The other day “Africa” by Toto came on the radio. Very good song. It occurred to me that I didn’t know wha tthe hell they were singing in the third line (“She’s coming in twelve-thirty flight” as it turns out) so I looked up the lyrics. I was absolutely flabbergasted to read that the chorus goes,
I’ve heard this song like a hundred times and I was absolutely certain it’s “I guess the **rain’**s down in Africa.”
So I queue up the song on my iPod and… well, it still sounds to me like “guess,” not “bless.” All the lyrics sites I checked (okay, three of them) say “Bless” but they all steal from each other anyway so that doesn’t mean a lot.
“Bless” makes sense if you look at the song in a quasi-mystical way (which seems supported by the natural exoticism employed in the rest of the lyrics).
“Guess” doesn’t make any sense, unless the song was about a guy who approached you on the street, asking, “Tell me, is there rain down in Africa?” and you had to provide a non-authoritative, non-committal reply.
This song came on the music system the other day while I was at a restaurant with Mrs. M. and I wondered aloud just what the hell they were saying. I may have also offered a few unkind words as to the quality of the piece and to the musical merits of Toto in general.
Anyway, it sounds to me like “guess” too. I don’t think “bless” really makes much sense either. What kind of men-gods are these Toto people who bless the rain?
I like to think they they say “I flushed the drain,” “I messed with pain” or “I lost my brain.”
But the real reason I posted here was to say that this is, in fact, the Greatest Song Ever Written, by virtue of the fact that it manages to use “Serengeti”, “Olympus”, and “Kiliminjaro” within the span of four measures.
I’ll join in to add that I too always heard it as “I’ll miss the rains…”
I’ll also say I always heard the other line as “sure as Kilamanjaro rises like an empress above the Serengeti”. Which almost makes sense but I guess “Olympus” makes more…
