Pinch Me
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| “Pinch Me” | |||||
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| Single by Barenaked Ladies from the album Maroon |
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| Released | October 31, 2000 | ||||
| Format | CD, 7", 12" | ||||
| Recorded | 2000 | ||||
| Genre | Alternative rock | ||||
| Length | 4:45 (album) 3:49 (radio edit) |
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| Label | Reprise Records | ||||
| Writer(s) | Steven Page Ed Robertson |
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| Producer | Don Was | ||||
| Barenaked Ladies singles chronology | |||||
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"Pinch Me" is a 2000 single by the rock band Barenaked Ladies. It was the first single off the album Maroon, which was a follow-up to their hit album Stunt. As such, "Pinch Me" is often regarded as an attempted follow-up to the hit single "One Week". This song became the band's second Top 20 hit, peaking at #15 on the Billboard Hot 100. This perception is strengthened by the chorus's rap structure, which is reminiscent of "One Week". The song was fairly popular (though it did not achieve the level of "One Week"), and remains a fairly consistent radio song for the band, and a live favourite.
The song was co-written by frontmen Steven Page and Ed Robertson, but the concept and base for the song came from Robertson. He wrote the song following the "roller-coaster" success of Stunt, and returning to Canada to find people less interested or aware of the success.
- I was trying to get to the root of what I was feeling... 'this is all great, but not right here it's not - not where I live, and not in my heart'... It's this notion that you know things are good - they're just not quite good for you.[citation needed]
The fundamental guitar riff of the song (through the verses) was based on the song "Leaving Las Vegas" by Sheryl Crow. The recording (and most live performances) is based on a drum loop (along which drummer Tyler Stewart plays). The loop was created by taking the best two bars of Stewart himself playing drums, and then looping them. The song was originally written with the chorus rap as the less prominent "underpinning" half of the vocal, with the melody being more prominent, but as the writing process went along, the rap became the foreground. Noting that the melody line was now the background, they took the lyric and also used it for the bridge of the song.
The song has a guitar solo outro which exists on the album version (the radio edit fades out before the outro). On the album, the solo was played by Robertson from the end of the solo to the beginning, and then the audio was reversed. When played live, the solo is played by Kevin Hearn (a unique solo, not based on the album solo). Occasionally, the outro is not performed.
The song is one of several in which the band consistently alters the lyrics humorously at live performances. Often changed lyrics include: "And run through with my gym shorts on" (substituting out "my gym shorts", for example, "with no clothing on"); "And change into some drier clothes" (substituting out "some drier clothes", such as "change into my sister's clothes"). Sometimes lines like this are changed to reference something topical about the performance. On a tour with Alanis Morissette, the line was often changed to "change into Alanis's clothes".
The band widely promoted the single and their new album, appearing and performing the song on The Tonight Show and Late Night with Conan O'Brien, though they did not appear on The Late Show with David Letterman for any song from Maroon, as they had in the past ("Brian Wilson '97", "One Week"). They also performed the song on the third season premiere of the TV show Charmed, as well as on MadTV, the MuchMusic Video Awards, and Farmclub. The song has achieved success beyond the album promotion period as well. It was featured as incidental music on the second season finale episode "My Dream Job" of the sitcom Scrubs.
A classic schoolyard joke in the third verse, "I could hide out under there/I just made you say 'underwear'," spawned a fan trend of throwing underwear onstage at that point in the song. This has caused Robertson to sing the line as "I just made you throw underwear" when this happens. The band members tend to each take an article of thrown underwear and hang it from the headstock of their guitars for the guitar solo outro.
The music video for "Pinch Me", directed by Phil Harder, features Robertson as a fast food worker while the other band members and several extras are customers. Page also acts as the restaurant's mascot in some shots. The treatment was written by Page. The logo for the restaurant is a thumbs-up logo, which is played in the video by showing the logo upside down in several shots as a thumbs-down. The video echoes the message of depression inherent in the song as Robertson's character seems depressed in his work. Eric McCormack has a cameo in the video as a customer. He happened to be on the lot in which the video was being shot, and since he was a fan, they let him be in the video.
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