One of the problems one faces when trying to answer all of these questions that can be found in songs, is; does anyone really care about the answer? For so many of the songs, we have no actual reason to answer the question properly. What do we get in return for all this hard work? Well, dear reader, if we answer today's question correctly, we will find in our grasps a really rather seductive woman: Carmen Sandiego.

( Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? )

Haddaway repeatedly asked us in 1993 What is love? It would seem that this question has gone on to puzzle years of listeners, and advertising gurus, and the song still crops up here and there (Madagascar, The Office, and an Australian milk advert, to name but a few). None of these media have attempted to answer his question however. Luckily, with my razor-sharp insight into the human condition, I'm here to tell you all today!

Dictionary.com defines love as the following:

love /lʌv/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[luhv] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, loved, lov·ing.
–noun
1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
3. sexual passion or desire.
4. a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart.
5. (used in direct address as a term of endearment, affection, or the like): Would you like to see a movie, love?
6. a love affair; an intensely amorous incident; amour.
7. sexual intercourse; copulation.
8. (initial capital letter) a personification of sexual affection, as Eros or Cupid.
9. affectionate concern for the well-being of others: the love of one's neighbor.
10. strong predilection, enthusiasm, or liking for anything: her love of books.
11. the object or thing so liked: The theater was her great love.
12. the benevolent affection of God for His creatures, or the reverent affection due from them to God.
13. Chiefly Tennis. a score of zero; nothing.
14. a word formerly used in communications to represent the letter L.

I would also add my own definition to the list: the feeling a person experiences when they become dependent on another. "Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another."

Really quite a simple question, Haddaway. On the Internet, many questions are asked which start with "What is...?". So many of them. Luckily, the same answer can be applied to all of them: JFGI.*

* Haddaway did not, of course, have this luxury until 1998, so he can be forgiven for asking his question in 1993. No one else can use this excuse though.

I really love a singing interrogator who actually cares about me. And whilst Cerys-from-Catatonia has shown some scant concern about possible mental disorders I might be experiencing, her kindness is nowhere near that Exuberant New Romantic Glam Rocker Adam Ant. I sometimes think that he's the only one who really cares, as he is.

To make up for last Friday's gargantuan failure, when I am ashamed to say that a holiday took precedence over LyricBlog, in the ring tonight you will see me answer not one, not two, but three questions! Steady on, I hear you cry, you might hurt yourself! Surely that's far too much singing interrogation for one person alone to face? Fear not, fair reader, for in completing this feat I will be ably assisted by a musician who really cares about me overreaching myself, none other than New Romantic Sparkly Glam Rock Antagonist, Adam Ant.

( Ants! )

So there we go, little reader. We have one blog, three questions, and some ants. Quite a lot of ants, in fact. It turns out that rather a lot of the English language is peppered with ants. Any guesses as to how many are lurking here?

The Barenaked Ladies has left fans asking many questions over the course of their songs (the most notable of these being; Did you pick that name purely to disappoint me?), and I intend to cherry-pick at them rather a lot over the course of time. However, today we will confine ourselves to the biggest of their questioning songs, When You Dream (N.B. No music video was made for this song, so I have had to guess that this YouTube one is correct as I can't watch any videos at work). Even if you don't give a damn about these questions, it's a really pretty song.

We're lucky here, as unlike many other bands the Ladies have actually bothered to contextualise their question for us, and even go on to offer a range of plausible (and some not-so-plausible) answers to the question. Full lyrics can be found here, but for the hard-of-mouse have a few little extracts:

With life just begun, my sleeping new son
...pictures a world past his bed*
...When you dream what do you dream about?

( When you dream what do you dream about? )

Interactive time!

Do you agree with my conclusion? Did you read it, anyway, or just scroll to the last paragraph? Luckily, there are some handy little ticky boxes, so you can make your view heard!

Poll #1273340 General Dreams
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

What do you think is the most common dream type?

