# Literal complaints at lyrics

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literal-complaints-at-lyrics/827371>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [January 7, 2019, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literal-complaints-at-lyrics/827371 "2019-01-07T21:01:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 11

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**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literal-complaints-at-lyrics/827371/201 "2019-02-13T15:25:40Z")

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Terry Jacks’s Seasons in the Sun. Rod McKuen took a great lyrical French song and turned it into English crap.

We had joy, we had fun  
We had seasons in the sun  
But the hills that we climbed  
Were just seasons out of time

What is a “season out of time”?

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**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2019, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/literal-complaints-at-lyrics/827371/202 "2019-02-13T16:12:58Z")

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> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#):
>
> Bob Dylan is a musical hero of mine, but I’ll never forgive him for this clunky and lazy snippet from “Tangled Up in Blue”:
> 
> _The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keeping on  
> Like a bird that flew…_  
> mmm

I’m another huge Dylan fan, but I alway laugh at the first couple of verses of “A Hard Rains A Gonna Fall”  
It just felt like he was making it up as he goes along, like some sort of improv party game.

I met a …young child beside a … dead pony.  
I met a …black man…that walked a white dog  
I met a …young girl…she gave me a …rainbow

But then I hit the last verse, which has some of the most brilliant Dylan lyrics ever, then all is forgiven

I’m going back out before the rain starts a fall in’  
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest  
Where the people are many and there hands are all empty  
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters  
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison  
And the executioners face is always well hidden  
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten  
Where black is the color, where non is the number  
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it  
And reflect if from the mountain where all souls can see it.  
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking  
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing.

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