Teenage FBI

ORIGINALLY from "Wish in One Hand" EP, 1997, re-released as the first single from "Do the Collapse"

I could begin this entry with a tirade similar to a previous one about the horrors that occur when Bob and the boys later re-release overproduced versions of once good pop songs. (See "Game of Pricks.") It would be a fair thing to say that Ric Ocasek belled-and-whistled this otherwise totally serviceable, hooky pop song into oblivion, but again that's well worn territory.

As opposed to flogging a dead horse, or Ric Ocasek (a still living horse), I am more interested in the intrinsically GOOD qualities of this lil' pop ditty. The hook of this song is so good that any version leaves the listener unable to avoid tapping his or her toe. This song is an exemplar of Bob's hook-writing prowess.

Content-wise, this is by no means a cerebral tune, but its pop hook in tandem with the lyrics manage to evoke a nostalgia for a self-pitying yet partially cheery naive high school days. "Someone tell me why / I do the things that I don't wanna do" as a statement pretty much encapsulates the whole of being 17, having a fresh drivers license, liking a girl who doesn't know your name, hoping no one notices either your zits or the boner you popped in math class. It's a high school song, but a high school song for those of us long out of high school who are struggling still with our sophomoric tendencies.

I have always harbored a notion that on some subconscious level we are all harboring deep-seated anxieties about who we were or who we weren't in high school. By trying to be a cool adult because you were a fat, awkward teen or by trying to relive "glory days" in the saddest ways imagineable on the softball fields that dot the suburban landscape, we don't really ever let go of the earliest life truths we learned in our larval stages, be they lessons of pride or shame. Not to say that I'm trying to relive high school and not to say that this isn't a foolish notion...but we are nothing if we are not in part some bizarre collection of formative experiences...and those adolescent experiences resonate because everything seemed to matter so much more then than they do in the adult days of paying rent and trying to remember to floss.

I think this song feels that, but is also mocking the listener gently about being followed by the "Teenage FBI."

In short, "Let the petty childish bullshit go, except that you can't completely because it still sort of makes sense in your darker moments, doesn't it? HA!"

B+

Favorite Lyrics:
"Someone tell me why / I do the things I don't wanna do / Someone tell me why / I act like a fool / When things don't go my way"
(Not cerebral at all, but a memory of the anger and sniveling self-pitying of teenage years...and how we cannot help but ask these questions still, now that we're all done growed-up, loathe though we are to admit it outwardly.)