No, it isn’t about S&M. The irreverent brain trust of Devo didn’t mind so much that many people misunderstood the meaning of “Whip It,” their biggest pop hit. In fact, they even made a video for it that brazenly played into the common misconception.
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Well, in that case, what is “Whip It” about? How was it an example of Devo playing R&B? And why did the song arrive at a time when the band needed it the most? Here are the details of one of the ’80s most subversive hit.
The De-Evolution Will Be Televised
Devo made a name for itself in the second half of the ’70s with the way it deconstructed the elements of rock music, reimagining them as if robots had come up with those song parts. Their bizarre costumes played into the effect. Critics lapped up their first two albums, and they developed a cult following.
But cult followings don’t always pay the power bills at recording studios. To that end, Devo, which then consisted of Alan Myers and two sets of brothers (Bob and Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald and Bob Casale) were told in no uncertain terms before the making of their third album that they were going to have to do a lot better, or else their record deal would essentially be torn up. No pressure, right?
Nonetheless, the band had already been thinking of shaking things up and doing a Devo-fied version of another genre, as band member Gerald Casale told American Songwriter in 2020:
“Bob Mothersbaugh and I had always loved R&B. And we had always listened to stations out of Detroit and we loved Motown. We were pushing to go that direction with beats and bass lines and to think of the music like Devo robots doing R&B with futuristic overtones. Mark really got into it, and thought if that’s what we’re going to do, let’s go all the way. Nobody understood that was our theoretical construct or our inspiration when they were listening to that music, because it’s so mutated from the inspiration.”
Cracking the Whip
The music for “Whip It” emanated from several different parts. Gerald Casale constructed a bass line that was a take on “Oh, Pretty Woman,” and Mark Mothersbaugh devised the chorus melody. Other instrumental parts were sourced from in-progress songs. The end result does indeed sound like some kind of automaton band sinking into their own synthetic groove.
As for the lyrics, Gerald Casale went back to some words he had written months earlier, as he explained to this author in the book Playing Back the ’80s: A Decade of Unstoppable Hits: “I wrote those lyrics in December of 1979 and was sitting on them wondering what to do with them. I was making an attempt to do his kind of parody of Horatio Alger: ‘You can do it, there’s nobody else like you.’ This kind of narcissistic, American exceptionalism. ‘You’re number-one, everybody’s special.'”
The Meaning of “Whip It”
There you have it: When Mark Mothersbaugh sings, “Crack that whip,” he doesn’t mean it literally. He’s urging the listeners to take initiative in their lives. Or at least his facetiously doing so, in the manner of jingoistic American slogans that have been around pretty much since the country was founded. Gerald Casale’s lyrics indulge in some wordplay as well, playing off the double-meaning of the word whip: Before the cream sets out too long, you must whip it.
“Whip It” slyly suggests that these self-help bromides tend to lose all practical meaning when repeated mindlessly without context: Shape it up, get straight / Go forward, move ahead. And they can also take on a kind of sinister undertone, especially if they imply that there will be consequences for those who don’t fall into line: You will never live it down unless you whip it / No one gets away until they whip it.
It’s likely as many people misconstrued the song’s meaning as those who understood the joke. But the bottom line is that a lot of folks took to it, as “Whip It” became a Top 10 hit and spearheaded the success of the 1980 album Freedom of Choice. Leave it to Devo to pull off such a juggling act, delivering a song that even charmed those whom it was mocking.
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Photo by John Shearer/WireImage
