"American Idol" seems to think it's doing Stephen Bishop a favor.

I'd never heard of Stephen Bishop or his "On and On" song, but I found his wife's outrage interesting:

"The word, not used intentionally in a harmful way, will be replaced. The road to success is always under construction."

Said representatives of Beyoncé, quoted in "Beyoncé to cut ableist slur from Renaissance song/Charities question why lyric was released weeks after similar controversy" (London Times).

The objected to line — on "Heated" — is "Spazzing on that ass, spaz on that ass." 

Who wrote that line? "The song has nine credited writers including Beyoncé and Drake, the Canadian rapper, but it is not clear which of them wrote the lyrics."

What was the "similar controversy" that happened recently? Lizzo used the same word, in the line "Hold my bag, bitch, hold my bag/ Do you see this shit? I’m a spaz."

A "very distinguishable voice."

I'm reading "American Idol winner Laine Hardy arrested after allegedly spying on woman/Louisiana college student found hidden audio recording device and told police she feared musician planted it there" (The Guardian). 

She... confronted Hardy, who said he left a “bug” in her room that he had since thrown into a pond, police said. Allegedly, Hardy later put his confession in writing in a social media message the woman ultimately provided to investigators.... 

The woman used Google to determine the device [she found under her bed] was actually a voice-activated recorder like the one Hardy is alleged to have claimed to have thrown in a pond.... 

Police alleged that officers heard Hardy’s “very distinguishable voice”....

He won "American Idol" with that voice, and now that voice — along with his confession — identifies him to the police.

In happier days:

"The race was pretty close this year, as runner-up Willie Spence and third-place finisher Grace Kinstler were also deemed frontrunners at various times."

"But during the penultimate episode, [Chayce] Beckham made a strategic move that all but ensured his victory: He doubled down on country, returning to the genre he started out with on the show, and sang an original song that wound up topping the iTunes country chart... When the final four... had to perform a song that would be released as a single, Beckham was the only contestant who wrote the song himself. The lyrics on the track, titled '23,' were very personal. ('Now I’m 23 and therе ain’t nobody who can drink like me/Soon I’ll be 24, and thе Lord knows that I can’t drink no more.') Beckham spoke throughout the season about getting sober after hitting 'rock bottom' last year and crashing his car while driving drunk, which led to a DUI charge shortly before his 'Idol' audition. '23' clearly struck a chord, as it rocketed up iTunes to the No. 1 spot on the country chart and in the Top 10 on the all-genre chart...."

From "This season of ‘American Idol’ was a close competition — until one very strategic move by the winner" (WaPo).

I didn't watch "American Idol" this year, just never felt inclined to check in and see what was happening until I did a search a moment ago and saw the whole competition was already over. Why didn't I watch? Why did I watch when I watched? 

I probably stopped suddenly and completely because I subscribed to Netflix and that, instead of my DVR, became my starting place whenever I was in the mood to watch television. 

And that coincided — for some reason — with my being less often in the mood to watch television. Maybe because there's less of a feeling that things are happening on television. What's on television now feels more like what's in books. It's all just sitting there, waiting for you to select it. It doesn't flow by without you. So "American Idol" flowed by without me. 

Here's that song, another country song about drinking too much:

"The reality TV ordeal of a Russian who joined a Chinese boy band show by accident – and made it to the final despite urging fans to vote him off – has finally ended..."

"... after nearly three months. Vladislav Ivanov, a 27-year-old from Vladivostok, was kicked out of the Produce Camp 2021 on Saturday after viewers ignored his pleas to leave and backed him all the way to the final. Ivanov, who speaks Mandarin, joined the show as a Chinese translator. But he said he was invited to sign up as a contestant after the directors noticed his good looks.... He appeared to regret his decision almost immediately but could not leave without breaching his contract. His lack of enthusiasm played out in half-hearted singing, rapping and dancing alongside the other, more eager contestants. 'Becoming a member of a boy band is not my dream as I can’t sing and dance,' Ivanov said in Chinese on the show.... 'I hope the judges won’t support me. While the others want to get an A, I want to get an F as it stands for freedom.'... 'Don’t love me, you’ll get no results,' he said on one episode. But viewers took to his dour persona and kept him in the running for nearly three months....  Ivanov appears to have struck a genuine chord as an anti-hero for Chinese audiences. Fans, some earnest and some ironic, called him 'the most miserable wage slave,' and celebrated him as an icon of 'Sang culture,' a popular concept among Chinese millennials referring to a defeatist attitude toward everyday life. 'Don’t let him quit,' one viewer commented on a video of a dejected-looking Ivanov performing a Russian rap. 'Sisters, vote for him! Let him 996!' another fan commented, using the Chinese slang for the gruelling work schedule that afflicts many young staff, especially in digital startups."

