Shaggy maintains that everyone missed the real message of “It Wasn’t Me”
According to Shaggy, his classic hit "It Wasn't Me" is actually an "anti-cheating song"
Music News Shaggy
Today, Wednesday June 7, 2023, bold and bald-faced cheaters without the sense to develop an alibi around the world have lost a sacred text. In a new interview, rapper Shaggy attempts to reframe the narrative of his hit “It Wasn’t Me,” explaining that the song’s status as an adultery anthem is actually based on a “big misconception.”
“That song is not a cheating song. It’s an anti-cheating song,” Shaggy tells People. “It’s just that nobody listened to the record to the end.”
According to the rapper, the key to really understanding “It Wasn’t Me” can’t be found on the sofa, the counter, or the shower, but actually lives in a moment on the record that finds its cheating protagonist atoning for his ways.
“There’s a part in the record where it’s a conversation between two people and you have one guy, which is me at that point, giving that bad advice, like, ‘Yo, bro, how could you get caught? Just tell her, ‘It wasn’t me,’’ and then at the end, the guy says, ‘I’m going to tell her that I’m sorry for the pain that I’ve caused. I’ve been listening to your reasoning, it makes no sense at all. Going to tell her that I’m sorry for the pain that I’ve caused. You might think that you’re a player, but you’re completely lost.’”
Shaggy continues: “Nobody hears that part! That’s what the song says. But everybody’s just caught up on that, ‘It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.’ It’s an anti-cheating song. No one ever really buys into that, and I keep explaining it to people. Then, they go listen to it back and be like, ‘Oh dude, I totally missed that.’” As Shaggy prepares to head out on the Hot Summer Nights Tour with TLC, En Vogue, and Sean Kingston, hopefully his fans will grapple with the news accordingly, and come correct to the show with an anti-cheating spirit.
63 Comments
it is funny how many romantic songs from the era were overtly about cheating (he may claim it’s anti-cheating, but it’s still ABOUT cheating). i remember once putting together a mix cd for a girlfriend and being like ‘wait a minute…nelly’s ‘my boo’ is not actually about his boo.’
Ahem…do you mean Dilemma? My Boo was an Usher and Alicia Keys song.
In The Pina Colada Song dude takes out an ad because he’s sick of his wife and she herself answers the ad because she’s sick of him!
at least they were cheating on each other with each other.
Does that count?
Did you hear the parody version of that song about subatomic particles accelerated at high speed that can’t stop bumping into each other? They call it The Pina Collider Song.(I don’t think that exists. Might be nice, though…)
Sounds about as tedious as the original.
Do you like bean enchiladas?
Do you like George Wendt?
Do you like movies about beans?
Would you like to see George Wendt eating beans in a movie?
…and their strong gastric pain?
I think that’s funny.
Thanks, I needed that XD
😉
1984 is about authoritarianism. Brave New World is about commodity life control. The Secret of NIMH is about animal testing.Is this a weird thing where people think seeing something happen onscreen means the movie says it’s good? Is that why Kylo Ren is a mass-murdering psychopath that gets hardcore gooned on and abandoned by everybody but people are still like, “The whole point of The Last Jedi is to abandon the past! I know because the loser badguy constantly going off on narcissistic rants and repeatedly proven wrong said so that one time!”
no i don’t think shaggy’s ‘it wasn’t me’ has anything to do with ‘the last jedi’.
Sure. Next you’ll be saying that “Every Breath You Take” by the Police and “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt aren’t love songs. Pretty soon we’ll have people claiming that “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen isn’t a red-white-and-blue-blooded patriotic anthem.
How dare you! “Kill the yellow man” is about as hee-hawin’ American as you can get!
And that “Copperhead Road” isn’t about weed.
Nah, the hook of the song is the repetition of “it wasn’t me” juxtaposed with obvious evidence of cheating. This is the reason the song was a hit, and it’s why people are still amused by the song over 20 years later. It’s a pro-cheating, pro-gaslighting song. You can’t mumble the message of a pop song in the last verse.
Why not? Meat Loaf did it, and nobody thinks he was actually happy with his decision to spend his entire life with a woman he banged in high school.
But he found paradise by the dashboard lights, what more does anyone need?
I didn’t ever get to the end of ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’, even though I love it’s wholesome message about boys growing up like their fathers.
Meat Loaf never mumbled.
Of course Jim Steinman AND Meat Loaf complained that nobody understood what “But I won’t do that…” was referring to (not some kinky sex move, but apparently breaking their heart.)
“pro-gaslighting”Settle down.
that is the premise of the song.
Its what you took away from the song.
oh wait i get it.
Or do you?
It wasn’t me, I never said the song was pro-gaslighting.
You did but denying you did isn’t gaslighting.
Ah, good, we’ve identified the exact joke clearly for the official record.
We haven’t.
“You can’t mumble the message of a pop song in the last verse.”I beg to differ. How else would we know Paul McCartney died in 1966 if we hadn’t been told in multiple Beatles songs?
It was the black carnation, I tells ya!
What about grooming? Any of that?
Uh its clear as day at the end, it’s sung by RikRok, the ostensible “cheater”, not rapped by Shaggy.
Stone Temple Pilots’ “Sex Type Thing” is about a rapist, from the POV of the rapist, and never condemns the rapist. And yet, it’s somehow clear that it’s not meant to be pro-rape.
The hook is a player’s ridiculous lie, the end of the story is the player being rejected. That doesn’t change because the hook is catchy.
“You can’t mumble the message of a pop song in the last verse.”So when should it be done? First verse, second verse, chorus? Ooooh, is that what “bridges” are for?
Even the catchy parts of the song make the cheater look ridiculous and silly
it’s not mumbled, at all.
Man when you base your whole life around a single song only to find out it’s a lie…
Right? Except for me it wasn’t a song, it was a romantic relationship with another human being. Basically the same thing though.
Yep that’s why I’ve been single for 20 years!
You know, that guy never really smelled like teen spirit.
You know, I do mind stealing bread, and I’m not actually all that hungry come to think of it.
Even if it’s from the mouth of decadence?
“I spend the time just posting on A.V.,
grey comments until I’m starred,then the star-giver says “it wasn’t me””.(best I can come up with in 10 seconds!)
Oh, so it really wasn’t him? Ok.
Nothin’ ta’ see here, move along!
He’s right. I never heard the end of the song, because I hated the beginning and I hated the middle. Never made it all the way thru.
I thought the idea was to prove that Eddie Murphy bits make for great song lyrics.
“And that other singer, who nobody liked, grew up to be RikRok. And now you know the rest of the story.”
I also recently found out Larks’ Tongues in Aspic by King Crimson isn’t a collection of medieval recipes.
Come on people, keep up! Wasn’t this already explained in a Cheetos commercial two years ago?
“Rapper”?
He does, in fact, rap in every one of his verses of the song and has, on top of that, been described as a rapper for thirty years. Go figure.
I always assumed it had something to do with the Mystery Machine and the gang and was about some perp being accused by some meddling kids.of dressing up like a ghost to scare visitors away from an abandoned amusement park.
ACTUALLY IT WAS ME
I still love how Murder She Wrote by Chaka Demus & Pliers is deemed top wedding DJ fodder and look forward to the AV Club article in about 10 years time.
My favorite fun fact about this song is that it’s what Michael Jackson is referring to in that well-known gif (where he’s at an awards show mouthing “I love this song”).
“Everybody just gets caught up on the ‘it wasn’t me’ part”, says singer of song called “It Wasn’t Me”, where the phrase “it wasn’t me” is repeated dozens of time.