So I’m at a funeral today and the lady singing Amazing Grace sang “Saved the rest like me”.
My first thought was “OMG. I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I’ve thought it was “wretch” this whole time. I will have to start one of those Misheard Lyrics threads when I get back in the van.”
I forgot about it by the time I got back to my computer. But I googled it right now, and it would seem that I was correct. Thank god.
But anyway. What the hell is up with singing it the way she did? Is this a different version or something? Is she just an idiot? I would think she should know the freaking words. She seemed like she was part of the ceremony, like she came from the church or something. Any ideas?
My guess is that it is a vague part of a trend a friend of mine commented on. There was a time when many people’s favorite hymn was “The Old Rugged Cross” and now it is “Amazing Grace”–how wonderful it is to be saved without doing anything to deserve it is arguably overrated by certain segments of modern Christian society.
Other possibility, even though she was a part of the ceremony, she learned the song by rote, by listening, and either misheard it or heard it as someone else mis-sung it.
I don’t think I’ve heard anyone sing the lyric that way, but that doesn’t prove much.
Ooops, I hit Submit too soon. Maybe she didn’t like the word “wretch” (I think it’s a fine word myself, it’s even part of my domain name) and changed it on purpose. Maybe she heard someone else’s version and they changed it, as Eureka said. It must have been jarring to hear it changed.
[give an inch]
Anyone else know of songs with the word “wretch” (or variations) in it?
Yep, if mishearing lyrics makes one an idiot, then she was an idiot all right.
In her defense, (1) “wretch” isn’t all that common a word, and (2) “Amazing Grace” (or at least the first verse) is such a well-known hymn that the lyrics are seldom provided. If you know it (or think you do), why bother to look up the words? Still, I agree that she really should have known better—and if she did know better, but sang the wrong word anyway, that’s even stupider.
By the way, the writer of “Amazing Grace,” John Newton, was pretty wrteched: he was a slave trader before his conversion to Christianity.
Paul Robeson, in The Collector’s Paul Robeson, substitutes “saves a soul like me” for “saves a wretch like me” when he sings Amazing Grace. Presumably this is a deliberate change, since the rest of the lyrics seem unchanged.
It was made less ‘offensive’. That has happened to a lot of hymns, although I can’t think of any other titles right now. It even happens to praise choruses. A couple of weeks ago, we sang The Servant Song, and “Brother, let me be your servant”, was changed to, “Will you let me be your servant?”
Many American English language hymnbooks now change original lyrics to make them less offensive or more inclusive. This is easier to do if the hymn was originally not written in English.
Some examples of changed lyrics I have noted include the following:
From “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” The line used to read Born to raise the sons of earth, now it’s Born to raise each child of earth.
From “Joy to the World” one line that read “Let men their songs employ” is now seen as “Let we our songs employ”
I also remember a line from one hymn that originally read as “God in man made manifest”, now it’s “God in flesh made manifest”
Can’t explain why wretch is offensive–except perhaps in the sense that many people don’t want to be associated with a shameful, sinful past. I’m reminded of a book–perhaps Anne of Green Gables or one of it’s sequels where a young girl concludes that the minister must be a rotten person because he so often prays about being a sinner, lower than a worm, etc. She’s misunderstood him— he’s metaphorically rotten, not a secret theif or gossip, or adulterer.
The other, I can explain. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved the rest like me , I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see”
Amazing grace saved me, and Myron over there, and John up front, and Susie my best friend forever, and John Newton who wrote this song . . . .
If it (grace) saved the rest, why add the “like me”? And if it is being used collectively, why not “We oncer were lost but now we’re found…”?
Singing the song incorrectly doesn’t necessarily make her an idiot, but the “replacement” lyric makes absolutely no sense contextually, so singing this particular wrong version does make her look pretty stupid.
The more common change I’ve heard is “…saved and set me free”. I don’t understand it, either… It’s not like “wretch” is a scathing profanity, and it’s a pretty good literal description of the original writer, and a metaphorical one for all of us imperfect humans.
I have heard it both “saved a wretch like me” and “saved a soul like me”. I personally prefer soul because the word “wretch” actually sounds like the physical act of retching so soul just has a nicer flow.
I only recently learned that the original lyrics to “The Yellow Rose of Texas” refer to the singer as a black man (this doesn’t bother me much, but it does amuse me). The lyrics were changed in the 1950’s.
This doesn’t really annoy me so much as it amuses me. Songs change over time, as do stories, for various reasons (cultural, economical, whatever). Really, the only time that a lyric in a song was changed that really annoyed me was when I heard the Aggie Singing Cadets sing this line while singing the Spirit of Aggieland:
“We are the Aggies, the Aggies are true! We are from Texas A M U!”
The CORRECT line raises chin in a haughty matter-of-fact way is:
“We are the Aggies, the Agges are we! We are from Texas A M C!”
The guy leading the Singing Cadets changed the lyrics at the end to reflect that Texas A&M College had just become a University. That said, everyone EXCEPT for the Singing Cadets sings the song the CORRECT, TRADITIONAL way.
On an unrelated note, you can sing most of the poems written by Emily Dickenson to the tune of “Yellow Rose of Texas” because most of her poems, like the song, are written in Ballad Meter.
And “wretch” is preferable because it emphasizes how miserable the person singing found themselves before grace saved them.
It’s also singular, and “Amazing Grace” is a song about personal redemption, not about how everyone else was saved as well. Sure, God saved us all, but each person experiences that for themself, not as part of a sort of group hug.
I’m about the least religious person I know, so you can take this with a grain of salt.
Whenever I hear Amazing Grace, I mentally cringe when I hear the word “wretch.” I’m aware of the context of the word, yet I find it offensive that anyone would describe himself that way, either before salvation or otherwise. I once heard a children’s choir sing “save a child like me,” and I almost cheered whoever chose not to have childrren refer to themselves as wretches.
