The Pompatus of Love
“’Cause I speak of the pompatus of love”
Miller didn’t just reference his own songs; he also alluded to other famous tunes, which even got him into some trouble (we’ll get to that soon). Let’s start with the lyric “pompatus of love,” which is a quote from the song Enter Maurice.
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Enter Maurice contains the lines: “I can whisper sweet words of epistemology/ in your ear and speak to you of the pompatus of love.” The word “pompatus” could have been Miller’s own invention, but the “epistemology” leads music historians to believe that it came from the 1954 doo-wop song The Letter by The Medallions.