Define "other"/clarification/tell me why the poll is fundamentally biased or incorrect.

Poll #1273339 Specific Dreams
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

What did you dream about last night?

What was it then?/Any other comments

*Oh gods please don't point out to me I've abbreviated this slightly; I know! That's what the dots are for, tardarse

One of the best things about being a child is that you get to find out how exciting the world is, before your experience of it makes you hollow and jaded. Just watch a small person playing in a puddle at some point. Wouldn't you love to be that enthused by a little bit of water? The thing is, they seem to love it because it is all so new. And, when they come across something new, they ask questions.

There's been a lot of bad things said about children's TV as of late, especially linked with whether it stimulates the children correctly or helps with their language acquisition skills. To my mind, Balamory is an excellent example of a programme which succeeds in the first regard, and fails dismally in the second. How does it succeed? Well, even in the theme song it's asking children questions, and getting them to actually think for themselves!

What's the story in Balamory?

( What's the story? (Morning Glory) )

It's always nice to see bands with a social conscience, isn't it? People who are out there really helping people, getting to the root of problems, and bringing about a change for the good. Some people will think of Bob Geldof and his support act, BandAid, who have of course done their bit towards addressing social problems. But of course, the name that leaps to everyone's lips is Cerys Matthews. Yes, the skanky-haired folk sensation from band Catatonia was worried about the state of people's mental health even before her own breakdown in 2002, when she went insane and moved to Tennessee (the causative link has been firmly established here, although debate still rages as to the causative direction), before appearing on I'm a Celebrity.... Yes, as early at 1998, Cerys-from-Catatonia decided to release a single aimed at the self-diagnosis and combat of one of the most prevalent forms of depression, with her concisely-worded lyric:

Well do you find the change in seasons affects you without reason? (from the song Don't Need the Sunshine)

A whole swarm of folk-indie teenagers seized upon these lyrics and now, 10 years on, they have grown into the scientists who had a good hard look around, and discovered SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder (which they obviously should have called Cerys Syndrome, in her honour).

Cerys' words have rung true so many years after her song, and it's clear that her prediction about such a phenomenon has manifested itself as a reality. Some people over the years have doubted Cerys' credentials as a therapist, but it is clear now that by forcing her listeners to examine themselves, she encouraged them to discover and treat this form of seasonal depression.

( Do you have Cerys Syndrome? )
Unfortunately, Cerys fails at the last hurdle, which is providing a treatment or cure for Cerys Syndrome. All she is able to do in the song is to reassure the listener that they do not, in fact, need the sunshine, but can just cope with things fine by themselves. It is here where Cerys and Medical Science part ways, and we find prescriptions for things like inordinately expensive light boxes, ionised-air reception and hormone-supplements. Having looked into the prices of these, I have decided that it's much cheaper to not have SAD and to take up drinking again, a course of medical treatment I will be starting at 00:01 on Wednesday.

These rap artist types ask a lot of questions, don't they? Take Timbaland, the great but uncommunicative rap artist who has made an impression on the R&B scene since the 1990s (NB. not to be confused with Timberland, who make hiking boots). He worked with Destiny's Child on the song Get on the Bus taken from a film soundtrack. Oddly, not from the film soundtrack of Get On The Bus, but of Why Do Fools Fall in Love? Thankfully, we're not on to movie titles yet, so we'll stick with the song.

The sturdy Mr Baland poses a number of questions to his hareem of women, including the one we're interested in here: Why you sleeping with your eyes closed?

Now, reader, please avoid the temptation to whack your palm into your forehead and make a suitably dismissive playground noise. Mr Baland is a very intelligent man (he's conned the beautiful Monique Idlett into marrying him recently, for one), so let's assume that he's ignoring the obvious reason and trying to get the curvy ladies to think about something a little deeper.

