Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

I have numerous issues with Geri Halliwell’s smash hit single It’s Raining Men (I shan’t even discuss the original version by The Weather Girls. Frankly, as trained meteorologists, they should have known better). But probably my main problem stems from these lines: God bless Mother Nature, she’s a single woman too She took off to [...]

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In the smash hit single When I’m Sixty-Four by plucky up-and-coming Liverpudlian band The Beatles (note the unusual spelling – a trap for inexperienced music journalists), was Sir Paul McCartney genuinely worried that his geriatry would be punished by starvation? (‘Will you still feed me, When I’m sixty-four?’) If so, what startling prescience of the [...]

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In their smash hit single Elenore, ’60s troubadours The Turtles express their love for the titular Elenore as follows: Elenore, gee I think you’re swell And you really do me well You’re my pride and joy, etcetera ‘Etcetera’?? ‘Etcetera’?? Brilliance. I mean, I’d have been overcome with giddiness at the thought of wooing someone with [...]

Interview questions for Bryan Adams (to be asked the next time your local 80s rock station spews forth Summer of ’69) QUESTION: So, Bryan, what was your first real instrument? QUESTION: Where did you get it? QUESTION: How long did you play it? QUESTION: Ouch! When was this? Pause for important guitar chord. QUESTION: Who [...]

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According to the smash hit song The Final Countdown, the farewelling, spacefaring troubadours are ‘heading to Venus’. Fair enough. A sound enough destination, given that planet’s mass and proximity and dubious claims of being the birthplace of all womenfolk. But then these self-same singing astronauts go on to claim, later in the same verse, that [...]

According to the smash hit song Baby Got Back, Sir Mix A Lot’s ‘anaconda don’t want none unless you’ve got buns, hon’. Oh yeah? Well, my anaconda doesn’t want any double negatives, regardless of my hon’s bun status. Grammar up, Mix A Lot!

In the smash-hit song Knock Three Times by Tony Orlando and Dawn, the object of Tony’s (and Dawn’s, presumably) affection is urged to ‘knock three times on the ceiling if you want me’. Alternatively, ‘twice on the pipe if the answer is no’. Simple enough, right? But are relationships ever such a simple yes/no proposition? [...]

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When Bon Jovi makes the hollering accusation ‘you give love a bad name’ in the coincidentally-titled song You Give Love A Bad Name, is he claiming that the defendant has rechristened ‘love’ as, say, ‘Lady Amorous Von Heart-Yearning McInfatuated’? Because he has a point. That is a bad name.

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Female paraplegic ZZ Top fans must be torn by the song Legs. On the one hand, the piss-taking lyric ‘she’s got legs, she knows how to use them’. On the other, that awesome driving guitar riff.

According to Percy Sledge, when a man loves a woman, he (among many other things) will ‘give up all his comforts and sleep out in the rain, if she says that’s the way it ought to be.’ Huh. I guess the title When A Man Is Pussy-Whipped By A Woman was taken.

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