Unintentional mashups (#1291)

Topics/tags: Miscellaneous, music, short

The other day, I was listening to someone singing Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. She got to the chorus, which goes like this.

You belong among the wildflowers

You belong in a boat out at sea

Sail away, kill off the hours

You belong somewhere you feel free

I don’t want to inflict my singing voice on others, so I didn’t attempt to sing along. But my brain was trying. Unfortunately, it was signing other lyrics. My brain thought the first line went.

You belong to the hard-working people

That’s clearly wrong. But Wildflowers clearly reminded me of another song. I just couldn’t recall which one. Then my brain pulled out something related to the infinite sea. That felt like a Who song. Was the hard-working people a lyric from the same song. I wasn’t sure.

After some time with an Interweb search engine, I determined that the infinite sea was from the Who’s The Song is Over.

I’ll sing my song to the wide open spaces

I’ll sing my heart out to the infinite sea

I’ll sing my visions to the sky-high mountains

I’ll sing my song to the free, to the free

While the sea/free pairing probably got me thinking of infinite seas, the two songs don’t sound all that much the same. The pacing of You belong and I’ll sing my song is somewhat similar. And among the wild flowers and to the wide open spaces feel interchangeable. But there’s less of a gap between lines in the Who song, and that song also has a shift after the the first two lines.

What about those hard-working people? That one turns out to be the Stones. Rolling, that is. The song is Salt of the Earth.

Let’s drink to the hard-working people

Let’s drink to the lowly of birth

Raise your glass to the good and the evil

Let’s drink to the salt of the earth

I realize that You belong has three syllables, Let’s drink has two (unless you think of it as let us drink), and I’ll sing my song has four. But they seem similar in my mind. And, as I said, the remainder of the first lines, at least, seem to match rhythmically.

Is it just my brain that conflates these songs?

In any case, they seem ripe for a mashup.

You belong to the hard-working people.

You belong to the infinite sea.

Sing a song to the good and the evil.

Let us drink to the free.

Version 1.0 of 2024-06-15.