowjobs to strap-ons.
HOWEVER...because of the pronoun confusion, it may also be the case that it is the femme who likes to "do boys like they're girls" (which would be the usual gay anal sex), and it is the femme's gay male partner who likes to suck off dildos.
ON THE OTHER HAND...there is the distinct possibility that it is the boi who is the subject of the last two lines; that it is the boi who likes to BOTH "do boys like they're girls" and "girls like they're boys". In other words, a switch hitter.
FINALLY...perhaps it is the case that it is the femme partner who is switch hitting, engaging with boys like they're girls, and with girls like they're boys, variously.
All of which makes it quite clear why, in the twenty years since this song was released, there has been a proliferation of queer terminology. Some people say that "labels are for cans of soup", but they also make it a lot easier to figure out what the hell is going on during a Grecian orgy.
