A couple of months ago, I tried Napster. They have a feature where you can check out Billboard charts from various years. On one I ran across the Hanson, uh, “classic”, “MMMBop”. I remember when this first came and it ended up being played about a million times a day. I streamed it and realized I couldn’t understand a damned thing they were saying other than the title!
I Googled the lyrics and tried to listen to the song while reading the lyrics. WTF? How can somebody mutilate a bunch of simple words like that?
Many, many moons ago, a co-worker gave me a copy of the Dead Kennedys’ “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables”. I had never listened to punk music and couldn’t understand a single word being screamed. It sounded like Jello Biafra was singing so fast, he didn’t have time to say the entire words. Oddly though, when I read the lyrics, he seemed to slow down considerably.
Oh, jeez…The number of artists I have that sing in English, but it’s not their first language, and they thus have inpenetrably thick accents are too many to count.
A specific example I’ve been listening to lately…MIA’s Arular…there’s, maybe, 3 songs I can follow properly without the lyrics in front of me (Banana Boat Skit, Freedom Skit, and Sunshowers). 10$ and Galang I can understand enough to get the general gist of the song. The rest…not a chance.
“Squeeze Me Macaroni” by Mr Bungle. Every single line is dirty either in implication or in actual words, but I didn’t catch hardly any of that just listening to it cause it’s sung so fast and weirdly (for instance, radically changing singing styles in the middle of a word.) If no one knew the lyrics it would almost pass being played on a regular radio station! But then I had to look up the lyrics… :eek:
for instance (you’ve been warned):
Chef Boy Ardee And the Three Musketeers
Shove Charleston Chews in their rears like queers
Holy moly, guacamole! said my Chips Ahoy
I’m gonna pinch a ravioli on the Pillsbury dough boy
I was listening to Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” on the radio today, and I realized that except for the “We come from the lands of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs grow” I cannot understand a word of it. And I like the song a lot.