February 24, 2012

Mondegreen Moments

hearthook.jpgThis week I have been bedeviled by the tricks of the hooks and the hearts of popular music. I keep telling myself that most popular songs are not written to be true, but glib; that they run on what's call 'the hook.'

Distracted by numerous lyrics that all seemed to sending me a secret message, I decided to investigate the functioning of "the hook" and came in my Googling to a song by Blues Traveler from their album "Four."

"Four" is an album I've had for many years (A memoir of a brief, but doomed, May -- September romance some eight years back.) which has a song on it called "The Hook." Looking up the lyrics, I saw -- for the first time -- what the refrain actually says:

"Because the hook brings you back
I ain't tellin' you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely."

It's a common problem with the lyrics to pop songs that they are often misheard by the listeners. These ear blips are called mondegreens. Neo has written about this in an illuminating manner @ neo-neocon: Mondegreens

I have a old friend who has bought apartments in New York City by exploiting the phenomenon in books. Mondegreens are commonly explained by the facts of loose recordings, production choices, and the volume at which all the instruments play and the singers sing. It is more simply explained by the fact, as noted by my old friend Ethan Russell about Mick Jagger many years ago, "Well, you know, he does slur a lot."

And he does, and they all do. Singing words requires, as we learn in the sacred book of Bob Dylan, that you bend and shape the words to the measure of the music. Success in pop music is found, after all, in the singer not the song.

The other thing that drives the hearing of a song is the mood of the listener. You hear things in songs that aren't ever there just as you see things about your house that are long gone. In each, what we hear and see in down times is essentially the ghosts of ... love, etcetera. And coming or going, love has a lot of etcetera attached to it that it pulls along behind it like the chains on Marley's ghost.

All of this is a periphrastic way of coming to what I had heard sung in the refrain to "The Hook" for many years. I never heard the word 'hook.' Instead I heard the word 'heart,' as in:

"Because the heart brings you back
I ain't tellin' you no lie
The heart brings you back
On that you can rely."

I've listened to that song, with attention or just as background, probably around a hundred times over the years. I've even been to a Blues Traveler concert in New York City that had it on the set list. In all those iterations I've never heard 'hook,' but always heard 'heart.' Now I know the truth of the lyric, but frankly, I'd rather not have known.

Seen whole the lyrics to 'The Hook' are all about the plight and pain of being a pop star. One of thousands of such screeds in which our celebrities bemoan the curse of wealth and fame their rise has brought to them -- the endless angst of those who fear they had to 'sell-out' in order to 'buy-in.' I try, but somehow I just can't feel this pampered pain.

"Heart over hook" is one of the many lessons of the Susan Boyle phenomenon that stormed the world this week. In the end, we really don't want the hook to bring us back. We want the heart to bring us back:

"Because the heart brings you back
I ain't tellin' you no lie
The heart brings you back
On that you can rely."

It might be a mere mondegreen, but it makes a much better song.

Posted by Vanderleun at February 24, 2012 2:38 AM
Bookmark and Share

Comments:

HOME

"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

I might add a comment or two regarding the misunderstanding of rock lyrics...

The most powerful pop singers of the middle 20th century (Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday come to mind) never ever left their audience in doubt as to their meaning. Sinatra said more than once, when queried about the secret to his phrasing, "I mean it."

Admittedly I don't sing rock; but I have always made at least part of my living singing Classical music and jazz and country. What's going on with me is that I wish powerfully to be heard; I have something to say, and this may be the only time anyone will ever listen. But I don't/can't write music, and when I sing I want the composer to be understood (and in the best of singers' music, the words make the notes easy); I want only to share this thing that moves me so much. If somebody has to consult a lyrics sheet to understand the message, I'm not getting it done. The difference is between "Listen to me" and "Listen to this."

I don't mean to highjack the thread. Susan Boyle sings like an angel, and that goes far beyond having a good voice. And I'm pretty sure she means it.

Posted by: Rob De Witt at April 19, 2009 6:49 PM

Rob-

Yes, but...

first of all you have to be a lover of R&R. for me with some bands the lead singer/front man's voice was another instrument in the mix. And imagine finding out through the lyric sheet that the songwriter actually had something to say worth hearing.

But it helps to burn one for the "state of mind" and also to LOVE R&Roll!!!

Posted by: adagny at April 19, 2009 8:16 PM

Rob-

Yes, but...

first of all you have to be a lover of R&R. for me with some bands the lead singer/front man's voice was another instrument in the mix. And imagine finding out through the lyric sheet that the songwriter actually had something to say worth hearing.

But it helps to burn one for the "state of mind" and also to LOVE R&Roll!!!

Posted by: adagny at April 19, 2009 8:16 PM

adagny,

You're right, of course, and it's all just rock and roll, as they say...

A couple of points here: give a listen, if you haven't already, to Billie Holiday and Lester Young for an example of why the jazz guys thought Billie sang like a horn player - another instrument in the mix. And like I say, imagine getting the songwriter's poetry in the context of being stunned by the sound, all at once. Like it's all happening for the first time, the universe creating itself.

Other good examples are Bach arias, where the singer is accompanied by a solo violin or oboe playing a whole other melody simultaneously, and following the words causes you to experience the harmony almost viscerally while being in thrall to the meaning of the text. Chill inducing, especially if you're the singer.

Also, while I haven't sung much R&R, I can promise you an awful lot of Blues and Bluegrass has been assayed soon after burning one ;-}

It's a good thing we don't all like the same stuff, too. Otherwise, as an old guy once told me, we'd all be driving Chevrolets and shooting Winchesters.

Posted by: Rob De Witt at April 19, 2009 11:52 PM

That was great.

Posted by: Doug at April 20, 2009 9:59 AM

"Is it not strange that sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?"

Shakespeare got there way ahead of all of us.

Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at February 24, 2012 4:36 AM

It may even be that many great songs are better appreciated without understanding whatsoever the language in which they are written. This is especially true of Elton John's work.

Posted by: james wilson at February 24, 2012 9:17 AM

Appreciated or mocked, Mr. Wilson. I can think of a number of Bollywood's greatest hits worthy og being appreciated for sheer comic relief (search buffalax on Youtube and find out what happened to the goats.)
I once misunderstood the lyrics to England Dan and John Ford Coley's song, "I'd really like to see you tonight." For years I'd been hearing, "I'm not talkin' 'bout the linen, and I don't want to change your mind, but there's a warm wind blowing the stars around, and I really want to see you tonight."
When this song came on the radio, I brought the subject of this odd-sounding line up to my husband.

I asked him what's so important 'bout the linens? Were they having a fight about bedsheets? Did she have one pattern picked out, but he wanted something else? I went on and on about that line in the song until my husband said, "It's: I'm not talkin' 'bout movin' in, and I don't want to change your life."

As Emily Litella would say: "Never mind."

Posted by: Jewel at February 24, 2012 10:12 AM

So, when I was three years old and appearing in a Sunday School pageant where all the little kids were belting out "Onward Christian Soldiers," to the delight of the parents watching intently, but I was singing at the top of my voice, "Christmas on my shoulder," was I having a Mondegreen Moment?

Posted by: Sara (Pal2Pal) at February 24, 2012 12:01 PM

After "Honky Chateau", Elton John would have been better off switching to Klingon.

Posted by: mushroom at February 24, 2012 3:41 PM

"'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense; the sound must seem an echo to the sense."

I could never figure out what that word (phrase) was in the England Dan/John Ford Coley song, and I ended up looking it up about a year ago. It wouldn't have been so tough to make it out if they'd put the accent on the right syllable ("melanin? they're singing about skin color?").

That song is, like the movie *Same Time Next Year,* filled with those pretty, pretty lies the grownups used to tell themselves and each other in the 1970s. You know: full of beaches and sunsets and broken hearts, and yet endlessly appealing on the surface. Like that movie, "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" is a guilty pleasure to this day, and yet I know plenty of people got burned over the pretense that one could engage sexually, yet remain emotionally aloof; it's patent nonsense.

What is one to do? To this day, I love a nice California sunset, and I've got a secret soft spot for men with long hair, or at least sideburns.

And, yes: "the hook" does sound like "the heart" in that song. I suspect that it was sung in a deliberately ambiguous way.

Posted by: Joy McCann/Little Miss Attila at February 24, 2012 5:15 PM