As a follow-up to Lee and Sheely’s excellent Think/Counterthink on the Miley Cyrus track “Party in the U.S.A.,” this edition of Musical Talmud wades into the shin-deep puddle of pop that ebbs and flows in the general area of the Jonas Brothers — the sunny shoal of music that feels comfortably warm until you realize it is the kiddie pool, at which point it becomes gross and creepy.

Listeners to the podcast (and other people who make the quixotic choice of hearing me talk) know that I have my money on a dog in the Disney Channel Music fight — although she is a young girl and it’s not a nice or appropriate thing to call girls dogs. And no, I don’t have inappropriate designs on her. But I like her music and think she has a bright future.

Today in Musical Talmud, we discuss “Get Back,” the first single off the first solo album (which came out last year) by the talented singer and, in the time-honored and resurgent American tradition of pop stars who rise to stardom from movie musicals (talk about the new Great Depression!), not-especially-great-actress Demi Lovato.

And yes, she actually wrote it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1H39He1snA

Okay, Lovato didn’t write the song by herself — she worked with the Jonas Brothers on it. Still, this seems like a collaboration among peers, and she’s still the lead writing credit. If I’m totally off-base on that, I apologize to the Jonases, who, as pocasterati and the quixotic may recall, are from the next town over from where I grew up in New Jersey.

The authorship of the song is important, because, like a lot of fierce songs for female singers that are actually written by men (see “Before He Cheats” which is obviously written by dudes, but I’ll get into that some other time), it contains heavy metatext about the singer’s role as an object of fantasy for the song’s audience. Were it written by, say, Jim Steinman — like the superficially similar but very different “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” most commonly sung by Celine Dion and coveted by Meat Loaf — it might be a bit changed for it and end up saying something very different about the subordination of women as objects. But it wasn’t and it doesn’t.

“Get Back” isn’t written by a man for a girl-of-the-hour to pick up and sing, but, to be fair and not overextend for this — whether we could tell the difference is up for debate. I don’t know how much of this song was written by the Jonas dudes — given the structure and some of the awkward line-stops, it’s possible that it was a lot. And I tend to opine that the writer of a piece matters less to its political role than the performer of the piece, because thoughts, words and language are not the most immediate, important ways we distinguish identity political groups – we distinguish them by appearance, by lineage, by political stance and by what they are seen to do in public.

So, it is possible for a writer to disappear behind a performer and for the political identity of the performer to become the political identity of the piece.

At the same time, it can be easy to recognize when a writer is serving a particular agenda for which the performer seems inappropriately suited or not wholly responsible.

Thankfully, Ms. Lovato has done us the courtesy of taking up both mantles, which makes this song a lot more interesting to talk about.

Okay, Musical Talmud time. Let’s see those lyrics.

“Don’t walk away
Like you always do
This time”

We start in the middle; I like it. While it’s sometimes nice to dwell on the “Hello,” this song begins as an unimportant conversation is coming to an end. In improv scene-building, we often ask “Why these people, why now?” If you can choose to show any scene you want (and you always can when you’re writing something) you want to show important and compelling conversations, not filler. From the get-go, we know that this song is a conversation and that it is going to at least attempt to force a change in a relationship. You can definitely tell it is written by somebody familiar with show tunes. It has “post-Oklahoma plot-driving musical number” written all over it.

Compare it to, say “Seven Things,” which also has a lot of the same subject matter, but is structurally and artistically extremely different.

That song has to go a long way to get to its point — the singer hates that the person she sings to forces her to love him — and the labyrinthine journey is where the song gets its (limited) aesthetic value (and also where it gets totally lost in a sort of weird passive-aggressive dysfunction). It then hits its point for a few beats, and then goes off on a whole different, irrelevant tangent.

Lovato’s song lives in its critical moment. Songs that manage to live in their critical moments (and not just describe them) are not the dominant storytelling form among songs, and they usually involve backfilling of events and details. This song doesn’t do a lot of that, which I think adds to its charm and quality.

(Someday I’ll do a close reading of “Hot In Herre,” another song that lives in its critical moment — the moment the party as a group seriously considers taking all its clothes off — although that song has extensive flashbacks in it that work a lot better than, say the Cyrus litanies in “Seven Things.”)

Somebody turning around at the beginning of a song is a clue that the song is hitting its critical moment. It’s the same with references to walking across thresholds in literature or opening or closing doors. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is probably the most in-the-critical-moment song I know. The backfilling it does is minimal, yet it is still very complex. The past events it evokes in a sideways way in order to reinforce that they really apply to the present – that “every now and then” is code for “right now.”