The Guardian reports.

I feel challenged to attempt to understand the Chinese through this story. What? Are they excited by the idea of forced work — titillated by slavery? Did they like it because he was not Chinese? Because he was Russian? Was his unhappiness — his "dour persona" — fun for them? 

Did they somehow think it was an act — a comic persona — and enjoy playing along? Was it like the way Americans, watching "American Idol" would target contestant who wasn't too good and keep voting for him? Why did we do that? The prank was called "Vote for the Worst." I wrote about it in 2007, when Howard Stern was openly promoting ruining the show by voting for the worst contestant. I actually liked this person, a sweet young man, Sanjaya Malakar, and I think many viewers voted for him because they genuinely liked him.

The high point of last night's "American Idol": Jovin Webb.

ADDED: He sang "Whipping Post." I remember 15 years ago, when Bo Bice sang "Whipping Post":



I wrote:

Bo Bice... He's the best rocker and the most masculine singer the show has ever had. Wow! He blew everyone else away.... That song was "Whipping Post": Good lord, I feel like I’m dyin’.

I enjoyed Arthur Gunn — born in Kathmandu — singing "Girl From North Country" on "American Idol."

The set is the Milwaukee Art Museum. I don't know if they ever mentioned where they were, but it's an unmistakably distinctive building.

"Arthur Gunn" is a stage name, adopted somewhere along the line, after his family moved to Wichita, Kansas. He has a little trouble keeping his eyes from rolling back in his head, but responds well to the advice to keep his eyes open, and is even better with his second song, "Who'll Stop the Rain?" CORRECTION: That is, “have You Ever Seen the Rain?” AND: Despite the title of the video, there right spelling of the last name is Gunn, so I’ve fixed that.

I'm as interested in Amy Klobuchar as the next person... You know me, I said in December 2018...

"I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar."

But I am amazed that on the day of the first primary, this is what I see at the top of my go-to political link webpage Memeorandum:



"Clay Aiken on 2020 primary...."

Clay Aiken!??

Is there some other Clay Aiken than the Clay Aiken I know, the guy who came in second in the second season of "American Idol"? No, this is that Clay Aiken.



Apparently, his opinion on who's the best Democrat this time around is the most important political news this morning.

I clicked through to the column, even though it's at USA Today, which is so clogged with ads that I feel like a person who doesn't even know how to read. But here's a paragraph. I'll put it over here so I can see it:

I, for one, am tired of candidates trying to dazzle me with meaningless platitudes or beat me over the head with poll-tested spin. I’m not so stupid that I can’t realize when a candidate doesn’t answer the question. I am not so forgetful that I don’t remember when they spit out the same talking points in every interview. The political world is littered with self-important candidates who speak to us like … well … politicians. We need a candidate who, instead of speaking with scripted talking points, is straightforward, honest and down to earth. Klobuchar is relatable.

Okay, I was with you until you asserted that Amy is not like all those other candidates....

And at that point, I got distracted into the "Not Like Other Girls" phenomenon:



To conclude: Amy is a politician, and Clay is a pop singer, and today is the New Hampshire primary, and you know me, I said it long ago, I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar.

ADDED: I'm reading those other links pictured in the Memeorandum screen-grab above. There's "Trump Rallygoers Confident He Can Beat Any Democrat This November" at HuffPo. That quotes one woman's opinion of Amy Klobuchar: "She seems like a bitch. She’s got that bitch face on her all the time... I have no use for her. I think she’s crazy.”

"Look, I love being on 'American Idol,' but of course, some would say in the past, 'American Idol' — you know, it’s been a bit of a karaoke show."

"Not anymore. When people like you come on, you bring original music. You bring artistry, and you make the stakes even higher," said Katy Perry to Alejandro Aranda on last night's "American Idol" finale, quoted in "The ‘American Idol’ finale ended in an upset. Katy Perry may have accidentally hinted at why" by Emily Yahr in WaPo.

I didn't think it was an upset. I'd predicted Laine would win. His winning fits the show. Alejandro went a long way with his whispery, musical voice. I appreciated the quiet, when so much else is noisy, but no reason to festoon modest musicality with a glitzy prize.

