Textual Literary Criticism Re-Do's #1: "Pour Some Sugar On Me" (Now with arguably-bonus belated cultural perspective!)
So. I was online the other year, some good ways back now, and somebody asked me the most almost literally incredible question:
Q. What is the meaning of "Pour Some Sugar on me", a song by Def Leppard?
Naturally I responded in my trademark (patent pending) plain, free and easy way: straightforth and down-in-front. The next section presents my original response verbatim. Bonus belated "perspective" follows after, in the typical style of such "self-plagiarizing [ Ed.: not really ] and academic" nonsense.
What is the meaning of "Pour Some Sugar on me", a song by Def Leppard?
First off:
“Every interpretation is valid to the degree it can be supported from within the text.”
It’s a lot lifelike. The purpose of life is what you put into it. The meaning of life is what you get out of it.
Only difference here, there’s a text. Convenient! In life you often have to wing it without one. With literary critique of any kind (this counts), we have this text we’re focused on for some reason. Trying to get meaning out of it.
Good news! This song’s in English. In fact, this song - Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” - has been many times called the greatest song ever written in English by me, although to be fair it’s unclear who I was kidding and/or trying to piss off with that. It could have been a general piss-take at rock criticism.
The point?
If someone tells you the meaning of a song (or other text, such as Picasso’s Guernica), you have the text to compare. You’re never at the mercy of some arch interpretation! You’re not drifting unmoored through reality is what I’m saying: if a given interpretation seems fishy - go fish. Any interpretation will either be supported from within the text, or it could be a load of bollocks. Caveat emptor - and never hesitate to elucidate your own interpretation of that same text if and where you see the room.
More than one valid meaning may be found in a work of art.
Now without further ado. Let’s rock.
“Step inside. Walk this way. You and me, babe. Hey! Hey!” This part here is just kind of obvious. Let’s skip to verse one proper:
“Love is like a bomb baby come on get it on.”
Clearly we’re talking woo, here. The speaker of the piece (hereinafter called “Def”) pitches woo framed in hyperbolically exuberant simile. Love is like a bomb? Well, in some sense. A very tortured and cryptically allusive sense, but the “bomb” here is apparently meant to be positive. A selling point with appeal to it - and witness the appeal: come on! Get it on! Bang a gong already. We’re in for some woo.
“Living like a lover with a radar phone!” Before cell phones, there were radar phones. It’s unclear whether this is true, but Def thinks so. How does a lover with a radar phone live? “On call” one presumes. Up for it. This song predates the term, “booty call” (I think) but it’s clear that’s the thrust.
“Looking like a tramp like a video vamp” - a lot of young women in pop and rock videos during the 1980s cultivated a “trashy” look. This was deliberate. No sense calling it disparaging. “Demolition woman can I be your man?” This is obscure, ambiguous even, but I suspect he’s saying she “brings down the house,” if you know what he means.
“Razzlin’ dazzlin’ flash a little light. Television lover baby go all night.” Well, who doesn’t love television? Let’s put the razzle dazzle lightshow down to a sort of eyes n’ smile and perhaps sparkly garb deal. “Go all night” is I hope obvious.
“Sometime anytime sugar me sweet.” Basically he’s up for it whenever. Surprise! “Sugar” here entails the sweetness of sexual gratification, rather than anything to do with taste. “Little miss innocent sugar me, wah-oh!” He’s got nerve with that one after all the trampery vampery, you might say! To me though, I think this is a sly wink at what Def presumes to be the other’s playful coquetry. Is Def right?
I’m not sure we ever actually find that out in the song! Cliffhanger? Let’s press on, long way to go yet. I’m only going to do this once, for the prechorus and refrain:
“Take a bottle, shake it up” - this is a mildly-sprained reification of the controlling “sugar” metaphor. It makes little literal sense, unless you really need to conceptualize the woman as a vessel and then go the further bonehead necessity of thinking vigorous succussion is foreplay! Hint: please don’t.
“Break the bubble” if this is a virginity reference, I’m lost. “Break it uh-up!” This I guess is boning? It’s unclear; also, all this whole part so far - the whole song, really has been one prolonged plea. A full-on woo job, plaintive and maybe a lil’ insistent. Will it succeed? Do you want it to?
Def definitely does. His earnestness is almost radioactive, here.
“Pour some sugar on me. Ooh in the name of love. Pour some sugar on me. C’mon fire me uh-uh-up. Pour some sugar on me. I can’t get enough. I’m hot - sticky sweet? From my head, to my feetchyeah.” A “feetchyeah” is apparently some godawful mangling of “feature” (from my head to my feature? Sure) or else: “feet, yeah,” but just kind of dragged and tangled together verbally. It’s quite winsome either way, but I’d bet on “feet, yeah.” “Listen.”
“Red light yellow light green light go.” More go-go exhortation from Def, hilariously getting the traffic-light sequence out of order. It’s really beginning to feel like wishful thinking at this point, isn’t it? (update: kind comment informs that in the UK, they really do flash yellow before going green. This seems hazardously ambiguous to me, more so than driving on the left, but lets Def off the hook. Thanks Melissa). ”Crazy little woman in a one-man show.” I’m going out on a limb here to say this was just for the rhyme. “Mirror queen mannequin rhythm of love, sweet dream saccharine loosen up (loosen up).” The object of Def’s affections is apparently a bit of a regally-distant self-admirer - plus something of a clotheshorse! The “rhythm” here’s speculative, obviously. He’s imagining it. And again with the wistful woo, daydreamin’ and false-sweetly scheming (“saccharine” is really kind of a red flag, here).
