Friday 19 March 2010

stools, schools, dunces and fools


The world of the song-poem is littered with inane, and quite often insane, lyrics, but these are some of the most banal I've come across recently. Even the genius multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer that was Rodd Keith fails miserably to inject some life into this pile of dross.

The words of To The Person were written by the wonderfully-named Melchor Carnate Jr, and you really have to ask yourself if English was his first language; he seems to have no idea of how to construct a sensible sentence. Melchor's words really are nonsensical:

To the person who is in love
But cannot say so from above
Come golden words in your sleep
Untold words you now can speak

To the person who's not in love
And can say they're not from above
Come Cupid's arrows, who are you fooling
Their pushin' will give you some schoolin'

To those who aren't in love
And cannot say from above
Comes a scolding because you are a fool
A scolding and a dunce's stool

To the person who is in love
And can say they are from above
Comes a blessing because you are wise
True love is your prize

To those who aren't in love
And cannot say from above
Comes a scolding because you are a fool
A scolding and a dunce's stool

To the person who is in love
And can say they are from above
Comes a blessing because you are wise
True love is your prize

...fabulously dreadful. This appears to have been Mr Carnate's only foray into the song-poem world, although I'd lay money on there being some more of his rotten poetry around somewhere - maybe preserved for posterity on a local newspaper letters page, or in one of those vanity anthologies that bad poets are always paying to be included in.

Anyway, here's Rodd's soulful rendition of Melchor's words. Have a great weekend.

Enjoy!


2 comments:

  1. Darryl, you are too critical.
    This nice song would, after a word- by- word translation, make a number- one hit on the german schlager- market.
    The music, however, isn`t schmaltzy enough.
    Thank you !
    Joey

    ReplyDelete
  2. Do people really name their kids Melchor?

    ReplyDelete

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