Thursday 13: At The Risk Of Repeating Myself

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At the moment, I'm trying to edit a novel and, as I travel on that journey, I'm coming across a lot of repetition that I have to fix. While doing this, it's struck me how unfair it is that songs can get away with as much repetition as they like, indeed they thrive on it, and I've thought how slightly funny it would be if songs were edited to remove their repetition. So here are thirteen examples of why editing songs to remove their repetition just wouldn't work:

1. The Hallelujah Chorus

Back in 1741, George Frideric Handel wrote this song, which repeats the word hallelujah over and over again. Sure, it could stand to lose a couple here and there, but if all the repetition was stripped, it would hardly be a chorus, and so would just be called Hallejulah (like that Leonard Cohen song, the one which repeats the word hallejulah over and over again).

2. The Mamas & The Papas' "Monday Monday"

If you remove all of the repetition, this would open with "Monday, nah , can't trust that day". Somehow I don't think Monday by The Mas & Pas would have been quite that big a hit.

2-4. Various Beatles Songs

"She loves you, yeah," doesn't quite have the same impact as the original, and you can hardly sing along drunkenly with ever-increasing volume to the minimalist "La, Hey Jude". If that's not bad enough, the chorus of Yellow Submarine would just be one line.

5. Musical Notes

They're always using the notes A to G in songs, but H to Z never get a look in. What kind of musical conspiracy is that?

6. Gladys Knight & The Pips

Sadly, since their sole purpose in live was to repeat her words, the Pips would all be leaving (leaving) on the Midnight Train to unemployment.

7. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody

"Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening" is a bit long-winded. Thunderbolts are just lightning bolts, which is a subset of lightning, so this could be reduced to "Lightning, very frightening". Don't even get me started on the Galileos.

8. On The Twelfth Day Of Christmas

The first eleven verses are made fairly redundant by the twelfth which relates near enough everything that's gone before. The twelfth verse would be sufficient, although, maybe just a preamble is needed about how the true love kept increasing the Christmas presents, never thinking of the storage and maintainance problems they would cause, nor the pointlessness of buying more rings than the receiver's fingers could possibly ever accommodate.

9. Happy Birthday

As an attempt at topicality, I'll drag in this song on this day of birthdays (Shakespeare was born and died on this day, it's also my sister's birthday today, and most importantly of all, it's the birthday of Lee Majors, the Six Million Dollar Man). Anyway, if the song was sliced down to the minimal "Happy Birthday to you, dear " then no one would have had the time to taken the requisite deep breath to blow out their candles, and as a result all those wishes would be lost.

10. Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)"

Maybe Meat would have had more time to actually get around to doing that, if he hadn't spent so much time mentioning "I would do anything for love".

11. 2 Unlimited's "No Limits"

A song that seems to consist mostly of the line "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ,no ,no, no there's no limit!". If something was done about the repetition then the song would be in danger of vanishing, although, on the plus side, there'd be far less negativity present.

12. Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha

Just because the Dolls have made up a new mispronounciation of "Don't you" they feel obliged to repeat it ad infinitum. Clearly by their next record Stickwitu the novelty of repeating made-up words had dimmed slightly.

13. Britney Spears' Song

I can't remember what it's called, only the lyrical genius that is the chorus, which goes something like "Womanizer, woman-womanizer, you're a womanizer. Oh, womanizer, oh, you're a womanizer baby. You, you-you are, you, you-you are Womanizer, womanizer, womanizer (Womanizer)". Maybe removing repetition from songs wasn't such a bad idea after all.

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