The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #152141   Message #3557375
Posted By: gnomad
09-Sep-13 - 06:32 AM
Thread Name: Improving Lyrics?
Subject: RE: Improving Lyrics?
Folks "improving" songs are often merely demonstrating their own failure to grasp the author's intention.

In some cases they improve things into utter nonsense (thinking here particularly of some changes to E Bogle's well-crafted works) other times they simply make the author out to be saying something other than what was meant.

Such changes are sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberate. I wouldn't dispute a singer's right to make them, though I believe that they should not be undertaken unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly. Nor would I question the public's right to say whether or not they are an improvement. In this case I think not as, like mg, I think the original sounds better. Ambiguities may be intentional, they give a listener more to think about, some like this.

If one is going to analyse exactly what any songwriter meant one should pay him the compliment of believing he knew his own mind.