"I got a lump in my throat 'cause you're gonna sing the words wrong"
--Vance Joy, "Riptide" (2013)
Mick Jagger once explained that some of the more indecipherable lyrics in Fats Domino's recorded catalog were part of a deliberately murky sound mix in order to draw the listener in. You can't just listen to Fats casually, in stark contrast to pre-rock music, where every word is enunciated "perfectly" and the vocalist's instrument is front and center, ahead of the backing players.
Rock records are more like a bit of roughhousing between buddies in a friendly feud for space, creating an exciting experience where even old stuff sounds fresh and immediate.
If you sing the following song lyrics out loud, you'll have more fun with these observations...
Everyone gets the words to a popular song wrong once in awhile, but my lack of focus continues to amaze me. Among my recurring shortcomings are two Brian Wilson '60s tracks, the Beach Boys' "All Summer Long" and the Hondells hit, "Little Honda." Perhaps they're really not hard to hear and yet two simple phrases never stick with me. After I check a website to try to close my synapse gap, I end up blanking on the lyrics yet again when one of those tunes blasts on the car radio--and I love to sing with the radio, so it's frustrating.
On "All Summer Long" there are four syllables following, "won't be long 'til summertime is through." Do you know what's next? The phrase is, "not for us now." That dumb J.J. can never retain the words--what I revert to when driving is to sing, "rock and roll now." Hey, at least that's not dirty. In the near-future, however, I plan to blog about made up, nasty lyrics.
On "Little Honda," the lyrics are, "first gear/it's all right," followed by, "second gear/I'll lean right." I don't even have substitute words for the "I'll lean right" part; perhaps I should visualize a worthless politician in order to remember the line.
The last time I played Shel Silverstein's "Quaaludes Again" on KAOS, one of my co-workers heard it and thought the song was "Quaaludes for Kids."
In 1984, John Mellencamp said his girlfriend at the time was singing along with Van Halen's "Panama," but what she was belting out was, "cannonball!"
I've long gutted Harry Chapin's lengthy "Taxi," purposely turning, "she was gonna be an actress" into "mattress." Has anyone EVER understood what the woman sings in the interlude before the final verse of that 1972 song? Didn't think so. I'll move on. (UPDATE: I stand corrected! See the comments section below.)
In this case, mishearing the record might not be an awful thing: I refer to Sam & Dave's 1967 "Soul Man," where Sam Moore could be singing, "I was educated/at Woodstock," and that would be groovy. That's historically inaccurate, of course, as the Woodstock love and mud festival didn't happen until 1969. Instead, that bit is really, "I was educated/from good stock." But I like either of them.
Jackson Browne's treasure "For a Dancer" (1974) depicts a survivor's helplessness when a loved one dies, and I play and sing it at home. It took a long time to clearly hear JB sing, "I can't help feeling stupid standing 'round/crying as they ease you down." A few years ago, when I was figuring it out on the piano--I don't read music--I thought that part was, "crying is the easier down." That's hardly a nonsensical interpretation, and it's how Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris incorrectly render it on their 1999 recording Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions. The lyric booklet for that album also gets it wrong.
Sophie B. Hawkins' "As I Lay Me Down" (1995) has background singers intoning, "pull my taco" at several points. I've misheard that, I know, yet I wasn't the only fool to think so. I had to monitor a radio show from Tucson once, where the hosts focused on that taco bit for what seemed like hours.
What is it with Tucson, anyway? Here's another: Little Feat's wonderful "Willin'." Four places mentioned, and I only know the first two--"I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari." The next part is, "Tehachapi to Tonapah," and if you know those towns, you win today's Crackerjack prize. For the last three words, I'd been singing, "You had to be the Joan of Arc" since the 1970s. But now I sing, "Mahatma Gandhi, Joan of Arc."
Back to Fats Domino. His terrific "Blue Monday" (1956) chronicles an overworked laborer, as captured by the descriptive image, "I'm beat to my socks." Most cover versions have something mundane in its place: "I say to myself."
In 2016, jazz singer Scott Morgan--not the Michigan rocker--remade James Taylor's lovely "Secret O' Life," which states, "Einstein said that he could never understand it all." Morgan screws it up, changing the line to, "Einstein said we can never understand it all." Doncha get it, sir? If Albert confesses that he (not "we") is ill-equipped unravel a mystery, what hope does that leave for the rest of us? Morgan's miscue illustrates how one omission can take the essence out of a strong phrase. My fantasy is to hear Billie Holiday (who died in 1959), in her early sixties and so alive in 1977-78, remaking "Secret O' Life" and getting every nuance right.
Last one: It seems ridiculous that I failed to understand all the lyrics to the theme song from TV's "The Flintstones" in the '60s. This is largely because I was quite young and didn't know how to use context to assemble the missing pieces. The correct couplet is, "let's ride with the family down the street/through the courtesy of Fred's two feet," referring to the car's lack of an engine.
So what did this goofy boy think the vocalists sere singing? Would you believe, "Rudolph, turn and see your friends compete"?