Whole Wide World
Parody: Afterworld
Artist: Billie Joe Armstrong
Album: N/A (song is a single)
Track number on album: N/A
Duration: 3:19
Fodder rating (out of 5): 5
When it came to songs that bore resemblances to Pirates of the Caribbean, I thought I had heard it all.
Men in the wilderness who sold their souls and were lonely sailors out to sea, would-be lovers turning devilish and raising the question of where his heart is, pieces of eight (and other treasure), thieving types born for adventure, fathers tragically set up to sail for eternity, self destructing over a broken heart, crossing the sea in search of freedom, relationships falling apart in ways that left her all alone and him feeling like dying, bad relationships that resulted in physical injuries, being given the creeps, surviving hard times despite apparently bleeding along the way, having your soul stolen, sons going down similar troubled paths as their fathers did, sinking ships, incomprehensible changes possibly caused by love, holes where hearts should be, death by a blow to the heart - these are all themes of PotC that I have also become familiar with actual songs about. After all that, I was starting to suspect that the further additional 5-fodder songs would just be typical songs about bad relationships.
But the lyrics to this one were unlike anything I had ever heard in a song - and in a positively Davy Jones and Calypso-reminiscent way. In it, a guy gets convinced that there is only one girl in the world for him, and sets out, expecting to find her in the tropics, willing to go anywhere to find her. He poses the question of why his eyes are filling with lonely tears and even goes so far as to establish that she has brown skin. Almost seems like too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. (Funny though, I never thought the singer seemed like the type who would like Captain Jones.)
This was the first song I did that was not part of any album.
Categories: 2020s songs, 5-fodder songs, parody singles