But hang on - what is the obvious answer anyway? The reflex one is "because people just do", but I would like to think we can interact with Mr Baland on a level above that of an harassed mother to her toddler. People have been faffing about with the human body for years now, so surely medical research has got a more in depth answer than that?

Well yes, it does! By studying people who suffer from Lagophthalmos or Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, we can examine what happens to people who don't close their eyes during sleep, for whatever reason. The two conditions above involve problems with the muscles in the face, which results in the inability to fully close the eyes, and sufferers have a number of unpleasant symptoms. Creatures close their eyes to sleep to shut out sensory distractions, but also to protect the eye from foreign bodies and to allow it to recover after a long day's work.

Because the body rarely blinks whilst asleep, there's a big risk of all sorts of crap getting into your eyes if you sleep with them open. Also, the inability to refresh the moisture levels in the eyes leads to drying-out, and can result in very painful and blurred vision for up to an hour after the sufferer awakes. The fluid inside the eye is also replenished (although I've yet to find a convincing explanation of how it gets out in the first place) during sleep, and without this sufferers face a much higher risk of developing glaucoma, or eventually losing their sight altogether.

With an inability to properly shut out distractions, sufferers often find that 8 hours' sleep is not restful enough for them, and report a "zombie-like state" during their days' movements. In addition to this, it's really freaky for anyone who happens to walk in on you doing this. Some people manage full conversations whilst asleep, and this seems to be more common of those who sleep with open eyes. One of the upsides of this unfortunate problem, though, is that sufferers often get lucid dreams, and see a whole range of colours and shapes normal sleepers do not.

There's no cut-and-dry reason why someone might start sleeping with their eyes open, but it would appear from research that this normally begins to occur regularly after the age of about 20. I hope I've shown Mr Baland why his lady chooses to sleep with her eyes closed, assuming she has the choice, and especially one so vain as Destiny's Child Woman #N. But that can't be the sole reason for him asking the question. The very fact that he posed it implies that this is unusual behaviour for her. So why has this lady suddenly gone back to sleeping with her eyes shut?

Chances are, she's had a gold implant. No, this isn't a new rap-culture thing, where the yoof inject gold into their bodies in order to up their bling level just a little bit more. You can, in fact, get a gold eyelid weight, which is implanted into your eyelid and weights it down during sleep, to stop it flapping open/about. It will also give you a slightly larger area onto which to apply your eye make-up. Score! I think it's clear that DSW#N has had secret cosmetic surgery without telling Tim, to correct her freaky sleeping condition in preparation for moving in with a new man. Nice try lady, but you've been busted!

I think the main, if not only, reason why The Beautiful South's song How Long's a Tear Take to Dry? only made it to number 12 in the UK singles chart is because they never got round to giving their poor audience an answer. This was in spite of the song having an awesome video, unsurprisingly produced by Hanna-Barbera. Watch it!

In one of her more sober moments, Amy Winehouse released her reply to the question, in the song Tears Dry on Their Own. Thanks, Amy, but what you've done is to discard the question rather than answer it. I firmly believe that the reason for the split of The Beautiful South in 2007 was not, as they stated, "musical similarities", but because they were still desperately searching for the answer to their question through the medium of song. Well, guys and girl, I'm here to tell you it now, so you can get back to the music making!

How long's a tear take to dry?

It didn't take long for me to realise that the main reason they never answered their question is because it's a sodding hard one, which uses both Maths and Science, neither of which I am particularly good at. However, after some tricks with sums, and a bit of empirical research to check the answer, I believe I've cracked it! There's some complex Maths here behind the cuts, for those of you who really don't care.

( How long? - some complicated numbers and letters )

And do tears really stain?

No.

