Down with song-lyric fascists

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 20:00:00 +0000

Mrs. Pajiba-hyphenate’s biggest pet peeve around the house is that it drives her absolutely bonkers if, while idly sing-songing about the house, I botch the lyrics to the tune I’m belting out. It’s an annoyance that she’s passed on to my 5 year old, whose forehead veins pop whenever I mangle a lyric. He insists that I sing it again until I identify the correct lyrics, and it’s only then that the vein will subside.

It’s a very serious problem in our home, and I suspect it’s a problem in other houses around America: Song-lyric fascists are ruining our fun. Because here’s the thing: Song lyrics are constructs. They are guidelines. Song lyrics, like the Constitution, are living, breathing words. We bend them to our will. They are not meant to be taken literally. In fact, song lyrics are often indecipherable junk written to accompany the melody and rarely to stand on their own. They are not poems. We do not derive meaning from their words; we experience the music. The mood. The feeling. The joy or the sadness. The lyrics glue the music together, but they are not fixed.

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Down with song-lyric fascists