The wisdom of children, my ass

THE FIRST SONG I EVER memorized was "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon. I was young, certainly far too young to grasp the song's interpersonal complexities, too young even to memorize the words correctly. By way of illustration, when Carly sang "Some underworld spy, or the wife of a close friend," I would sing "Some underwear spy and the wife of a clothespin." My mother never attempted to correct me. She probably thought it was cute. Like a lisp.

Like a lisp, if it's not corrected quickly, your son winds up a fag, and gets tormented in elementary school because not only is he singing Carly Simon in the playground, he's singing it wrong with a fucking lisp.


REGARDLESS, THIS LYRIC MADE perfect sense to my child brain. While singing, I would picture a clothespin puppet, dressed up in a pretty felt dress, yarn hair pulled back, standing next to a man wearing a cape and a pair of underwear over his eyes to conceal his identity. I may have confused spies with Zorro.

When you're a kid, your ability to discern the reasonable from the absurd is severely limited, as my friend, whose imaginary friend "Broccoli" (a human-sized head of broccoli), can testify. I think that's one of the reasons kids attach to such horrible songs. The neighborhood kids used to spend hours dancing around with Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" on repeat, and our parent's never tried to kill us! Not once!

Even if we put aside children's music (hey, remember Raffi?), there's enough kid-friendly, soul-grating music by otherwise credible musicians to fill thousands of trips to and from Gymboree, the day's playdate, and any number of mind-numbing soccer games. One key entry into this pantheon of shame is surely "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon. Why can I call you Al, Paul? And it's not Betty, okay? I'm having enough trouble with the kids in the playground and I don't need this from you.

The song makes no sense, but an entire generation of kids grew up singing the song from the wayback at the top of their lungs. It turns out it was an international phenomenon, as Jens Lekman explains, before launching into a worthy rendition of the song. Lekman gets at the heart of what makes the song so annoying - the chorus, and Chevy Chase's smile in the original video - and then does us all a favor and gets rid of both. The guitar riff in the hook is pretty amazing, right?

Jens Lekman - "You Can Call Me Al"

You need two mics to rock this hard.