Every now and then, I get into a mood where I want to listen to a particular style of music. I don't think there's any discernible pattern as to when I want to do this. I just seem to randomly decide to listen to a particular genre or artist. If I'm really feeling like that genre, I will listen to the same song on repeat for hours. It's not really that I love that one song as it is that I feel like listening to that particular sound or set of lyrics.
For this particular blog post, I'll point to an episode where I was listening to 1990's R&B. Again, I don't quite know how this started, but I did start listening to a few songs from that era. There were a few fun trips down memory lane in the course of that mix, since my adolescence was from that general time period. Let's just say that I knew more of the lyrics from memory than I expected.
Still, I didn't know all of them. When it came to Des'ree's "You Gotta Be," I couldn't quite remember part of the chorus. The "you gotta be" parts just came spilling out from my memory banks, but the rest of the chorus was just a blind spot for me. I remember trying to sing along at one point, hoping that the words would come to me. They did not, however, so I had to more or less substitute "blah blah blah" or "something something something" for the parts where my memory came up short.
The end result was "you gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together, something something something." I knew full well that those weren't the complete lyrics, so I just inserted sounds to keep the tempo going. It was all in fun, and I knew full well that there was a deficiency in my interpretation. Still, I was home at the time, so the Mild Wife overheard me. I will present to you the resulting conversation, below, as best as I can remember it:
Mild Wife: "Wait, what did you say?"
Me: "You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together"
Mild Wife: "No, not that part. After that."
Me: "Oh, something something something. I don't remember that part."
Mild Wife: "Love will save the day."
Me: "Oh, that's what it was. Meh, I got most of it right."
Mild Wife: "That's kind of the point of the whole song!"
So, yeah. She was right. Looking back on it, I would imagine that teenage-Me didn't find that particular line all that interesting, but he did think that the "you gotta be" parts were catchy enough to, well, catch my attention. So, the part that stuck, and could be recalled on demand, was the "you gotta be" series. That last part was just filler at the time.
Let's just say that the Mild Wife had a good, long laugh as we both realized that I had missed a key point in that song.
For this particular blog post, I'll point to an episode where I was listening to 1990's R&B. Again, I don't quite know how this started, but I did start listening to a few songs from that era. There were a few fun trips down memory lane in the course of that mix, since my adolescence was from that general time period. Let's just say that I knew more of the lyrics from memory than I expected.
Still, I didn't know all of them. When it came to Des'ree's "You Gotta Be," I couldn't quite remember part of the chorus. The "you gotta be" parts just came spilling out from my memory banks, but the rest of the chorus was just a blind spot for me. I remember trying to sing along at one point, hoping that the words would come to me. They did not, however, so I had to more or less substitute "blah blah blah" or "something something something" for the parts where my memory came up short.
The end result was "you gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together, something something something." I knew full well that those weren't the complete lyrics, so I just inserted sounds to keep the tempo going. It was all in fun, and I knew full well that there was a deficiency in my interpretation. Still, I was home at the time, so the Mild Wife overheard me. I will present to you the resulting conversation, below, as best as I can remember it:
Mild Wife: "Wait, what did you say?"
Me: "You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm, you gotta stay together"
Mild Wife: "No, not that part. After that."
Me: "Oh, something something something. I don't remember that part."
Mild Wife: "Love will save the day."
Me: "Oh, that's what it was. Meh, I got most of it right."
Mild Wife: "That's kind of the point of the whole song!"
So, yeah. She was right. Looking back on it, I would imagine that teenage-Me didn't find that particular line all that interesting, but he did think that the "you gotta be" parts were catchy enough to, well, catch my attention. So, the part that stuck, and could be recalled on demand, was the "you gotta be" series. That last part was just filler at the time.
Let's just say that the Mild Wife had a good, long laugh as we both realized that I had missed a key point in that song.
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