Literary Reminders

I have to admit it: I like Nickelback--inasmuch as I like any band.  I'm more of a like-the-songs kind of person rather than the band.  The exceptions to that are Barenaked Ladies, The Kingston Trio, and Lost and Found.  Pretty much anything those three play are OK in my book.  Anyway. . .
The breakout song for Nickelback was the song "How You Remind Me."  It was written as a breakup song, but whatever. It has some pretty good lyrics: Only a Canadian band could rhyme "sorry" with "story".  It does have a few "what'd you say?" moments.  The beginning of lines don't always come out clearly, but what's a few first person subjective pronouns among friends?  And I was certain it was a sarcastic "yes" before the "no no".  Turns out it was a repeated "yet" from the line "Are we having fun yet".
That said, the biggest confusion on my part is where the lyrics have a literary allusion.
It must have been so bad
'Cause Little Women must have d**n near killed you.
It's kind of a low blow, when you think about it: it's as if they are saying "you're so sensitive you can't even handle reading Little Women".
It turns out that this time I'm mistaken. (See what I did there?)  It is not "Little Women"; the words are actually "living with him".  According to Louder, this line is a reference to living with the lead singer of the band.  Okay, that makes a little more sense.
So, are we having fun yet?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no--no.

Love is a Gamble

I may have come of age (that is to say, I graduated from high school) in the early '90s, but the soundtrack of my era was the '80s.  The radio stations that now play " '80s, '90s, and today" back then played music from the 1970s and 1980s.  Now when I listen to the '80s station on satellite radio, I realize how much of the music really infiltrated my younger years. 
I had to explain to my children the concept of 1980's power ballads after they observed me laughing through "Lost in the Woods" in the movie Frozen 2.  They couldn't understand just what was so funny.
One power ballad I recall listening to had one of those confused lyrics that a ten-year-old me pondered.  At the time I liked songs, not bands, per se; however, I liked Starship's three #1 songs: "We Built This City"; "Sara"; and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now".  The song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" often made me realize that lyrics aren't always what they sound like.
This song that was featured in the movie Mannequin (a rather strange movie that actually has a sequel!) begins with the line "Looking in your eyes I see a paradise". The way the singer pronounces the word "paradise" always made me think he was saying "pair a dice".  I knew there was no way he could look into a person's eyes and see dice (although it does give a hilarious meaning to "snake eyes". . .Voldemort, perhaps?  "Nothing's Going to Stop Us Now" the Death Eater version? Harry Potter and the Starship--Ahem, I digress. . .); therefore, the word had to be "paradise".
Little did I realize my mistaken lyrics would resurface.  Recently I have been reading books by author Francine Rivers, and her book Redeeming Love has a Gold Rush town in 1850s California named--you guessed it--"Pair-a-Dice"!  With the name of the town, it is a clear pun with so many men taking a gamble on finding paradise in gold, and finding a wilderness of lawlessness.  There is an actual city of Paradise, California, in the Gold Rush area.  The town was supposedly named after a saloon called "Pair o Dice", but there is little evidence for that.
I still listen to the " '80s, '90s, and today" radio stations, and I do like the music from the turn of the century as well as from my childhood. This gives me more opportunities to find more confusing lyrics.

Well, Kids, This is Where We Are

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

**There's not much more I can say at this point.**

Huh? What was that?

When I was a child, my siblings and I participated in our Sunday school's Christmas Eve program.  We had to memorize a line (Bible passage or other) and then recite it.  My father would always encourage us to e-nun-ci-ate.  He would say it slowly and distinctly to emphasize the point.
To this end, I adjure singers everywhere to enunciate and help prevent confusion.
One song I point out would be "Soak Up the Sun" by Sheryl Crow.  Where was her Communist friend hold meetings?  I assumed it was his office.  Turns out, not so much.