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August 16

The Sound of Silence

Paul Simon's The Sound of Silence appears to have two variations of lyrics in the last verse.

paulsimon.com (presumably the authoritative site) and azlyrics.com have "And the sign said “The words of the prophets Are written on subway walls And tenement halls And whispered in the sounds of silence"

musicmix.com has two variants: for Simon and Garfunkel "And the sign said “The words of the prophets Are written on subway walls In tenement halls" And whispered the sounds of silence and the Disturbed version: "Then the sign said, “The words on the prophets Are written on subway walls In tenement halls" And whispered in the sound of silence

The paulsimon.com version strikes me as being grammatically the best English and reflects what is sung by S&G (although the final 'in' is very short and may even be missing). The disturbed musicmix version appears to match what Disturbed sing. Is there any rationale for the on and the In in that version or did they just "get it wrong"? -- SGBailey (talk) 05:56, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

S&G version: "And the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls, whispered in the sounds of silence"[1] Disturbed version: It does sound like he's saying "on" although the subtitles say "of".[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:16, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"On" makes no sense. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Musixmatch.com (which is what I get instead of musicmix.com when I search) says its lyrics come from Spotify, which (according to audiohype.io) gets its lyrics from genius.com, which allows for listener-transcribed lyrics. So it's possible the lyrics have been mistranscribed by a listener. AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 11:04, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes, these (or similar) ambiguities are cleverly written in for poetic purposes, though, such as in David Bowie's famous line "Lenin's / Lennon's on sale again". 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:18, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lennon and McCartney, in "Revolution", used to sing the line following "If you talk about destruction" different ways. As originally written, the following line was "Don't you know that you can count me out", though sometimes they would sing "in", either in place of the "out" lyric, or over the top of it, or immediately after it. --Jayron 32 12:47, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Now I don't remember the exact details, but I recall that some adult contemporary American (I think) "singer-songwriter" had written a whole song with recurring similar ambiguities, and wanted to exclude the liner notes, since it implied a canonical interpretation... But in the end he gave in to the transcriptors (or whatchamacallthem), and just let them pick one version. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:51, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Many lyricists write songs based sounds and prosody of the words, often resulting in nonsensical, but musically interesting, lyrics. In the 1990s, both Beck and Kurt Cobain were known for writing this way. Oftentimes, in live performances of Nirvana songs, Kurt would literally sing incoherent mumbling that only vaguely resembled the lyrics of the song; on songs like that the "official" lyrics didn't make much more sense. He's more focused in these performances on the sounds of the words, and how they interact musically, so any actual "meaning" behind such lyrics is secondary to their musical function. There's nothing wrong with that, it is a compositional and performance choice, and many people are entertained by it. The voice is an instrument, and for some performers, using it for its musical quality is more important than telling a coherent story. --Jayron 32 14:30, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed that Simon in recent performances (including at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts in 2009 with Garfunkel) sings "Take my arms that I might reach out to you" instead of "Take my arms that I might reach you" as in the studio version. Nardog (talk) 16:36, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One important thing to remember is that no performer, whether the original writer, or any later performers, is required or bound to perform the song slavishly copying the way it was written. Musicians can, and often do, provided a novel interpretation of the music, adding their own improvisation, in terms of both notes and lyrics, with almost every performance. The words as Simon published them in 1964, have the potential to be changed with each subsequent performance. Lyrics websites, such as music mix, often contain lyrics as heard, and may contain misheard lyrics and other errata, and there's no reason why, say, the Disturbed version, or live performance by Simon himself, would contain the exact same words every time. --Jayron 32 17:30, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Besides purposefully changing the lyrics for different audiences or changing times, there's also the possibility that the singer made a mistake, or themself misheard the words if they weren't the writer. In the studio version of Procol Harum's Conquistador, there's the nonsense line "And as the gloom begins to fall / I see there is no, only all." People have puzzled over this, but it seems quite clear when you listen to it. I've seen the suggestion that it's supposed to be "I see there is no aureole," which would make sense if the writer was tying the end of the song back to the beginning ("And like some angel's haloed brow / You reek of purity.") But "aureole" is an obscure word, and it's possible that it was one the writer Keith Reid knew (or found in a thesaurus), but that the singer Gary Brooker did not, so he substituted sound-alike words, perhaps influenced by the following verse ("And though you came with sword held high / You did not conquer, only die", the only other place the word "only" appears). I don't know if the lyrics were ever published, but even if Reid did intend "aureole", that doesn't mean Brooker didn't sing "only all" instead. — kwami (talk) 22:52, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Aha. Possibly a mondegreen, then. ColinFine (talk) 22:54, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's the word! A mondegreen by the singer himself. Maybe. — kwami (talk) 23:02, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Happens. Jimi Hendrix at least once sang "'scuse me while I kiss this guy". --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 00:08, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, I didn't know that about Procul Harum. I assumed the whole thing was a Gary Brooker joint, but it turns out they had this band member Keith Reid whose role was purely to write the lyrics, and who apparently floated around on stage doing nothing. That's a pretty unique arrangement, like Bez only useful. Card Zero (talk) 20:00, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm more familiar with Ben Carr in that role, but I came of age in the US in the 1990s. --Jayron 32 12:29, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The singer of Disturbed has a peculiar, affected way of singing here. He brings the mouth movements (whatever those are called) all the way to the back of his mouth. He puts the back of his tongue up at the roof of his mouth, like Kermit. To pronounce 'of' properly, he'd have to push his vocalization all the way to the front of his mouth. That might throw off his performance. So he just kind of swallows it. It becomes "on." Temerarius (talk) 16:50, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]