Listening to lyrics
One of the songs for Guitar Hero 2 is Possum Kingdom. I know exactly two lines of the song's lyrics. The two lines I know are, "I will treat you well, my sweet angel, so help me Jesus." That's it. That's all I know of the song. That's all I really cared to know of the song.
My lack of lyric knowledge suits me fairly well. It's kinda like my lack of knowledge of Hollywood directors when I worked in the movie industry: it's hard to be intimidated by someone if you don't know who the hell they are. It's hard to dislike a song if you like the rythym and melody and bass line, and you don't know the lyrics.
Before we went to Water Dog Lake with Andy, Kris was humming along to a Guitar Hero song, which I recognized as Possum Kingdom, and immediately belted, in tune, but with crappy tonal quality, the only lyrics to the song I knew, expecting Kris to smile and join in as he normally does when I sing loudly to make up for my lack of finesse.
Instead, he asked, "Do you know the lyrics to that song?"
"No. Well, you've heard all of the words I know."
"Just those lines?"
"Yeah."
"It's not a nice song. I don't know that you want to be singing it."
He then went on to tell me the story of the lyrics, how there were a couple murders at Possum Kingdom Lake in Texas and the song is the telling of how the murders happened from the perspective of the murderers. He quotes a few of the lyrics, and I responded with a strong, "Eewwwww."
We talked about how, maybe, just maybe, I should actually listen to the lyrics of a song before deciding if I liked it or not. Finding out a song you like is about how weak people are, or how retarded someone is, or how a person is supposed to give another person what he wants because the second person is a pathetic little twit woe-is-him, often makes for seriously big disappointments.
We went on to discuss other songs' lyrics when Kris asked me what song's lyrics I actually know and liked. I was stumped. I could list a lot of songs with lyrics I didn't like, but not any with ones I did like. Eventually I gave up and flipped through my iTunes songs to find some.
Shame I couldn't think of any off the top of my head.
I don't think I'll bother learning the rest of Possum Kingdom.