"Often the reason we don't know what the singer is singing is that the singer does not enunciate clearly. Elton John, for example, often sounds as though he's singing in a foreign language, possibly Welsh. James Brown routinely sings entire songs without making a single intelligible statement other than 'Hey!'
"Sometimes the problem is that the singer himself doesn't know what he's singing. As I mentioned elsewhere in this book, I sometimes play in a literary rock band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. As I also mentioned elsewhere in this book, we suck, but our musical director is an actual talented legend, Al Kooper (. . .) Al did one solo number -- a long, slow, powerful blues song called 'Caress Me Baby' -- and although I understood all the other lyrics he sang, there was one line I could never get. Al sang it with tremendous passion, and it sounded like he was singing, 'Goan rare-ro hah-dee-nah' (. . .) It turned out that Al didn't know what the real lyrics were, either. He had listened repeatedly to the original recording of 'Caress Me Baby', and the closest thing he could come up with was 'Gonna railroad high tonight', and so when he sang the song he just slurred that part."
"Allow me to translate the first verse of Phobophile into Lord Wormish:
In The Kitchen With A Screaming triple amputee: It's completion depends solely On my needs: Said Amputee's stumps Are my way of saying; "Thank You Just For Being You" It's Fear Tastes Better Than Its limbs.
"I hope you appreciate this service I'm providing, because there's no way in Hell you'll be able to understand any of the words on your own. In fact, I literally laughed out loud my ass off rolling on the floor in the middle of track three when I finally heard the very first audible words on the album: 'FUCK YOU!'"
