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| :“the rhythmic and melodic structure of the line forces the lead singer, Joseph Williams, into circumlocutions of stress that end up mangling the final word of that longest line; instead of “Seren''get''i”, the rhythm and melody of the song force him to pronounce it as “''Ser''engeti”... I understand this moment now as an unhappy, though fleeting, collision of contrary rhythms. The song still moves me, however, all the more now for this small window into the world of its rhythm.” | | :“the rhythmic and melodic structure of the line forces the lead singer, Joseph Williams, into circumlocutions of stress that end up mangling the final word of that longest line; instead of “Seren''get''i”, the rhythm and melody of the song force him to pronounce it as “''Ser''engeti”... I understand this moment now as an unhappy, though fleeting, collision of contrary rhythms. The song still moves me, however, all the more now for this small window into the world of its rhythm.” |
| Mr. Bradley is clearly a glass-half-full sort of chap. | | Mr. Bradley is clearly a glass-half-full sort of chap. |
| ===“Olympus”?===
| | {{olympus}} |
| A correspondent writes:
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| {{quote|Sorry but you ALL HAVE IT WRONG!!! THE LYRIC IS “RISES LIKE A LEOPRESS”... THIS HAS BEEN BUGGING THE F OUT OF ME FOR YEARS. I think Weezer screwed up the whole world in this lyric... read his lips in the video}} | |
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| Now while I respect the the vigour with which this argument is put, I cannot agree with it. As for lipreading, no chance: the video cuts away to [[Steve Lukather]] who, rather like a tone-deaf footballer singing the national anthem, has forgotten to sing along [https://youtu.be/FTQbiNvZqaY?t=118 at the key moment].
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| And we must allow [[David Paich|Mr. Paich]] some facility with logic and common sense, even if not much, and while Olympus clearly does not rise above the Serengeti, or another part of the African continent, being a mountain, it ''does'' at least rise above things like plains.
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| As for “leopresses”, who can say? What even ''is'' a “leopress”? It has escaped the compliers of the OED and, for what it is worth, Websters.<ref>Probably quite a bit, for [[David Paich|Mr. Paich]], being from California.</ref> I take it to be some kind of creative contraction of “leopardess” on Mr. Paich’s part. This cannot be right, for two reasons:
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| Firstly, female leopards, however described, do not really rise above things like plains. They may be fast, but in two dimensions. Leopards are wholly earthbound. The sorts of things that ''do'' rise above plains are mountains, rainclouds (mainly in Spain), and hot air balloons (as per the above, I am told, it is only ''from'' a hot air balloon, that has already risen high above the Serengeti, that one can even ''see'' Kilimanjaro.)
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| Secondly, the “leop’r’ess” contraction strikes me as implausible, particularly as elsewhere [[David Paich|Mr. Paich]] gives the strong impression that he is not in the habit of making literary contractions for the sake of space. After all, he has already jammed twenty one syllables into a line apparently requiring only fourteen. Why start now?
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| {{sa}} | | {{sa}} |
| *[[Kilimanjaro]] | | *[[Kilimanjaro]] |