HENRY…Busted!!! Yup, that’s what she says. For the last 36 years, I thought those were the closing lyrics to the B-52s’ “Love Shack.” The whole song talks, I mean sings, about a love shack, a place where we can get together. Love shack, baby, that’s where it’s at, and so forth. So it makes sense that at the end of the song, in an escapade, a woman barges in and yells, “Henry…” beckoning, and then says, “Busted.” Except!
That’s not what she says. She says, “Tin roof, rusted.” Well, that made no sense at all to me. The same place where I saw the actual lyric said this is a phrase that means “accidentally pregnant.” OK, that makes sense: running off to the love shack, bang, bang, bang on the door, baby…accidental pregnancy. OK, “Tin roof, busted.” Except!
Band member Cindy Wilson ad-libbed the line because she was picturing a real, run-down shack outside of Athens, Georgia, that had an old, weathered metal roof. Thirty-six years of exuberantly saying “Henry…busted,” and it’s wrong. Could it have been true? Yes. Did it make sense? Yes. But what happens when the real story is denied? When the myth, the fiction, is held tightly because it could have been true and it made sense, so there’s no harm? Except.
When there is. When myth and urban legend replace truth and fact. When marketing and spin take over from common sense. Ponder this: what do you know to be true, and what do you believe to be true? This is what sent me into an existential crisis and in search of caffeine. What do you know to be true, and what do you believe to be true? It’s all belief, isn’t it? In that case, what changes your belief?B-52s “Love Shack”: the story of “Tin roof…rusted!”
For a variation on this theme, see:
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 