Growing up, my parents always had music playing — both at home and in the car. It was mostly Motown and a mix of oldies rock and pop (which I think explains why my taste in music today is so eclectic), but they did dabble in “current songs”, which back in the ’70s and ’80s was anything from Fleetwood Mac and Blondie to Michael Jackson and Hall and Oates.
And while my father, in particular, knew every word to every 50s and 60s song he listened to, when it came to 70s and 80s pop music, he was known for changing the lyrics … On purpose.
Some of my dad’s silly song lyrics are forever stuck in my head. The first three that come to mind are:
- There’s a bathroom on the right instead of there’s a bad moon on the rise (“Bad Moon Rising” by CCR)
- I want to kiss you, Uncle Rover instead of I want to kiss you all over (“Kiss You All Over” by Exile)
- She’s a sleazy lover instead of she’s an easy lover (“Easy Lover” by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey)
I will never not sing these songs the wrong way, thanks to him.
Fast forward three decades, and I started doing the same thing around my boys. But unlike my dad, I wasn’t doing it to be funny. I was doing it to cover up inappropriate lyrics or avoid having to explain what a word meant. To make my music kid-friendly so I didn’t have to listen to boring nursery rhymes or — worse — lame Kidz Bop songs.
My boys grew up singing everything from Bob Marley to Tupac — just with a few lyrical revisions to keep the songs clean and age-appropriate. Sex became six, gun became gum, d*ck became tick … You get the point.
And it worked.
My favorite example of this is when we lived on Long Island and belonged to a beach club. Every Friday, a singer-songwriter would play live music at happy hour. One of his favorites was “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” by Jim Croce. A then 5-year-old H and 2-year-old O belted out the lyrics the way I taught them:
Bad, bad Leroy Brown
Baddest man in the whole downtown [damned town]
Badder then old King Kong
Meaner than a junk yard dog
...
He got a custom Continental
An El Dorado, too
He got 32 gums [a 32 gun] in his pocket for fun
He got a raisin [razor] in his shoe
Twenty years later, and we all still sing it that way — and I bet we always will.
—LJDT
