Speaking of fictional lawfirms, we finished new Matlock

[conuly]

Okay, so you feel so ashamed and guilty over what you did, and it's haunted you for the past decade and a half, and you've changed, you're not that person anymore - that's all well and good, but you know how you deal with that guilt and shame? How you prove you changed and you're not that person anymore?

You fucking come clean about your coverup! Yeah, you were manipulated by your terrible, emotionally abusive dad. And yeah, he'll probably wiggle out of all the consequences and you'll get them all. And yeah, that sucks. That absolutely sucks.

But you still gotta do it, buddy.

During the Christmas episode we saw the firm's acapella group, which might have just been an excuse to highlight one character's amazing singing voice. Anyway, they were singing White Winter Hymnal, and I'm going to just post two quick videos, the original version and a different acapella cover:

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

(Those lyrics can't be entirely right - surely the pack is swaddled in their coats, not swallowed?)

Anyway, you'll notice that in the first one they weirdly pronounce "the" with a "long e" (the vowel in pee) before the words "white snow". Does that strike anybody else as a weird place to do that?

Comments

[cactuswatcher]

I'm from a different part of the country. The pack being swallowed in their coats doesn't sound bad or even odd to me, and fits better with "following" in the first sentence. But without a "thuh" instead of a long-e "the," I disturbingly keep hearing "I was following the eye..." It takes a slight break in the voice to say "thuh" before "I," which they probably didn't want. But saying it smoothly together with a long e makes me dislike the whole song.

Long e "the white" sounds off to me as well. But I grew up near, but not in the Ozarks, where "the" read aloud was almost always pronounced with a long e, and our teachers, often from the Ozarks, were careful not to correct either pronunciation of "the."

[movingfinger]

Note that this occurence of "the" before "white snow" is sung as a two-note rising vowel (not a musician) and it would sound far less distinctive if it were an open schwa rather than the crisp "ee" sound, and not lead into "white" so unambiguously. The "eeee--oo--eye" versus the "uuuhh--oo--eye" is more musical. So the choice to sing "the" with the long "ee" there makes perfect sense to me.

[conuly]

two-note rising vowel (not a musician)

A melisma, maybe?

[chomiji]

Awww, you didn't use a video showing Pentatonix doing this! I have seen them do it live - the clap percussion/choreo is awesome.

[conuly]

I considered it, but I didn't like the video quality that much.

[darkoshi]

The "the" doesn't seem odd to me at all. But how do red scarves keep little heads from falling in the snow? It sounds creepy somehow. The last lyric even more so, with an image of blood-reddened snow. Is that the image it is meant to evoke?

edit: I do like the song though, including the ambiguity. But I'm surprised it's included on some Christmas albums.

[conuly]

Their heads are tied on. (Also, judging from the comments it looks like some people just... don't listen to lyrics?)

[darkoshi]

Supposedly the song lyrics are about loss of innocence. I still don't see how that relates to the line about the heads, but no matter.

I can see the lyrics say "swaddled" in the first video, but even in that one it sounds like "swallowed" to me.