The morning I wrote this essay, I was in my still-dark house preparing to give the dog his first walk of the day. As I did so, I sang an especially stupid song \u2014 \u201cMississippi Queen,\u201d which was recorded in 1970 by the now forgotten band Mountain. I was singing it loud.<\/p>\n
This is the song that begins with the lyrics:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cMississippi Queen. If you know what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
No, of course I don\u2019t know what he means. He hasn\u2019t provided me with any context that would enable me to know what he means. Maybe if he\u2019d used complete sentences, I would have known what he meant.<\/p>\n
As I was doing my early morning singing, I complemented the sloppy lyrics with some sound effects, uttering, from time to time, noises such as UGHH or GUDD or DUGGUHH; I don\u2019t remember what.<\/p>\n
My wife yelled down from upstairs, \u201cWhy are you singing that?\u201d And then she started trying to imitate my sound effects. She was really asking me why I was making these ugly noises \u2014 and making them so loud and so early in the morning.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t think of a good answer, so I said something like, \u201cOh, I just thought it was a way of celebrating the fact that another day has begun.\u201d<\/p>\n
I spend a lot of time in my house singing stupid songs: in other words, singing popular songs. I do this because my wife expresses astonishment at her sense that I know the lyrics of every popular song ever recorded.<\/p>\n
Once I heard her make this claim of my extraordinary knowledge, I started pulling up, from the treasure house of my memory, every dumb song I could think of \u2014 \u201cDelta Dawn,\u201d \u201cMagic Man,\u201d \u201cThe Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia,\u201d \u201cHow Do You Do?\u201d \u201cWatchin\u2019 Me And Scottie Grow.\u201d I sang them all, front to back. I ripped through the Neil Diamond repertoire. After all this time, I\u2019ve still never found a song more stupid than \u201cYou\u2019re Having My Baby.\u201d That one gets sung a lot around the home.<\/p>\n
I mainly do this to demonstrate to my wife that I have memorized an awful lot of stupid lyrics. Every time I can pull something like, say, \u201cBaby Ima Want You,\u201d out of my head, I figured I\u2019ve demonstrated this marvelous ability again.<\/p>\n
For the songs that are so stupid they merit repeat performances, I feel it\u2019s a little blah to keep singing them straight over and over. So I subject the dumb songs to dramatic alteration. I\u2019ve already described what I did, on one particular morning, to \u201cMississippi Queen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another song I especially like to mangle is Mac Davis\u2019 anti-classic \u201cBaby, Don\u2019t Get Hooked On Me.\u201d You may be unfortunate enough to know the chorus of this song, which begins,<\/p>\n
\u201cBaby, baby, don\u2019t get hooked on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, when I sing that, it gets quite a bit different. My version usually goes something like this:<\/p>\n
\u201cBaby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, don\u2019t get hooked on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
My wife sometimes makes the mistake of asking me why I sing it like that. That\u2019s my opportunity to make up a story. I say Mac Davis originally wanted to record the song that way. But the musical innovation made the studio heads nervous. They were afraid the extreme repetition might spread through popular music and break their stranglehold on the pop song format. So they refused to let Davis release his daring version. But you can still find it on demos if you look hard enough.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, I do it the backwards way around. Before I start singing, I say, \u201cHey, do you know how the Beatles originally wanted to record \u2018I Saw Here Standing There\u2019?\u201d It\u2019s always as if the record industry were in league against The Beatles \u2014 or whoever it might be \u2014 to prevent them from recording the stupid song the way they wanted to. I think if I tell these stories often enough, with enough embellishment, some of them will become legendary.<\/p>\n
It might be asked \u2014 as a matter of sociological or anthropological curiosity, if nothing else \u2014 why I do know the lyrics of such pap as \u201cDelta Dawn\u201d or \u201cI Never Promised You A Rose Garden\u201d word for word. Is it that I have a really good memory?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think so. It\u2019s just that I\u2019ve always listened to the lyrics of songs. Why not? They\u2019re there. They\u2019re part of the song. My ears are working. Why not listen?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always been that way with me. When I used to go to church, I was always the one guy in the church who was actually listening to the sermon. Why not? I\u2019m there anyway. I might as well hear what the guy has to say, no?<\/p>\n
One can occasionally learn at least little things by following this simple, common sense approach. One learns, for instance, that regardless of how often people use Bruce Springsteen\u2019s \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d as a patriotic anthem, the song is an anti-war song. It\u2019s obviously an anti-war song. There\u2019s nothing ambiguous about the lyrics. Here\u2019s a taste:<\/p>\n
\u201c \u2026 They put a rifle in my hand,<\/p>\n
\u201csent me off to a foreign land<\/p>\n
