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Utopian Turtletop. Monsieur Croche's Bête Noire. Contact: turtletop [at] hotmail [dot] com

Monday, May 07, 2007

[the original version of this post was a lot grumpier. but not about "Sugar Sugar." never about "Sugar Sugar."]

Sugar, ah honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.
Honey, ah sugar sugar
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.

I just can't believe the loveliness of loving you
(I just can't believe it's true)
I just can't believe the one to love this feeling to.
(I just can't believe it's true)

Ah sugar, ah honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.
Ah honey, ah sugar sugar
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.

When I kissed you, girl, I knew how sweet a kiss could be
(I know how sweet a kiss can be)
Like the summer sunshine pour your sweetness over me
(Pour your sweetness over me)

Sugar, pour a little sugar on it honey,
Pour a little sugar on it baby
I'm gonna make your life so sweet, yeah yeah yeah
Pour a little sugar on it oh yeah
Pour a little sugar on it honey,
Pour a little sugar on it baby
I'm gonna make your life so sweet, yeah yeah yeah
Pour a little sugar on it honey,
Ah sugar, ah honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.
Oh honey, honey, sugar sugar . . .
You are my candy girl . . .


It’s one of the great kinky songs of all time, conflating eating and sex in a delirium of stickiness -- sugar as woman, sugar as love, the lover telling his beloved sugar that he will make her sweeter, making sugar sweeter, wanting the sugar, sex as sweet-tooth, with the ecstatic capper, the joyful plea to “pour a little sugar on it,” the antecedentless “it,” das Es, the Id, the unconscious, the genitals, the singer begging the beloved to pour the sugar-which-is-herself onto his prick -- this is great smut!

And the lovely eco-pagan touch -- sex as sunshine, like the summer sunshine pour your sweetness over me, the bare ecological fact that without the sun there is no life, and that any of life’s sweetness can be attributed to the sun, the sun among other powers and potentates.

There are sound reasons to hear the antecedentless “it” the way I do. The English translation of Freud’s theoretical book The Ego and the Id takes the common solid German words Das Ich und das Es and instead of turning them into the common solid English of The I and the It, imposes the Latin Ego and Id on them. In Hollywood-speak, “It” is sex appeal; Clara Bow, the “It” girl. It doesn’t feel like a stretch to conflate the unconscious Freudian It with the sexy Hollywood It and hear genitals in any poetic antecedentless “it” -- especially when the song is about sex already.

The more traditional interpretation of the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar” is: It’s just bubblegum, it’s just fluff, the slightest of slender slips and airy poofs of pop -- a catchy tune, nice to tap your foot to, nothing worth paying attention to.

And, of course, my reading of “it” is only one possibility. The general interpretation seems to be that the “it” upon which the honey is to pour a little sugar is the atmosphere, the situation in general, or, at the most lascivious, the singer’s lips.

His singing though -- listen to his singing. He’s excited. More excited than kissing had made him earlier. He’s very excited. He’s excited.

The music carries information that isn’t in the words by themselves. In addition to the excited tone in which the singer declaims his desire for poured sugar, we take into account his light grainy tenor voice that earlier in the song had gone from friendly to exuberant, from cheerful to ecstatic. There’s the cheery strummy acoustic rhythm guitar (which Nick Lowe paid a lot of attention to). One of the song’s hookiest hooks is the insistent persistent riff answering the lines of the chorus, played in octaves on a xylophone and organ (I think), the legato bass notes of the organ giving the riff heft and obsession, the staccato treble notes of the xylophone giving it clatter and excitement. The arranger deserves credit for the celebratory build-up of choral voices at the end, a communal testimonial for the joys of sex as the lead singer reaches his timbral and melodic and verbal climax.

Not to mention the melody or the register shifts between chorus and verse and outro -- and obviously, this is barely scratching the surface of a repetitive song lasting two minutes and 44 seconds. Anyone who hears the song is processing this information, consciously or unconsciously. And since the song is an Oldies radio perennial, a lot of people must be liking what they’re processing.


I’ve been thinking about “Sugar Sugar” because Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor devote a chapter to it in their recent book Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. Barker and Taylor’s book explores the psycho-social dynamics of authenticity in popular music and the complex interactions between a performer’s person and persona and audience. And while I have objections to some of their attitudes toward music in general and toward some of the particular pieces that they discuss, on the question of authenticity -- the book’s center -- Barker and Taylor are excellent.

Barker and Taylor assemble a series of profiles, from Mississippi John Hurt and Jimmie Rodgers, to early folk-blues-country impresarios Ralph Peer and John Lomax, to Elvis & Ray Charles, to the Archies & John Lennon, to Neil Young & Billy Joel, to Donna Summer to John (-ny Rotten) Lydon to Ry Cooder to Moby to Nirvana and Leadbelly. With engaging and informative histories they show how the artists interacted with imposed or self-imposed notions of authenticity.

