Untangling mysterious song lyrics: 'Pompatus of Love'?
Posted: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 5:00 AM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
Filed Under:
Music
The post on awful song lyrics garnered so much discussion while I was off for Labor Day that I'm not quite ready to leave the topic yet. Certain songs came up over and over again in your comments, one of which featured readers arguing about whether or not Steve Miller made up a word. Let's dig into the mystery of "the pompatus of love," and in the meantime, you can call me Maurice. Some people do.
You know the song: In Miller's "The Joker," he sings "Some people call me the space cowboy, some people call me the gangster of love. Some people call me Maurice, because I sing of the pompatus of love."
I thought the debate would center around what the heck "pompatus" was supposed to mean, but many of you disagreed that he was saying "pompatus" at all.
PROPERTIES?
Folks who thought the phrase was "properties of love" got pretty indignant about it. Tim insisted that Miller was not saying "pompatus at all," commenting "Pretty funny that you made up one yourself there sport. Its 'properties of love'. Congrats for outing your intellegence (sic) on the internet."
Someone who calls themselves Ableme agreed with Tim, saying "The lyrics are, "... and I speak of the PROPERTIES of love." Pompitice? Quit smoking whatever you're smoking and try google before you post such a dumb question." (Hmm, I tried Google, and it listed "properties of love" as a commonly misheard version, and it's all about the "pompatus.")
PROPHETESS?
Here's a new one. Says Jim: "It's "prophetess of love" ... Don't diss Stevie."
COMPETENCE?
Steve from California doesn't hear the "p" at the beginning of the word. He writes: "You were asking about a lyric in "The Joker" by the Steve Miller Band. The lyric you mentioned was " ...and I speak, of the pompitice(sic) of love." I believe the actual lyric is "...and I speak of the 'competence' of love"
POM POM...
I'm not sure if Laura is putting us on here, but here's her comment: "Years ago, I heard an interview with Steve Miller on a local Atlanta, GA rock station. He said in WWII, they called the bombs 'pom poms.' They also applied this same description to women's breasts. The lyric should have been "because I speak of the pom pom t*ts of love" but because it wouldn't get airplay, it was changed to 'pompitice of love.' For what it's worth... "
POMPOUSNESS?
For me, I was always pretty sure that he says "pompatus," but I assumed he meant "pompousness." Mae agreed with me, saying "I think he actually means 'pompousness' in that line. Though why he would think love was pompous, I don't know."
HE MADE IT UP
Other readers claimed Miller himself admitted to making up the word. Says E: "I recall vaguely reading an interview with Steve Miller where he admits that he does indeed say "I speak of the pompitous of love", but also that he made up the word pompitous because it sounded cool."
HE BORROWED IT
The most well-researched and documented information on the phrase, as many readers pointed out, was done by Cecil Adams' great "The Straight Dope" column.
Adams' column mentioned that actor Jon Cryer even wrote and stars in a movie, "The Pompatus of Love," in which four guys sit around and try to decipher the lyric. Turns out in the course of making the film, Cryer discovered that R&B group The Medallions had a song called "The Letter" that included a similar lyric -- mentioning the "puppetutes" of love.
Miller's publicist doesn't exactly admit that he took that word and reformed it, but goes on to say that Miller borrowed another famous line ("really love your peaches, want to shake your tree") from a different R&B hit.
The mystery might linger on, as long as there are people out there hearing a half-dozen different words when they listen to the song. But as long as Miller's not spelling it out for us, the Straight Dope's version is probably as close to a good answer as we're going to get there.
