Adam Neely has a YouTube channel containing “music theory, music cognition, jazz improvisation, musical performance technique, musicology and memes”; AntC sent me this example (11:14) in which he analyzes why “every pop singer of the past 20 years” sings the phrase “caught in the middle” in a particular way. It’s full of interesting phrases like prosodic dissonance, Picardy third, and Scotch snap, and he discusses the cot-caught merger, but I confess I’m posting it at least as much for the phonetic rendering I’ve used as the post title. I’m a sucker for fish puns.
(Oh, and if you’re thinking of the same half-century-old Stealers Wheel song that I was, impatiently waiting through the whole thing for it to get mentioned, he does so at the very end. He baited me, caught me, and reeled me in!)
I’m a sucker for fish puns
No. You didn’t!
(You might want to get you some of Ray Troll’s beautiful art, or a calendar. The all-time master of fish puns.)
Perhaps hat is just baiting a trap, but of course neither “caught” nor “cot” nor for that matter “cod” appear in the lyrics of the Stealers Wheel tune in question, which did however generate a wacky promotional clip which is a nice specimen of what people occasionally did in the wild and lo-budget years before MTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAIsqvTh7g
Yes, it’s that Ray Troll.
(Warning: hard to read because the rotating pictures near the top aren’t the same height, so the text jumps up and down.)
@J.W. Brewer: My favorite fact about that music video is that the singer, Gerry Rafferty, isn’t even in it. He had left the band by the time their first album was on sale, but was convinced to rejoin when after song became a big hit.
@Brett: You are obviously less easily distracted and corrupted than me, since my favorite aspect of that music video is the slinky young lady who is easier on the eyes than any of the dorky musicians, whether in a Rafferty-excluding configuration or a Rafferty-including configuration.
I have to admit I found that Stealer’s Wheel video disgusting. I might’ve liked the song better if I hadn’t seen it.
I might’ve liked the song better if I hadn’t seen [the video].
I remember the song: it arrived within the brief few years I was pretending to be hip. And like @Hat, I was waiting for it to get mentioned. Not ’til now have I seen the video, so the song remains secure in memory. I don’t recognise any of the rest of their oevre.