Lyrics and Life

By Caitlin Ward

Sk8er Boi
A Motown Tribute to Nickelback

He was a boy, she was a girl
Can I make it anymore obvious?
He was a punk, she did ballet.
What more can I say?
He wanted her, she’d never tell.
Secretly she wanted him as well.
And all of her friends, they stuck up their nose.
They had a problem with his baggy clothes.

He was a skater boy, she said “see ya later, boy.”
He wasn’t good enough for her.
She had a pretty face but her head was up in space.
She needed to come back down to earth.

Five years from now, she sits at home
Feeding the baby, she’s all alone.
She turns on TV and guess who she sees?
Skater boy rockin’ up Soul Train.
And all of her friends, they already know
And they’ve all got tickets to see his show.
She tags along, and stands in the crowd.
Looks up at the man that she turned down.

He was a skater boy, she said see ya later boy.
He wasn’t good enough for her.
Now he’s a superstar, slammin’ on his guitar
Does your pretty face see what he’s worth?

Sorry girl, but you missed out.
Well tough luck, that boy’s mine now.
We are more than just good friends
This is how the story ends.
Too bad that you couldn’t see
See the man that boy could be.
There’s too much that meets the eye,
I see the soul that is inside.

He’s just a boy, and I’m just a girl.
Can I make it anymore obvious?
We are in love, haven’t you heard
How we rock each other’s world?

I’m with the skater boy I said ‘see ya later, boy.
I’ll be backstage after the show.’
I’ll be at the studio singing the song we wrote about the girl he used to know

It was this past April when six of us were wedged into my coworker’s tiny office eating cupcakes that I declared I was going to road trip it down to New York to propose to Scott Bradlee. Most of my coworkers thought this was funny; one of them was slightly concerned. Who was this fellow, and why did I want to marry someone who lived so far away?

It was kind of difficult to explain at the time. This proposal business was a joke my sister and I started on Facebook last November. Now, bear with me for a second; you need a bit of context. Nickelback had been booked to play the half-time show at the Thanksgiving Day football game in Detroit. You see, people from Detroit were very unhappy about this Nickelback business. In fact, it got quite heated: there was a petition with 55,000 signatures demanding the band be replaced, and when they did take the stage at the halftime show, they were booed.

So, in a rather tongue-in-cheek attempt to assuage the pro- and anti-Nickelback camps, New York-based pianist Scott Bradlee released a video called A Motown Tribute to Nickelback — Detroit being the birthplace of Motown. He arranged a full band version of How You Remind Me, complete with tambourine player (creatively named Tambourine Guy by the song’s fans) and saxophone. My sister knows my particular affection for Motown (and really, most music that involves any sort of brass section), so she posted it on my Facebook wall.

Immediately, I declared my undying love for Scott Bradlee for coming up with this concept. After I perused his YouTube channel and found out that he also does ragtime piano versions of hits from the ’80s, it became clear that I probably had to marry him. And so, my sister and I concocted a hare-brained scheme to drive down to New York the next time she came home to visit.

Many months later in my coworker’s office on the cupcake coffee break, I showed the group the band’s more recently released video: A Motown Tribute to Avril Lavigne, in which Tambourine Guy makes good on the song’s name (Sk8er Boi) by wearing roller skates. This is when I mentioned that I was going to propose to Scott Bradlee.

You have to understand, though: this was never a real scheme. Not a thing that was actually going to happen. It isn’t quite right to call it a joke, as I did earlier, but it is a sort of exercise in silliness, with no basis in reality.

This idea of a grandiose but non-existent scheme was not familiar to my coworker, who didn’t seem to believe me when I said I’d never met Scott Bradlee and I really had no intention of making any attempts to propose to him, in New York or otherwise. Why would I say such things if I didn’t mean them?

Well, mostly, because it’s funny, but I will admit it’s partly also because I have apparently not quite got past the point in my life where I fall slightly in love with people I’ve never met. Now, I have no illusions about the fact that this makes me a very silly person, but I’m also not insane. I don’t know the guy. And I have my dignity. Or at least, some semblance of it.

But you know, part of me wasn’t sure if I did have any dignity, or a semblance of it, either. Perhaps I really am just a 13-year-old on the inside.

It was only when A Motown Tribute to Nickelback decided to make an album and began a Kickstarter online that I realized, no, I may actually be something of a grown up. For those who don’t know, a Kickstarter is, essentially, asking fans of a band to pay for an album before it’s made. It’s an act of faith that if the band makes their goal (in this case, $3,000), they will produce an album and send it to you if you pledged money online. For musicians, you generally have to donate at least $10 in order to receive the album, but you’re welcome to donate more.

If this article has taught you anything thus far, you should know that I would be very on board with this band making an album. So I wanted to donate more than $10, but here was the issue: the more you donated, the more stuff the band would give you. It was in levels, and at the level I wanted to donate, I would be entitled to a half-hour Skype date with Scott Bradlee in which he played any song I wanted on the piano.

This was very distressing to me. I did not want to have to talk to Scott Bradlee. Now, I’m sure he’s a lovely human being; if I met him under normal circumstances, I could likely have a reasonable conversation with him. But I’m not sure how the piano Skype date could be anything but very strange for both of us. How on earth could I have an intelligent exchange with someone under such artificial circumstances? I didn’t want to just sit there and be a fan of him for half an hour. Eventually, I worked out that I could donate as much as I liked and as long as I selected the $10 reward in the menu, that’s all I would get. You see, I really just wanted the music.

So maybe, just maybe, I’ve actually become some sort of grown up who has moved past those obsessive 13-year-old tendencies I once had. But then again, maybe not; I did donate more money to that Kickstarter than I’m willing to admit in public.

Ward is a freelance writer and aspiring documentary filmmaker based in Saskatoon. You can find her short bursts of insight and frustration at http://www.twitter.com/newsetofstrings