I have always been a beat guy myself. What did you expect? I'm a drummer. But, that is not to say that I don't appreciate good lyrics. A corollary is that poor, ambiguous, inaudible and non-sensical lyrics bug me. A case in point is I'd Really Love To See You Tonight by four-hit wonders England Dan & John Ford Coley. That song reached # 2 on the Billboard charts in the summer of 1976. The first time I heard that song on the radio, I thought they were singing:
I ain't talkin' 'bout the linen,
And I don't wanna change your life.
Huh?
I ain't talkin' 'bout the linen? I should hope not! Those can't be
the words, I told myself. But, the next several times I heard the song I
was positive that's what they were singing. Whenever the song came on
the radio, I waited for the DJ to comment on the strange lyric, but no
comment was ever forthcoming. Of course, this was before the days when
lyrics were easily viewed on the internet.
Then, about fifteen years ago, England Dan (nee Dan
Seals) had a gig at a summer festival on Harriet Island, and I went to
see him. He was pretty chatty from the small stage, maybe because there
were only a few dozen of us geezers there to see him. He played his
duo's other hits (Nights Are Forever Without You (# 10), We'll Never
Have To Say Goodbye Again (# 9) and Love Is The Answer (# 10)), and
saved the song I'd been waiting to hear for last, I'd Really Love To See
You Tonight. He told the audience that he and his singing partner,
John Ford Coley, were constantly asked about the words to that song's
chorus, but in the interest of maintaining the mystique, they never
divulged the lyrics. He cited a few examples of what fans thought they
were singing, including "the linen" possibility. This was the first
time I realized that I wasn't the only one who heard "linen." Then he
told us what the words really were:
I ain't talkin' 'bout movin' in
Ah
ha! Of course! Once I knew what the lyrics were and heard the song
again, my ears no longer played tricks on me. That's exactly what they
were singing! Those words, "movin' in," are (almost) clearly audible.
Another brief example of a similar situation is
Bryan Adams' 1985 hit (# 5), Summer Of '69, one of my favorite songs of
all time. The vocal bridge in that song includes the lines:
We were young and restless,
We needed to unwind.
I
could never figure out that second line but, because I'm more of a beat
guy and this song rocks, I did not let that little deficiency stop me
from including it on the best music mix I ever made, Pud's Plethora Of
Platinum (a possible topic for a future post). And just like the
England Dan song, once I found out the true lyrics, the words
thenceforth seemed rather obvious.
And so ends the first portion of this post.
What follows are my brief observations about four well-known songs
containing lyrics that bug me, plus a fifth song that I was going to add
to the list but, after a personal epiphany, decided to segregate. When I
use the term "bug" here, I don't mean it in the usual sense. I still
consider all five of the songs to be anywhere from very good to great.
But each song has a word or a line which deprives the song of being
even better, and that's why they bug me. These are songs that should
have been tweaked, ever so slightly, to make more sense.
1. You're So Vain, Carly Simon, 1972, Billboard Chart Peak # 1.
Let's
start with low hanging fruit. Carly had twelve hits which reached the
Top 40 on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100, but You're So Vain was her only #
1. When Carly came out with this song in December 1972, it immediately
generated a lot of buzz for two reasons. First and more famously,
everybody wondered which of her seemingly dozens of male friends and
lovers inspired the song. The smart money was on Warren Beatty, who
even opined to the press that he was pretty sure the song was about him.
But Carly enjoyed the attention and thus refused to divulge the
answer. Other than the rumored death of Paul McCartney around the time
the Beatles' Abbey Road album came out in 1969, the identity of the
singer's love interest in You're So Vain was probably the biggest puzzle
of the music scene. Carly has thrown hints over the last forty-one
years, and has purportedly revealed the answer to two or three people
whom she first swore to secrecy. Currently, the smart money has shifted
from Beatty to David Geffen, former president of Elektra Records and
therefore Carly's former boss.
The second reason for the scuttlebutt surrounding
the song, and more to the point of this post, is that the chorus to
You're So Vain includes the repeated line, "You probably think this song
is about you." Well, duh! Yes, Carly, when you write a song with the
word "you" in the title, there is a good chance that second person will
believe it's about him. Even her most ardent fans thought that line was
a little weird, but as noted above, it got folks talking about her song
for more than just one reason.
Incidentally, and getting back to the first point,
Mick Jagger provided uncredited background vocals on You're So Vain. He,
along with other well known singers like Cat Stevens and Kris
Kristofferson, were also considered possibilities of being the song's
mystery man.
2. I Get Around, Beach Boys, 1964, Billboard Chart Peak # 1.
According to the Billboard charts, this is the
highest ranking song ever put out by the boys from landlocked Hawthorne,
California. (The Beach Boys had three other # 1 songs: Help Me Rhonda,
Good Vibrations and Kokomo, but under the Billboard ranking protocol, I
Get Around is the cream of that crop.) Structurally, it is unique,
partly because the chorus is sung before the first verse, a
characteristic shared by the Beatles' She Loves You. I Get Around
contains four two-line verses, and it is the last of those that
constitutes a head-scratcher for me:
None of the guys go steady 'cause it wouldn't be right
To leave your best girl home on a Saturday night.
