My four-year-old is a lyrical savant.
At least that’s what I thought until he ruined my favorite Cody Johnson song the other day.
My kid boasts an excellent track record. He chanted Luke Combs’ “Beer Never Broke My Heart” in supermarket aisles as a toddler. It only took him two weeks to learn the hook to Koe Wetzel’s “February 28, 2016” and earn himself a promised trip to Taco Bell.
He even surprised me one night before bedtime with a word-for-word rendition of Combs’ “Cold As You,” a song I didn’t even realize he’d heard before, let alone could memorize.
So, I decided to introduce him to a song I’d been jamming to lately: Cody Johnson’s certified Gold “Me and My Kind.”
The second track off CoJo’s 2014 album, Cowboy Like Me, “Me and My Kind” is my favorite type of country song: upbeat and catchy but actually quite sad if you listen to the lyrics.
The cowboy warns his buddies that, not only did he lose the girl, but he also soured her on anybody like him.
As the chorus goes:
“’Cause she’s over buckles
She’s over spurs
To her you’re just a heartache in a pearl snap shirt
Been lassoed and let go for the last time
No, she ain’t just over me
She’s over me and my kind…”
“Cheese over buttholes?” said my kid from the backseat.
“What?”
“He said ‘cheese over buttholes?’”
“No no… it’s ‘she’s over buckles.’”
“Cheese over buttholes?”
“No, SHE’S OVER BUCKLES.”
“Cheese over buttholes?”
“NO, it goes CHEESE OVER BUTT…”
Now I can’t unhear it.
He wasn’t trying to be funny. He honestly thought a country song was about cheese and buttholes, and he was just trying to understand why. And, in his defense, CoJo doesn’t exactly enunciate the word “buckles” like an English teacher might.
My son keeps asking for “Cheese Over Buttholes” in the car, and I know what he means. He gets it: it’s a great song. And the more I play it, the better chance I’ll be able to eventually cleanse my ears and hear the original version again rather than the embarrassing, alternate one my kid hears.
Just be sure to enunciate the word “buckles” when you sing this one along with your kid, and you should be fine….
“Me and My Kind”
