{"id":14301,"date":"2012-12-05T10:04:30","date_gmt":"2012-12-05T18:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2012\/12\/05\/14301.html"},"modified":"2012-12-05T10:04:30","modified_gmt":"2012-12-05T18:04:30","slug":"if-i-only-had-a-brain-lyrics-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2012\/12\/05\/if-i-only-had-a-brain-lyrics-m\/","title":{"rendered":"If I only had a brain lyrics mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was listening to the extended version of “If I Only Had a Brain” the other day (it's the version that didn't make it into the film, with an extended instrumental bit (while the Scarecrow dances) followed by a final verse), and I was struck by the ending, in which the Scarecrow sings:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

And perhaps I'll deserve ya<\/p>\n

And be even worthy erve ya<\/p>\n

If I only had a brain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My first thought was (as usual when I hear that verse) that it seemed odd to me that both this song and “If I Only Had the Nerve” would involve Brooklynesque accents, though I'm not clear on whether the latter was written intentionally that way or not, and I suppose that a song that rhymes “nuffin” with “stuffin'” may stretch pronunciation in all sorts of ways for a rhyme.<\/p>\n

But that wasn't sufficient reason for a blog entry. The reason I'm posting this is my second thought, which was:<\/p>\n

Is he courting Dorothy?<\/p>\n

I mean, doesn't “deserve you” and ”worthy of you” sound like he's talking about romance? And there's nobody else around. There's Toto, and a crow—but I just checked the video (the extended number is an extra on the Blu-ray of the movie), and he sings those lines looking directly at Dorothy.<\/p>\n

So what's that all about? There's no hint of anything romancey in the presentation of those lines, and I don't think we're meant to assume the Scarecrow is romancing her (Garland was 16, but I think Dorothy was meant to be younger), but I'm having a hard time interpreting the words any other way.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was listening to the extended version of “If I Only Had a Brain” the other day (it’s the version…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}