did anyone ever tell the Backstreet Boys why

My FAVORITE quote, of all time, is from the like, 2008 VH1 Top 50 Best Boy Band Songs special when AJ was commentating this song’s #1 win and he said, “I’ve never understood this song. WHAT WAY do I want it? And why DON’T I want it that way if SHE wants it that way? What’s the way? This song makes no sense. But man, they paid me to sing it.”

He was so distressed about his confusion, and I loved it. I love this song. It is truly the song of all time.

The songwriter, Max Martin, has written or contributed to the lyrics for a huge number of pop hits since the 90s. Max Martin is Swedish, and English is not his first language, a fact which feels incredibly obvious once you know it.

It’s not my intention to mock him for this–his English is miles ahead of my Swedish!–but this sincere vagueness and novel interpretations of English grammar are a noticeable quirks of his songs, especially his earlier work, so much so that trying to tease apart the individual words and phrases of the songs is a task designed for a Greek tragedy. His songs are the aursl embodiment of “no thoughts just vibes.”

Citation: Slate’s 2014 article/highlight reel of some of Martin’s most baffling lyrical Decisions:

They don’t bring it up in that article, but Martin is also responsible for Britney Spears’s “…One More Time,” and I’m sorry to anyone in whom something was awakened with those lyrics, but our good friend Max thought “hit me” was contemporary American slang for “call me.”

I feel like this adds a thin, waxy coating of surrealism in a genre whose worst examples can lean hard toward bland vapidity, and I love that Backstreet Boys lyrics are still making people question their sanity 25 years on. But mostly I can’t get over the thought of all of these singers–many of them already really big before they worked with Martin–puzzling their way through these lyrics enough to figure out how to sell the shit out of them.

“hit me up” the phrase he was probably thinking of was “hit me up”.

Artificial intelligence when I show up with my natural stupidity

Awesome fucking fan art I did of Creatures from morrowind

i need to train in a temple for 50 years bye

nvm they wanted to teach me discipline & patience instead of Hundred-Man Slaying Fist Technique so i dont care anymore

why does it cost money

this is how tumblr girlies hold and look at their insane fictional men

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on” Okay it’s fine to hate me or whatever but you do understand the horse is not a part of this right. Like he’s only here because I got on his back and steered him here. I treat him exceptionally well but if he saw anything slightly strange he would run into the woods and forget about me forever. Take it back.

favorite visual gags:

• something drawn realistically to show an emotion
• something drawn poorly to show an emotion

I stopped reading DNIs because 90% of the time they were just fucking inscrutable to me. I’d go to somebody’s page and it would be like “DNI if you’re a COSLA apologist,” so then I would Google COSLA and it was just like “Welp, either things are really heating up in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities fandom or I still have no idea what the fuck this person is talking about.” Or “DNI if you identify as ANFO.” Okay, well, I definitely don’t identify as Ammonium Nitrate/Fuel Oil, but that’s probably not what you meant (although hey, maybe you did; I obviously don’t know enough about your views on chemical compounds to outright dispute that option).” Like, you have my blessing to hate whatever obscure fandom pairing or super niche kink group you want, but just know I am embracing ignorance on this one and will not be looking that shit up. Peace.

reading DNIs is like reading conlang-heavy sci-fi

#i dont even read bios#if you dont want me to interact#dont post publicly mwah

how i feel when i’m reading bios described above