About 18 years ago, my DJ partner, Bengi, and I were driving home after entertaining at a wedding on the Connecticut shore. We had played the song “Sweet Home Alabama” that night, and though we knew some of the words from this iconic song, neither one of us knew them all, so we decided to spend the hour-long ride memorizing them.
This was circa 2001. Not only were there no smart phones at the time, but most people didn’t even own a cell phone, so in order to memorize these lyrics, we were going to have to listen to the song again and again in order to identify them ourselves.
This wasn’t easy.
You try figuring out the line:
“Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers”
… when you don’t know who or what or where are Muscle Shoals or the Swampers.
Nor should we have understood these references given that Swampers was the nickname given to the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, a group of studio musicians who initially played at FAME Studios before leaving in 1969 to form Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.
In a song that mentions Neil Young, Watergate, and Birmingham, a reference to a group of studio musicians seems a little inside baseball if you ask me.
Nevertheless, by the time we had arrived home, we had committed the song to memory.
I’m so glad we did. Every time that song is played – which has been a lot in the 18 years since we memorized that song – I get to sing along with confidence and joy. There’s a freedom that comes with knowing the lyrics to a song and being able to belt them out at the top of your lungs.
It was a gift to my future self. An hour very well spent.
It’s also an argument in favor of learning and memorizing the lyrics of your favorite songs. Rather than stumbling through lines or humming the verses you can’t quite figure out, take the time to learn and memorize those lyrics.
The time invested today with continue to pay off again and again in the future,
My current project is the song “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. I know more than half the lyrics already, having played the song hundreds of times at weddings, but there are parts of that song that are sung so quickly that I’ve never been able to figure out the words.
Thanks to the Internet, the process of identifying and memorizing lyrics is a hell of a lot easier today than back when Bengi and I were memorizing “Sweet Home Alabama”, which is good but somehow bad, too.
Easier? Yes.
Less satisfying and memorable? I think so.
