Ginuwine, now there’s an irritatingly allegro-named RnB also-ran few of us have had the long-term memory or the lack of self respect to have wondered about for a good, long while.
If you’ve been in a seedy dive bar or a strip club looking to subscribe to every cliché imaginable in the last 20 years, chances are that you have participated in, or at least bore witness to, a shameless level of intoxicated bumping and grinding to his 1996 one-hit-wonder, Pony.
Do you get it? ‘Pony’ is a metaphor for his dick! See, back in the 90s, this kind of wordplay was considered a double entendre of the highest quality. All that equestrian-themed imagery only lent itself to a song about getting one’s fuck right on, without offending anybody seriously! Also, the vocoder melody totally sounded like burping, which six-year-old me thought was hilarious. He swiftly followed up this Top 10 hit with… pretty much nothing.
Fast forward to 2015, where our sense of humour has largely refined itself into a much more sophisticated blend of self-referential sarcasm, and Ginuwine somehow still has a career, as evidenced by his latest single (and by God let’s hope there’s only one of them). A song so imaginatively-titled Leave It In.
You’re talking about your dick again, aren’t you Ginuwine?
That melody might be one of the most dreadful I’ve ever heard, is it meant to evoke the squeaking of bed springs? Because it sure fucking sounds like it. It uses levels of autotune that even T-Pain would have a problem with.
Not even this man would enjoy this song
I searched the lyrics on Genius just to be sure I was hearing them correctly. It tried to be helpful by informing me that people who liked this song may also enjoy such similar lyrical masterpieces as I Know by Big Sean and Bitch Better Have My Money by Rihanna, but what I think they would benefit more from is an audiobook on how to love themselves, because they aren’t doing it properly. Although if you’re still a fan of Ginuwine after all these years then there probably isn’t enough electro-shock therapy in the world that can fix whatever it is that you have.
After being set up with a verse just riddled with classical romanticism like:
She pulls me down, starts whispering
Some words that start exciting me
And instantly I feel gratitude
Do I deserve this gift, this woman who
Just told me something every man wants to hear
The chorus goes:
This is more than a (ugh), more than I’m thinking
More than a (ugh), she wanna have my baby
All she needs is a man like me
Who can give her love… and leave it in
MFW my entire life’s work is torn down in less than four minutes by a man named Ginuwine and I simply CANNOT EVEN DEAL WITH IT’
Because of course what every woman both wants and needs left inside of her for an extended period of time is a long-irrelevant penis. Here’s to seeing Ginuwine at the back of the unemployment line.
If you want to murder your ears with more terrible lyrics, click here and here and, oh, also here