Lyrics that Stress the Wrong Syl-LA-ble

There’s a Dan Fogelberg song that was a hit back in 1975 called “Part of the Plan.” It’s a good tune that I’d forgotten all about until recently, when a friend of mine gave me a copy of the album Souvenirs. I listened to the opening track and scratched my head a bit, because while I remembered the tune, I still didn’t know what the heck Fogelberg was saying during the chorus. Was he mentioning an exotic city somewhere? A bar? A dance I’m unfamiliar with?

No, he was saying “One day we’ll all un-DER-stand,” stressing the wrong syl-LA-ble. It sounded weird when I was six. It sounds weird today at age 56.

And it brought to mind additional cases where songwriters have taken huge liberties with their lyrics, asking the audience to basically shrug off what is clearly artistic license gone awry.

On my podcast recently (episode 74), we featured a song called “Mirage Zone” by Hot Mama Silver. In preparation for the recording, I listened to the song multiple times, not knowing what it was called, and I didn’t figure the title out until I read it. The singer sings, “MEER-age Zone,” instead of “Mir-AGE Zone,” and it’s the most important part of the tune! The title! Hot Mama Silver did themselves no favors with this one.

I thought of some other tunes that stress wrong syllables for the sake of the melody, and some of them are hits - fantastic songs in every other way.

Stevie Wonder takes all sorts of liberties with the syllables on his amazing song, “I Wish,” the most egregious being in the chorus: “Why did those days e-VER have to go.”

The first line of Alanis Morissette’s breakout hit, “You Oughta Know,” stresses the wrong syllable:

“I want you to know, I’m hap-PY for you,” and she goes on to sing the words eloquent-LY and ba-BY. But hey, there’s no denying the song’s greatness. I still remember hearing it for the first time en route from Detroit to Muskegon, Michigan, and I was floored. Now, you could make the argument that the odd stresses in this song mirror the singer’s seething anger, a case when what one says doesn’t come out calm or controlled or correct.

You could argue that, but Morissette is a repeat offender, as a contributor to this link highlights. It was pointed out that she outdid her mis-syllabic self on the song “Uninvited,” (another song I like):

“I am fla-TERED by…”
“I have sim-PLY”
“An un-for-TUN-ate slight.”

Ugh. Yeah, I like the tune, but that’s pretty bad.

Another hit song with a misplaced stress is Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” when they sing, “When the rain wa-SHES you clean you’ll know.”

The above-referenced link of syllabic stresses has a lot more examples, including several I hadn’t thought of:

Eric Clapton, “Won’t you be my FOR-ever woman.”

Stevie Wonder again, from “You Are the Sunshine of My Life, when he sings, “Because you came to my res-CUE.”

The Beatles “Old Brown Shoe” with the line, “My love is something you can’t RE-ject.”

The list could go on and on. But what are we do make of it, especially if you’re a songwriter? Should lyrics always be sung the way we speak? Probably not, but I would say most of the time, yes. If you’re purposely stressing a wrong syllable to be clever or for comedic effect – a sort of “wink” to the audience – then I think it can be not only justified, but downright genius. One contributor to the above thread wrote about Ira Gershwin employing stresses for comedic effect in the song “It Ain’t Necessrily So”:

“He made his home in
that fish’s ab-DO-men.”

That’s great! And I imagine that showtunes are full of these types of examples. Hip hop and rap, too.

But many of the above examples seem to simply be laziness. When a word didn’t fit the meter, the songwriter just stuck with it even if it sounded odd. That certainly isn’t the ideal. No one is denying (or at least I’m not) the merits of each and every song I mentioned above, but I’m confident that they would all have benefited if the offending lyrics had been replaced by words that fit the stresses naturally.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

But now I’m wondering how many misplaced stresses I’ve written in my repertoire. There are probably a few!

Randy Newman’s Bad Love at 25 Years

Everything I write all sounds the same
Each record that I'm making
Is like a record that I've made
Just not as good

In 1999, this line from Randy Newman’s “I’m Dead (And I Don’t Know It),” the third track from his album, Bad Love, could have been interpreted as a funny, self-aware lyric from the mid-50s composer who recognized that his best stuff was behind him, but I tend to think that Newman may have viewed the lyric with a degree of irony, because he probably realized that he was recording some of the best songs of his career. Other Newman records get more love – Good Old Boys, Sail Away, Little Criminals and Trouble in Paradise, but for me, this is his masterpiece, the culmination of everything he’d perfected over the years: witty lyrics, intricate orchestration, deft observations of history and society, and shifting moods, the latter gift likely developed over the previous two decades of writing for film. I’ve read some comments on-line about how he missed the boat on this release, but I think those listeners should sit down one more time with a drink in one hand, the lyric sheet in the other, and savor the brilliance of Bad Love.

