You're a Vegetable

Last night my roommate Mel asked me, after listening to the song on her iPod, if I knew that Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' references the infamous Billie Jean. That was news to me, so I fired up iTunes and had a listen. You have to listen closely, but these lines are in there:

Billie Jean is always talkin'
When nobody else is talkin'
Tellin' lies and rubbin' shoulders
So they called her mouth a motor

But that's not the end of my story. After this discovery, I continued listening to the rest of the song as I do enjoy the old-school MJ. But now that I was paying such close attention to the lyrics, another line jumped out at me: "You're a vegetable".

But that couldn't be right. It's just too weird. A quick lyric search proved that ears weren't deceiving me though:

You're a vegetable, you're a vegetable
Still they hate you, you're a vegetable
You're just a buffet, you're a vegetable
They eat off of you, you're a vegetable

I've heard the song numerous times, so how did I miss that?? It's a pretty distinctive lyric. And it's not like it's buried in the third verse. The phrase is in the chorus and appears in the song 10 times.

Posted by Jane at May 18, 2006 11:02 AM