And, in case any of you reading this are actual Demi Lovato fans who are too young to know “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” here you go. Enjoy:

Back to Lovato — on the metatextual front, this initial stanza is also a sales pitch. “Pay attention to me.” “Change your habit of ignoring acts like mine and listen to what I have to say.”

If there is a consumer good that a person always walks away from, and that person is tempted not to walk away from it, then that sets up the expectation that the good is either a luxury or something inappropriate – and in both cases, something that would potentially be thrilling to try out.

“Get Back” is directed at a specific person – identified with the listener, but also a fictionalized, unnamed person in the world of the song. The singer is going to ask this fictionalized person for something, and the audience is also going to be asked for something analogous.

We can tell all this from the first three lines. It’s dense — the lyrics are simple, but because it’s positioned dramatically (as opposed to, say, reflectively, descriptively or expositorily), they do a lot to flesh out the characters and the message. This is efficient writing. Not tremendously original of course (I’ll say that once and discard it, because it doesn’t matter), but efficient.

“Baby you’re the only thing
That’s been
On my mind”

Ah, okay, now we know what’s going on. This is a seduction song! It’s a fairly common pop song style, the singer is seducing a fictional listener and the audience at the same time. Thus, the song has an embedded appeal and sales message.

The other thing that we can know right off is that this person is lying — or at least exaggerating. Nobody ever really means they can think of nothing else than a person when they say it. The human mind doesn’t work that way — you never have only one thing on your mind, especially over an extended period. Of course, these are teenagers we are talking about, who are given to exaggeration of both time and emotion, and we’ll get to that.

At any rate, from the first stanza, we know that the turning and walking away happens a lot — it has probably been going on for a while (more on that later). The implication here is also that the singer has been fixated on the listener for a while. It’s a nice sentiment, and a deserving cliché, but always something said for the sake of persuasion and emotional release rather than honesty.

This is the kind of sentence used in the two heartlands of romantic self-delusion — strip clubs and long-distance relationships. This is something you say to somebody to make that person feel good. It’s tantalizing. People who say this are playing a character or imitating behavior that has been modeled for them — they are trying to be what the audience wants them to be, say what the audience wants to hear.

Metatextually, this stanza locates the song, for now, in the same tradition as most early Britney Spears — it’s an underage pop temptress song. You’ve set up that you want the audience to break their rule of not listening to you, and now you’re going to whisper sweet nothings to them and make them buy your album.

At least that’s the expectation at this point, right?

“Ever since you’ve left
I’ve been a mess
(You won’t answer
Your phone)”

This words and interpretation startle. The singer had seemed so confident, so sly, taking control of the situation, whispering sweet nothings. Suddenly, bang, Match.com red flag. Never tell somebody you’re hitting on that you’re “a mess.” Don’t put that in your profile, I don’t care about the context. Also, don’t confess to calling them repeatedly when they don’t answer (you can hear the singer character understand how this last part is pathetic, so she intones it only halfway, and the producer helps that along).

This stanza is much messier than the first two stanzas, which is fitting, given the content. The song turns from solicitation to sincerity; this stanza is more naturalistic. From here, “Get Back” becomes almost shockingly honest about the experience it describes, especially considering its genre conventions.

I read a heavy shift in the metatext here — the relationship between the singer and the audience changes. (It is also important to note that, even as the singer becomes lower-status, she never subordinates herself to the object of her singing, which is also uncharacteristic of this sort of song. This is neither “Toxic” nor, if I need to say it, “I’m a Slave 4 U.” So, there’s less congruence between the image of the character and the content being delivered. So it’s a bit less presentational, or at least less icon-driven.)

Well, ahem, long parenthetical – that sincere display of something potentially embarrassing – without a commeasurate shift in the representation of the artist – departs from the conventions of the genre enough that it identifies primarily with the perspective of the audience, not the perspective of the artist.

It is the pop star who is supposed to be asking you to stay and getting all wicked, and the listener who is supposed to be relatively slovenly and stalkerish (Relatively. Let’s keep things mature here, folks.).

The other notable metatextual clue that the song solicits the audience in order to speak from their perspective is in the timing of these events. I mentioned earlier that teenagers can be expected to exaggerate lengths of time relative to adults. Children do it even more than teenagers. But it is conspicuous that the singer character assumes a long history with the listener character – and, metatextually, Ms. Lovato with the audience, since this is the first single off her first solo album.

I mean, yeah there’s Camp Rock and all that, but it’s still strange.

She’s setting something up – pretty soon we’ll find out what the big metatextual purpose of this song is, whether it’s intentional or not.