And Katy Perry is all about big, loud, ludicrous noise, so she can't really talk. Here's how she presented herself on last night's show:



That's the concept of entertainment the show forefronts, and people who enjoy that are taking the trouble to vote about a prize. So it's impressive that Alejandro made it to the final.

The things that went wrong on TV last night were better than anything that went right.

There was a Starbucks cup of coffee on "Game of Thrones":



I don't give a damn about "Game of Thrones," and I don't even want to hear about why I should. But I do like the screwup of including a Starbucks cup.

Meanwhile, over on "American Idol" — which I do watch, and I don't need to hear about why I shouldn't — Katy Perry picked her butt:

When you forget your on live TV! 😂

You get that wedgie girl 😂💖 @katyperry @AmericanIdol
pic.twitter.com/Do3YaeACjt

— CAITLIN (@KCCAITLIN_) May 6, 2019

They eliminated my favorite contestant, Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon. The voters didn't want him, and the judges — faced with two losers and with only one "save" to give — chose the other loser. It was obvious her performances were worse, but to save the boy and send home the girl and leave a final 5 with 4 males and only one female was apparently intolerable. And I think the show's effort to portray Jeremiah as rejected by his conservative parents because he's gay kind of backfired. His parents weren't public figures who deserved public scorn even if they were awful, but they were a lot nicer to him than the show wanted to make it look, as Jeremiah himself pointed out back when he was soaring in the competition (in early April):

You might not be watching "American Idol"... but check out Jeremiah Lloyd Harmon.

That's a duet from Monday night that got him through to the final 14 (the point where the audience starts voting). With him for the lovely song is Cynthia Erivo (who won the Best Actress in a Musical Tony in 2016 for her role in "The Color Purple").

Here's Harmon's original audition, with background about his life as a "PK" (Katy Perry's term for something she is too, a preacher's kid). There's some gentle, tasteful treatment of his sensitivity toward his parents over their difficulty with his sexual orientation. He is not estranged from them at all, it seems, as he works as a janitor in their church:



PLUS: He sang Bob Dylan. I'm just seeing this now, having skipped all the early weeks of the season.

Abstention is a valid choice.

In a comments thread earlier this morning, richlb said:

Anne [sic] - I've tried to search and find your post from a few elections ago where you make an argument about NOT voting. I can't seem to locate it. On this election day, any chance to rerun it, or reference it?

In the comments, Meade located a post of mine from June 2012, "We're sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to publicize who does and does not vote":

This is an effort to shame and pressure people about voting, and it is truly despicable. Your vote is private, you have a right not to vote, and anyone who tries to shame and harass you about it is violating your privacy, and the assumption that I will become active in shaming and pressuring my neighbors is repugnant.

Not voting is a valid choice. If you don't have a preference in the election, don't vote. If you think no one deserves your vote, don't vote.

But this is a topic I've come back to. In April 2016, seeing President Obama appear on the "American Idol" finale, I wrote:

[Obama's] congratulations to the show morphed into a lecture on voting:

"Voting is the most fundamental and sacred right of our democracy. I believe it should be almost as easy as voting on 'American Idol,' and we're working on that. But when we choose not to vote we surrender that right."

Eh. What bilge. Voting is the most sacred right? Voting in elections should be like voting on "American Idol," where you call and text in multiple votes? And you surrender your right if you don't use it? No, you don't. Just as you have a right not to speak (as part of freedom of speech) and a right not to have a religion (as part of freedom of religion), the right to vote includes the right to abstain.

Maddie Poppe sings Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide"...

... on the "American Idol" finale last night. The results are revealed tonight, in a show that will include, among other things, Maddie Poppe singing her audition song, "Rainbow Connection," with Kermit the Frog. I don't know what you like to watch on TV but Maddie Poppe singing "Rainbow Connection" with Kermit the Frog sounds like the best thing that's been on TV in years.

Here's the audition version of "Rainbow Connection" (one of my all-time favorite songs):



ADDED: "If not for american idol i may have never heard her artistry.she is so cute.when i hear her sing it makes me want to ride a merry go round at the county fair" — a comment on this video from last year, before the TV-show competition began:

"American Idol" top 3 revealed.

2 contestants were cut last night. I only liked 2 of the remaining 5 and predicted both would be cut. But one survived:



She also sang what I long ago identified as my all-time favorite song:



She also auditioned with one of my favorite songs:



You have to endure so much loud, show-offy belting to put up with the show. It's amazing that someone with restraint, taste, and quiet charm made it to the end.