^{Obviously, I did almost all of this all by myself, because I am good at numbers and whatnot, but I would also like to thank filecoreinuse for spending many hours explaining to me how to do it, and making the equations look pretty, and not laughing when I didn't know what a reciprocal was checking my spelling.}

You remind me of the babe
What babe?
Babe with the power
What power?
Power of voodoo
Who do?
You do
Do what?
Remind me of the babe

And so on went the cyclical questioning in David Bowie's Magic Dance, from Labyrinth. We all know how frustrating questioning loops can get (see Henry and Liza's discourse about that godforesaken bucket), so I think it's about time we bust this whole thing wide open, answer just one of the questions properly and stop the deformed puppet Ground Hog Day scenario.

What babe?

It seems like a simple enough question at first. Toby Williams, the step-brother to the pouty melodramatic Sarah. A chubby little creature stomping about the set in a red and white stripped romper suit. The baby who was going to get turned into a goblin. But who was he really?

The actor playing Toby was Toby Froud, the son of the conceptual artist Brian Froud, who worked on the film. We can but hope that he wasn't just hired because he had a suitable child. Assumably they kept the same first name to allow for the small possibility that he might actually respond when he heard it. Unfortunately, Toby battled with his lines, and was unable to gurgle in a convincingly child-like manner, meaning that all the baby sounds you can hear on Magic Dance are actually Bowie.

But you can't define one person's entire existance based on an appearance in a film before they were able to speak. So who is the babe?

Toby Froud was born in 1984, and grew up in the world of showbusiness and puppetry. A little unsurprisingly, he has now moved into this world himself. He apprenticed at the Muppet workshop, as well as on the set of Lord of the Rings. More recently, he returned to the very place where Labyrinth was filmed, this time as a puppeteer himself, working alongside the man who had ensured he didn't topple from the beam in the climax of the film. It might seem slightly surprising that a young actor from sucha family should opt to be behind the scenes, but I guess that's what spending hours of your early years surrounded by grotesque monsters does to a kid.

^{Apologies for brevity of this post; it's been one hell of a week!}

By 1999, Savage Garden weren't just content to sit at the top of the Australian and US charts, steadily working their way towards selling 25,000,000 albums. Oh no, that clean-cut Austalian duo had had enough of the vacuous world of music making, and decided it was about time that they addressed some of the deep philosophical questions in life. In The Animal Song, their chosen topic was the nature of humanity.

Unlike a good many philosophers, Darren and Daniel attributed their audience with critical thinking skills, and so instead of leading their listenership to a well-reasoned, carefully-sculpted answer, they just threw out the question mid-lyric: Animals and children tell the truth, they never lie. Which one is more human? There's a thought, now you decide

Thanks guys. Sadly, it seems like no one has decided yet, so I thought it was about time our lads got their answer.

( The Answer )

It really does break my heart that Patti Page has been waiting since 1952 for an answer to her famous question, How much is that doggie in the window? If we ignore the fact that that original dog she saw has probably popped its paws by now, we can finally answer her rather straightforward question. Hear her heartfelt plea here.

But is it really a straightforward question? Well, no, not really, because we don't know what type of dog it was that she saw. Dog breed prices vary enormously, and surely we cannot provide an accurate price without knowing more about the glass-shrouded beast? Chances are that all she took not of was the colour, not make and model breed as well.

Luckily, the song provides us with enough context to make some educated guesses. Firstly, the dog is in the window of a shop, so it is logical to assume that it is one of the best available for sale, to draw the customers in. Think Little Shop of Horrors style advertising. There is a chance, of course, that a shop might put sale items in the window, but as it is normally easy to tell if an animal is inferior quality, I think we can discount this. The line "I do hope that doggie's for sale" would also imply that the animal is not discounted, or the price would be prominent in the shop

Secondly, we can safely assume that it is a pedigree dog, for much the same reasons as above. If you're going to sell animals, clients will want to know they've got the very best!

Thirdly, we can safely assume that not only is it the best specimen, but that it is also one of the most expensive dogs on the market. Why? Well, think of all the shops you've been to where they don't display prices on items in the window display. We're talking Bang & Olufsen standards of rabies bags here!

Fourthly, given all of the above, we can assume that product is Mint In Box or, in this case, a puppy.