Produced by Mitch Froom (whom he’s continued to work with on two subsequent albums), Bad Love is twenty-five years old now, and I am now a year older than Newman was when he recorded it. I’d like to think that means that my best work may still be ahead of me, but dang – that Newman was able to record an album this good at age 55 is amazing. Then again, it may have been exactly the age necessary to address the song topics with such directness and deftness: this isn’t an album that he could have made in his 20s.

Newman is known for writing songs in character – often disreputable ones, at that – but in Bad Love he inserts more of his own life into the lyrics than previous albums (save for the first several tracks from the autobiographical Land of Dreams). In the opening song, ”My Country,” Newman observes the culture of watching TV in US society, but then in the final verse, he discusses his own relief when his house empties and he’s able to switch on the tube and tune out:

Now your children are your children,
even when they're grown.
When they speak to you,
you got to listen to what they have to say.
But they all live alone now,
they have TVs of their own
but they keep on coming over anyway.
And much as I love them,
I'm always kind of glad when they go away.

I sent this lyric to a friend of mine a few years ago, and she hated it, like it was a personal affront to parents everywhere. Me, I think it’s hilarious.

More personal is the heartbreaking “I Miss You,” a song he’s introduced live with this terrific setup: “This is a love song that I wrote for my first wife while I was married to my second…scared ‘em both!” An ode to a relationship that failed, but with lingering feelings of love and regret, it’s a killer tune, and I marvel that as much as Newman has made a career out of singing in character, the most interesting character may be himself.

Even in the masterwork, “The World Isn’t Fair,” in which Newman first summarizes Karl Marx’s political philosophy before having an imaginary conversation with the man himself, Newman inserts a comedic story about his own life to illustrate just how unfair the world has remained despite the hopes that communism may have initially generated:

Karl, I recently stumbled
Into a new family
With two little children in school
Where all little children should be
I went to the orientation
All the young mommies were there
Karl, you never have seen such a glorious sight
As these beautiful women arrayed for the night
Just like countesses, empresses, movie stars, and queens
They'd come there with men much like me
Froggish men, unpleasant to see

Despite the insertion of himself into some of his lyrics, there’s plenty of Newman’s trademark in-character songs, the most successful being the second track on the album, “Shame,” in which Newman plays a jealous, aging lover of a younger woman. He banters with his conscience, portrayed by background singers who interrupt his ramblings with the reprise: “Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame…”  He responds,

Could be right, I sunk pretty low this time

Ultimately, he tells the singers in his head to shut-up and offers a line that cracks me up each time I hear it:

You know, I have a Lexus now,
and I don't get out much
You know what I'm saying
Come on home

In “The Great Nations of Europe,” Newman gives us a somewhat comedic but also mournful history lesson on colonialism and its affect on The Guanche, a people who inhabited The Canary Islands until the 1600s:

Now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone
You've never seen anyone so gone
They're a picture in a museum
Some lines written in a book
But you won't find a live one no matter where you look

Musically, Newman succeeds at many genres, from mournful ballads, an orchestral-backed march (“The Great Nations of Europe”), country-tinged rock (“Big Hat No Cattle”), American roots (“I Want Everyone To Like Me”), Latin-leaning ballad (“Better off Dead”), but somehow it’s all held together by Froom’s generally spartan production, with Newman’s vocals far out in front of the mix, few audible effects applied.

If there’s one modest miss on the album, it’s the penultimate track, “Going Home,” but at 2:06, it’s really just a brief interlude before the final song, “I Want Everyone To Like Me,” a funny number with a tinge of truth to it, and it’s fitting that Newman concludes his album on a personal note.

I want everyone to like me
That's one thing I know for sure
I want everyone to like me
'Cause I'm a little insecure

If I had to pick one Newman album to take with me to a desert island, Bad Love is the one. Some of Newman’s contemporaries continued to put out solid efforts late in their careers, (Jackson Browne’s Standing in the Breach" James Taylor’s Before This World, Paul Simon’s So Beautiful, So What), but Bad Love may be the best among them.

Pursuing Happiness

The pursuit of happiness. Nice idea, but it’s a phrase that’s fraught with pitfalls, and all the more in our age of advertising and social media.

What exactly is happiness, and should it even be a goal? I spoke with a friend of mine a few months back who questioned whether people’s desire to be “happy” hasn’t blocked the perhaps more important pursuit to live life “meaningfully.” Are we basically trading in difficult, long-range pursuits for short-term pleasures? What about working hard at something? Of struggling? Of accomplishing something you didn’t think you could do? Of being resilient under difficult conditions? For those types of challenges, at any given moment you aren’t likely to say that you’re “happy,” but it may be those types of experiences that lead to the greatest feelings of achievement and satisfaction.

