Songs I Don't Understand

Antonin Dvorak wrote “Songs My Mother Taught Me”, and Felix Mendelssohn wrote dozens of “Songs Without Words”. To those notable musical works I humbly add my own literary one, entitled “Songs I Don’t Understand”. This is an attempt at explanation as well as a request to all of you readers for help. If any of you know what any of these songs do mean, please email me or leave a comment about them. If any of you don’t understand them, either, but like them anyway, please don’t be offended by any of my commentary.
I first heard our first example not very long ago. I was in Old Navy, waiting for my sister to be done with her purchases. Naturally, since the female members of my family have adopted my old saying of “looking is not buying” (remind me to write about this sometime) even when they don’t buy, I had plenty of time to observe the rich specimens of human nature that were around me. While so doing, I could not help but listen to the music that was loudly playing throughout the medium-sized store. I wasn’t particularly enjoying what I heard, preferring a Chopin nocturne to contemporary alternative any day. But the words of one song caught my ear and my interest.
The song mournfully asked, “Are we human – or are we dancers?” I don’t know about you, dear reader, but this question has never been among the most pressing that have crowded my mind. In fact, I’ve never asked it, and even if I did, I would never have regarded it as an “either-or” proposition. I see no ugly conflict inherent in such a state of affairs in which it is possible to be both human and a dancer. My level of angst apparently still has not risen to that of the poor singer, who expressed that he was “on his knees looking for the answers”. Now, let me be the first to avow that God is surely interested in every little thing we do and worry about, but let me also say that I don’t think He spends as much time on stupid questions. I hope the singer resolves his issue, but acting on a strong hunch, I would also plead with him to put it down, whatever it is he’s smoking, and back away – slowly, slowly, that’s it – and try to do something productive like enroll in a basket-weaving class at his local community college.
Let’s now move on, because we have more songs to consider. The next case of lyrical abstruseness is one from the years before my birth, and it has gotten a lot of good-natured ridicule from my family. Its chorus declares, “I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so!” Just about the only thing this song does for me is show why its creators never made it all that big. I myself have not yet been turned Italian (I really don’t think so) by force of the sheer volume of pasta I have eaten in almost a quarter-century, so you will pardon me if I go out on a limb to proclaim that a sudden change of ethnicity is hardly realistic.
Doubtless some will think I am meddling with sacred texts when it comes to our next selection. However, I feel it is my duty to call them as I see them, and this I will do even if the Beatles are the offending party. The song I have in mind today (for the Fab Four were repeat offenders) is “Yellow Submarine”.* I really need go no further than the chorus – “We all live in our yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine” – but I will delve a little deeper anyway, because the full effect is not gained unless we study some of the verses. The opening verse talks about “a man who sailed to sea” who himself talks about “his life in the land of submarines”. Very well so far – I get it, and I’m satisfied. John and Paul lose me in the very next lines – “so we sailed up to the sun” – whoa, now, hold on a minute and let me off the funny bus (or submarine, if you like). You just talked about a normal sailor, and now you’re going to the sun? Forgive me if I’m skeptical, but it gets a little warmish in those regions.
But it gets worse. When they sailed up to the sun they “found the sea of green” where they “lived beneath the waves in our yellow submarine”. I don’t know about all that. Wouldn’t any water, green or otherwise, completely evaporate on the sun’s flaming shores? And they weren’t alone – “and our friends are all on board, many more of them live next door”. So not only are they on your submarine, but they’re also in some unspecified structure nearby? In this world of magic, they also “live a life of ease” and have “all we need”. I suppose this includes plenty of oxygen tanks, because the air’s a bit thin out there (even when it’s not feeding a giant ball of fire). Their description of “sky of blue and sea of green” strikes me as a little ignorant of the appearance of outer space – and I think even people like them, in the early Space Age of the 1960s, should have known better than that. Maybe I’m supposed to sit back, “let it be”, and believe this tall tale for the sake of “art”, but I just can’t force myself to keep this song off my list. I simply can’t “imagine”, and it’s not easy if I try.
Two more songs briefly round out my collection of songs I don’t understand. The first leaves the realm of those I don’t intellectually grasp and enters that of those I literally can’t understand with my ears. It happens to be Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets”; those words are really the only ones in the song I can understand. Even then, I don’t know of any Benny who has played for the New York Jets, and I certainly don’t see what in particular my favorite comedian, Jack Benny, has to do with jets of any kind. Since Sir Elton is a tad creepy to me, I’ll move on to the last number and be done with this entry.
When I was knee-high to a small child (I am now knee-high to most adults), I used to sing in my crib Randy Travis’ song “Diggin’ Up Bones”. I will for now ignore the fact that I have since sought forgiveness for that ignorant time in my life when I liked country music. I will only say that I truly believed Randy meant “Diggin’ A Phone”, and I sang it that way. It seems I inherited from my mother the same malady that caused her to believe (up until only relatively recently) that when they sang “They Tell Me of an Uncloudy Day” in church, they were saying “They Tell Me I’m an Uncloudy Day”.

*Author’s Note: I decided to throw this in as an aside, because it doesn’t really fit anywhere else. I personally think yellow is an awful color to paint a submarine. Even if one does make an allowance for the ghastly color schemes of the 1960s, there is still no good excuse for it. It serves no military purpose whatever, unless you intend to do a little reconnaissance in a bowl of macaroni and cheese. But as I do not possess any credentials at all in design or decorating, I will leave and make way for someone who does.