Whatever happened to criticism?

So when i was on @AmericanIdol I slightly flubbed some lyrics. Nowhere near this noticable.. https://t.co/IS1QcuyCI8 and even Paula gave me hell. This girl gets a therapy session?! 🙄 Really? Seriously??! What happened to the show we loved? #MakeIdolGreatAgain

— Clay Aiken (@clayaiken) May 7, 2018

Remember back 2002 - 2003 when @AmericanIdol was a high stakes singing competition & we were all waiting and nervously anticipating what @SimonCowell had to say? Why's it now totally without critique and essentially just a Vacation Bible School talent show? 🙄 #MakeIdolGreatAgain

— Clay Aiken (@clayaiken) May 7, 2018

The Bangles determine who gets to be American Idol's quirky cute girl.

As we head toward the end, there's little room for duplication. We've got to choose, and maybe there's not room in the top 5 for 2 female singers in the same niche. "American Idol" has forefronted Catie Turner since the first episode this season. And I forefronted her in a post about last week's show. She was the "Lisa Loopner" who sang the Disney song "Once Upon a Dream" so delightfully.

But the week before, I told you my favorite was Maddie Poppe. Remember? I was utterly charmed by her performance of the old Bangles song "Walk Like an Egyptian":



Here's the old Bangles video for comparison.

Last night, Catie Turner chose that other great Bangles song "Manic Monday."  It was Prince night on "American Idol," so I don't have my usual complaint that the show presents songs as if they were written by the most familiar performer. Prince got full credit for writing "Manic Monday," but those of us who love Prince and love that song also know it's a Bangles song. (Here's the old Bangles video for that.)

We'd just seen Poppe distinguish herself 2 weeks ago bringing a Bangles tune back to life, so what did Catie Turner do with what seemed to be the perfect song to compete in the niche of quirky cute girl?



Sorry, but Deer in the Headlights is not the right kind of cute. "America" voted and Catie did not make the final five.

What Prince song did Maddie sing?, you might ask. "Nothing Compares to You." Sweet. Final 5. What did other people do with Prince? Oh, if you cared, you'd have devoted last night to watching the whole damn 2 hours, like I did. But if you want to laugh or you understand something about country music that escapes me, here's Caleb Lee Hutchinson doing "When Doves Cry." He's been hogging the country boy niche all season.

By the way, back in the post about "Walk Like an Egyptian," I said something I now think is wrong: "It's one of the songs Clear Channel banned after the September 11, 2001 attacks."

I got that from Wikipedia, where the information is presented like this:

"Walk Like an Egyptian" was one of the songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks^[9] and was also included in a "list of records to be avoided" drawn up by the BBC during the Gulf War.^{[10][11][clarification needed]}

I have an informant — a person I have strong reason to trust and who I believe has first-hand knowledge — who wrote to me:

This is a battle I no longer fight; it’s been lost. I even saw it mentioned in a recently published college textbook of American history. But for you, here’s the real story:

Clear Channel Radio never banned any songs after 9-11. A day or so after the attack, one program director in San Diego sent an e-mail to other PDs with a short list of songs they might want to think twice about for a short time, purely for reasons of taste and sensitivity. I doubt that Walk Like An Egyptian was on the list then.

Now, you have to recall the typical bad-boy snotty attitude of the typical FM rock program director of 2001. Immediately, for their own entertainment, many of them started adding to the list, coming up with increasingly ridiculous suggestions, and trading the list back and forth.

The later, ridiculous list is the one that that made its way to the press, to the early forms of social media, and eventually to history books. Clear Channel was already being bashed for its size and its destruction of local radio, so this story fit right in.

"Ada vox had the best voice of the whole competition but conservative america ignored that bc she was a drag queen and that’s the tea."

That's one tweet, grousing about the results on the most recent episode of "American Idol," quoted at "Ada Vox Lost ‘American Idol’ Because She Wasn’t The Best Singer. Period," by Clay Aiken. Aiken, a gay man, is a former contestant. He came in second in Season 2. Aiken tells off the shows critics:

That outraged Twitter user was correct: This is a competition about singing. And Ada Vox, entertaining performer though she doubtless is, was not the best singer. No, ma’am.

Most of us were thrilled to see a contestant breaking down another barrier. We were excited to see an out and proud contestant doing well and living their truth on an American institution.... Ada Vox was not eliminated because she didn’t conform to the societal norms of “Idol” viewers; she was eliminated because she didn’t conform to the key of the song.