\u201cto go and kill the yellow man \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCome back home to the refinery.<\/p>\n
\u201cHiring man says, \u2018Son, if it was up to me \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWent down to see my V.A. man.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says, \u2018Son, don\u2019t you understand?\u2019 \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHad a brother at Khe Sahn,<\/p>\n
\u201cfighting off the Viet Cong.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re still there. He\u2019s all gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
How does a person get patriotism out of that? I\u2019ll tell you how. He never listens to the lyrics. (More to the point, I guess, he only listens to the lyric that grabs his sluggish attention: \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Springsteen is one of the few songwriters who can put food for thought into a popular song. Even a song as dopey-sounding as \u201cHungry Heart\u201d has some pretty thought-provoking ideas. Just listen to the words and you\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n
I pay attention to song lyrics\u00a0 \u2014 and even to the worst song lyrics humankind has had the misfortune to hear \u2014 because I think it\u2019s probably a good idea in general to pay attention: at least to the degree that one can. If there is something to life, and I pay attention to what\u2019s going on, there\u2019s at least a chance I may catch a glimpse of that something before it speeds past me.<\/p>\n
And one learns, even from the worthless things. Perhaps the most singular thing I\u2019ve learned about stupid lyrics is that they defy analysis. For once, there\u2019s a phenomenon of life that it\u2019s pointless to think about. Pop lyrics could be thought of as providing a relief from the ongoing chore of analysis.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve become more and more aware that I\u2019m winding down my life, I\u2019ve become even more disappointed in the lyrics of pop songs. I\u2019ve tended to think that if I could find something enduring \u2014 something worth having lived for \u2014 I might find it in old movies, and, in particular, the great screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. After all, all the people who were in these movies are long since dead. Before they died, did they look at or think of something in these movies, and conclude, \u201cThat was worth living for\u201d?<\/p>\n
In these old movies, songs are much more important than they are in today\u2019s movies. Often the stars sang the songs. For some time now, I\u2019ve been looking over the lyrics of songs from the old movies to see if I can find in them some transcendent message.<\/p>\n
But the results are discouraging. One of the songs that\u2019s sung most often in old movies is \u201cThe Old Oaken Bucket.\u201d A hundred years ago, this piece of junk was probably the most popular song in the U.S. It was, in fact, adapted from an idiotic popular poem about the great sentimental value of \u2014 yes \u2014 an old oaken bucket that the poet had used to draw water up out of a well when he was a boy. The less said about it the better.<\/p>\n
In \u201cIt Happened One Night,\u201d which some consider the greatest screwball movie, the passengers on a bus sing, \u201cThe Man On The Flying Trapeze.\u201d Come on.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe flies through the air with the greatest of ease,<\/p>\n
\u201cThe daring young man on the flying trapeze.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not much transcendence there.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t help to look at the lyrics of the great songwriter of the screwball comedy: Irving Berlin. Most of the songs are about one of two motifs: I love Sue and she loves me and isn\u2019t it wonderful? \u2014 or, I love Sue and she doesn\u2019t love me boo hoo hoo.<\/p>\n
Deep down, I\u2019m not surprised by this. Those are the two motifs that have been the stuff of Western popular songs for as long as they\u2019ve been around. (I don\u2019t know how long they\u2019ve been around, but they\u2019ve been written down in notes for about 700 years.) Once in a while, there\u2019ll be a songwriter such as John Dowland who can, like magic, make lyrics that transform those most banal of motifs into something beautiful and fulfilling and deeply insightful \u2014 perhaps something worth having lived for.<\/p>\n
I may wind up deciding that there\u2019s nothing better I can do with the time remaining than to listen to Dowland songs over and over.<\/p>\n
By the way, just in case anyone was wondering, I don\u2019t listen to popular songs. I hope you have more respect for me than to think I spend my time doing something like that. However, I won\u2019t mind singing \u201cI Saw Her Standing There\u201d a few dozen more times \u2014 and doing everything within my vocal power to make it sound more stupid than it did the first time I heard it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s amazing. Think about it. A man looks over and sees a woman. She\u2019s standing. His heart goes boom.<\/p>\n
If I hadn\u2019t listened to the lyrics, I would never have known that hearts go boom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The morning I wrote this essay, I was in my still-dark house preparing to give the dog his first walk of the day. As I did so, I sang an especially stupid song \u2014 \u201cMississippi Queen,\u201d which was recorded in 1970 by the now forgotten band Mountain. I was singing it loud. This is the [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[38,893],"yoast_head":"\n