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.

Lyrical Coincidence

I was listening to Nirvana's Come As You Are on the ol' iPod this morning and these particular lyrics stuck out to me:

Take your time, hurry up
The choice is yours, don't be late.

It suddenly sounded very familiar. After running it through the database of songs in my head, I came up with Blink-182's Adam's Song. After a few clicks and circles of my thumb, I had this song going on the iPod. And there is a fairly similar lyric:

I took my time, I hurried up
The choice was mine, I didn't think enough.

I wonder if they just liked those lines or if there's supposed to be some deeper meaning there. Adam's Song, which basically encapsulates a kid's thoughts before committing suicide, was released about six years after Kurt Cobain committed suicide. Looks like I'm not the only one who has noticed this: Wikipedia, Songfacts