Remember, contestants don’t get voted off “American Idol.” They failed to get voted on. Ada Vox didn’t have millions of people logging on or calling into ABC and voting to remove her from the show. She simply couldn’t grab enough viewers (or high Bs in “Circle of Life”) to compel them to vote for her.

A few thoughts:

1. "That's the tea" is defined at Urban Dictionary as: "That's the gossip. The deal. The current news. The latest."

2. I'm not so sure what Vox was doing counts as "living their truth." Vox is a drag character created by Adam Sanders after he tried out for the show 12 times as Adam Sanders and never got too far. The female performance was much more successful than what I would guess Sanders prefers — showing himself as a nonconforming male. Wasn't what he tried 12 times more the truth than the drag performance?

3. I give a lot of credit to Clay Aiken for going on the show in 2003 and presenting himself forthrightly as as a nontraditional male (basically, what Sanders attempted 12 times before turning to drag):



4. Clay Aiken was on Season 5 of "Celebrity Apprentice." He came in second (losing to Arsenio Hall). Here he is expressing his respect for Donald Trump back in 2015:

"Lisa Loopner got me this week: She was the only person to embrace the ancient charms of Disney, dress for that occasion like a 4-year-old in love with the Walt vault on Halloween..."

"...  and bring us back in time like an old theme-park ride. She wasn’t above the occasion. She dove into it with that fierce, strange color-guard-captain commitment. Points for picking (1) a song that doesn’t immediately scream Idol-worthiness, and (2) a style of song that tells us something new about Catie herself. Face it, she’s a cunning competitor and a real talent. I’m wary of people who like hugs too much but she’s working this karaoke derby right."

That's Louis Virtel at Vulture, rating the 10 performers on last night's "American Idol" and putting Catie Turner in second place with her lovely "Once Upon a Dream":



"Idol" did something completely new last night: It required viewers to vote during the show and announced the outcome at the end of that very show. It ran live, at the same time in all time zones, which meant it started at 6 p.m. in the Mountain Time Zone and at 5 p.m. in the Pacific Zone. Who knows how that affected the outcome, but the drag queen contestant, Ada Vox, was one of the 3 contestants eliminated. It was drastic to cut 3 all at once. The top 10 is normally dragged out, with only one cut per week, and a very nice send off for each, with a review of that person's "journey" through the contest and one last song. Last night, we learned that 3 were leaving as the time for the show was running out. Suddenly, 3 whom we'd been made to care about were sort of stunned and wandering aimlessly on stage, and that was it. Brutal!

That said, Vox deserved to be in the bottom 3. Virtel ranked her 9th, and she chose to sing "Circle of Life." Not a great choice, and it sounded pretty unpleasant.

"American Idol is shedding contestants like an Agatha Christie whodunit. There goes Effie Passero through a trap door."

"A suit of armor fell on Ron Bultongez. Amelia Hammer Harris took a hard fall off the Orient Express. And now we’re at the top 14 with the shivering, terrified survivors who just want Ryan Seacrest to lower his monocle and solve this whole thing for everyone. But we’ve got five episodes left to deduce which contestant deserves the crown, and I have a sneaking suspicion it could be anybody. Let’s roll through these 14 contenders, comment on the eliminations, and wonder if Lionel Richie knows his sparkly blazer would look smashing on Vicki Lawrence."

Louis Virtel is doing a fabulous job of recapping "American Idol" at Vulture, with snappy sentences and full, commercial-free, clips of every performance. That link goes to the recap of last night's results show, where my favorite, Maddie Poppe, sang "Walk Like an Egyptian":



And here's the link to the Sunday episode recap, with each performance ranked by Virtel, including #1, Maddie Poppe, doing "Homeward Bound":



ADDED: Here's what Virtel wrote about that "Walk Like an Egyptian" performance:

I’m all for Maddie Poppe’s calmed-down, twee’d-up renditions of songs... “Homeward Bound”? Sure. “Brand New Key”? Absolutely. But after Ryan Seacrest announced she was safely in the top ten, Maddie gave her first baffling performance of the season: an undanceable take on “Walk Like an Egyptian.” It’s as if she wanted us to pay attention to the Bangles’ lyrics, which are … well, they’re stupid. Let’s talk a look at “Foreign types with the hookah pipes say / Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh / Walk like an Egyptian.” That’s offensive, senseless, and then back to offensive. And she didn’t even throw us the saucy Susanna Hoffs side-eye to soften the embarrassment! I’m worried now. Soon, Maddie with perform “Kokomo” as a piano ballad or add marimba to “Tears in Heaven”! Here’s hoping she’s back on track with an angora-warm version of “You’ve Got a Friend” or something next week.

