By The Landlord
“Americans especially love superlatives. The phrases 'biggest in the world,' 'finest in the world,' are on all lips.” – Isabella Bird
“When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“From scarlet to powdered gold, to blazing yellow, to the rare ashen emerald, to the orange and black velvet of your shimmering corselet, out to the tip that like an amber thorn begins you, small, superlative being, you are a miracle, and you blaze.” – Pablo Neruda
“I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.” – Dorothy Parker
“If you're the tallest, the smallest,
If you're the fattest, the thinest, if you always win it,
Your the fastest, the slowest, if you really go,
Then you're a record breaker, a record maker,
You're a record breaker.
If you're the best, the worst, longest immersed,
If you're the base, the ace, furthest in space,
… You're a record breaker.” – Roy Castle, from The Record Breakers
The best! The greatest!! The GOAT!!! Superlatives are indisputably an attention-seeking form of language. Often overexposed, to retain their potency they should surely be used more sparingly, like swearwords.
Yet in a hyperbolic culture trying to attract likes and clicks, even in higher-minded declamatory love song for example, going full heap-praising poetic throttle is hard to avoid – you can't say about the one you love that they are ‘one of the best’, or comparatively middle-range attractive, unless perhaps you are Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords, who despite declaring the one he fancies at the party to be the most beautiful girl in the world, qualifies that statement with the phrase (“well definitely in the top 3” and she could at least “be a part-time model”), a stumbling, awkward comic parody of songwriting hyperbole.
Not good, not better, but best. So what is a superlative, and does it always point to the highest quality? No. A superlative is an adjective or adverb that expresses that the thing or person described has possessing more of that particular quality than anything or anyone else of that type. So unlike the comparative forms, not wise, but wisest, not loud but loudest, not clever but cleverest, or wittiest, craziest, hottest, coldest, fluffiest, silliest, and where the word doesn't end in 'est' then usually most is used before the adjective – most poetic, beautiful, musical, interesting, appealing etc. It's simple rule to find in lyrics, but must apply as a central tenet to the song.
So superlatives don't need to be always positive. It could be the most boring, tedious, annoying ugliest, slowest, or if you're Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, and worst episode ever ...
Superlatives however take me back to childhood, and that classic TV programme, The Record Breakers, presented by the all-singing, dancing, trumpet- and other playing entertainer Roy Castle, a vaudeville equivalent to my Blue Peter childhood hero, John Noakes. It featured the stiff, stern, somewhat oddball, nerdy and dodgily far-right older know-all identical twins Ross and Norris McWhirter, who shared their encyclopoedic knowledge of world record facts and also actually owned (so were they also the richest?) and edited the Guinness Book of Records, a volume which would end up as Christmas presents on several occasions.
But it was fun, factual childrens’ magazine entertainment, with a theme song and another ditty called Dedication ("If you wanna be the best, if you wanna beat the rest … ") and also screened world record attempts, including the silly, obscure and absurd, almost always verified by men in white coats, stopwatches and clipboards. Roy himself attained the record of most tap dances per second – a super-clicky 24. It was eccentric, sometimes charming BBC at its height, including this clip of 500 tap dancers all at once record-making sequence, mimiking some Hollywood extravaganza movie scene, but at central circular courtyard of Broadcasting House.
As I kid I would enjoy poring over the 'most' of everything, imaging the sheer dimensions of tallest ever man Robert Wadlow (8ft 11in) and just how giant he would be was if he came to our front door and if he were to shake my hand, just how large they would be. I would also imagine just how massive a blue whale was if it were to swim down our street.
Tall order: Robert Wadlow (8ft 11in)
The Guinness Book of Records is a weird and wonderful melting pot of impressive and often pointless examples of superlatives. Imagine for example being the man who pulled the heaviest train with his beard? Or the one who spent the most number of days in a bath of baked beans? Or London's Paul Lynch, who, you might say got his finger out to be someone, and performed 124 consecutive one finger push-ups. Or Serbias’s Dalibor Jablanovic, who balanced 31 spoons on his face for 30 seconds. Well, you’ve to be the best at something. Or do you?
Christian Adam: 37 miles cycling backwards playing the violin
Then there’s Christian Adam, who cycled the furthest backwards while also playing a violin (37 miles in five hours). Or that American boy who managed to put the most live snails on his face at once (43). Then there’s fastest talker, Canadian Sean Shannon, who recited Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy (260 words) in just 23.8 seconds. Er, what did you say? I didn’t quite catch it. And then there’s the lanky American Maci Currin, who has the longest legs in the world – 135.267 cm (53.255 in) for the left leg and 134.3 cm (52.874 in) for the right leg. And on and on, the records go, at length …
But generally speaking, even if you are very strong, talented, fast, or whatever, there's almost always someone out there somewhere who is even more of it than you. Unless you’re actually the very best. Until you’re not.
Arguably music itself lends itself to some superlatives in the form of Italian classical manuscript terminology. While many words dictate speed, volume and other forms of expression with nuance, there are also the ‘most possible’ category, such as prestissimo, pochissimo, fortissimo, pianissimo, vivacissimo.
But once you've got the most of something, where is there to go? In addition to some quoted above, many writers wince at superfluity of superlatives.
Writer and painter Wyndham Lewis, active the first half of the 20th century, blamed the language of marketing and that was long before the prevalence we experience today. “The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no standard of value whatever is intact.”
And here's Claude C. Hopkins decrying superlatives’ overuse: “'Best in the world', 'lowest price in existence', etc are at best claiming the expected. But superlatives of that sort are usually damaging. They suggestion looseness of expression, a tendency to exaggerate, a careless truth. They lead readers to discount all the statements that you make.”
“There emanates from superlatives a destructive force,” says Elias Canetti, in his study on mob mentality, Crowds and Power. In politics, superlatives are often used as an attention-seeking device, often betray clear insecurity, and for a certain presidential candidate currently in court, constant falsehood and self-aggrandisement.
“A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm,” adds E. B. White, self-reflexively perhaps overstating it a bit.
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind,” adds Rudyard Kipling. But is that an exaggeration too?
But when it comes to superlatives in song lyrics, if not simply the best, they can be a lot of fun. Another childhood memory prompted by this topic is the card game Top Trumps, played by picking out the best aspect of each entity (such as fastest jet plane, biggest or train or boat). It's more of a comparative game, but not every model, or person, is the best at everything, but might be the best at something, so it's all about playing to your strengths, which seems like a good rule in life.
If there’s an up-to-date American Presidents Top Trumps edition, even among stiff competition, there’s a leading current candidate for all the Worst and Bottom Trumps records. The Top Trumps card game franchise seems to have branched out in many directions these days, mining even music genres from different eras, from pop to rock and other genres. They are more, essentially comparative, and of course subjective, but the essential somewhat pointless and also quite interesting point is each one of them must be stronger at something, such as record sales, or craziest clothes, or most songs, albums, band members, or whatever. Here are a few, possibly examples... yet surely there’s not such thing as best in music, is there?
Punk Trumps
Post-punk Trumps
Synth-Pop & New Wave Trumps. OK that’s far too many Trumps now - Ed.
So then, it’s time for your to search for the loveliest, the loudest, the silkiest, the smoothest or whatever as described centrally in lyrical form. Keeping an always comparative, but among the most perceptive and cleverest eye and ear on proceedings is the most benevolent and broadminded UncleBen! Place your superlative-based songs in comment below, for deadline at 11pm UK time on Monday and playlists published next week. It’ll be (one of the) best ever!
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