In the Temptations song, “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” there are these lines:
Is the correct lyric “alone” or “a loan”? Both would fit the song and I’ve seen the lyrics written both ways. What’s the official answer?
I came in here precisely to make a joke about it being “a loan”, and I see that’s actually your question! How would it make sense that way? Do dead people leave "loan"s? At any rate, it would undercut the bitterness at his abandonment, neglect, and financial irresponsibility.
It could be that he left a note that needed to be paid off (maybe he got Mama to cosign). It sounds like they were “alone” long before he died. The note would be even more of a burden. The song works both ways but what’s the official version?
I have noticed the two possible lyrics. I prefer to think it’s “alone,” because it seems to fit a little better, but I am interested to see which is the correct lyric.
The first page majority opinion, via a google search on lyrics, prefers “all he left us was alone.”
Also, it’s just more clever as ‘alone.’ You expect someone to leave you an object, but instead he left them in a particular state. It’s a great lyric.
You could have at least waited until the third of September to ask. Then we could have goofed on it all day.
That’s a date I’ll always remember. It’s my brother’s birthday.
You don’t leave a loan, you leave a debt. If anybody wrote out the lyrics as “all he left was a loan”, it’s because they: a) were semi-literate at best; b) didn’t think about what the hell the lyric meant; c) made an innocent slip.
It is a small play on words. It means he left them with nothing tangible. All he did was leave.
Can you state that with authority? A site with the copyrighted lyrics maybe? I’ve Googled it and found sites with it shown both ways. I can see it anyway I want but I am wondering how the lyricist wrote it.
To hijack my own thread, can anybody think of any other lyric that is similar where the exact words as sung can have two different meanings? I’m not talking about innuendo.
Steely Dan’s Rikki Don’t Lose that Number. I have always thought of it as a song about a girl who flipped out because her friends were getting high. One gave her a joint as she was leaving, thus the song. Others hear it as a breakup song.
SSG Schwartz
While “a loan” works kinda sorta, it seems to me that the lyric writer was intending the wordplay and cleverness that “alone” conveys. I can’t state it definitively, but I’d wager rather heavily that’s what the lyricist intended.
I’ve found several references on Google that the lyric sheet says “alone,” but I cannot find the actual lyric sheet.
It’s also listed on this site of mishead lyrics.
Perhaps Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” with “Or steal my daddy’s cue and make a living out of playing pool” which could be taken literally as well as idiomatically.
Never, in all the years of listening to that song, did I ever think of the words “a loan”. Never. Not once. For one, loan doesn’t make sense at all in the context of the song. And two…the word play of “Alone” was perfect for an absent father.
No, it really doesn’t.
How many times in your life have you heard or read “he left her alone?” Approximately 50 kajillion, I would wager.
And how many times have you heard or read (the misheard lyric for this song aside) “he left her a loan?” None. No one actually says that. Now, you might hear/see “he left her with a loan to pay off” or some such, but not “he left her a loan.”
It’s wordplay akin to “I’m so broke I can’t even pay attention.” To construe it as “a loan,” is, I daresay, trying too hard to fit a square peg into a round hole whilst ignoring the obvious. Yeah, you can pound that peg in if you beat it hard enough, but why not use that nice round peg that fits perfectly?
Funny, in reading this thread I was thinking of this very same expression. Except I was imagining someone saying that it was actually “I’m so broke I can’t pay a tension” and coming up with some twisted rationale to make sense out of that.
It’s “alone,” no two ways about it.
“All he left us was alone” was, back in the early-mid 20th century, a way of saying of, “he’s gone & good riddance.” A common vernicular.
Love, Phil
You are my new hero. I will be stealing this for personal use.
Which generally means someone got it wrong, and the error got copied multiple times by undiscriminating folks who don’t bother to consider that they may be using an imperfect source. There are countless examples of song lyrics on Google that are flat out wrong, easy to determine by listening to the recording and/or reading the official lyrics, that have been spread onto a large number of sites this way. Even so, one can often get an indication of which is correct. In this case, Googling “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” “was alone” gets 3,050 hits, while “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” “was a loan” gets 275. It’s pretty hard to argue effectively that the latter is the right one.