LET'S GET LYRICAL

I love to sing. I don't have a good singing voice, but my kids tell me I do a mean Axel Rose in 'Sweet Child of Mine'. So I guess '80's glam rock is my strong point. One of the hazards of being a singing fool, is that inevitably I will get the lyrics wrong from time to time. In my defense, many times the artist is nearly impossible to understand, so I figure they are just asking for it. I blame my mom for this actually. She used to replace the lyrics of songs she felt were 'inapropriate', with some she felt better about. How can a person be expected to be a stickler for lyrical perfection, when her own mother taught her it was fine to just sing it the way you hear it?!? For example, I was 14 before I realized that Kenny Roger's 'The Gambler' didn't say, "you never count your BLESSINGS when you're sittin' at the table, there'll be time enough for countin', when the DINNER'S done." I was with some friends, going to the mall or something, when the song came on and I began to sing these made-up lyrics. Imagine my embarassment! It was a long time before I heard the end of that one. It was a popular song in it's day! Everyone (except me) knew that it went, "you never count your MONEY, when you're sittin' at the table, there'll be time enough for countin', when the DEALIN'S done." Yes, the song was about gambling, the title after all, was The Gambler, but my mom didn't agree with gambling, so she made the song all about dinner.


I also think it's funny when you could swear the lyrics go a certain way, and then later find out you were way off! One of my favorite things is to listen to my kids in the backseat of the car trying to sing along with a cd or the radio. It's funny what words they will put in based on their age, and scope of the world around them.
My kids are great about coming up with replacement words for swears in songs they like. Squish (our dog's name) can replace a swear word starting with Sh, gosh, and dang, are always great lyrical censor words, and sometimes just yelling BLEEP at the offending word is enough.

The worst offending band of all time, I think, is Aerosmith. My worst interpretation of song lyrics was way back when Aerosmith released 'Dude Looks Like a Lady'. I tried and tried to figure that one out, but all I heard was... well I can't even repeat it here! I think they just allow for Steven Tyler to sing gibberish for a certain percentage of each of their songs!


I guess that's the great thing about art... we can all interpret it in our own way!