They make a persuasive case against the notion that authenticity is ultimately obtainable -- a case which could save a lot of authenticity-obsessed musicians a lot of needless grief. Kurt Cobain is the most extreme example of a victim of unobtainable ideals of authenticity, and Barker and Taylor begin by juxtaposing his story with that of a musician he revered and covered, Leadbelly. Leadbelly in his way was a victim -- and also a beneficiary -- of myths of the authenticity of acoustic music by rural black people. Without a white audience buying into that myth, he may never have had a professional career, and yet that myth influenced his audience to perceive him as personally “primitive” as well as musically intense.

Barker and Taylor are rightfully relentless in their case against the myth that “undiluted” cultures exist without influence from other cultures. This myth of cultural authenticity has informed how the folk music canon was developed and, to a lesser extent, how world music has been researched and received in the industrial west.

They make a case that I hope changes the nature of pop music’s cultural consensus.



Barker and Taylor may be well suited to change the nature of pop music’s consensus, because in most ways they speak from within its center, and they uncritically buy into some of its myths. They speak for a conservative consensus when they say,

Art has to be evaluated by some criteria -- some artists have always aimed to please their audience, while others have aimed to satisfy their own need to project their inner selves outward. The latter urge is no less valid than the former, but it cannot be called successful unless it connects with an audience, no matter how small -- in other words, it must be tempered by some kind of audience consideration.


The criteria they seek are a mirage -- maybe a collectively hallucinated mirage, but a mirage. Aesthetic judgments can only ever be personal. You might hear the Archies and think, what an annoying melody! What annoying words! I hear them differently, and I’ve tried to articulate why, but that doesn’t mean that anybody’s wrong to hate the Archies. In other words, when making aesthetic judgments, the only audience that the auditor need consider -- and the only audience that anyone can authoritatively speak for -- is himself or herself. To speak for others is either to speculate or to engage in sociology or history -- interesting sidelights to criticism, but not necessary. I enjoy music history -- a lot; I enjoy learning about the development of techniques and lineages of influence from musician to musician. But while aesthetic experience is informed by history, it is not primarily concerned with historical issues. A lot of criticism confuses the two.

Barker and Taylor are able historians who have chosen to salt their history with criticism. As critics, they are only occasionally perceptive in a way that is not already in general circulation -- I particularly liked the parallels they draw between Mississippi John Hurt’s late career revival and Ibrahim Ferrer’s. Sometimes they’re simply off the wall, as when they say of Pleased to Meet Me, the Replacements’ 6th album (counting Stink but not The Shit Hits the Fans), “for the first time, this sounded like a band that actually knew how to play their instruments” -- that’s nuts! (And it’s also insulting -- another rockcrit habit I object to.) In most of their judgments they’re middle of the road, but their critical middle-of-the-road-itude will probably rhetorically help their case as historians with the majority of their audience. The book has been fantastically well-reviewed.

Among academically-minded rock critics it has become less fashionable to speak as though from a place of central authority, as Barker and Taylor do, but most rockers still believe in the myth of objective aesthetic criteria that the authors speak from. Barker and Taylor’s closeness to the consensus on most issues will help the cause of their case against the myth of authenticity -- a central tenet of the rock belief. At least, I hope it does.

And no -- I don’t think they’re faking it. I don’t believe they have made a rhetorical choice to dismiss progressive rock with a single unsupported noun because they know that such reflexive attitudes are shared by most of their potential audience. I think they share such reflexive attitudes as well for the most part.

And, as Barker and Taylor argue skillfully and perceptively and consciously throughout their book -- baby, that is how pop works. By limiting their challenge to one particular corner of the rockcrit domain, they may be better able to have a positive effect on people’s attitudes than if they were attempting a full-on revisioning -- a revisioning that I would love to see. Of course, by speaking here for a potential audience that does not include myself, I’m engaging in sociological speculation, not criticism.

Archie said it best. Pour a little sugar on it.



* * *

I recommend the book to anybody who is interested in the topic. If you’re curious, check out Barker and Taylor's blog, which also has a link to the book. I thank them for prodding me to think about “Sugar Sugar” -- which turns out to be a more interesting song than I had ever imagined. On their blog, they’re prodding me to think about the musical effects of group spontaneity -- how group interaction may sharpen instrumentalists’ attack and accenting. It is subtle stuff not well understood -- I am glad they are grappling with tricky, interesting issues.



Posted by: John / 11:44 PM
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