Name that Tune

I love music.  There's nothing like a great song to pick you up during the day, help you get a job done, comfort you in times of sadness and rock out to in times of joy and victory (for example, "We are the champions?" - let's go Phils!). 

Getting to know the lyrics of songs can be awesome.  You hear a song you like and you try to hear it as many times as possible so you can sing along to it.  Back in the day, we would "tape it" and do everything you possibly could to have your radio ready for when the song came on so you could hit record and then rewind the tape 50 times a day.  Then we got to burning CDs of favorite songs and instead of waiting for the tape to rewind, so you could simply hit the seek back button and your song was on without the wait!  Now in the age of iTunes - we can have any song we want in an instant!  Oh how things change!

What does not change throughout the ages is the fact that some songs, no matter how hard we try to sing the words, we just cannot figure out what they are saying.  Aretha Franklin's R-E-S-P-E-C-T comes to mind as well as 99% of hip-hop songs.  But there are a few examples that may not be as common:

For the last two weeks I have had great difficulty trying to get the songs from Mary Poppins out of my head.  I have been watching that movie since I was little and my sister, Regina, loved it more than any of us.  We watched it over and over again and sang along to all the songs - "A Spoonful of Sugar," "Step in Time," and "Chim Chim Cher-ee."  Our favorite one, though, was "Jolly Holiday."

Scene: Regina - about 4 years old and me - about 8 years old.  We are watching Mary Poppins in the "play room" (this is the room in our house that had all the toys in it - which to this day is still called the play room though the only toys left in there are Misty's!).  The part of the movie where Mary brings Jane and Michael to meet Bert and the four of them jump into the street painting.  Bert (and Regina) begin to sing "Jolly Holiday." 

Regina:
"When Mary holds your hand, you feel so grand, your heart starts beating like a BIG BLACK MAN.  Oh, it's a jolly holiday with Mary. No wonder that it's Mary that we looooovvvvveeee!"

Fast-forward 10-15 years and we still laugh at the thought of Regina - a tiny blonde-haired, blue-eyed, little girl - dancing around our play room singing her version instead of "big brass band."  Naturally when that part of the musical came, I was giggling to myself in the theater!

I shared this story with a lot of people when we were going to the show and everyone has told me stories from their past that involve people messing up the words that are just so hard to decipher.

My favorite, however, was a story told by my roommate, Molly.  She said that one of her guy friends from school thought the lyrics to the OutKast song "Hey Ya!" were:

"Shake it, shake, shake it, shake it like a corduroy pizza"

The song actually goes "...shake it like a Polaroid Picture."  I nearly died laughing when she told me that! 

A good song can be a pick-me-up, an expression of feelings, a way to make it through - but for now, it is the source of this week's "Giggle."