In today’s world of social media and advertising, it’s hard not to fall in the trap of constantly comparing one’s life to others. Case in point: I have numerous friends who travel extensively around the world, and when we get together it’s natural for our discussions to include some details about their experiences. I often leave these conversations questioning why I don’t travel more.

But the answer is, because I don’t really want to. I have other stuff I want to do. So why then do I still have that nagging feeling? It probably has something to do with the way humans are wired. There’s a good reason why The Ten Commandments include the edict: “Thou shall not covet.” This isn’t a new thing.

I read an interview with comedian/writer Samantha Irby in The New York Times a while back, and she said something very affirming for me:

The thing where whatever you aspire to is a thing we all should aspire to — I hate it. That kind of messaging just exists to make people feel bad. When you flatten everything into “be happy,” it’s like, what does that mean? It means a different thing for you than it does for me.

Her message really hit home. We don’t all have to be doing the same thing. And we don’t have to take other people’s experiences as models to subscribe to.

But this can be easier said than done. I’ve had numerous discussions with friends and family members who’ve distanced themselves from social media due to its ability to make users feel inadequate and unhappy, and I think this should be STEP ONE in the FEAR OF MISSING OUT RECOVERY PROGRAM. When you’re not constantly being bombarded with photos of what a wonderful time other people are having, it’s easier to pursue the stuff that you want to do without the nagging sense that you should be doing something else.

(An aside: it’s also important to note that what you see on social media isn’t the full story. No one is taking photos of family quarrels, delayed flights or child tantrums.)

The 1980’s version of social media was advertising. I think of the old Carnival Cruise commercial with Kathie Lee Gifford singing, “If they could see me now.” (Talk about selling FOMO!)

I remember watching this commercial wondering why my family didn’t get to go on cruises. (Answer: because it would have been a disaster!). For decades, advertising kept telling me how amazing cruises were, and several friends said the same thing. Then, one day, I actually went on a cruise. It was okay. It met the needs of my particular circumstances, but I won’t be going on another one.

Sometimes what’s being sold to you isn’t actually what’s best for you. Go figure.

So go do what’s best for you, what’s meaningful to you, and try do so with a sense of confidence.

So Long, Paul Auster

One of my favorite authors, Paul Auster, died last month, and it was one of those deaths that had me glum for a few days. No more new books from this brilliant man. He published his last, Baumgartner, just six months ago, and I devoured it in a few days. It may not have been his best work, but each of his books had something to offer, and I regret that I’ll no longer be able to experience the pleasure of reading a book of his for the first time.

I first learned of Auster by happenstance. His wonderful novel, The Brooklyn Follies (and a good place to start for the uninitiated), was displayed on the “New Fiction” section of my local library, and I found its cover compelling. A man stands at the corner of a crosswalk peering into a plastic grocery bag. Is he lamenting having forgotten to purchase something? Did a carton of eggs break? I don’t know, but I was drawn to it. Chalk one up to the lost art of browsing (it just isn’t possible to do so on-line with any efficacy).

And so began a love affair.  In fact, I took a line from Brooklyn Follies for my 2016 song, “You.”

I think of Nathan Glass and his Book of Human Folly
All the blunders and pratfalls, embarrassments, the foibles, oh good golly
But you.  I wouldn’t change you.

The first and second lines are all Auster (except for the “oh good golly”) and I thank him for the inspiration.

As much as I loved Auster’s fiction, I found his memoirs positively fascinating. In 2012 I blogged about his book, Winter Journal, a one-of-a-kind memoir that defies convention. 

“(It)describes a nonlinear history of Auster’s physical body: the injuries it sustained, the physical pleasures, the scars – both mental and physical – it endured.  At various points, Auster describes the different sensations and actions that his body (and all of our bodies) have experienced:

‘Your body in small rooms and large rooms, your body walking up and down stairs, your body swimming in ponds, lakes, rivers, and oceans, your body traipsing across muddy fields...’

He spends 52 pages identifying the twenty-one permanent addresses his body has lived in, ten pages describing the plot of a movie he identifies with (and he does it so well that I feel I’ve already seen the 1950 film, D.O.A.), and a page and a half listing the countless activities of his hands (“brushing your teeth, drying your hair, folding towels, taking money out of your wallet, carrying bags of groceries...”).

Unconventional?  You bet.  But so much more interesting than a play-by-play of his life.”

The start of Auster’s published career was also a memoir, The Invention of Solitude, a haunting recounting of the aftermath of his father’s death, and in 2013 he published Report from the Interior, a companion peace to Winter Journal, in that the latter is a history of Auster’s physical body while the former recounts his psychological development through adolescence.

