Great Unanswered Questions In Pop

I don’t know all that much about Lloyd Cole but what I know I like. I know that he’s Scottish and sings a great song about eating tangerines. I know that no matter how many ways you try to spell his name, it never looks quite right written down. I also know that Lloyd Cole is a very patient guy.

In 1984 he sang “Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?” and it was almost 22 years before anyone saw fit to answer the poor man. Last year, fellow Scottish legends of twee, Camera Obscura released “Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken,” and though he may have lamented the fact that their response came back 10 times catchier than the question ever had been, I’m sure that some small part of Lloyd Cole was terribly pleased to finally get an answer.

Lloyd Cole got me thinking about all the great unanswered questions floating about in the annals of pop history. For every, “Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?” there are at least a 100,000 “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”s lingering on the airwaves, just waiting for some sort of musical closure. I imagine that some of these pop queries have already been answered without anyone’s realization. For example, I’m guessing that somewhere out there in the great storehouse of lost musical treasures there resides a song called, “Darling, Can You Stay In And Paint My Toe Nails Tonight?” If not, Meat Loaf’s “I Would Do Anything For Love But I Won’t Do That,” makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Until some brave soul more musically capable than I, decides to take up their Casio and fire out a whole concept album of poptastic answers to questions posed by the great and the good of rock music, it falls to me to rifle through a few of the great unanswered questions in pop and try to speculate on “What’s Up?” 4 Non Blondes style.

The Geographically Challenged Questions

It’s easy to get a little lost when you’re motoring down the rock highway. Clearly many singers are simply looking for a little direction. Dionne Warwick has been driving up and down I-5 for the last 30 odd years asking anyone who’ll listen, “Do You Know The Way To San Jose?” So far no one has come to her rescue. Judging by the number of times they managed to sing it during The Graduate, Simon and Garfunkel are equally desperate to find out, “Are you going to Scarborough Fair?” Having been to Scarborough myself and found there nothing but a host of drunken and somewhat sunburned English tourists, I can only assume that Paul and Art would be grateful to hear from other singer-songwriters who have actually gone to Scarborough Fair and can save them a wasted journey. And then there’s Lenny Kravitz, standing on the rock highway, dreadlocks flowing (or more likely remaining rigidly fixed) in the wind yelling, “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” Only if you’re going to Scarborough Fair, mate!

The Pseudophilosophical Questions

Who’s to say pop music shouldn’t attempt to wrestle with the great complexities of life? Every time Belle and Sebastian put their sugary sweet tongues in their cheeks and ask, “Is It Wicked Not To Care?” 200 troubled teenagers, eagerly answer “Yes!” and rush to sign up for saving Tibet or endangered whales or boys who like to collect stamps or any other indie cause celebre you can do whilst wearing a beret and looking wistful. The Pixies clearly felt passionate enough about locating their inner selves they attributed not one but three question marks to “Where Is My Mind???” Two decades later one hopes Frank Black isn’t still trying to pin the blessed thing down. The pseudophilosophical pop question to end them all remains The Smiths’ howling epic, “How Soon Is Now?” The only way to answer this without being forever hurtled into some kind of brain freeze vortex is to toss a few searching questions back in the direction of Morrissey et. al.: “How Now Is Soon?” “Is Soon Now?” “Is It Wicked Not To Care?”

Trick Questions

Sometimes we ask questions and, even while we’re asking them, realize that no one will ever respond. These are known as rhetorical questions but I prefer to call them trick questions because they’re just a wee bit tricky. Rhetorical questions were invented to make us really understand what it’s like to be a rock star. So when U2 sing, “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?” they aren’t expecting anyone to sing back, “I Will Bono, But Only If You Provide The Saddle.” They’re fully aware that wild horses aren’t meant for riding but thinking about riding gives you, the listener, an opportunity to walk in Bono’s rock and roll cowboy boots for approximately 5:16. Similarly, when Elvis Costello sings, “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding?”, I will reply with conviction, ‘“Absolutely nothing,” but, gosh, Elvis, I feel more peaceful and loving, not to mention understanding, just considering it. On rare occasions, trick questions venture beyond the realms of rhetorical and are simply tricky. Tom Jones sings, “What’s New Pussycat?” fully aware that there isn’t a pussycat this side of Wonderland capable of answering his question. In the mid ’90s whilst trying to pin down a favorite radio station REM quite understandably asked the world of rock “What’s The Frequency?” Unfortunately, they made the mistake of addressing this question to Kenneth and therefore will never receive an answer for there are no self-respecting legends of rock named Kenneth to sing it back to them. Consequently REM have been listening to the same country gospel station since 1995, unsure how to find another frequency.

The Questions We’ve All Asked From Time To Time

Rock music remains the language of the honest everyman. It seeks to raise the issues and questions which all of humanity wrestle with on a daily basis. Often times I find myself singing along with one of the great unanswered questions of pop, wishing, just wishing someone would speak up and give us both an answer to some of these profound dilemmas. Obviously Frank Zappa speaks for all of us when he asks so eloquently, “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?” Sadly we’re all still drinking cranberry juice and waiting for an answer on that one. Furthermore there’s hardly a summer night that goes past when I and my friends do not find ourselves gathered round an open camp fire, echoing Elton’s sentiments when he sang, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?” In fact, speaking entirely hypothetically, I’d hazard a guess that your ability to feel the love tonight, or any other night for that matter, will increase in direct proportion to the number of attractive young men you approach with the question, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?” Speaking of young men, it would be remiss of me not to mention Paula Cole’s “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?”, a question I ponder almost daily. Perhaps Bono cornered the market for cowboys when he sent out a plea for wild horse riders and now there simply aren’t enough to go around.

The “Are You Really Sure You Want To Ask That?” Questions

Morrissey once sang, “Coyness is nice/and coyness can stop you/from saying all the things in life you’d like to,” and often times that’s no bad thing. There are some questions only asked by idiots and rock gods who’ve spent long enough in front of an amp to have their ears rendered incapable of hearing the answer. Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” is a stellar example of questions best kept to yourself. The desire to inflict physical pain is always going to be a particularly dangerous topic to delve into if you find yourself in one of two situations: (a) in the general vicinity of a chainsaw wielding maniac or (b) stepping up to the mic as the larger than life front man of an ’80s pop group. (Note to Boy George: singing in such a hand-wrenchingly whiny voice is only going to make your situation worse, I fear.) The Strokes took the whole genre one step further, entitling their entire debut record “Is This It?” Sadly for everyone concerned it wasn’t. No one seized the opportunity to release a come back album called “Yes, Now Stop Making Music” and the boys are still making painfully thin haircut rock and pouring all their creative energy into cultivating nice cheek bones. Finally, there is Dave Matthews who takes his life in his hands when he sings, “What Would You Say?” Oh, Dave, there are so many things we’d like to say to you, it’s hard to know where to begin.

The world of pop is chock full of unanswered questions. Clearly Bob Dylan realized this and quickly penned a song which would act as a universal answer for every question rock could throw at him. “Blowin’ In The Wind” is like the Magic 8 Ball of great unanswered questions in pop. Sing a few lines of existential yearning in the general direction of Dylan and he fires back with “The answer my friend/is blowin’ in the wind,” and no one can argue with that. As far as I can see there’s only one question beyond Bob. This question remains the most profound and puzzling snippet of a musical query ever conceived. At one time childishly simple, yet simultaneously diabolical in its complexity, not even Bob Dylan has been able to speculate on this one and thus it remains the greatest unanswered question in the history of pop: “Who Let The Dogs Out?”