So, Patti has seen a pedigree puppy of one of the most expensive breeds. But which is the most expensive breed? A few hours of trawling through breeder sites today has revealed one simple truth; breeders won't damn well tell you how much animals cost. Luckily, the wonders of comparative Internet shopping will! Rather surprisingly, the most expensive dogs in Britain and America today (that can be bought in shops - we're discounting the ridiculously rare breeds one is unlikely to see*) are English bulldogs, quickly followed by French bulldogs. Christ, but aren't they just ugly? They don't even take a good puppy picture. Like wrinkled alcoholic moles.

But you don't need to take my word for it that it's the English bulldog we're after! Patti even makes it clear in the song; I read in the paper there are robbers with flashlights that shine in the dark. My love needs a doggie to protect him and scare them away with one bark. Clearly, she's not talking about a poodle or any dog that looks sweet as a puppy, and I can honestly say that if I were a burglar, I would be repulsed by an English bulldog puppy. And, when it gets older, it'll chew through their ankles.

An English bulldog puppy costs somewhere between £2,000 and £4,500, depending where you go. Why, I hear you cry, are they so damn expensive? Well, because they are so top heavy, and bred to be stout little buggers, they cannot breed naturally, and so have to be artificially inseminated. Along with this, their nose-shape means that many are born unable to breathe properly, and die at a young age. Those surviving, therefore, are worth rather a lot of money.

Let's assume that the dog was a mid-range cost, £3,000. Still, we don't have Patti's answer, though! She was in America in 1952, not Britain in 2008. So what would that be in her money? Today, that would be $5,296. Using the magic of economic history, we can tell that that would be $638.10.

So there you go, Patti. I think we have conclusively proved that little doggie to set you back $638.10. Now, on to postage and packing...

^{* The rarest, and rumoured to be most expensive dog in the world is the Norweigan Puffin Hound. In 1962 there were just six of the animals left, from which all of today's dogs are bred. There are now around 2,000 of them in the world. They were originally used to hunt puffins, shockingly, and have 6 more toes than normal dogs. I could find no information about possible costs.}

I've always been a little bit male when it comes to communicating with people. If someone presents me with a problem, I'd much prefer to offer a solution than sympathy. Especially if they ask a question. Why on earth would one leave a question unanswered? Even some rhetorical questions really do need an answer ("What's wrong with me?", "Isn't that great?", etc).

This is why songs with questions in really bother me. How on earth am I meant to reply to them? Why ask straightforward questions in songs anyway? They go through large amounts of editing and consideration before they are released. JFGI. But we're getting sidetracked. If I can't answer lyrical questions direct to the asker, I'll just have to do it to the world in general.

So, this weekend I heard Little Jackie's The World Should Revolve Around Me. See here for the Youtube video. In this lovely song, Little Jackie starts by stating "If I ask no questions I'll hear no lies", but then goes on to ask us a few questions. I'll try not to lie in my replies. The one that particularly interests me is:
So I bide my time with philosophical questions
Not for nothing, but what came first
The chicken nugget or the egg mcmuffin?

Now, I'm sure one could debate for hours about what a 'philosophical question' is, but I'm pretty sure that this isn't one. A little bit of googling reveals the (to my mind) slightly surprising answer: The Egg McMuffin. The Egg McMuffin was introduced in 1971, as the first item on the McDonald's breakfast range, whilst the Chicken McNugget (I assume this is what Little Jackie means) was introduced in 1983. They were a combination of white and dark meat until 2003, when they became entirely white meat.

So there you are, Little Jackie. I've answered the question you posed. I can't help thinking, though, that what you are actually asking is a rehashed chicken and egg question, using modern youth terminology to make it more accessible for a new generation. Would you like that answering whilst you're here as well? Thought so.

So, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, being as we haven't defined the type of egg we can answer this easily; the egg. Dinosaurs were laying eggs long before chickens were around.