Three versions of a loving, travelling earworm October 20, 2011
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Earworms, Etcetera, Videorama.Tags: Dessert, Have Love Will Travel, pop music, Richard Berry, Salted caramel, The Basics, The Beatles, The Black Keys
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I heard the Black Keys version of Have Love, Will Travel for the first time a few days ago.
And I wanted to like it, it I really did. (Because I love the whole Brothers album so very much.) But I just couldn’t forget how fantastic The Basics version is:
[Do ignore the Californication thing. How is that even relevant?]
And then I was worried that I only liked The Basics version because of the joyful, pop-y Beatles-yness (and the perfectly imperfect syncopation).
But then I listened to the original by Richard Berry, which is about as pop-y as it gets:
…and I didn’t like it so much.
Ergo, I think my taste in music (or at least this song) is like my taste in food: really savoury isn’t my thing; completely sweet isn’t (always) my thing; but I truly adore salted caramel. (No really. Give me a bouquet of PayDay bars and I’ll be happy until I die of the diabeetus.)
A Beatles song for every financial meltdown October 11, 2008
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Words, The News, Earworms.Tags: Etymology, The Economy, The News, Syncope, The Beatles, Parlous, You Never Give Me Your Money, Abbey Road
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You Never Give Me Your Money
(♫…you only give me your funny paper… ♫)
A carefree tune for these parlous economic times *,
from The Beatles, Abbey Road (1969)
……………………………………………………………………………………
* And on that point,
why is the global economy always in a “parlous” state?
Does this word serve no other purpose
than to furnish economists
with their own special euphemism for “scary”?
The short answer?
Yes.
The Maven’s Word of the Day (Random House):
“Parlous is actually just a variant form of perilous, and that’s exactly what it means… The existence of the form parlous is the result of a linguistic phenomenon called syncope, in which a word is shortened by the omission of one or more sounds from the middle of it….”
Indeed.
Now play on, my cheerful troubadours….
♫ All the money’s spent, nowhere to go… ♫
First published at tumblr Proof (v.)
