I'm Not The Man, I think I Am A Doll

I know you probably haven’t ever really given it much thought, but it’s something that in your life has probably affected you more than possibly anything else.

I’m talking about music, but in this case I’m talking specifically about LYRICS to music. Probably as far back as you can remember you were humming or singing along to, or god forbid, actually sitting own and LEARNING lyrics to some of your favorite songs. And how often has it happened to you that a favorite song comes along somewhere in public, and you, showing your best singing powers to your pals, start belting out the actual lyrics along with the song — that is, until you sing the wrong line (that’s in the NEXT verse), or worse yet, completely flub an important line and forget the most important part of it. Face it, it makes you look like a fool.

It probably makes you feel like a real dolt when you realise you never actually knew WHAT Elton John was singing in Rocket Man . . . what was it — “I think it’s going to be a long long time, uh . . .touchdown? brings me in a bit too fine?” Could that be it?  "I'm not the man, I think I am a doll" (that's what I always thought he was singing). Is THAT it? “Rocket Man, burning out a lot of lose alone?” Can THAT be it????*

These "misheard lyrics," by the way, have an actual name -- they're called "Mondegreens" and how they got that name is a very interesting story in itself.

It’s downright embarrassing though, isn’t it? Hey, think about THIS: I was once a professional musician, and I couldn’t remember the words to MY OWN songs, let alone anybody else’s. Even if I hadn’t also been playing an instrument at the same time (I always was) I STIll wouldn’t have remembered what the words were. Hell, I had enough trouble remembering whether we were supposed to repeat the chorus twice or four times (this can be crucial! If you’re going to call yourself a band! If you start playing the wrong chords when everyone else is playing the right ones!)

But back to lyrics. Having been on both ends of the stick, so to speak, learning them AND writing them, I feel I know as much as anyone can know about them. I know that through absolute DECADES of practice, I’m a walking rhyming dictionary; I can make up rhymes to words almost instantly, and almost at the same moment know whether they will be able to fit into the line that I want to write, let alone the SONG I am writing. For many, many years, one of the ways I have put myself to sleep is to take a word and just run off the rhymes to it endlessly . . . when I get bored of one word, I go on to another. There’s also the magic art of the pseudo-rhyme — most of the time it’s a copout because you couldn’t think of a real one, or there was no real one that you could make fit the meaning of the line, but a lot of the times it’s such a perfect fit in meaning that you can be excused a million times that it’s not a “hat” to a “cat” but rather an ”end” to a “when.”

Which brings me to famous lyrics. If I asked, "Name me the most famous song that contains lyrics in English of all time,” I think there may be a few arguments, particularly among the younger set.  But I really don’t think there is any but one single answer to that question: the song is “Yesterday,” by Paul McCartney (none of the others except possibly George Martin had anything at all to do with it).

I dare you to name me one more famous, one more played, one more interpreted and re-interpreted by others, one simply by dint of existence the most famous piece of music ever composed by any human being in any time period, ever, including Beethoven’s Fifth or in terms of written words, The Lord’s Prayer.

Go ahead: I dare you. There are many uniquenesses about this song: the fact that it is in English, not French or Russian; the fact that it is considered a pop or even a rock song, not a piece of Western classical music, and possibly the least considered but maybe most important component of the song: its complete, abyssally deep and all-encompassing sheer banality.

I don’t remember what an undoubtedly peeved and no doubt monumentally jealous John Lennon had to say about the song, but it couldn’t have been any more than a grudging, backhanded compliment, if anything at all.

But if you think about the lyrics alone, you are struck by the impossibly puerile emotivations (is that a word? If not, it should be), the almost childishly simple choice of rhymes, the meandering, nothingness of any true meaning, actually just kind of a string of words conveniently assembled to fill in an incredibly simplistic, naive collection of chords which are actually NEGATIVELY ENHANCED by the inclusion of a string quartet, the maudlin, shamelessly sentimental keening whine of a melody that after only a few listenings grates harshly on your ears . . . in other words, all the makings of possible the WORST piece of music ever penned by a human being.

I believe Paul even summed up the pure badness of the lyrics by, probably after being asked for the 200 millionth time of how he came up with the lyrics, said something along the lines of “I dunno, they just came to me, you know . . . “day” rhymes with so many words, you know, it’s really easy to just make up anything at all, really . . . I probably did it with a hangover on a bit of paper sitting on a train somewhere.”

Let’s look at them, and please, bear in mind that you are looking at quite possibly the most famous assemblage of human words ever compiled since the first proto-human uttered a grunt that actually meant anything:

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away

Now it looks as though they're here to stay

Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be

There's a shadow hanging over me

Oh, yesterday came suddenly

Why she had to go

I don't know, she wouldn't say

I said something wrong

Now I long for yesterday

Yesterday love was such an easy game to play

Now I need a place to hide away

Oh, I believe in yesterday

Why’d she have to go?

I don't know, she wouldn't say

I said something wrong

Now I long for yesterday

Yesterday love was such an easy game to play

Now I need a place to hide away

Oh, I believe in yesterday

That’s it? That is the sum of human capabilities, from the same folks who brought you e=mc2?

* For the curious, the actual lines in Rocket Man are “‘til touch down brings me round again to find” and “Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone”