September 22, 2023

Music Friday: Cake’s John McCrea Wants ‘A Girl With a Mind Like a Diamond’

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you fun songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, Cake frontman John McCrea combines quirky lyrics with a vibraslap rattle as he describes his ideal partner: “a girl with a mind like a diamond.”

Appearing as the fourth track from Cake’s 2001 album Comfort Eagle, “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” is a song “about prosperity and depression,” songwriter McCrea told CNN in 2001.

“It’s really just about… what happens to the human mating ritual when you have population booms and then things start to lag in every way,” he said. “So I was not really writing about a woman in short skirt/long jacket as much I was writing about humans and how strange our behavior is.”

He sings, “I want a girl with a mind like a diamond / I want a girl who knows what’s best / I want a girl with shoes that cut / And eyes that burn like cigarettes.”

He also reveals that he prefers a girl who plays with her jewelry, enjoys uninterrupted prosperity and uses a machete to cut through red tape.

The video for “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” earned a nomination for Breakthrough Video at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards. The Platinum-certified single sold more than one million copies and the Comfort Eagle album earned a Gold certification with more than a half-million albums sold.

Last Friday, the band reissued Comfort Eagle on vinyl — in both black and Coke-bottle green varieties.

The song features McCrea playing a vibraslap, a percussion instrument consisting of a piece of stiff wire that connects a wooden ball to a hollow box of wood filled with metal “teeth.” When the wooden ball is struck with the palm of the hand, the device emits a prolonged rattlesnake sound.

Founded in Sacramento, CA, in 1991, Cake is classified as an alternative rock band, but many critics would rather put Cake in a class of its own due to the group’s wide range of musical influences, off-beat lyrics and deadpan delivery.

The key to the band’s unique sound, joked guitarist Xan McCurdy, is old, cheap guitars.

“We never get the exact same tone twice,” he told songfacts.com.

Trivia: “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” was used as the opening theme to Chuck, an action comedy/spy drama that ran on NBC for five seasons starting in 2007.

Please check out the audio track of “Short Skirt/Long Jacket.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along…

“Short Skirt/Long Jacket”
Written by John McCrea. Performed by Cake.

I want a girl with a mind like a diamond
I want a girl who knows what’s best
I want a girl with shoes that cut
And eyes that burn like cigarettes

I want a girl with the right allocations
Who’s fast, and thorough, and sharp as a tack
She’s playing with her jewelry
She’s putting up her hair
She’s touring the facilities
And picking up slack
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket.

I want a girl who gets up early
I want a girl who stays up late
I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity
Who uses a machete, to cut through red tape

With fingernails that shine like justice
And a voice that is dark like tinted glass
She is fast, thorough, and sharp as a tack
She is touring the facilities and picking up slack
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket

I want a girl with a smooth liquidation
I want a girl with good dividends
At Citibank we will meet accidentally
We’ll start to talk when she borrows my pen

She wants a car with a cup holder armrest
She wants a car that will get her there
She is changing her name
From Kitty to Karen
She’s trading her MG for a white Chrysler LeBaron
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket