Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
As we were driving to dinner with friends Saturday evening in the ol’ Honda Badonkadonk®, Mrs. R and I were listening to one of the country channels on Sirius. I forget which song it was or who sang it, but the first line of the chorus goes, “I should be sleepin’ ‘stead of keepin’ these long hours that I’m keepin”.
“That’s weak!” I observed.
“Em?” replied Mrs. R.
“Weak! If you’ve got to repeat the same word twice in a line to get it to rhyme, then you’ve got some creativity issues.”
“You ought to be a country writer.”
“I don’t want to be a writer, I want to head up the Lyric Police and have the authority to issue citations for wording that is clunky, shallow, clichéd or otherwise offensive to my sensibilities. Multiple violations could result in substantial fine and/or imprisonment.”
“Um.”
“Seriously, where in Nashville do you think I should send my resume?”
UPDATE: Just to tidy up, the song is, in fact, called “I Should Be Sleeping” and it was sung by Emerson Drive (not a band that I would call A-list Country).
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January 23, 2012 at 4:02 pm
Diane
“…wording that is clunky, shallow, clichéd or otherwise offensive to my sensibilities”
Pretty much describes all of country music, with a few exceptions.
And that’s from someone who LIKES country music.
January 23, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Robbo
Oh, I was just giving myself the widest possible prosecutorial discretion. I like country, too, and would never fault a song for those things that MAKE it country, if you know what I mean.
January 23, 2012 at 5:23 pm
April
I like the new name for your Honda. We slipped the song in at our wedding reception and the look on the parental faces was priceless
January 24, 2012 at 12:15 am
profmondo
I collect identical rhymes. My two “favorites” are from Blue Oyster Cult’s “Joan Crawford”: “Catholic schoolgirls have thrown away their mascara and chained themselves to the axles of big Mack trucks./ The sky is filled with herds of shivering angels./ The fat lady laughs, ‘Gentlemen, start your trucks.’”
and from Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”:
“Generals gathered in their masses/ Just like witches at black masses.”
One day I’ll write a post about my favorite awful lyricists, Yoko Ono and Peter Sinfield.
January 24, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Robbo
Yes, identical rhymes certainly would come under my jurisdiction. Now that you mention it, there’s one in particular that grates on me every time I hear it. I can’t think of what it is at the moment, but I’m sure it will suddenly appear in my mind like the demon king popping up through a trap door, probably at some inappropriate moment.
January 24, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Don
“War Pigs” is better in Latin.
One of the reasons I listen to Asian and European music is that I usually can’t understand a word they sing and thus do not hear how lame the lyrics are.