These are the books I will likely keep going back to. His fiction is fascinating (besides Brooklyn Follies, my favorites are The Book of Illusions and Man in the Dark), and – admittedly – sometimes over my head, but his memoirs speak to a shared humanity and mortality that we all reckon with, and one that I find endlessly compelling.

Thank you, Paul, for your significant contribution to defining the human condition. Peace.

The Pros and Cons of Solitude

“All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you'll be quite a lot.”

-        Dr. Suess, from Oh, The Places You’ll Go

I just took an on-line quiz to determine once and for all if I’m an introvert, an extrovert or somewhere in between (what’s sometimes called an ambivert). For people who know me, I can appear to be an extrovert, but I recall taking the Myers-Briggs personality test in grad school as part of a broader class discussion, and my classmates responding with shock when my test results labeled me as an introvert. To them, I was an active and willing participant in the social life of our close-knit group: I even co-chaired our social committee that led to activities like baseball games, scavenger hunts, and other escapades. To them, that didn’t jibe with the label introvert at all.

But I knew better. I knew that while I indeed craved a social outlet every day – even today, I get anxious if my calendar is lacking pre-planned activities – I also needed alone time, and that without it I’d be one unhappy camper. This is why big gatherings for weekend getaways fill me with anxiety, even if I’m the one who planned the activity! By contrast, sometimes all the interaction I need in a day is a quick conversation with a neighbor and a hello from a cashier.

So, while I think of myself as an ambivert, the test I just took says quite unequivocally that I’m an introvert. Fair enough. I’ll embrace the label.

Which leads me to solitude, from which all my creativity flows.

I think back to being a child in the 70s with two older siblings who went to school while I was left to fill my day with my mother whose parenting style was fairly hands-off. Sure, I played with friends from time to time, but a good chunk of my day was spent as a solo act: I dug up ant hills in the back yard, copied maps, built houses with Lincoln Logs, created abstract pictures with a Spirograph, and collected shotgun shells in the field behind our house (I shit you not – my parents let me wander around a field by myself with a paper grocery bag, collecting yellow, red, orange and green shotgun shells. What could possibly go wrong?).

And I wrote songs. Even before my family inherited my maternal grandparents’ piano, I was composing songs in my head, sometimes sharing them with my classmates in the back of the bus – funny songs about smoking cigarettes (quite edgy for a 6 year-old!) and one about Ohio that sounded oddly like George Baker Selection’s “Paloma Blanca,” one of those AM radio hits that shaped my early ear.

The songwriting never stopped. Shortly after the spinet was delivered to our door and placed in our living room, I was composing tunes, including two that my father painstakingly wrote out on manuscript paper for me. I still have them. One really isn’t a tune at all, but just an organized discovery of triads, but the other is, I must say, kind of impressive. I was no Mozart, that’s for sure, but the song has a good melody and cleverly transitions from a major key to its relative minor – not bad for an 8-year-old.

But all of this was happening because I was alone. Because there was nothing good to watch on TV. Because my older siblings had better things to do than entertain their baby brother. Because my parents weren’t ones to fill up my time. Because my next-door neighbor traveled to Florida for weeks at a time and there was no one to hang with. And because there was no such thing as the internet, smart phones and home computers.

Solitude. I’ve often stated that the two ingredients required for creativity are boredom and silence. This isn’t entirely true – musicians, actors and writers can be extremely creative in group settings – but it rings true for me. As a teenager I worked in retail, and it drove me crazy when my inner songwriting jukebox was unusable because of the Muzak pumping through the speakers overhead. My Orwellian nightmare would undoubtedly include my being exposed to continuous streams of music. Even good music for long periods of time exhausts me the same way conversing at a party for three or four hours can.

I wrote about my need for solitude in my song, “Falling by Degrees.”

I need silence
I need space around me
And it’s okay
It’s got nothing in the world to do with you

And this lyric alludes to the downside of solitude. My need for solitude has probably been misconstrued by some as being standoffish, and I know it’s kept me from exploring fun activities at times because they seemed like too big of a hassle. I’ve said no to outings – especially ones for multiple nights – because I feared I wouldn’t have a way to escape and recharge my batteries. And saying no to activities can snowball; when invitations are rejected, they eventually stop coming. Over the years, I’ve learned to be more careful to say yes to the right things and no to the wrong things, but it’s a tricky balancing act.

These days, as an empty nester whose wife travels quite a lot for work, I am careful to try to plan something social every day. Not ALL day, but a lunch, a phone call or two, a hang with the neighbors…something, just enough to get me out of my head.

And that’s probably the biggest con of being an introvert – being unable to get out of one’s own head. I’ve been there, and it’s not always a pretty place.