Jeff Jarrett will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. The former five time Intercontinental Champion had quite an illustrious in-ring career through several promotions, but is perhaps best remembered for his 1995 country song that he didn't sing, "With My Baby Tonight."
In storyline, Jarrett's character had been professing that he was a great country western singer, even though no record company would sign him. At the time, future Smackdown-ruiner Road Dogg Jesse James was appearing as Jarrett's cohort, called simply "The Roadie." During the spring of 1995, the above music video was played on Monday Night RAW several weeks in a row, followed by a "Live" performance at In Your House 2, which you can watch in the Tweet below.
Later that night, Jarrett would lose his IC Title match to Shawn Michaels and blame The Roadie for the loss, with Roadie decking Jarrett during the argument. The story was supposed to lead to The Roadie outing Jarrett as a lip syncher; it was actually The Roadie who recorded the vocals to the song and Jarrett was nothing more than a fraud in shirt that had apparently gone through a paper shredder.
The 90s were weird, man.
But before that storyline could take place, both Jarrett and The Roadie vanished from the WWE. Road Dogg resurfaced the following year, and they played out the lip synch angle, even thought Jarrett was in WCW at the time.
So, in canon, it was Road Dogg who sang the song, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that Jarrett himself WROTE the song, and since he's going into the Hall of Fame tonight, I thought I'd do a Full Lyrical Analysis of "With My Baby Tonight," just to see if this gives us any insight into what makes him tick.
(NOTE: The last time I did one of these, it was about Chris Jericho's FOZZY song "Judas," which was written and recorded around the time of "The Festival of Friendship" and which is inarguably about Jericho's relationship with Kevin Owens.)
So let's get started.
"Spend my days working hard on the go"
Jarrett doesn't say what his job is, only that he's constantly "on the go." So we can assume he doesn't work in an office or a factory or flipping burgers down at the local Five Guys. He's got to be a delivery driver, maybe with a regular route, but he stays in the area; he can't be like a long haul trucker--otherwise he wouldn't be able to be alone with his baby every night.
Let's say he drives a beer truck, delivering to bars and liquor stores all over town.
Cool? Cool.
"But the hands on the clock keep spinning too slow"
Okay, wait, what?
If he spends his days working hard on the go, when is he looking at a clock with hands on it? Doesn't he have a digital clock on the dashboard of his delivery truck? But the song was written in 1995, you say. Perhaps the truck was an old one, manufactured in the days before digital clocks. Well, a little rudimentary Googling shows that digital dashboard clocks started becoming the norm in the mid-seventies, which means that his delivery truck would have to be twenty years old in 1995 in order to have a non-digital dashboard clock. Possible, yes, but highly unlikely.
Maybe he keeps noticing clocks on the wall at the businesses as he makes his rounds. Or perhaps he's just wearing a non-digital watch. Ol' Double J doesn't strike me as a Casio guy, so that's probably it. However, he doesn't say "The hands on my watch keep spinning too slow." He specifically says "the clock" not "my watch."
Anyway, this is probably a stupid thing to get hung up on, but the inherent contradiction between "working hard on the go" and spending all day watching "the hands on a clock keep spinning too slow" has bugged me since I first heard the song. There's a minor hole in the plot there, and the first two lines of the song present Jeff Jarrett as someone who can't really be trusted. Why would he lie about how he's telling time during his long day of work? Something is fishy here.
Let's move on. We get our first refrain of the title of the song.
"Cause I can't wait to be alone with my baby tonight."
A lovely sentiment, to be sure, but does he really mean it, or is it just lip service? Let's explore the lyrics further.
"Well my baby's got me wrapped around her little finger
Cause she knows I'd walk through hell and back to be with her."
Okay, that's just a thing you say, Jeff. You don't really mean that. That is empty hyperbole and your baby deserves better. I'm calling bullshit on this whole thing right now, on behalf of your baby.
What else are you lying about? We've established the whole clock thing is just false. Do you even spend your days working hard on the go? At this point, I highly doubt it.
"Cause I can't wait to be alone with my baby tonight."
You keep saying that, Jeff, but I don't believe it, and I think, deep down, your baby doesn't believe it either.
Now here's where the backup singers make their first appearance, singing the point of view of Jeff Jarrett's baby. You know, the one with whom he can't wait to be alone tonight. Let's call her Charlene.
Charlene sings:
"Turn the lights out, bolt the door."
Wait. Why are you bolting the door? Why does Charlene need the doorI mean, turn the lights out, I get. I think we all understand at this point that the reason you want to be alone with your baby tonight is because you want to have sex with her, and Charlene wants the lights out so you can't see her shame (we'll get to that later).
But why do you need to bolt the door?
Are you expecting a SWAT team? Are there bears roaming the neighborhood? Are you in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?
I hope you're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Zombie apocalypses always make everything better.
Wouldn't just closing the door be sufficient? I mean "Turn the lights out, close the door" not only has the same number of syllables, it even employs the same vowel sound.
Who is your baby scared of? Who is she hiding from? This bears further investigation.
Jeff Jarrett singing again:
"We'll leave all the worries of the world behind."
Okay, my zombie apocalypse joke is starting to sound more plausible here.
What are the worries of the world that you're hiding from? Debt collectors? Digital clock salesmen? Are there actually bears roaming the neighborhood? Zombie bears?
Or oh no.
Wait.
IS YOUR BABY MARRIED?
Is that why she wants you to bolt the door? So if her husband comes home, he won't walk in on the two of you making sweet sweet love?
