I Melt with You

There are two possible interpretations for this song. One is morose, bitter, and sarcastic, while the other is funny, joyful, and sincere. I thought of both of these on the way home from work. First, the song could be about the irrelevance of love in the face of nuclear destruction. I checked on Wikipedia and in an interview in 2003, Robbie Grey did confirm this was about “couple making love as nuclear bombs fall.” However, I’d like to elaborate a little. Let me set the scene: It’s 1982 in Colchester, England. A young fellow, let’s call him Robert, is going home to visit his parents, and takes his girlfriend with him. However, while he’s there, a Soviet R-36M splits off overhead, and a 1 megaton MIRV heads straight for Colchester. Now, when it comes to nuclear weapons, those immediately under and around the blast will typically immediately vaporize, and they can look forward to a swift, painless death. The will cease to be distinct objects before their brain even has a chance to register pain. Those farther away from the detonation, but still in its line of sight, might look forward to burns on their bodies which, while painful, could in a few weeks or months heal up, allowing them to resume normal lives. Robert is not so lucky. He’s not far enough away to survive, and not close enough for this to be painless. He’s going to melt, and whether he goes to the roof or the cellar won’t make much difference. So, he grabs his sweetheart, goes outside, and holds her tightly, and kisses her, hard. The warhead detonates about 6,000 feet from ground level, scorching his body, and throwing him from his lover’s arms. Nearly every pain receptor in his body sends a message of pain to his brain, overloading any coherent thought. Any touch is now pure torture, and he writhes in pain. He screams, but there is no one in the world that could help him now. His clothes catch fire, and his eyes and ears are useless, and the flesh melts from his bones. He endures slow moments of the worst pain a human can physically endure before a drop in blood pressure brings with it a sweet loss of consciousness, and he can finally peacefully die.

Second, this song could be about a man and his love for a Wendy’s bacon cheeseburger. Let me set the scene: It’s 1982 in Columbus, Ohio. A young fellow, let’s also call him Robert, is going home after a hard day at work. It’s around 7:30 PM when he passes a Wendy’s, and as he’s tired and not looking forward to making something to eat at home, he parks and goes inside. It’s mostly empty, and rather quiet. It’s a clean, well-lit Wendy’s, and there is a sale going on where he can get a quarter-pounder bacon cheeseburger with a drink and fries for just $1.99, plus tax of course. He orders a combo, no onions, and the cashier is very friendly. He is tired, but still smiles at her politely. A fresh batch of ingredients had recently come in, and in the back, one of the employees whips up his order, and in only a few minutes he can take his food, fill up his cup with soda, and take a seat. His stomach rumbles, as he had a very small lunch. His mouth waters in anticipation. He licks his lips, then opens his mouth and takes a big bite of the bacon cheeseburger. He chews it in his mouth, and the combination of perfectly cooked meat, fresh lettuce, fancy ketchup, and tangy mustard creates a pleasant blend in his mouth, while the salty cheese and bacon create a pleasant aftertaste. For a moment, the world stops for him. There are no deadlines, no responsibilities, and no worries. It’s just him and his cheeseburger. He sighs in delight, and then takes another bite, and another, and his empty stomach fills with the bounties of modern society. It’s only after he’s taken his last bite of the cheeseburger that he realizes he hasn’t even touched his fries and soda. As he begins eating his fries and drinking his soda, he finds they are good, but now he’s mostly full. The worries of the world come back to him, and while he’s a little disappointed he can’t reclaim that prior moment of bliss, he’s at least happy to have the memory of the experience.

Lyrical interpretation is vastly different in these two scenarios. In the former scenario, nearly every word is oozing with sarcasm. “You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time” in particular is his bitter way of saying basically “Oh, the world is just so, so much better with the threat of nuclear destruction looming over our heads.” The changes he sees in the world are all bad ones, ones that cause further uncertainties and threats. The future is open wide, and he hates that. He wants to go back to an imagined past where everything was peachy, and the technology that today causes uncertainty, threat, and destruction was not even conceived of in the human mind. In short, a world where the most dangerous weapon a human could conceive of was a stick of dynamite, not a missile that can turn lots of people into puddles of flesh.

The latter scenario is optimistic, cheery, and sincere. It’s also distinctly G-rated. “Making love” here doesn’t mean sex, but instead, the pleasure of a good piece of food on his taste buds. He moves forward to the cheeseburger, smelling the aroma with all his breath. And for a moment, time stops. The world thrashing all around the food stops, and he can let the food melt in his saliva, tasting pleasure in his mouth. The changes it refers to could be topical, or general. Topically, it could just be that, previously, for example, Wendy’s wasn’t offering bacon on its cheeseburgers, and it is little changes like that that make life more pleasant. More generally, would an experience like this be possible in the past? In the past, making a meal took hours of either you or someone you paid or married slaving over a hot stove to make something palatable. The end result would be maybe one or two ingredients on a dirty plate in a smoky cabin, where you pretty much had to eat what was in front of you or starve. Compare that to the situation Robert is in here, and you’ll see the difference, and it’s getting better all the time. For nearly all human history, for every human long gone by, the simple act of getting something to eat was an unpleasant life or death ordeal. The very fact that a place like Wendy’s exists at all, a place where you can, for cheap, get tasty food in just a few minutes, is a boon to the human race. If we can change the act of getting something to eat from an unpleasant, difficult ordeal to something you can do on your way home from work, there is nothing you and I can’t, or won’t do. The future is open wide, and in this interpretation, those lyrics are spoken with true sincerity, like the famous Carl Sagan quote that “A still more glorious dawn awaits.”

So, this song is either incredibly gruesome, or incredibly hopeful. Human technology is either a blight or a boon to us, and “Hmmm hmmm hmmm” could be the sound of a man screaming in the distance, or enjoying a good meal. Take your pick.