The Miller's Tale, or The Laziest Song in Recorded History
/[Quick Note: I keep meaning to return to my actually substantial series of posts on education, learning, thinking, etc., and I swear I will do that soon. But I was on vacation with the family this week and thus did not have time for substantive thinking. So instead you get this}
I have an embarrassing confession to make. Like many responsible adults, I have a bit of a sordid past, and did some things as a teenager that cause me shame to this day. One of the blackest spots on my permanent record, from my current vantage point of wisdom, is my youthly affection for the music of the Steve Miller Band. It’s just one of those things, you know? You don’t set out meaning to bob your head along to “Swingtown” or hear “Rock’n Me” and think “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.” But then you wake up one day and find yourself humming “Jet Airliner” and you can’t tell if it’s ironic or genuine anymore.
Enough about that dark period of my life. I’ve had occasion to think about one Steve Miller Band song in particular of late, because it’s followed me around from warmed over classic rock station to warmed over classic rock station: 1976’s “Take the Money and Run.” For whatever reason DJs with names like Bonedog Grizzle and Big Daddy Gunther still see fit, in this year of our lord two thousand twenty and one, to play “Take the Money and Run” on the radio. While I don’t think it is the worst pop song ever recorded (an honor that could only ever go to John Lennon’s “Imagine”) — heck, I don’t think it’s even Steve Miller Band’s worst (a tie between the walking smirk that is “The Joker” and the New Age teabag insipidiration of “Fly Like and Eagle) — but it is, I’d submit, in the running for the title of laziest song ever written.
In a lot of ways Steve Miller Band is poster child for smug, lazy classic rock. The godson of Les Paul, Steve Miller emerged into this world choking on a silver spoon, and used that accumulated status to… write “Abracadabra,” a song that simultaneously feels like it was churned out by an algorithm and feels like relevant evidence in a restraining order case. Laying aside all the stories about what an absolute d-bag the man is in his personal life, Steve Miller’s songwriting screams “I pooped this out in 30 minutes while noodling around on my guitar.” I don’t know if it’s his milquetoast, downmarket voice or just a total lack of enthusiasm on the part of anyone in the band, but every Steve Miller Band song feels like it was once a vibrant song with a life and a family, but then it got bit by Dracula and has been doomed ever since to roam the world in a state of soulless stupor.
Anyway, back to “Take the Money and Run.” At the level of music and production, I actually think it’s one of the best SMB songs, because it channels that signature “too cool for school” sound into a detached, freewheeling tale of two robbers/lovers, a la Bonnie and Clyde. It’s got a decent (by SMB standards), hummable tune, and some the “Hoo-hoo” vocal work is probably the best case scenario for Miller’s lackluster vocal style. It’s at the level of songwriting craft that the song takes a major nosedive. Mr. Burn’s typewriting monkeys could pound out better prosody that Miller manages in these lyrics, which (no exaggeration) contain 3 or 4 of the worst rhymes I’ve ever heard in a song. More on those in a minute, but I want to start by looking at the overall structure of the song. Here are the full lyrics:
Hoo-hoo
This is a story about Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue
Two young lovers with nothin' better to do
Than sit around the house, get high, and watch the tube
And here is what happened when they decided to cut loose
They headed down to, ooh, old El Paso
That's where they ran into a great big hassle
Billy Joe shot a man while robbing his castle
Bobbie Sue took the money and run
Hoo-hoo-hoo, go on, take the money and run
Go on, take the money and run
Hoo-hoo-hoo, go on, take the money and run
Go on, take the money and run
Hoo-hoo-hoo, Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is
He ain't gonna let those two escape justice
He makes his livin' off of the people's taxes
Bobbie Sue, whoa, whoa, she slipped away
Billy Joe caught up to her the very next day
They got the money, hey, you know they got away
They headed down south and they're still running today
Singin' go on take the money and run
Go on, take the money and run
Hoo-hoo-hoo, go on, take the money and run
Oh lord, go on, take the money and run
Hoo-hoo-hoo
Hey, yeah, go on, take the money and run, yeah (yeah)
Hoo-hoo-hoo, go on, take the money and run
Oh lord, go on, take the money and run, yeah (yeah)
Hoo-hoo-hoo, go on, take the money and run, oh lord
Now, according to the YouTube version I just pulled up, the entire song lasts two minutes and fifty seconds. That’s not nearly enough time to write a successful narrative song about two outlaws, even if every microsecond were packed with plot points. But Miller can’t even provide that — nearly ever other line is just “Take the money and run,” padded out with various guttural noises. It’s like he fell asleep watching Badlands and thought, yeah, I could do that as a song, then got distracted by a golf date with his manager or a giant pile of cocaine or something.