Oh my god. Her husband works the graveyard shift, doesn't he? You spend your days working hard on the go, and when he goes off to work the midnight to 8 am shift as the manager of the all-night Denny's, you sneak in under cover of night, don't you, Double J?
YOU HOME WRECKER.
Let's explore these lyrics further.
"Hold me in your arms, never let me go."
Your baby is needy, Jeff.
"Well it's true I've got a one track mind, but it's hard to concentrate around a girl like mine."
Jeff Jarrett thinks about sex a lot.
He probably gets boners while driving around in his beer truck.
Sorry to put that image in your head, but it's true.
He gets random boners in his beer truck, then when he gets to Finnegan's Pub and goes inside to make his delivery, he asks the bartender with the glass eye if he can "hit the head real quick," and he goes in the bathroom and rubs one out.
You know he does.
Now the backup singers are at it:
"I can't wait to be alone with my baby tonight."
I'll bet you can't, you little adulterous harlot. I'll bet they call you Single J.
And the J stands for JEZEBEL.
(Guitar Solo)
Back to the refrain, but this time Double J includes this little bit of info.
"I'm the type of guy who likes to get things right, so you won't find me complaining if it takes all night."
Okay.
This is not a thing you admit, Jeffrey.
If your overall philosophy in the bedroom is "if at first you don't succeed, try try again," then you're doing it wrong.
You are saying that you make lots of mistakes while having sex--what those mistakes are, I don't even want to know--but that's okay, because you're persistent, you've got a certain stick-to-it-ive-ness that allows you to stay positive in the face of your awful, clumsy lovemaking.
Even if it takes all night.
Just so you know, Double J. It's not supposed to take all night. It should take like two hours, tops. If it takes you all night, you're doing it wrong.
Jeff Jarrett is admitting that he can't satisfy his woman in a reasonable amount of time. It might take him all night to bring her to orgasm.
Jeff Jarrett is terrible at sex. He knows this, he admits it, and he can't wait to be alone with his baby tonight, every night, so that he can be terrible at it again.
Anyway, now here we come to the bridge, which might be my favorite part.
The music slows, and the three Charlenes sing:
"Maybe what we're doing might be wrong."
See, I used to think that was just a caveat of mid-90s morality--that to make sure the listener doesn't think that Jeff Jarrett's baby is a slut, she has a crisis of conscience. She might be sleeping with this guy out of wedlock, but at least she feels bad about it.
But now. as we've seen, she KNOWS what they're doing is wrong. She's cheating on her husband with a beer truck driver who bumbles and fumbles through hours and hours of terrible sex, night after night after night.
I just had a thought. What if she thinks what they're doing is wrong not only "morally" but also "objectively."
As in "Jeff Jarrett, you're doing sex wrong."
But he definitely doesn't think so, since he sings:
"How in the world could we be wrong?"
Well, Jeff, if you don't know, I'm not going to be the one to tell you.
Charlene has an idea, though.
"Never knew that love could take so long."
You might be fooled into thinking that this means that she, too, is "not complaining when it takes all night." But she doesn't say "Never knew that love could LAST so long." She says "TAKE so long."
When you use the phrase "this is taking a long time," you're espousing a negative opinion. No one has ever said "Why is this taking so long?" about something they are enjoying.
I'm actually starting to feel kind of sorry for Charlene at this point. I mean, how HORRIBLE must her husband be that she can't bring herself to break up with Jeff Jarrett, who is the worst lover anyone has ever had, and who. let us not forget, is a beer-truck delivery driver. It's not like he's showering her with expensive gifts. And he also probably lies about what kind of clock is in his delivery van.
Jeff Jarrett is the best that Charlene can do, or maybe he's just the best she THINKS she can do, and that might be the saddest thing of all.
(ADDENDUM: It occurred to me overnight after I finished and submitted this piece that the situation might even be more tragic than I thought. It's possible that Charlene has found herself trapped in two abusive relationships at the same time. Maybe her husband has a terrible temper and a drinking problem and she finds herself living in fear of him, and when she meets a charismatic beer-truck driver with a Tennessee drawl, she falls in love, hoping that he can rescue her. But the new guy turns out to be an emotionally manipulative sex addict who is terrible at sex, and for whatever reason, she can't seem to find a way out. So her life becomes a waiting game, sick with anticipation about the time when her husband comes home early, and finds her with Double J, flies into a rage and kills them both. This would explain her co-dependence with Jarrett and her compulsive need for a bolted door during sex.
Poor Charlene.
Poor, poor Charlene.
I'm sorry I called you a harlot and a jezebel.
I hope everything turns out all right for you.)
The final verse of the song is as follows:
"Well I wake up in her arms with the sunlight peeking
Through the curtains in the room
And there's just one thing I'm thinking
I can't wait to be alone with my baby tonight."
Wow, this guy really does have a one-track mind. Even when he's alone with his baby in the morning, he's thinking about being alone with his baby tonight.
Now, maybe I'm wrong, and the song really is about a zombie apocalypse, but it certainly appears that beer-truck delivery guy and terrible-sex-maker Jeff Jarrett is engaging in an illicit (and clumsy) adulterous affair with a woman (probably not actually) named Charlene, who knows all too well that her lover is like all-time horrible at sex but who is unable to extricate herself from the repeated all-night mistake-filled proceedings, because she has a terrible sense of self-worth, and/or a husband that is somehow worse than Jeff Jarrett.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the hidden meaning behind Jeff Jarrett's seminal hit "With My Baby Tonight."
It is about adultery.
Unless it is about a zombie apocalypse.
