I went to a wedding recently, and due to the age of the happy couple and the bulk of the celebrants, I was exposed to music that would make me whizz the tuning dial past the station as fast as I could if I came across it on the radio.
I felt sorry for the mob on the dance floor - every tune sounded the same, and they all danced to every tune in exactly the same way, jigging up and down with their arms in the air, waving them in time to the music. And they weren't even on ecstasy.
The music consisted of maddeningly catchy melodic hooks and choruses repeated without variation above a heavy baseline, with bursts of electronically enhanced yodelling and melisma. (Apparently, the first pop record to feature melisma was "To Sir With Love" by Lulu, 1967, although Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston must surely have more to answer for in this respect, via a shared background in the conventions of US gospel singing.)
One tune that was repeated a few times, presumably by request, was "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" by Beyoncé Knowles. I remember this from when it came out, and was reminded of the mental response the chorus elicited when I first heard it.
It goes: "If you like it then you should have put a ring on it".
Number one, if the lyrics are directed at single "ladies", as the title suggests, and "putting a ring on it" refers to removing men from the market for sexual liasons by marrying them (or getting engaged?), it's surely not the men's third finger the women like.
Plus, it's necessary to interpret "it" as being used here to either = unattached men in general, or as an insulting, non-gendered substitute for "him".
2, if you don't know the title, the other lyrics are difficult to make out, and you might assume it referred to unattached women.
Either way, the logical interpretation is that the theme of this song is a recommendation of genital piercing.
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