You know your song’s construction is shoddier than a suburban McMansion when, within the span of a single verse, you introduce a character (Billy Mack the detective), make the claim that “He ain’t gonna let those two escape justice,” then immediately smash cut to the part of the story where they literally are escaping justice. What exactly is Billy Mack’s purpose in this tale? He does not pore over clues, he doesn’t psychologically bond with the robbers to the point that he lets them go out of grudging respect, he does not give chase to the border. He’s just introduced and dismissed within a matter of seconds.
Things don’t get better (in fact they get much, much worse) when you zoom in from the panorama of the song’s structure down to the level of line by line composition. Let’s go ahead and start with the most infamous lines of the song, concerning the aforementioned Billy Mack:
Hoo-hoo-hoo, Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is
He ain't gonna let those two escape justice
He makes his livin' off of the people's taxes
Steve Miller’s dedication to “rhyming” in the most listless way possible is almost admirable here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the sort that insists that rhymes be “perfect” to be good; some of the best rhymes in pop music are near rhymes at best. But to metamorphose your rhymes so rapidly from line to line — to craft four lines in a row that should ostensibly rhyme, where none of them in question actually rhymes with any of the others? In a songwriter with more personality and elan, say a Randy Newman, one would be tempted to see this as evidence of a sort of meta-commentary on songwriting and its lack, or something. But this is Steve Miller, so it’s both just and (sadly, given the alternatives) even charitable to assume he said, “Welp… Texas. facts is… justice… taxes… good enough. Now back to admiring my own reflection.”
The rhymes, though especially egregious, aren’t even the only miscues in these four lines. Basic scansion itself comes into question: because he’s packed too many syllables into the first two lines, he then has to draaaaaaag out his singing of the third line to an absurd degree. It’s grating on the ears. And, given that line two features the redundancy of “just exactly”, such Gumbyesque line contortions are completely unnecessary.
Let’s jump back slightly earlier in the song to another great series of failed rhymes, one that gets a bit overshadowed by Le Affaire de Billy Mack: Miller’s decision to rhyme “El Paso” with “hassle” and “castle". Now, I actually think rhyming “hassle” with “castle” approaches a state of cleverness, especially since it involves the use of a colloquial phrase that twists in interesting ways (a man’s house is his castle). Yes, considering this rhyme clever does require skipping over the inconvenient fact that Miller describes the murder of a man in his own home as “a great big hassle” (that Millerian touch again). But still. Compared to the rest of the song it’s a rhyme worthy of Shakespeare (or at least Vachel Lindsay). Unfortunately you can’t appreciate that rhyme because paired with it you get the ear thudding “El Paso.” I’m not looking for true genius here, just something competent. American place names that rhyme with “hassle” and “castle” are a bit hard to come by, for sure, but why not just pivot? “Vassal” suggests itself as an appropriate rhyme to pair thematically with “castle.” But no, Miller just had to talk about “old El Paso” (not without first stretching his line out again with an utterly useless “ooh”). One suspects this reference is less an evocation of the wild west and more a throwaway reference to a barely tolerated brand of Tex-Mex foodstuffs. Good one, Steve.
This image has about as much relevance to my point as the fine city of El Paso has for Steve Miller’s song. (Photo by Mw007)
Occasionally I’ll get frustrated with a student’s sloppy work because I know it represents a fraction of what they might be capable of with a little effort. Try harder, I’ll implore them, because I know you can make it better. But, to be honest, on rare occasions I’ve run across students who seem constitutionally incapable of trying harder: they’ve gotten so set in their ways that it would take an Archimedian lever to move them. The Steve Miller Band reminds me of those students. I’d like to believe that they were capable of a less shoddy song than “Take the Money and Run” but, given their track record, I honestly don’t know. Maybe, in a way, that makes “Take the Money and Run” the perfect SMB song. Feed every scrap of SMB music into a supercomputer, and it very well might puke out “Take the Money and Run.” Hoo-hoo, indeed.