For those who may be new to reading my blog, I do a special segment on the second Wednesday of the month called “Stupid Song Lyrics.” For previous episodes, click on “Stupid Song Lyrics” on the label cloud on the right column. This month I focus on lyrics that I place in the category of “almost stupid.” Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. But if they are not, they are pretty close. As always, enjoy.
1. John Denver, Sunshine on My Shoulders: “Sunshine almost always makes me high.”
My compliments to the late John Denver for not painting himself into a corner. For, if he had not inserted that all-important caveat “almost,” we might be led to think that any time the sun was shining, Denver was “high.” This could lead to obvious misunderstandings as well as possible criminal trouble. But he has cleverly given himself an “out.” I picture the following situation . . . “No officer, sunshine almost always makes me high. I’m fine now, I swear.”
2. Bruce Springsteen, Glory Days:
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar,
I was walking in, he was walking out.
We went back inside, sat down, had a few drinks,
But all he kept talking about was . . . Glory Days.
Whoa, hold on a second. There’s a logical disconnect here. If you were walking in, and he was walking out, then you both couldn’t have gone “back inside,” because you had not been inside in the first place. Unless, unmentioned in the lyrics, you went inside initially, remembered that you needed something out of your car, went out to get it, and on your way back in met your old friend. Then you both could legitimately be said to be going “back inside.” I hope this helps clear things up.
3. The Police, Don’t Stand So Close to Me:
It’s no use, he sees her, he starts to shake and cough,
Just like the, old man in, that book by Nabokov.
You’ve all read that book by Nabokov, right? I haven’t, and given the subject matter, I’m not sure I'd recommend it. Regardless, I’m guessing that this literary reference goes right over the heads of most victims of American public school education.
It’s no use, I’m stupid, I just say, “What the heck?”
Just like that, dumb guy in, that book by John Steinbeck.
4. At the end of James Taylor’s “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),” Taylor repeats the title line several times, and he throws in some heartfelt statements each time. One of them is:
How sweet it is to be loved by you . . . just like honey to the bee, babe.
This line raises a very significant question in my mind. That is, do bees eat honey, or do they just make honey? I always thought that bees only make honey, they don’t eat it. People eat honey, and it is very sweet. Therefore, shouldn’t the line be: “just like honey to the human, babe?” In other words, the sweetness of your love for me is like the sweetness of honey that I taste (and that the bee manufactures). The next time you hear this song on the way to work and find yourself singing along, try my “honey to the human” line and see what you think. Actually, I’m going to defer to my sister on this question because she is a bee keeper. Do bees eat honey, or do they just make honey? Regardless, I think Taylor could have done a better job of avoiding such ambiguity at the end of one of my favorite songs of his.
I thought you were just a little bit hard on John Denver. I always interpreted that line as “Sunshine almost always brings me joy”, and if it doesn’t, then it’s a pretty bad day! As for the Springsteen entry, well….he ought to have refused to sing the song until the writer added yet another full stanza clearly defining why his friend’s movement was either egress or entry, or whatever! Who’s Nabakov, anyway? Well, anything for a rhyme! As for “just like honey to the bee”, that reminds me of the saying “He drinks like a fish”. This gives fish a bad rap. Who’s to say fish get inebriated? Or even drink to excess occasionally?
ReplyDeleteSo there!!
Very silly. But that is what these Stupid Lyrics are all about right-a little fun at the expense of the artists. Sunshine pretty much always makes me feel good. Notice I qualify with "pretty much" because in August in Virginia, sometimes it makes you feel a little well done.
ReplyDeleteNabokov wrote Lolita. I think we all know about that story and how it relates to the Police song.
The silliness runs strong in you.
ReplyDeleteAnd aspiring beekeeper that I am, I can answer your question-- Bees DO eat honey. They make honey to mostly store it for the winter, although if they run into hard times before then, they might dig into it. When it comes time to harvest honey, I cannot take it all because then they will not have food to survive the winter. I will have to estimate how much to leave them, and how much I leave for them really just depends how quickly and how large the colony grows before winter.
jim—i admit that i had to look it up (lolita) a few days ago b/c i never knew what book sting was referring to. as you suggest, it looks like the plot of the book is kind of creepy. but then again, so is the police song.
ReplyDeletemissy—thanks for the insight. i find this fascinating. of course, i would be the kind of bee that started nibbling from the stash in october, and i’d have nothing left by the time winter started. then i’d be the big fat bee in the corner of the hive with a honey-eating disorder, and all the other little bees would make fun of me. i’d spend the winter trying to shamelessly mooch off of all the other bees, and trying to make friends. or just hibernating.
seriously though, do you think of questions like, should i be careful not to overfeed them so they don’t become soft and spoiled? and if they do run out of honey during the winter, is it okay to just squeeze a little sue bee in there to compensate? i can’t wait to see all of this.
thanks for the input!