but that's not how songs should be.

Vocal diction has always been an obsession among Folkies whose irksome conservatism accounts for much of the MOR flavours on offer. Call it cantankerous old curmudgeon mode if you will, but to do so is to miss the point of a) the music in general and b) of the words in particular. Words are never there to be listened to directly otherwise why bother setting them to music at all? And why rejoice in mondegreens? And why have lyic sheets with albums? By singing words we are, in effect, rendering them occult by carrying them onto another level - subliminal, distorted, obscured, as is the case with much Popular & Traditional Musics and a good deal of Classical too. In both cases some of the greatest singers sing the greatest lyrics in such a way they can't be readily understood. We may get as much meaning from listening to songs sung in languages we can't understand as we do from those in our native tongue - even without translations - because the meaning of music is a deeper instictive calling of hearts and souls that transfigures mere language by lifting it beyond the mundane and placing it into the realms of the transcendent - like those who stopped to RC Mass when they started doing it in English because they no longer understood it. With this in mind, listen again to Jon Boden's Frankie's Trade in terms of its organic spatial sense wherein musique concrete & wax cylinder distortion interweave in subliminal synchronity in which the words tell of something far deeper than ever Kipling or Bellamy intended, thus speaking in mythic tongues in a wilder, Shamanic trance of pure & perfect jouissance in which to account for the subject in hand. In this, as always, Mr Boden does us very proud; as does everyone on there. Storm along my gallant captains indeed.