When Kapranos assumes the female role, the words have now changed to “ No, you boys never care / How the girl feels.” When the song was controlled by a man, he was telling a woman that women never seem to consider the feelings of a man. (Case in point: the female player.) Either way, ‘No You Girls’ gives you some definite food for thought.
I am quick to point out that all men are not the same, just as all women are not the same either. Of course, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve met plenty of men / guy friends who don’t fit this profile (thankfully!), but I think the general consensus still is that men don’t feel about love the way us women do. After all, most girls I know and I were brought up by our fathers to think that most men are not to be trusted and they only have one thing on their minds. As a woman, it never occurred to me to think this way, to think that a man might have similar hopes and dreams about relationships like us women. In the male versions of the chorus, he’s telling off a woman, saying, “ no, you girls never know / how you make a boy feel.” I was talking to a good guy friend of mine and he was saying how true this sentiment was, that it’s not just the women who want the fairytale relationship, guys are not only capable but often think of relationships in such dreamy terms. Has he changed sex? Because all of a sudden, he’s singing it as if he’s a woman. The first two are identical and sung from the perspective of a man (Kapranos). The rhythm of the chorus appears three times. It’s easy to get lost in the chorus of ‘No You Girls’ because it’s oh so catchy, and I bet this was done on purpose. Even before you can get to love, you’ve got to make sure the other person is even receptive to the mere fact that you like him/her. As we all know however, love is never that simple. Physics tells us “opposites attract”, at least when it comes to electromagnetic forces. I might be wrong, but I have a theory, which goes back to why I wanted to write that essay in the first place.Īt the basic level, ‘No You Girls’ is about attracting the opposite sex, how such attempts at attracting are interpreted by the recipient, and what feelings are felt by the sender. But then I considered why I was thinking about this very song. I don’t even own this album, so it’s not like a song that I had on repeat in my life at some point. I thought it was strange that it should come to me all of a sudden.
It all started from a couple weeks ago, when I woke up with the ticking of this song’s guitar line in my head. I’ve decided to do something in the middle. I struggled for a long time on whether I wanted to do an essay about the topics explored in ‘No You Girls’, using it as one example for a broader piece, or just a straight-forward analysis. Oh you know, you know that I know that I love you Oh, you know you know you know that yes I love Yet, I think this inherent catchiness might just be taking away from the song’s take home message. It’s so catchy, Kapranos himself is singing right along to it at the end. And why shouldn’t it be? It’s got the catchiest guitar line since their breakout hit ‘Take Me Out’. Witty, yet with such simple lyrics, it’s ridiculously smart, and it’s been a live fan favourite ever since it’s seen the light of day. You never knew whether to desire the man or detest him. Yet the song retained the smart arse, sleazy, leery vocal style we’d come to know from Alex Kapranos. Where to find it: ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand’ (2009, Domino)įranz Ferdinand’s third album saw the band go – or attempt, at least – to go in a more dance-oriented direction, and ‘No You Girls’, the second single released from it, was a good indicator of this.
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