lyrics

A Christmas Music Ethics Spectacular! [Second Stanza: Lyrical Incompetence]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In the first installment of this year’s Christmas music ethics review, I only plumbed the depths of the insulting lyrics in the Unethical Lyrics category. A much larger and more irritating sub-category lies ahead: incompetent Christmas song lyrics.Before I start, I must mention a lyric that now ruins a wonderful Christmas hymn for me, thanks to my sister. When we were children, she commented after hearing a rendition of the 19th century carol “O Holy Night,” “Why would I want to fall on my knees? It hurts to fall on your knees!” Then, year after year, every time we heard the song, she would interject a loud “OW!” after the lines,

Fall on your knees!O hear the angel voices!

I can’t hear the song now without hearing the “OW!” as well. But that lyric isn’t the lyricist’s fault. These are… Continue reading →

Just For Fun: Lyric-Writing Ethics!

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I’m writing a new musical legal ethics seminar that I’ll be premiering with my brilliant musician partner Mike Messer at the end of the month. It’s going slow: the trick is to simultaneously make the song parody lyrics funny as satires of the songs and to set out substantive legal ethics problems along the way. And the lyrics have to rhyme and scan.

Writing song lyrics is one of my many pseudo-useless talents that I have never figured out how to monetize significantly, but I am still a perfectionist about it. Competent lyric writing is becoming a lost art, and there were hacks polluting the art decades ago even when the Sondheims, Simons, Berlins, Dylans and Joels roamed the plains like buffalo.

I’ve collected examples of terrible lyric-writing for decades, and my White Whale is the Most Incompetent Recorded And Widely Heard Lyrics Ever. So far, nothing has topped, or rather ducked beneath, the execrable theme song of the popular TV Western “Bat Masterson” (starring Gene Barry), which you can listen to in the YouTube clip above just as TV viewers could hear in 108 episodes from 1958 to 1961.

The lyrics are incredibly bad. Let’s examine them:

Continue reading →

CORRECTION! GEICO Ethics Dunce RETRACTED! It’s All Frank Sinatra’s Fault!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Emily Litella1There is apparently a diabolical law regarding Ethics Alarms that the more trivial a subject is, the more likely I will screw it up, or it will be a hoax, or something else. The previous post, chiding GEICO for allowing the lyrics of “You Make Me Feel So Young” to be massacred by Peter Pan in its current TV ad is an epic example.

First, I posted a video of Sinatra singing the song as an example of the right way. It is hard to find a video of anyone BUT Sinatra singing it, for he made it one of his standards. Then LoSonnambulo, a frequent commenter here, properly chides me for using a crooner who regularly changed lyrics as the paragon of lyrical certitude. Yes, that’s pretty stupid. Thus I resolve to change the embedded video, and what do I find? I find that the non-English, slangy abomination, “You make me feel so young, You make me feel so spring has sprung” did not originate with GEICO, or Peter Pan, but Frank Sinatra, who sang the polluted lyric in the earliest recording I could find. It appears to be his invention.

It gets worse. Because Frank sung it like that, everybody started doing it: Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney, Jack Jones, everybody.  It’s the wrong lyric, damn it!

But I can hardly blame GEICO for not fixing the version in its ad when most who are familiar with the Sinatra version think those are the lyrics.

Never Mind.

UPDATE (4:00 AM): ARRGH! I just woke up with the song in my head, and realized what Frank was doing, or thought he was doing, with this lyric change. Since I know the correct lyric, I assumed that substituting “so” for “as though” or “like” meant that “so” was supposed to mean “as though” or “like” and so doesn’t mean “as though” or “like,” which is why I also assumed this was some kind of Jersey slang. But no! Frank altered the lyrics more than I realized. What his version is, is a parallel construction comparison:

You make me feel so young,

You make me feel so “Spring has sprung!”

In Frank’s version, “Spring has sprung” is presented as a synonym for “young,” as it replaces “young.” In the original, “You make me feel as though Spring has sprung” is a related but separate thought, as it should be, because feeling young and feeling like it’s Spring are not the same thing. If they were, then so would make lyrical sense. For example, if I write the a song that goes,

You make me feel so old,

You make me feel so Spanish gold…

That works, because Spanish gold is old. But Spring springing isn’t young. It’s a bad lyric change. It makes the song worse.