Ha ha. Ask Meade if I didn't say out loud, "The lyrics to this song are actually pretty offensive."

AND: Here's the old Bangles video featuring the ancient mystery of Susanna Hoffs's inability to position her irises in the center of her eyeballs. As for the idea of "the Bangles' lyrics," I've got to object. They didn't write the song. It was written by music producer Liam Sternberg, who, Wikipedia tells us, "wrote the song after seeing people on a ferry walking awkwardly to keep their balance." The only connection to Egypt is that Sternberg thought the people looked like the figures in the ancient Egyptian paintings.

Is the song offensive? It's one of the songs Clear Channel banned after the September 11, 2001 attacks. [CORRECTION: That statement is wrong, as explained here.] It's got that casual, silly attitude toward ethnicity found in many old songs — "Ahab the Arab" ("There he saw Fatima layin' on a zebra skin rug with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes and a bone in her nose ho, ho"), "The Sheik of Araby" ("At night when you're asleep/Into your tent I'll creep"), "Midnight at the Oasis" ("You won't need no camel/When I take you for a ride"). I'm just naming ones about Arabs that spring immediately to mind. There's also Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs...



You wouldn't do that today. Domingo "Sam" Samudio was Mexican American, and he just enjoyed Yul Brenner as Pharaoh in "The Ten Commandments." As for Yul Brenner, he was a combination of Swiss-German, Russian, and Buryat, but it was accepted back then that he could play an ancient Egyptian. And he also got to play the King of Siam.

I'd branch out to other ethnicities, but I'll just say "Turning Japanese," and I'll leave it to you to come up with some other silly songs that would steam people up if they came out today (but maybe we can still love because they are old).

"Turning Japanese" was just a way of saying I feel like a foreigner in my own culture. The lyrics had nothing to do with Japanese people:

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women
No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark
Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a cyclone ranger

But the video (and that musical riff)... just comically leaned into Japanese stereotypes (back in 1980, when not letting anything offend you was kind of the culture):

I don't know if any of you are watching "American Idol" these days, but...

... I bet a lot of you will, like me, enjoy Maddie Poppe singing the old Melanie song, "Brand New Key":



That song was very popular in 1971. What was it about? Was it sexual innuendo or just simple girlish enthusiasm about roller skating? Roller skates used to be metal contraptions that you tightened onto your shoes with a metal key. You don't have to read Wikipedia to see the potential for sexual metaphor — the woman is excited about her "brand new pair of roller skates" and some guy's "brand new key" and thinks they should get together and "try them on" — even though she's "okay alone," he's "got something [she] needs." Melanie denies any sexual depths:

"I was fasting with a 27-day fast on water. I broke the fast and went back to my life living in New Jersey and we were going to a flea market around six in the morning. On the way back… and I had just broken the fast, from the flea market, we passed a McDonald's and the aroma hit me, and I had been a vegetarian before the fast. So we pulled into the McDonald's and I got the whole works... the burger, the shake, and the fries… and no sooner after I finished that last bite of my burger… that song was in my head. The aroma brought back memories of roller skating and learning to ride a bike and the vision of my dad holding the back fender of the tire. And me saying to my dad... 'You’re holding, you’re holding, you’re holding, right?' Then I’d look back and he wasn’t holding and I’d fall. So that whole thing came back to me and came out in this song."

Her explanation makes it even more childlike (and therefore not sexual). Melanie says:

I thought it was cute; a kind of old thirties tune. I guess a key and a lock have always been Freudian symbols, and pretty obvious ones at that. There was no deep serious expression behind the song, but people read things into it. They made up incredible stories as to what the lyrics said and what the song meant. In some places, it was even banned from the radio. My idea about songs is that once you write them, you have very little say in their life afterward. It's a lot like having a baby. You conceive a song, deliver it, and then give it as good a start as you can. After that, it's on its own. People will take it any way they want to take it.

Some people mainly know this song from the movie "Boogie Nights" (which had a character, Rollergirl), and it was sung on "The Voice" in 2016 (but I never watch that show, so it was new to me as a present-day singing competition song).