Questions and Answers about "Precious Things"
Question: The lyric sheet to Tori Amos' song "Precious Things" contains the line, "So you can make me cum - that doesn't make you JESUS." So why does your quote page have a different version?
Answer:
Because that's not the way she sang it during a live performance on KROQ-FM in Los Angeles.
And, more significantly, because it makes more sense that way - "to come" means, among other things, to have an orgasm. "Cum" is nothing but an obnoxious pornism, an all-too-common misspelling of that one sense of the word. I think Amos' pun is much, much richer if it can be understood at more than one level. Jesus is supposed to have come once (down to Earth, that is), and will supposedly come again before things are over. But just coming, man, even coming twice - that doesn't make you Jesus.
To remove the pun - to make it "cum," which has only one meaning - makes the written lyric worse, not better... and it doesn't matter if Ms. Amos herself thinks the opposite. She's not Jesus either... she's just a very good musician.
Original content on this page ©1997, 1999 Alan P. Scott. Other content as attributed. All rights reserved. Thanks to R.M. Macrae for bringing up the issue to begin with.
This document was last updated April 15, 1999.
Contact me:
ascott@pacifier.com