Joe McConnell
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Let’s blame it on the high school musical, not the movie series, but an actual live show, where my youngest teenager line danced at the end of summer term. The kids from her middle school put on Without brakesthat slightly madcap tale from the early ’80s about repression in a small American town, famous above all for the song that gives the film its title and for the unusual performance of Kevin Bacon in the title role.
All licenses for Hi Oliver! had apparently sold out, so this throwback, complete with plaid shirts, cowboy boots, and Bonnie Tyler waiting for a hero, was what we got in its place. AVsceker the disappointment of not being able to help our daughter rehearse some of the best lines at the theater (“Oi Fagin, these sausages are moldy,” “Shut up and drink your gin”), we spent several weeks watching her learn the moves while we mangled the lyrics.
For the record, the title track, a celebration of letting loose on the dance floor, didn’t break into the charts years ago with the line “Please, Louise, cut me off at the knees.” But aVsceker singing it a couple of times, as an acceptable approximation, it stuck. It’s the family “arrangement,” if you will. And why not? If friends or family members shame you for a similar habit, as you throw tantrums and twirls in the kitchen singing old and new tunes, then my advice is to simply “Shake it Off,” as Tay-Tay would say. Bakers bake, bake, bake, bake, bake, to paraphrase Ms. SwiVscek, and we need to feel uninhibited while we do it.
“Those aren’t the right words at all,” the diva herself observed with a stony expression in a charitable parody. And sure, making things up when you can’t decipher or remember the correct words may hurt some ears, but really, who does it hurt? Hawaiian singer-songwriter Jack Johnson isn’t sitting in the backseat of our car as we all sing along to a tune we’ve dubbed “Red Wine, Big Steaks, Big Lots of Cheese” (or, if you want to be picky: “Red Wine, Mistakes, Mythology”). Admittedly, it could give him auditory indigestion if he were there to suffer from it.
Being silly is allowed, and it makes me nostalgic for my 80s bedroom, with its Habitat rug and David Bowie posters. Innocent times.
Growing up, mangled lyrics were a regular feature of the chart countdown shows that accompanied my Sunday aVscekernoon homework marathons: maybe that’s why I cling to this nonsense. Insisting that Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites” should be renamed “My Ears Are Alight” was a running joke on Capital FM in that era. Who can forget the plaintive tones of Paul Young’s “Every Time You Go Away (You Take a Piece of Meat With You)”? Being silly is allowed, and it makes me nostalgic for my 80s bedroom, with its Habitat carpet and David Bowie posters. Innocent times.
Of course I would never dream of disrespecting the lyrics of the saintly David: we all have a red line. But anyone else is an easy target. Apparently, “Chiquitita” by Abba is one of the most oVsceken misunderstood: “Take out your teeth, tell me what’s wrong.” Beautiful. Especially in the era of the perfectible and ageless Abbatars of Voyage theatrical performance.
There’s even a name for these badly heard and badly repeated impostor song fragments: the homophonous phrase that replaces the original lyrics is known as a mondegreen. How fitting, and now that I know I’m basically named aVsceker the phenomenon, I’m fighting the defense case even harder.
Harmony can suffer when people become obstinate in challenging official lyrics (not me, of course). The man in our house only discovered this summer that Sister Sledge haven’t been confused by an unclear result in a disco contest all these years, and they certainly haven’t been singing “I wonder why . . . he’s the greatest dancer” (the actual line is “Oh, what, wow”). This discussion has gotten pretty heated. But strange private reinterpretations are just the humble non-showbiz person’s cover version.
And literary tradition embraces borrowing and twisting one’s influences. Some might think it cheating to try to improve on the words of a Nobel laureate, but my last example, donated by a colleague at the Vscek, is so wonderful it should be conclusive. Bob Dylan himself would surely fall silent and marvel at the beauty, pastoral mood and spiritual connection to nature evoked by perhaps the greatest mondegreen of all time. Get out your guitar and sing, please, in a nasal voice: “The ants are my friends, they’re blowing in the wind.” Case closed.
Miranda Green is deputy editor of the Vscek. Robert Shrimsley is absent
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