Nonetheless, I suppose that a singer who didn’t know the real lyrics, and maybe even a listener, would hear the song as making sense, sort of.

There.

Maybe I can get back to sleep now.

Trivial Ethics Dunce That Is Driving Me Crazy Anyway So I Have To Mention It: GEICO

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The current GEICO ad campaign, “It’s what you do,” has already scored an ethics foul; the latest one is less substantive. Nonetheless, it is in the increasingly common category of “They just didn’t care,” which is a subset of disrespect and lack of diligence. Besides, it involves a great American song.

In the GEICO ad featuring Peter Pan annoying former classmates at a high school reunion ( the kid playing Peter is terrific), the spot concludes with Peter entertaining the class while flying over their heads with a mike and singing, “You Make Me Feel So Young,” a 1946 classic composed by Josef Myrow, with lyrics written by Mack Gordon. It begins,

You make me feel so young.
You make me feel as though (alt. “like”) spring has sprung.
And every time I see you grin,
I’m such a happy individual.

But for some damn reason, Peter sings,

You make me feel so young.
You make me feel so spring has sprung..

..which isn’t even English, and definitely isn’t the lyric. How hard would it have been to fix this? GEICO just couldn’t be bothered, so the song is misrepresented in its first widespread media us in decades.

Here’s the song sung the right way, Peter, you little snot:

UPDATE: See here.

On Peter Pan, Pippi Longstocking, And Ethics Of Applying Political Correctness To Art And Literature

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Cultural events earlier this month brought to light, on two continents, the problem of maintaining the integrity of art and literature under the onslaught of political correctness.

In Sweden, a controversy has erupted over the re-broadcast of a 1969 television adaptation of the Pippi Longstocking books, the children’s classics authored by Astrid Lindgren. The Swedish national TV station, SVT, announced that it is revising a scene from the 1969 television series about Pippi  which she says her father is “king of the Negroes,”a direct quote from one of the stories. Believe it or not, this has set off a contentious national debate.

The family has approved the station’s  desire to change the TV version, but is keeping the term in future editions of the books. In 2006, the family added a preface explaining that today, the word is considered “offensive,” but that when the books first appeared, “Negro was a common expression for people with black skin who lived in other parts of the world than ours.” That’s a sensible solution. Period and context is important in art and literature: the urge by some to constantly purge the world of any reference, word or attitude in past creations that seem out of place now leads to a form of cultural self-lobotomy. Erik Helmerson, a columnist at Dagens Nyheter, an influential Stockholm newspaper, called the changes a form of censorship. “I’m very sensitive to the fact that people are offended by the N word,” he said in an interview. “I’d never use it myself.” He even called revising the TV series  “a huge interference into freedom of speech.”  “Where do we draw the line? What do we cut and what do we keep? Who should decide? Who needs to be offended before we cut a word?” Continue reading →

“Finishing the Hat”: Sondheim, W.S. Gilbert, and Expert Malpractice

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Stephen Sondheim’s “Finishing the Hat” is a fascinating reflection on a remarkable career and the craft of making musicals by the greatest living master of the form. In the course of recounting his formative years, triumphs, failures, and duels with producers, authors and composers, Sondheim also critiques the lyrics of his predecessors, contemporaries and role models—as long as they are dead. In a nod to gentility or cowardice, the only living lyricist he subjects to his expert critiques is himself.

Sondheim is a tough judge, as one might expect from a composer/lyricist who meticulously measures each vowel sound and stressed syllable for maximum effect. He is also, by virtue of both his reputation and technical expertise, an influential one. The lyricists he grades highly in the book, such as Frank Loesser, Cole Porter and Dorothy Fields, are likely to have their reputations burnished by his praise, and those he slams, like Lorenz Hart and Noel Coward, will suffer by comparison. Because of this, Sondheim had an obligation, as a respected expert in his field, to make each case carefully and fairly. To his credit, Sondheim seems to recognize this, and all of his critical discussions of an individual lyricist’s style and quirks include specific examples and careful analysis. We may disagree with Sondheim as a matter of personal taste, but it is difficult to argue with his specific points, because they are backed up by examples, technical theory, and the weight of his authority.

It is therefore surprising and disappointing to see Stephen Sondheim slide into expert malpractice when he undertakes, clearly half-heartedly, a critique of the lyrics of W.S. Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. Continue reading →