2004-02-01T10:52:00.000-08:00

Milkshake
Kelis
(Tasty, 2004)

Written by Pharrel Williams and Chad Hugo

Few things are certain about this song. Hours have been spent by people around the globe trying to decipher exactly what a 'milkshake' is. The video and packaging - let alone the slurping straw noise early on, the one word title - hammer home the idea that this is a milkshake, plain and simple, sans quotation marks. She hammers it home. Hammers it home. And, yes, methinks, as youthinks and Kelisandtheneptunesthinks, she doth protest too much.

But this confusion and illusion is precisely the point. The song is - for this is certain -about one woman saying to an other, to a few others, to all the female world maybe, that she has 'the thing that makes me what the guys go crazy for'. She has the 'techniques that freaks these boys'. But, this isn't just bragging, although there is undoubtedly that aspect to it.

You see, Kelis is offering to teach 'you' (the listener, the woman sitting at her feet) how to do whatever it is that she can do. Not do it on/with you. She is opening up some kind of community spirit, she will help you out, she knows you need the love and attention and are dying to please. She has created, no matter how temporarily, a commune. But, she reminds us, 'I have to charge'. She has to cut you off; sex will liberate but sex will imprison. See, these 'techniques' are the one thing she has going for her, the one thing that will get her anything like affection from anyone, her claim to fame and her one shot at immortality. And she needs to make a living after all. As this legendary figure, she finds it hard to live her life anywhere other than in this den of unreality she's been cornered into. She wants friends and listeners more than you want to please your man. And that is why she'll help you out...

...but to do what? Trawl the internet and you'll find options galore: breast, blowjobs, urban myth gross-outs. The explanations for what a 'milkshake' is mirrors the porn and gore that the internet revels in and in many ways depends on. It mirrors the quest for information, the trivia and pop culture, fractured meaning, regional difference, universal memes and access to knowledge that underpin the reason the internet has become sacred. And this is precisely the point. No-one knows, or can know, what a 'milkshake' is. Kelis herself, oracle-like, hiding behind the mists of a bhangra backdrop, is the one that knows. She knows how to treat YOUR man. She is - if you'll pardon the potential pun - the fountain of knowledge. This is more about knowing what to do than being able to do it.

And this is why the main version is so sparse, so minimal in it's clues. Kelis doesn't muddy the meaning to avoid the sexual implications. She is no Mick Jagger or Fats Domino. She - with the help of The Neptunes, who penned this for her - simply cuts bits out. She's more than explicit that she's talking about sex. But she's deliberately removed any notion of what sex she means. There are versions floating around that suggest something more specific. Lyrics exist that seem to pin her down, remixes saying that this is about her being good at receiving oral sex. 'Once you had mine your girl will seem sour' she tells us.

And here is her tragedy and the reason she's been so evasive. The quest is more important than the grail. Trying to find out is more important than what you'll actually find out. The song is about the mystery not the discovery. The fact that some people might find out what she means makes her fall back, doubt herself. If people find out my secret, will they still listen, won't I just be the mad woman, twisted and goaded into singing 'I hate you so much right now'. We know she's trying to impress us, trying to be what we want her to be, slightly terrified that we'll ignore her if she does anything more than hint. 'The boys are waiting' she is urged, but she manages to cram in one last piece of advice:

"You must maintain your charm,
Same time maintain your halo."

Her proteges dash off to be with the men they love, reduced to cut-outs, 'once you get involved, everyone will look this way'. As they leave, she can't help but let on that it's all about slight of hand, a trick. She's too human to leave them dangling, in love with a version of each other subsumed by a lyric and a piece of advice about fucking. And what's more, it's all a trick that leaves the real woman adrift, cut loose between the vision of the whore ('maintain your charm') and the vision of the saint ('maintain your halo'). She repeats, desperate as she'll let on, that 'what you have within' is the most imprtant, aware that we'll take her advice to be anything other than good old-fashioned morality. She's made us aware of ourselves - isn't this where all fruitless quests end up? - and what we can do, but has moved the goalposts, affirming the unbalanced cravings that have left her in this position, hungry for affection and pretending she doesn't care.

2004-02-01T09:06:00.000-08:00

A partial explanation for why I'm doing this...

At the time I'm typing this, Milkshake by Kelis is number two in the UK charts.

If ever there was an example of the wonderful, baffling, unifying power of pop lyrics then that is it. People seem genuinely perturbed, excited, vilified. The song is/isn't about milkshake/fellatio/some other sexual technqiue. The very fact that everyone/no-one knows what Kelis is going on about is part of the song's power. The song is a riddle, some eternal joke played on the entire public with the punchline replaced by a smouldering, uplifting hug.

This is the power of interpretation.

Interpretation is an art that can capture, at its best, the very pinnacles of popular music. In this sense, I'm not just talking about great artistic visions, great popular poetry. Looking, or listening, to the lyrics and trying to figure out what is going on allows a wondering bafflement to creep in to pop music. It allows a democratic 'everyone is involved' approach, as no-one can ever really say what something actually MEANS, not in any concrete sense. It allows pop music to be political, to be stupid, to be beautiful and to be about you. It is a hook which doesn't just drag in your dancing feet and wiggling ears. It drags in whole rafts of popular cultrue, countries thousands of miles apart, history and sex and Karl Marx, Andy Warhol, Sigmund Freud, ideas of community and society, ideas of what we are and what we want to be and what we fear we will become.

It can also be fun and stupid and clever and this is why I'm doing this.

Remember, these interpretations are tentative and personal and wrong, in as much as any interpretation can be wrong. Please feel free to offer alternatives or ask for something else to receive a treatment. Use the comments. Perplex yoursleves. Enjoy.

2004-01-27T15:41:00.000-08:00

This blog is maintained and written by Jim Cassius.

Lyrics Interpreted Inc