First
of all, I originally thought the first word was "All" instead of
"None," because that's the only way the lyric makes sense to me. When
you go steady, you are not leaving your girl home on a Saturday night;
she is with you. But what the Beach Boys are saying, I guess, is that
they like hanging out with their buds so much that, in effect, they're
doing their would-be girl friends a favor by not going steady. Three
possibilities here: (1) Californians are so whacky that that's how they
think; (2) Californians aren't whacky, but co-writer/space cadet Brian
Wilson is, and that's his thought process; or, (3) I am the one who's
not thinking clearly, and the lyric makes perfect sense to practically
everyone else. I asked Momma Cuandito for her opinion, and she opted for Door # 3.
3. This Boy, Beatles, 1964. B-side of All My Loving (Billboard Chart Peak # 45), but did not chart separately.
Speaking
of the Beatles, This Boy was the third track on the Beatles first US
album, Meet The Beatles, an album which I must have played (and drummed
to) three hundred or more times. The song's setting is a guy singing to
his ex-girlfriend who has now moved on to another guy. I got started thinking about the lyrical
trouble with This Boy when the Beatles performed this song on
their second Ed Sullivan Show appearance on February 16, 1964. Even
though the lads had two microphones at their disposal, John moved over
to Paul's mic and got between Paul and George for this one song. The
three of them sang all three verses together, with John taking over the
lead on the vocal bridge. On the opening line of the song, it appeared
that at least one of the three singers sang "That boy took my love
away..." (the correct lyric) while at least one of the others --
probably John, who was known to forget lyrics occasionally -- sang "This
boy took my love away..." (which, even though including the title of
the song, was incorrect). If you watch the video of that performance,
Paul and John quickly look sideways at each other and giggle. They knew
there was a screw up, but of course they kept right on singing.
This faux pas surrounding the first verse presaged my personal question regarding the third verse of the song. The lyrics to that verse are:
This boy wouldn't mind the pain
Would always feel the same
If this boy gets you back again.
Should
the first two words of the third verse be "This boy" or "That boy"?
Though I will admit that you can make a case for either, it's my
contention that "That boy" makes more sense within the context of the
song. If you substitute "That boy" for "This boy," what the singer
would be saying is that the girl does not mean that much to her new
boyfriend. Even if she returns to the singer, life will go on for that
other guy; he won't miss her. Apparently what Lennon and McCartney were
shooting for was something different, viz., that if the girl returns to
the singer, he'll let bygones be bygones. In case you are wondering,
the song writing partnership did not consult me before putting pen to
paper, probably because I was a mere lad of fifteen at the time.
4. In These Arms, Bon Jovi, 1993, Billboard Chart Peak # 27.
I
am not ashamed to admit that Bon Jovi is my favorite band currently
making music, a fact I've already revealed in my March 30, 2013 post (a
review of their album What About Now). In These Arms is
the quintessential guitar rock song, with a driving beat, impassioned
vocals, a slick and speedy guitar break, three-part harmony, a tempo
build-up, and near-great lyrics. Why only "near" great? Read on.
In These Arms is the best of both worlds, a
love song that rocks. The message of the singer's unflinching fidelity
to his woman is evident in the first verse:
... I would do anything,
I'd beg, I'd steal, I'd die...
and in the second verse:
...baby, I want you,
like the roses want the rain...
and in the chorus:
... I'd get down on my knees for you
and make eveything all right...
But unfortunately, the vocal bridge is entirely incongruous with the rest of the song:
Your clothes are still scattered
All over our room
This whole place still smells like
Your cheap perfume.
Oh boy, what a way to win a girl's heart; tell her that her cheap perfume stinks up the whole room!
The former 5. Kodachrome, Paul Simon, 1973, Billboard Chart Peak # 2.
This is my favorite Paul Simon song, which is saying something because I love his work. But as much as I like Kodachrome,
I thought he had things flip-flopped. People do not dream in color;
their dreams are in black and white. Conversely, when I view things in
real time, I do see color. The lyrics suggest the opposite.
After chewing on this seemingly inverted idea that Simon offers in his
song, I think I've solved the mystery. I was equating dreaming with
imagining. My bad. Once again, my propensity to be The Linear Guy had
come into play. I did not recognize the symbolism. Metaphors are not
my forte; I was a finance major.
The song's theme is worthy of group discussion, as
it's likely that a panel of five people would have five different
"takes" on what it's about. If I could put my interpretation in a
nutshell, it would be this: Our imagination is color, while our
perception of reality is black and white. We should not be stunned or surprised when stark reality does not measure up to our imagined hopes. The key is the third line
from the following chorus:
You (i.e., Kodachrome) give us nice bright colors
You give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah!
But
when we look out the window or step outside, it's not always beautiful
and sunny. Half of the time it isn't. In other words, not every day is
a Chamber Of Commerce, picture postcard kind of day. Reality can be
grim, like black and white.
I should have figured this out sooner, when Simon is singing about gathering "all the girls I knew when I was single":
I know they'd never match my sweet imagination,
Everything looks worse in black and white.
I suppose now that I've come clean, someone will try to tell me that Bridge Over Troubled Water isn't really about a bridge.
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