Congratulations to Wednesday’s winner, GScarfe! The lyric, “in a river or a creek,” is indeed from Irving Berlin’s, “Cheek to Cheek.” What a wonderful, wonderful melody! And what an awful, awful lyric. It literally sounds like Berlin picked up a rhyming dictionary, asked himself, “What rhymes with cheek,” and grabbed the first few words that popped up and built his song around them. “Oh, I love to go out fishing, in a river or a creek?!” What does that have to do with dancing, or falling in love on a dance floor? Even if one likes to fish, who would word it that way; “in a river or a creek?” Just awful.
The line about mountain climbing is equally awkward and misplaced. And, when describing how good dancing makes the singer feel, Berlin says his cares “seem to vanish like a gambler’s lucky streak.” Cares are bad, at least as depicted in this song. A lucky streak is good, especially if you’re a gambler. Why not write, “seem to vanish like a gambler’s losing streak?”
This song has always amazed me because Irving Berlin was such a great lyricist. One of the best, if not the best, song writer in the history of recorded music. Yet, the errors in this song are so basic. Sure, every song isn’t going to be a home run, but how can a man with his talent not see the glaring flaws in this lyric? Bizarre. And it’s a beautiful melody! A wonderful song! The melody is so great it’s kept this song alive, despite the awful lyric. And, yet, there is that, “Heaven, I’m in heaven” part where the words perfectly match the music, and the sentiment. And the way the chorus leads up to the second mention of heaven, and back into the original theme, “…will carry me through, up to heaven…I’m in heaven…” is genius. Pure genius. I’ll never understand how the mind who could write this melody, and so many other great lyrics AND great parts like “heaven, I’m in heaven” within this very song could not see the awkwardness of the fishing and mountain climbing lines.
Oh well, on to today’s entry. I’ll need the title and the group:
Pika, pika, risky business
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First!
Doofus. You cannot claim first on your own thread…
“Swamp,” by Talking Heads. Click, click and seeya later…
Berlin could write clunkers too. Just watch “The Coconuts” for proof.
Porvaznik!!! You are becoming the Khan to my Kirk, or am I Khan and you Kirk? Either way, I knew we’d have trouble with you from the get go. You are correct, Sir, it is “Swamp” by the Talking Heads.
Gonna swallow you up…
Alright, wise guy… what movie was “Swamp” featured in?
Easy, “Stop Making Sense.” Hey, you called me wise guy.
Without cheating, I’m going to say/guess “Risky Business.”
After cheating, I see it was also in “King of Comedy,” sadly the only Scorsese besides “New York, New York” I don’t own…yet.
Lars,
I know Babe Ruth struck out looking sometimes to, everybody has an off day, but what I don’t get about “Cheek to Cheek” is the whole song is not a clunker. The melody is fantastic and the “heaven, I’m in heaven” part is right up there with the melody, as well as a few other segments of the lyric. So the guy was obviously paying attention. He didn’t phone this one in. In less than five minutes I could vastly improve upon the fishing, mountain climbing and gambling references, and I’m no Irving Berlin. I’m not even Irving Potsdam. I’ve never understood how those clunkers ended up in this song.
Not that it’s Irving Berlin or anything, but I always found “Fa, a long long way to run” a particularly stupid line. “La, a note to follow So” is waaaaaaaay beyond stupid. It’s a blatant case of “I’m not going to even bother trying to think of a rhyme.”
And although it’s commonly known that Cole Porter wrote the lyrics to “At Long Last Love” while laying on the ground with a broken leg from his horse accident, waiting to be rescued, it’s *not* commonly known that the original lyrics were “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! Aaaaaaaarrgggggggggg! My Leg! Oooooooh, God! It hurts! It hurts! Or is it at long last love? Ahhhhgggggh! Arrrrrrgh! Kill me now! Somebody, please kille me now! Or is it at long last love?”
Obviously, he needed to clean that up a bit before the first performance. Still a good song, though.
Good points, Republibot 3.0. Let’s not forget the extremely fortuitous decision by Paul McCartney to order the “scrambled eggs” as opposed to “two eggs, sunny side up” the day he penned, “Yesterday.” That would have really messed up the meter.
As bad as the lyric is, it works. Especially listening to Sinatra’s version on Come Dance With Me. I wish I was around Wed. to get that one. I’m glad you brought back Name That Tune, Rufus. I started thinking you wore out your record collection.
Indeed it would have. And it bugs me when No Doubt sings “I’m just a typical prototype.” Well, which is it? “Typical” or “Prototype?” Because prototypes are by definition not typical…yeah, I’m pedantic, but that just nags at me.