“Just a Folded Up Leaf….She’s Like the Wind”: Confessions of a Lyric Slaughterer

Written by: Andrea Angileri

We’ve all done it….taken a perfectly good song and completely screwed up the lyrics.  When we were kids it was cute.  We didn’t know better.  As we got older some of us are old enough to remember the lyric insert inside the cassette tape or compact disc (young’uns that’s what ‘CD’ stands for).    With the lyric insert we were invincible, correcting our friends as needed.  These days we can Google search any song and find the correct lyrics.  I don’t usually care too  much about lyrics these days, except when the radio station bleeps out a bunch of words that I can figure out very quickly, realizing that I shouldn’t be hearing this in the van with the kids.  Lil’ Wayne’s ‘I Ain’t Got No Worries’…we all know what you stuck in your face…and you have no worries about this…but now I do.    In a different, somewhat more appropriate hip hop song  my husband guessed a lyric as ‘There goes the business’,  I thought it might be ‘There goes the beat drop’ and our preteen corrected us with ‘There goes the beast’.   We are in our 30’s…we really shouldn’t think we know hip hop lyrics.  We are much better quoting Rob Base’s ‘It Takes Two’.

The other day I was singing Train’s ‘Drive By’ in the car and found myself singing “Just a shy guy…lookin’ for a 2 ply” and then I stopped myself.  ‘Lookin’ for a 2 ply? Really Andrea…he’s looking for a 2 ply?’  He’s a shy guy…looking for a 2 ply.  A 2 ply of what?  Toilet paper?  I now envision the lead singer of Train sitting on the toilet waiting for somebody to pass him a square of toilet paper,….but he’s too shy to ask.   ‘Seriously Andrea?  You are wrong!  You are screwing the song up!’  That’s how I talk to myself…I’m kind of a bully.    He must be saying ‘Supply’ pronounced ‘Sue-ply’…..  No, he’s not… he is really saying ‘2 ply’.  This stupid Seinfeld conversation goes on way too long in my head, but it was a long highway drive which almost makes it seem… o.k.  A later Google search will reveal that it says, ‘Just a shy guy looking for a 2 ply’ …then the next line ‘Hefty bag to hold my love’.   Oh, it all makes much more sense now!  It was never toilet paper…it was a garbage bag.  I can now move on to the next insignificant drama.

Confession time: What lyrics will you admit to slaughtering?