Questions About Lyrics

[sadchild]

I've long wondered what he's talking about in the opening to LL Cool J's "Shake It" (the stuff I highlighted in orange). If anyone has any insight, please share!

Yellow canary, tennis bracelet necklace, know what I'm sayin'?
Three quarter black mink; shades, canaries in both ears
Know what I'm sayin'? Black Phantom, triple black, with the oak wood
Gucci shoes, that's how I play

I wonder if "canaries in both ears" are in-ear monitors?

AAW Canary In-Ear Monitor Review

AAW Canary In-Ear Monitor Review: Don't let the pretty face fool you. This IEM is a powerhouse.

www.headphonedungeon.com

This song is from 2004, so "black phantom" can't be the fragrance released in 2017 (right?)

https://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/By-Kilian/Black-Phantom-43632.html

 

[HecticArt]

I don't know what he's sayin.....

 

[scotchandcigar]

 

[Aaron]

Great old song, but major use of an apparently made up word, surry, by the great songwriter Laura Nyro.

Can you surry, can you picnic?

 

[Channel98]

"Made up"? No. A surrey is a four-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage with two seats facing forward. Many of the carriages also have a canopy. They are named for Surrey County in southeast England where they were first manufactured. Here is The Surrey With The Fringe On Top, a song which first appeared in the 1943 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! This version is sung by Gordon MacRae to Shirley Jones in the 1955 movie adaptation.

 

[Aaron]

Not the word she was going for though, said it was just a “nice word”, spelled differently also

 

[Channel98]

Saint Wikipedia declares "Surry" to be a "spelling variant" or a "misspelling" of "Surrey." I think Nyro just misspelled the word and didn't want to admit it. And remember the old saying, "Love means never having to say you're surry."

Surry - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.wiktionary.org

 

[Channel98]

Philadelphia singer-songwriter George Wallace – no, not that George Wallace! – included Stoned Soul Picnic on his 2020 CD Believing Mirrors. His website includes the lyrics and shows the word as "surrey." No further questions, your honor.

 

[scotchandcigar]

Here's some good reading

In Steve Miller’s “The Joker,” what is “the pompatus of love”?

www.straightdope.com

 

[sadchild]

Interesting!

 

[scotchandcigar]

Every time I hear "Across the Universe" by The Beatles, I wonder what they're saying in the repeated chorus. But then I forget about it before I look it up. It sounds like Lennon is singing "Jack-a-roo day vine". I think the only reason it sounds like that to me, is because we had a dog named Jack, and we called him Jack-a-roo.

So it turns out, this is one of those cases, like "Loser" by Beck, or "Games Without Frontiers" by Peter Gabriel, where the answer lies in the non-English world. Here are some of the lyrics:

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world (4x)

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
They call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a restless wind
Inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world (4x)

Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing
Through my open ears inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns
And calls me on and on across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world (4x)

Jai guru deva (6x)

So WTF is Jai guru deva om? It's a mantra for transcendental meditation. Pretty obvious, eh?

Anyway, I was listening to the excellent "Life with John Mayer" channel, and he played this Fiona Apple version, which was apparently used in the 1998 movie Pleasantville

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

I remember the movie but not the song. I do like it but not familiar at all.

ETA: I think I will add it to my library.

And watching the video -- Not Guilty.

 

[scotchandcigar]

Yeah, she was still young then.

 

[Channel98]

"Jai Guru Deva" means "Hail, Guru Dev" or "I give thanks to Guru Dev" – and "Guru Dev" means "divine teacher." Guru Dev was a title given to Brahmānanda Sarasvatī, a Hindu monk who taught Transcendental Meditation to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1955. Hoping to become TM teachers, the Beatles trained with the Maharishi at a retreat in India in February 1968 but quickly became disillusioned with him.

सः धोखाधड़ी आसीत्!

Origins of TM - The Meditation Trust

Transforming lives through silence

meditationtrust.com

 

[HecticArt]

Every time I hear "Across the Universe" by The Beatles, I wonder what they're saying in the repeated chorus. But then I forget about it before I look it up. It sounds like Lennon is singing "Jack-a-roo day vine". I think the only reason it sounds like that to me, is because we had a dog named Jack, and we called him Jack-a-roo.

So it turns out, this is one of those cases, like "Loser" by Beck, or "Games Without Frontiers" by Peter Gabriel, where the answer lies in the non-English world. Here are some of the lyrics:

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world (4x)

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
They call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a restless wind
Inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world (4x)

Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing
Through my open ears inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns
And calls me on and on across the universe

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world (4x)

Jai guru deva (6x)

So WTF is Jai guru deva om? It's a mantra for transcendental meditation. Pretty obvious, eh?

Anyway, I was listening to the excellent "Life with John Mayer" channel, and he played this Fiona Apple version, which was apparently used in the 1998 movie Pleasantville

Never had a clue.

 

[sadchild]

Hoping to become TM teachers, the Beatles

Imagine saying "I think I'll try TM". You show up and your teacher is Paul McCartney.

 

[sadchild]

On Genius (the website where you can add notes about song lyrics) the breakdown in System Of A Down's "Chop Suey" is loaded with conjecture about biblical references and debates about what Serj meant when he wrote them. Here is the official word on what they actually are in the context of this song: “complete and utter lyrical gibberish”. Producer Rick Rubin explained:

This System Of A Down song called ‘Chop Suey!'… I think. You know that song? It has this big bridge section in it where Serj [Tankian], lyric writer — the singer — didn’t have words for this one part of the song.

And we’re sitting in the library in my old house and he said ‘I don’t have words for this’ and we were finishing and it’s like, OK. ‘Any ideas?’; he didn’t have any ideas. So I said, ‘OK, pick a book off the wall.’ He picked a book randomly off the wall, I said, ‘open it to any page [and] tell me the first phrase you see.’

He opened it, first phrase he sees: that’s what’s in the song, and it’s a high point in the song. It’s incredible, like magic.

It’s the part, ‘Father, into your hands. Why have you forsaken me?’ It’s wild… The context, it doesn’t really make sense to what’s going on, it’s rad.