The Song Mangler

The Song Mangler

I’m one of those guys that sings in the car. Yes, that’s me zooming down the highway, belting out songs, pounding the steering wheel and the dashboard, oblivious to anyone who might be watching. I’m also a “Song Mangler”. That’s the title my wife invented to describe how I get a perverse pleasure out of changing the lyrics to songs; sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose.

I’m so good at changing lyrics to something ridiculous that I’ve had many friends who have heard my version say, “Now I can’t listen to that song without hearing your stupid version pop in my head…Thanks a lot!”

I think it comes from when you’re a kid and you hear songs on the radio or somewhere, and you try singing them. Not having an advanced vocabulary, you just substituted words that you didn’t understand. Instead of growing out of it, I developed it into a weird talent.

An example would be the Santana song, “Oye Como Va.” The lyrics are “Oye como va, mi ritmo”

I changed it to “I like Cocoa Puffs, and Cheetohs”

It sounds stupid but, sing it that way a couple of times and you’ll never hear it the same way again. My brother’s favorite was when I changed Hermans Hermits “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter” to “Eva Braun You’ve Got A Lovely Fuhrer.”

It must be genetic because the other day while driving the kids back from preschool I had the radio on to Christmas carols. Band Aid’s “Do They Know Its Christmas” was on and when the song got to the ending chorus I heard my son Michael belt out from his car seat, “Feed the Squirr Els! Let them know it’s Christmas time…”

He kept going, not caring or knowing he was wrong. He was having a good time. I got a little misty and wiped a tear from my cheek.

I was so proud.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 8:42 pm and is filed under My Kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.