Teach Me Tuesday

Here’s a little different try at my Teach Me Tuesday series. As we all know, I was an English major. I once read a quote about how great it was to major in English because you can think of sonnets and Shakespeare while you iron. To be honest I don’t iron a lot, but I do think of Shakespeare a lot, and of sonnets, and I think a whole lot about words and how they create emotion. Today I’m blogging about song lyrics. Your lesson for the day is that you should put song titles in quotation marks when you are writing. And that poetry and beautiful words are everywhere[see that incomplete sentence?]---you just have to listen for them.

I love song lyrics. I like the poetry in the really good ones. Some songs are written by true writers and poets, and their songs speak to you with flowing elements of poetry that seep into your soul without you ever once realizing that structure and word choice and alliteration have all played a spell on your mind to suck you in. Sometimes it’s the idea behind the song that gets me. Sometimes it’s a line or two that resonate in the background of my days.

Every time I hear Tim McGraw’s “Where the Green Grass Grows” my mind floats to days of my youth riding my bike on the “back roads” of Lehi. See the elements of poetry in the lyrics: Green Grass Grows (alliteration), Corn pops up in rows (forget what it’s called, but see how they were so tricky and reversed popcorn to corn pop?), Concrete growing in the city park (personification), Six lanes, taillights, red ants marching into the night (imagery). Kudos to the people who wrote that song (not Tim!). I know that not everyone loves country like I do, but the lyrics are such great poetry!

I love it when I hear one line of a song that just sticks to me. I have a great Pandora station going right now. It started with Five for Fighting’s “100 years” and is altered perfectly by giving a thumbs up to a bunch of great songs, and especially by giving a thumbs up to every single version of “Hallelujah” that comes along (love those lyrics too!). I have realize that John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting is my favorite singer-songwriter. (Okay, top five because a ton of other people just came to mind. But he did write a song about Superman, so maybe that defaults him to #1?) In his song “The Riddle” there’s a line that has been the background to this entire summer, “Batter swings and the summer flies.” Don’t you love that? It’s such a beautiful blend of images and words and so perfect yet unexpected. That has totally been our summer. We started with Claire in Tball at the end of May. It seemed like that would last forever when we got the packed game schedule, but it was over way too soon. Isn’t every summer like that? When I think back on summer growing up I can feel the sun on my back as I stand at 2nd or 1st base. I can smell the leather of my glove. I can taste the chewing gum and snow cones that always accompanied our baseball games back in the day. And it all went by so quickly. Batter swings and the summer flies. Perfect.

Also in “The Riddle” he refers to someone dying as his “heart ran out of summers.” Love that too! And that “100 Years” song? It deserves an entire post. Everything about it is gorgeous…the lyrics, the piano playing. It’s my favorite. Literally my favorite song ever.

What do you like? What songs speak to you? What lyrics do you think are absolutely perfect?