Photograph courtesy of the artists
A weekly dose of weird, "WeIrD SoNg Of ThE WeEk" presents you with Chicago's strangest, wonkiest, noisiest, most fun, intergalactic, icky, gooey songs one week at a time.
This week’s WeIrD sOnG oF tHe WeEk is brought to you by Boy Language, the side project of songwriters Joey Lucente and Joshua Grimes. By day, Joey and Joshua are members of the bands Wisconsin and Party Jacket respectively, but come night, Boy Language comes out to play. The “hawt duo” (Joey’s words) fused both of their love for the hits of the 80s into one project to “spill their Daevin Juices” (also Joey’s words).
The name of this week’s track is “Oh My God, It’s Boy Language!” and it comes from the EP titled DAEVIN. "Daevin" is a word with an undisclosed meaning between Joshua and Joey, and it is mentioned 11 times over the course of this one-minute, 28-second-long track.
“This song in general was an idea that me and Joshua had to open up the whole EP with. It was suppose to be this really ridiculous intro that would express the word ‘Daevin’,” explained Joey. “This song I think made me laugh the most during recording. Josh did the whole ‘Daevin’ speech throughout the whole thing in one take, and after I ended the recording, I couldn't stop laughing at how we managed to make a song more ridiculous than a previous song.”
Ridiculous is the perfect word to describe the entire DAEVIN EP which includes a love ballad titled “Baby (Won’t You Hold Me)” featuring numerous repetitions of the line, “Baby, won’t you hold me / I want to be your biscuit covered in gravy," but “Oh My God, It’s Boy Language!” is on another planet of ridiculousness entirely.
“Oh My God, It’s Boy Language!” opens with a tacky dance beat that leads to a nonsensical monologue in the falsetto of a grown man mimicking a 12-year-old brat. The peak of the track is when Joshua exclaims, “Ddaaaaeeevinnnn” which is quickly cut off by a harsh whisper, “Boy language,” beat, and then in a hiss, “Shut up, it’s starting.”
And “starting” it is indeed; “Oh My God, It’s Boy Language!” is the gateway drug to the strangest compilation of songs dedicated to a word that has no meaning I have ever heard. The next four songs will have you feeling you are in a corny 80s rom-com tripping on acid complete with an overload of synth oozes grooviness, over-the-top kitsch, and of course, excessive "Daevin."
Interview and writing by Elizabeth Meyer
Listen to "Oh My God, It's Boy Language!"