The Wannabes: Six songs fit for fake Wannabes

On Madaraka day, I somehow found myself on YouTube. Maybe I should have sought ‘Muungano choir of yore’ songs there. Maybe? Maybe. But, no.

Instead I tracked down six of the sickest Wannabe songs of all time, just for you. ‘I wanna be a billionaire, so freaking bad; and buy the things I never had. I wanna be on the cover of, Forbes magazine; smiling next to Oprah and the Queen.’ I have already forgotten the singer of that song, but how very ‘wannabe’ is this song?

Everyone wants to be a millionaire, yeah, and grace the covers of popular magazines. But few will ever start a TV show, let alone a station that makes them multi-millions, because that’s damn hard work. But this silly wannabe pop singer got one thing right — the other route is to be a lucky royalty spermatozoon, like baby Charlotte, and ‘one die one cad wyell be come the quayne o’ In-glend!’ (Brit accent).

Then there’s the Bryan Adam’s song: ‘I wanna be, your T-shirt when its wet, I wanna be, your lipstick when you lick it. I wanna be, your high heels when you kick it. But more than anything else, I swear, I wanna be, your underwear...’

Yeah. How many wannabes go licking their chops on the streets and in offices at women they will never have, way out of their league, in wannabe desperation? Many. Other wannabes are out for celebrity, living their lives vicariously...

Like the dude in the 3 Doors’ Down song ‘Be Like That.’ See if you can recognise yourself. ‘He’s spent his whole life being too young, watching the stars on the big screen. At night he lies awake and he wonders, ‘Why can’t that be me?’‘

Then there are the opposite types of wannabes, like those funny wazungus who come to Kenya and want to tour Kibra or hook up with Samburus coz they think it is all exotic and erotic and ‘poor is cool.’ Pulp, the rock group, had a song about a rich girl who says she wants to be like ‘common people’ ( or what some of our elites who have never climbed a matatu call watus): ‘ She said: ‘I wanna be like common people, I said I’ll see what I can do.

So I took her to an off-license mini-supermarket, I said ‘pretend you’ve got no money’, but she just laughed and said ‘you’re so funny,’ coz she had a super-loaded daddy. I said, ‘honey, yeah? Coz I can’t see anyone else here smiling.’” Big Bad Voodoo Daddy also had a grand ‘wannabe’ song for arrivistes.

‘Now I’m the King of the Swinger’s ball, Jungle VIP Well I reached the top, and had to stop, and that’s what’s bothering me.I’m a wannabe man, man cub, stroll right into town, and be just like you. Coz, oooh, I’m sooo tired of monkeying around.’

But as said the late great Bob Marley, emancipate yourself from mental slavery. Most wannabes are wannabes because they feel the pressure to be so from society.

And Linkin Park has Numb, the perfect liberation and antidote for such wannabes. ‘I’m tired of being what you want me to be, feeling so faithless, donno what you’re expecting of me. Can’t you see that you’re smothering me, holding too tightly, afraid to lose control? And all I want to do, is be more like me, and be less like you ...’

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