“You gotta squeeze a little tease a little please a little more,” more? You mean we’ve started? I don’t get that impression. Gotta squeeze some before you can squeeze more, surely. “Easy operator come-a knockin’ on my dowoowoah.” That’s “door,” and damn if they don’t nail the exultant come-hither high sweet harmony! “Some time anytime sugar me sweet! Little miss innocent sugar me! Wah-oh! Wah-oh! Give a little more!” Yes. Quite. Been there!
I mean we covered that patch already. Both sides.
Prechorus, refrain again. Nifty lil’ staccato guitar solo, and we come to the bridge.
Are you ready?
“You got the peaches I got the cream!” Breasts? Butt? Vulva? Odd plural if so. Some firm ripe handfruit at any rate, I don’t think Def’s very particular in the produce department. “Cream” is needless to specify. “Sweet to taste! Saccharine!” AHAHAHAHA that kills me all the time everytime!
I mean, can you ever be so stuck for a rhyme to “cream” that you must needs yell out how fake your sweetness is? Or how fake you’re willing to take your sweetness? I think…not, maybe. When I was a kid, we were all so sure the line was “Sweet to taste! That could mean!” Which is a marvel of implication if you think about it. Also I’d bet none of us could even conceive anyone would deliberately put “saccharine” there. “Saccharine” had been a pejorative for ages already. Moving on, “’cause I’m hot hot so hot, sticky sweet, from my head (hey, hey) to my feet!”
Much more clearly “feet” here. As opposed to any more cryptic feature.
“Do you take sugar?” It’s about time he asked this.
“One lump or two?” While this could be construed as a threat of violence, I’m saying naw, nah Def’s not the kind. Pretty sure it’s just a play on what you ask when you’re doing up someone’s coffee or tea for them.
Then prechorus, refrain, refrain out. Bottom line?
The Upshot.
This song is a big huge pitch of sticky woo from some dude with a sweet-tooth for someone he thinks is pretty sweet - but apparently fake’s fine, too. It’s boisterous, jubilant and adolescent puppy-dumb in the best way, while also being perhaps a tad irritating and repetitive. Sometimes, when I hear the “one lump or two” bit and picture this attempted wooing going down at a coffeeshop or diner, I imagine an abrupt title change to “pour some coffee on me,” c’mon fire me up, etc.
However, let’s be fair. This song went over huge back in the day. People overall responded very positively to the song’s whole pitch, which - in song form it’s quite winning! Jouncy, stompy, propulsive riffs, all that “HEY!” business? Quite a package, all wrapped up in Joe Elliott’s vocal: pure class and sincerity with a wistful, knowing leer. It’s entirely possible that the effect of pestering only creeps in here, typing the whole thing out for a [ online response to a rather incredible even-for-online question on NO PARTICULAR WEBSITE, PLS ].
In any case, we don’t really find out in the song whether the pitch is successful or not. My guess?
Sometimes it was. Sometimes it wasn’t. Now if you’d please be so kind, could you pour some salt in the comments?
Thank you.
BONUS PART: For reference, and to listen to while re-reading the above text-literal critique for sense: Two Versions! "Holy Generosity, Def!"
Not used ^^
They went with vv
"Black and white" was still at this point a hugely overrused trope back then. It meant "classy, in an artsy way suitable less to German Expressionist Filmmaking than you'd think if you ever saw one of those pieces of shits (largely! Not sorry to say it, the dark-hot-white lighting and shadow style and weird framing/angles were of tremendous influence upon and inspiration to the stage and lighting crew of tv's The X-Files, but who even gave a toss about the stories, by then? Watch M!)."
Apparently the more black & white one was merely a "UK Concept Video," and was never seriously used. They went, as is usual with UK bands, with the American "Tour" version. Rightly so! Check out that one chick up front! CUTE. I was at the time totally "in love" with how she runs her tongue under her top row of front-teeth. See if you can spot why.
My take? Arguably it was "woke" before "woke" got its capital "Dubya" on. For obvious reasons: time travel: not possible really, for reasons that self-evidently exceed the self-limiting remit of a rock video critic, "bud." Yet it's hard to deny with so much sheer white onstage and in the crowd, the odd average Def Leppard fan working behind the scenes might've been like: why not chicks AND dudes all "colourful" (the so-wrong, it's arguably O.K. that this or that bold, blatant misspelling is still popular with the common Brit Ignoramus of English [ AMERICA-STYLE ] who could if they wished to "SHOW THEIR ASS" object to my white ass characterization of their "shite" spelling techniques!!) in "make up" and "coloured" [ Ibid. ] [ Ed.: not really "Ibid," but then I'm not Really Ed, so ] "gender-screwy displays" openly out for HOTLY-ANTICIPATED, ULTIMATELY SUPER-DISAPPOINTING (by all the lukewarm gossip: TOO TRUE) "COITUS" (varies) with DEF LEPPARD TOURING MEMBERS AND "ROADIES"?
Yeah.
Probably not, guys. Don't "get a haircut and a job" if you can help it, arguably, but go put a real shirt on please.
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