Keep track of the songs all week to figure out the common theme. If you can name it Friday you can win Free Lunch at Jersey Mikes.
This song was on an album called ‘Pocket Full of Kryptonite’ which was released in 1991, launching this band into MTV stardom. Their first single “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” was, for a time, the “most requested song in the nation on album-oriented-rock stations,” according to Rolling Stone, and one of the top requested videos on MTV.
Today’s song was the next single, which told the classic tale of a woman caught between the affections of two men: One is rich and family-approved; the other is, presumably, the lead singer of the band, who may not have the pedigree but knows “what a prince and lover ought to be.”
This song has somehow angered a lot of critics over the years and it has taken a beating as a consistent social media punchline. Part of what makes the song so cringeable for some is the song’s repetitive structure.
Every other line is returned with “just go ahead now” or some variation. Then there’s the scatting…
But there’s also a purity to the song that kind of makes it equally cringeworthy and endearing. The band, Blink-182 named this as their least favorite song, but they said the worst part is that there’s nothing to get mad at. “There is no twist...There’s no rub to it....It’s just kneeling before you, asking you to choose it...A bouquet of flowers from a man you’ll never date.
The "just go ahead now" part of today’s song, which annoys so many people, came from a guy named Mickett Wilder, who was the older brother of the bass player in the band.
They all looked up to him, so when the lead singer, Chris Barron was working as a busboy when he reconnected with a girl he liked from high school, who wanted to meet up with him that night, he ran into Mickett and told him about it. "Just go ahead with that. Just go ahead now," Mickett kept telling him. And it stuck.
Speaking of lines from the song, there is a line which is almost always misheard as either "Princeton lover" or "prison lover." The actual line is "I know what a prince and lover ought to be” Please make note of it!
Spin Doctors...Two Princes...on K103’s I Know That Song!