“Pari Passu” is the song that other songs off of e’rebody make fun of. They say he’s too poppy. He has a lame Latin name, like that kid Romulus that everyone makes fun of at school, but not like at an inner city school where that name would actually be cool.
“Pari Passu” is the 3-minute song that is satirized earlier on the album in “Black Unstemmed Noteheads” (at the 3:00 mark), but there’s no shame in a short simple fluffy song self-edited for radio and mass consumption composed to taste as dictated from above by “the kings and popes”—as Frank Zappa would say.
Like most other songs, it’s all about love and boy-girl relations, or rather squid courtship (gif related). Using the Second Person narration, the lyrics seems to speak directly to the listener, as if you, and you alone, are the object of the melody’s affection, like those porn parody book series Finish Your Own Adventure by Danny Steel.
Or is it? There’s a psychosexual twist lurking in each verse. Much like “Shaving Cream” by Benny Bell, a lickety-quick turn of phrase evades the profane chorus in favor of a profound refrain.
And so the “diaphragm” mentioned in the 1st verse, isn’t like a Planned Parenthood kind of diaphragm, but rather a “soggy, mucous membrane” used for breath, and suddenly, what was supposed to be a simple love song becomes a complicated and awkward sex-magick ritual.
