30 days of music - Day 8: a song I know all the words to

Oh I give up on Day 7, which must be day 17 by now.

Day 8 however, brings back memories of a diary I kept for song lyrics. (No need to go looking, I burnt it once I stopped getting high on scented markers.)

There were four songs in there, which remain the songs I know all the words to. The ignominy of naming said songs would be too much, and hence, I decline to do so except under duress.

What is, however, in both our interests, is this alternate for Day 8. A song I'd LIKE to know all the words to. 


Chart music, unfortunately, is not one to experiment with lyrics. Conventional ideas and subjects - love, loss, sex, hot girls, partying, giving-peace-a-chance - and worse, conventional treatments and metaphors are only expected.

Then occasionally, you have a Tom Lehrer or Jonathan Coulton turn up to talk about real stuff:

• In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics - PLAGIARIZE / Let no one else's work evade your eyes/ Remember why the good Lord made your eyes - Lobachevsky
• Hey Tom, it's Bob from the office down the hall...Things have been okay for me, except that I'm a zombie now...I don't want to nitpick Tom, but is this really your plan/ Spend your whole life locked in a mall - re: your brains

Yes, those are real songs, and brilliantly smart ones at that. 

Because a great song is entertaining - and that's not something you can do simply with "virtuosic playing" or "being loud".

That's not my idea - Ben Walker says it best in a post from last year  - and he should know - he writes some of the best words I've heard put to tune. 

Song I'd like to know the words to: Ben Walker's Putting Your Hand in the Blender Again. It's song #3 but the whole album is awesomeness.