Setting goals is an important part of becoming a better person.
This year, I’ve also discovered setting goals is an important part of making yourself a worse person.
Please help me.
Let me explain.
In early January, I had a Thought. An Idea. Normally I don’t recommend such a thing, but I was tired and let my guard down and this one slipped through, okay? I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.
Anyway, this Thought turned into a Goal, and the Goal became a Little Worm that has dug and hooked its way into my dumb little brain and despite repeated efforts I can’t get it out.
My brain wants to be able to sing Nicki Minaj’s hit 2010 single Super Bass, word-for-word, in real time.
This, it should go without saying, is one of the worst ideas I’ve had this year for a wide variety of reasons, and goodness me I’ve had a lot of really, really dumb ideas already. (I nearly shoved a screwdriver into my car ignition last week. Don’t ask.)
This Little Worm won’t get out of my brain and now I’m worried Nicki Minaj is going to turn up in my Spotify Wrapped at the end of 2023.
Why does my stupid brain want to do this? I’m yet to think of a reason, aside from ‘man, it’d be cool to drop it flawlessly at karaoke’, but there are quite a few reasons why not to carry out this hare-brained scheme.
First, I famously refuse to do karaoke, not because I sound like a distressed camel while singing (which I do), but because actually singing in front of someone and confirming I sound like a distressed camel (or a cat being swung by its tail) would ruin my dream of someone finding me on the floor of the men’s bathroom searching for a toothpick and asking me to join their barbershop quartet.
Thus, I refuse to sing, to allow myself a Schrödinger’s Cat situation where simultaneously I am the worst singer in the world and a hidden talent.
Second, I don’t like Nicki Minaj’s Super Bass. If I’ve perhaps, hypothetically, wet my whistle at the Aussie Hotel at 1am and it comes on, I’ll drop everything to race to the dancefloor and boogie.
However, I also do that for Flo Rida’s 2007 track Low and that song is Extremely Bad unless you’ve had six glasses of rosé, followed by an incalculable number of vodka lemonades, and no longer have object permanence.
Super Bass is a product of its time and the Year 10 social, and in 2010 is where this song should probably stay.
Third, Super Bass has the N word in it, and I’m not sure where society landed on white people being able to use that word when singing a song with it in it? I feel like it’s a ‘yeah, nah’ instead of a ‘nah, yeah’? Anywho, I’m not game enough to find out.
Fourth, Super Bass is a really hard song to sing. Like, really hard. If you haven’t heard it, it’s at the speed of Eminem’s quicker rapping.
If you haven’t heard Eminem, imagine — oh, I don’t know, someone singing really quickly.
Then make it a bit quicker.
Fifth, I don’t sing (notable exceptions: the car and the shower when no-one’s home).
I know I made this point earlier but considering the sole reason my brain thought this was a good idea is based on the premise of me suddenly pulling it out as a party trick, I think it bears repeating.
There are other reasons this is a bad idea, but you get the idea, and there’s only so much time I can spend writing this column before someone tells me to do actual work, or get a real job, or have someone tell me in no uncertain terms I need therapy. I’ve well exceeded the time limits for all of these.
Someone help me get this brain worm out of my head.
Can we purge it by shoving my head into a microwave and turning the contents into gloop? Can we whack my head repeatedly with a mallet? Can we replace this idea with an even stupider one?
I'm open to anything, as long as somebody saves me from myself, and from Nicki Minaj’s 2010 smash hit Super Bass.