What's that guy saying?

It's kind of funny that I should be one of the TFCers asked to write about music this month. It's kind of funny because I have no talent in that regard. I can't play an instrument, can only sing on key sporadically, and whenever called upon to take part in rhythmical clapping as part of a large group, eventually I find myself clapping at beats that - obviously - no one else is hearing.

Then, too, there's the problem of me being one of the oldest, if not *the* oldest, TFCer - I could practically be The Crypt-Keeper here! This means that a lot of what I like - Frank Sinatra, Warren Zevon, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull - is likely of little interest to teens. Now I do listen to the radio in the car. The problem with that though is that DJs so rarely tell you who's singing what anymore, so even when I like something I have no clue about who I'm listening to. I'm forever finding myself trying to sing lyrics to other people, hoping they can tell me the arist/title so I can go out and buy the CD. Since my singing is of questionable quality, and since I have a habit of getting the lyrics wrong, this process can take quite some time.

Which brings us to the problem of lyrics.

From the time I was little, I had trouble deciphering lyrics. And it doesn't help that as I've grown older, I've become slightly hard of hearing, meaning my phone conversations make me sound like Manuel, the Portuguese waiter on that old show "Fawlty Towers": "Que?" "Que?" "QUE?" When I was young, and my older brother and I would have Mom play the radio in the car, I'd be singing along in my happy little private world, only to have my brother say, "What did you just sing?" So I'd tell him. So he'd tell me that what I was singing wasn't the same words the guy was singing. So I'd ask him what the guy *was* singing, only to be met with a superiorly mysterious, "Whatever he's singing, it's not what you're singing." What a vicious circle!

There's a song I've really liked the last few years on the radio and I finally even learned the title of it: "Lonely No More," by Rob Thomas. But there's a line in it that confused me for the longest time. I *thought* he was singing "Open up to me - let me do your girlfriends." And all I could think of was, How can you "doing" my girlfriends make me want to go back to you??? Maybe, if you've been "doing" my girlfriends, *that's* the reason you're so lonely? It was a puzzle. Well, I finally learned that Mr. Thomas is *really* saying, "Open up to me, like you do your girlfriends." Ah, the light goes on!

This is all a longwinded way of getting to the question of the day: WHAT LYRICS HAVE YOU REPEATEDLY SCREWED UP IN YOUR HEAD, ONLY TO FIND OUT LATER THAT THE TRUE LYRICS CARRY A FAR DIFFERENT MEANING? (Or anything else you want to tell me about music or writing or life.)

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