“I’ll say it once
And I’ll leave you alone
But I gotta let you know”

Again, this speaks to uncharacteristic sincerity for a pop singer. Pop singers never have any intention to leave you alone.

Also it reinforces the theme of “fleetingness” – whatever original relationship these people have, it has gone away. Whenever they talk, it always ends with someone walking away. When broaching an important subject, you only get one chance to talk about it.

“Fleetingness” is not usually a theme for pop songs by the young. “Fleetingness” is a theme for pop songs about the young.

Which further suggests that Ms. Lovato is putting some of her words in the mouths of her listeners – that she is singing partially on her own behalf, but that she is also singing about the people who experience her music.

“I wanna get back
To the old days
When the phone
Would ring
And I knew it
Was you”

OKAY. Here’s where stuff gets interesting.

First of all, she wants to “get back” to the “old days.”

She wrote this song when she was, what, 16? When you’re 16, when are the “old days?” Like, six months ago?

Also, the example she chooses of what characterizes the “old days” is really interesting – the pleasure of hearing a ring and knowing who it is.

“Knowing” here is important. She doesn’t want to get back to the old days when the phone rang and it was you. The implication is that now, she’s not sure who is calling her, whereas before she was sure.

Stick with me here:

Given modern technology, it is not likely that Demi Lovato has less knowledge now than she did at any time in the past as to who is calling her. She almost certainly has a cell phone with standard caller-ID, customizeable ringtones, even facebook-synced pictures. Furthermore, in both the present and the past, she’s probably getting a bazillion phone calls. Kids are so connected these days.

You know who has less knowledge of who is calling them than they did in the past?

People with land lines.

One of the most annoying things about modern telecommunications is that land-line telephones are positively overrun by sales and marketing calls and other solicitations – to the point where they have become close to useless.

So, I posit that there is an element of metatext here where the gripes that Demi Lovato is expressing about the “old days” are, sure, symptoms of a lost teenage love affair, but they are also about the experience of an older audience who has lost youth and some of the things associated with youth. An audience who has “old days” and who at one point in their lives used their  telephones only infrequently to converse with a small group of friends and family.

“I wanna talk back
And get yelled at
Fight for nothing
Like we used to”

I find this really interesting. Because, having grown up with four younger sisters, if I were to identify somebody in a teenage girl’s life whom she talks back to and is yelled at by, I’m not  going to start with “boyfriend” right out the gates. I’m going to start with “parent.” With a boyfriend, it seems the terminology is too normatively passive. “Talk back” implies you’re supposed to offer this person deference, and there’s nothing in the song to suggest that Ms. Lovato offers any deference to this person. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a woman talk about “getting yelled at” by her boyfriend. I’ve heard men describe “getting yelled at” by their girlfriends, but the phrasing implies a resignation to things being one’s own fault that is not very characteristic of how women view their relationships with their boyfriends (usually for good reason).

So it seems like she’s describing her relationship with her parents, not a romantic relationship with a dude. As Shrek taught us, if you want to sell to kids, sell to their parents.

However, in my experience with adult relationships, I know that this is in fact, paradoxially and somewhat pathologically, something you can really miss about a relationship.

I give Ms. Lovato credit both for being insightful about how relationships work and for slipping in some pretty strong subtext about parents and children.

There’s a degree to which I read the chorus of “Get Back” as:

“Adults, you really miss the old days before things got all complicated. You wish more than anything that things could be the way they were. Well, we children also definitely miss the days when we were young and you took care of us. We desperately want what you desperately want.”

But there’s also a degree to which it means:

“I have suffered a loss because of the end of a romantic relationship, and I feel an urgent need to roll back the clock. My urge to make things they way they were romantically – and I have no illusions about most of them being bad – is visceral and immediate.”

And there’s yet another degree to which it means:

“I understand you are offput by the aesthetics of contemporary music, so here is a rock song that probably could have been recorded at any point between 1969 and 2012 (when of course, the world ends.*), more or less.” After all, Lovato is probably the only Disney Channel songstress who doesn’t need an autotuner (although they probably use one anyway).

This is the sort of dense structure of meaning I find compelling and aesthetically pleasing in poetry or other literature.

* Oh, except of course for the world ending part. Unless you’re John Cusack.

“Oh, kiss me
Like you mean it
Like you miss me
Cause I know that you do”

In Disney Channel versions of this, “kiss” is replaced by “hold.” Gotta keep that swine flu in check! (Plus, Disney is thoroughly uncomfortable with even the most basic and harmless teenage sexuality. I had no idea they were Catholic.)

