Why we mishear song lyrics

The week’s best arts and culture reads – including the ghosts of fast food past, Chris Rock on racism and why it sounds like Hendrix wants to “kiss this guy”.

On the awkward second life of chain-restaurant buildings. They were designed to do one job, project the brand, and they did it brilliantly. So when a Pizza Hut or a Burger King falls empty, and another business moves in, you can never un-see the fast-food origins. “Whether in Topeka or Tampa, the A-frame shape of an International House Of Pancakes and the trapezoidal windows of a Pizza Hut are similarly recognizable and –  for many – comforting”.

They represent only 2% of US music sales, they are mostly for collectors and DJs, but vinyl records are back in fashion. Sales are up 49% so far this year, and what remains of the old manufacturing base is struggling to keep up with demand. A single company supplies 90% of raw vinyl for American records, leading to daily supply shortages at the 15 remaining pressing-plants; only a handful of engineers know how to maintain the old equipment.

On the science of misheard song lyrics — or “mondegreens”. Quite often the problem is an oronym — a word string in which the sounds can be logically divided multiple ways: “Bohemian Rhapsody becomes Bohemian Rap City”. We’re also governed by familiarity; we choose to hear a word or phrase that we’re familiar with. “Excuse me while I kiss this guy”, for Jimi Hendrix’s “Excuse me while I kiss the sky”, remains “one of the most widely reported mondegreens of all time”.

Thrillingly condescending review of Narrow Road To The Deep North, Richard Flanagan’s prize-winning novel about Australian soldiers on the Burma Railway. “It is all bite, and no chew. The writing is overstuffed, and leaks sawdust. The book was described as having gone through many drafts, with Flanagan using those that didn’t make it to ‘light the barbie’. I can’t help thinking this wasn’t the right one to spare”.

Interview with “the architect of the most important hard-rock band to ever walk the earth”, Led Zeppelin. Page is “the second- or the third-best rock guitarist of all time, depending on how seriously you take Eric Clapton”. At 70 he “looks fantastic”, and still has plenty of edge. “He is, in fact, oddly intimidating, despite his age and unimposing frame. He rarely raises his voice, yet periodically seems on the cusp of yelling”       .

We tend to understand disagreement as a kind of failure. But Jewish tradition “repudiates the cult of unanimity”; it favours “an almost erotic relationship” to argument. Minority opinions are “preserved alongside majority opinions because their reasoning may one day be useful again”. This idea of a “contentious community” is “not as paradoxical as it may seem”. To accommodate disagreement is a form of strength.

American comedian Chris Rock talks about racism in the US film industry. “When it comes to casting, Hollywood pretty much decides to cast a black guy or they don’t. We’re never on the ‘short list’. We’re never ‘in the mix’. And there are almost no black women in film. I go to the movies almost every week, and I can go a month and not see a black woman having an actual speaking part in a movie. That’s the truth.”