INDY REVIEWS
Score: 7 / 10 
The Offspring
It is now an established scientific fact as indisputable as the existence of electrons or the stupidity of fly fishing vacations that the opening phrase ('My friend's got a girlfriend and he hates that bitch') of The Offspring's Why Don't You Get A Job? is one of the finest lyrical hooks ever created.
What most people don't realise, however, is that this opening line was originally proffered by a certain Mr Ringo Starr during the recording of The Beatles' Let It Be album. He was, however, unable to convince the others of its merits, with John and Paul dismissing him outright (John: "If he hates her, then why is she his girlfriend?" Paul: "Exactly. I can understand him hating somebody else's girlfriend (glare at Yoko), but his own? It make no sense.")
George was more open-minded, offering to take the lyric and tweak it. The result was the opening line of George's Something on the Abbey Road album. 'Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover', which even George conceded was a 'bit of a digression'.
And so Ringo's sublime lyric remained unused for three decades until The Offspring took it as the starting point for their 1998 smash single. As I say, however, few people tend to notice the lyrical homage to the Beatles, so blown away are they by the song's infinitely more blatant musical rip-off of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.
Begone,
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