While listening to the oldies station, they played that old tearjerker “Rocky”.
You may remember the choruses. The first goes:
“Rocky, I’ve never been in love before.
Don’t know that I can do it.
But I’d like to lean on you,
Take my hand, I might get through it, through it…”
The second chorus:
“Rocky, I’ve never had a baby before.
Don’t know that I can do it.
But I’d like to lean on you,
Take my hand, I might get through it, through it…”
But then the third chorus goes:
“Rocky, I’ve never had to die before.
Don’t know that I can do it…”
Then all of a sudden there’s a riff that skips over to the next verse. I mean, what the hell happened? Did she drop dead in the middle of the verse right there? I mean, Jesus! “They told me she didn’t have long to live…” I guess so!
Seriously, did they think completing the chorus would be in bad taste or something? Or did they think the song was too long if they did the whole chorus? That skip just sounds weird, and that part’s always bugged me.
Any light shed would be appreciated. Or share your own pet peeve musical hiccups in songs that you know.
I can see her wanting to fall in love and have a baby but why would she want to die? So she would have no reason to ask Rocky to take her hand and help her this time.
What the fuck is up with “Everybody have fun tonight”? It’s cruising along minding it’s own business being a nice funky 80’s dance tune, then they stick a snippit from a totally different song in there that goes
On the edge of oblivion
And all the world is Babylon
And all the love and everyone
A ship of fools sailing on
aaaand then back to the other song they were playing like nothing happened.
I would think holding a hand might be comforting while dying. I can also think of a reason she’d want help through it, but I don’t wanna go all Kervorkian on everyone here.
That would be a weird musical hiccup if that’s the right lyric. I always heard it as “M’lud” as in a fast British way to say “My Lord” when addressing the magistrate. But I could be wrong. And if so it will sound weird to me whenever I hear it again.
There’s a strange hiccup in Tom Petty’s “Last Dance for Mary Jane”
Well, she moved down here at the age of eighteen
She blew the boys away, was more than they’d seen
I was introduced and we both started grooving
She said, “I dig you baby, but I got to keep moving … on”
Keep moving on
Apparently Petty wanted to have the rhyme of grooving and moving. And he also wanted to have the line end with “keep moving on”. But trying to split the difference didn’t work. When you hear it, it sounds like Petty forgot the lyrics for a second and then caught himself.