Censored or no, this stanza is a little naughty. Because here I think the metatext shifts again – “’Cause I know that you do” is delivered as an aside – there’s a slight change in tone, back to the “don’t walk away now, there’s something you want that you don’t let yourself have” character. We’re back to the sales/seduction.

I’d infer the metatext here as:

“As an adult I understand that you want to be young again, very badly, and that you miss teenage kissing.”

I think the subtext of the song here gets a little creepy when you explain it – but if you don’t explain it, it’s totally reasonable. It’s not that people actually want to mess around with teenagers (If you want to hear about that whole can of fish, listen to the TFT podcast, which is too rich for my blood). They just miss that part of their lives, just as they miss knowing who calls when the phone rings or they miss even the fights with their loved ones when they were still around and not off with friends at the diner or loitering by a convenience store or what have you.

“I wanna get back
Get back
With you”

This is a Jonas-Brothery crappy end-stop. The song would be better without “with you” right here. Anything that preserved the tensions. The song doesn’t need a poetic resolution here.

But yeah, this is where we pretend the song has no subtext and is just about trying to get back together with an ex. Nothing to see here.

“Don’t look at me that way
I see it in your
Eyes

Don’t worry about me
I’ve been
Fine

I’m not gonna lie
I’ve been a mess
Since you’ve left”

The song gets pretty repetitive at this point (though still fun). Here, we establish that the person being sung to does care about Ms. Lovato, and presumably her stability and safety, but that she’s okay.

Although it’s interesting how different “I’ve been a mess / since you left” feels from “Ever since you left / I’ve been a mess” with the little muttering about the phone after it. There’s a real heightening here of emotional distress, the strong, almost wailing end-stop on “left” ups the ante nicely. Very well crafted.

I would reiterate that this part of the song implies that older people get kind of screwed up as they get older and lose stuff (Al Pacino style), and that, when youth leaves, nothing is ever really right, and no matter how effed up it is to be a teenager, there is a way it feels retroactively like nothing from that time is really bad. Yay, cognitive dissonance!

“And every time I see you
It gets more and more
Intense”

I just really like how she sings this part.

“I wanna get back
To the old days
When the phone
Would ring
And I knew it
Was you

I wanna talk back
And get yelled at
Fight for nothing
Like we used to

Oh, kiss me
Like you mean it
Like you miss me
Cause I know that you do

I wanna get back
Get back
With you

You were the only one
I wanted
And you were the first one
I fell for”

Apparently, the singer had a series of romances and wants to reconnect with her first love . . . at 16.

I mean, I know it feels that way a little when you’re a teenager, but wow, is that not what is actually happening at the time, relative to the analogous experience with adults. A further notion that the lives of older people inform what’s going on — or maybe just show how the imagery of teenagers has been so bound up in the anxieties of adults that by relying on familiar phrases, the diachronic steps in and makes connections you never thought were there. Either way is possible.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about the song – it’s a song about a bunch of things all at once:

1. The visceral drive to revisit a lost romance and its intrusion on the psyche, for good or for ill.
2. The relationship between parents and children and the strain that is put on it as children grow up.
3. Nostalgia on behalf of adults for their own youth and their own teenage sexuality.
4. Frustration with contemporary musical production style, which drives the conservatism and the exploration of forms of rock that characterize the whole Jonas Brothers stable.

And it manages all this while capturing its narrative and emotional moment, presenting a compelling surface story, and keeping it all efficient and tersely written. All good things.

Oh, and a lot of it is (arguably) in dimeter. You don’t see that every day.

Oh, all that and I first saw the video while running on a treadmill and have had it stuck in my head intermittently at least once a week for like four months.

“You’re the only one
That I’ve been needing
And I don’t want to be
Lonely anymore

I wanna get back
To the old days
When the phone
Would ring
And I knew it
Was you

I wanna talk back
And get yelled at
Fight for nothing
Like we used to!

Oh, kiss me
Like you mean it
Like you miss me
Cause I know
That you do

I wanna get back
Get back
With you

(Get back)
Get back
(Get back)
Get back

(Get back)
Get back
(Get back)
Get back

Oh, kiss me
Like you mean it
Like you miss me
Cause I know
That you do

I wanna get back
Get back
I wanna get back
Get back

I wanna get back
Get back
Get back
Yeah, yeah, yeah”

Yeah, I probably should have ended this post a while ago, but you’ve gotta finish the song.

At any rate, I wish Lovato all the success and longevity of Debbie Gibson. Deborah Gibson. Whatever.