If you’re sitting down to pen some anthemic lyrics, let me give you this tip: Do not ever use the phrase “the sky.”
You see, “the sky” can easily be mis-heard as “this guy.”
Classic example: Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and it’s infamous line, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky” became “Excuse me while I kiss this guy.” This has amused people like, well, me, ever since.
Sweden’s Hammerfall took the lyrical landmine to a new high in their song, “Templars of Steel.” Granted, the song is already silly enough, glorifying, as it does, a bunch of admittedly badass Crusade-era knights who were still quite spartan in their living and weren’t exactly a bunch of ladies’ men, if you catch my drift. For them, it was a life of prayer, combat and just a bit more prayer thrown in for good measure. Partiers like Poison, these were not.
But Hammerfall made it worse with the line “Raise your fist in the sky.” Yes, heard through the wrong ears (namely mine), you have Joacim Cans possibly exhorting listeners to “raise your fist in this guy.”
Fortunately, Hammerfall are playing this over monstrous slabs of instrumentation and Cans’ very cool post-NWOBHM voice. Still, I giggle.
Don’t make me giggle at you – don’t use the words “the sky” in your lyrics.
