Lyrics are arbitrary, joy isn’t

I went to my first UK folk festival this week. I went because my dance group was going, but the concerts were an extra joy. I grew up listening many of the songs on my parents’ records, but now instead of a recording I was listening with hundreds of others under a rising moon. As a teenager, I thought lyrics I couldn’t understand held some mysterious meaning that I would eventually understand. I was disappointed to learn that Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” initially had the placeholder lyrics “Scrambled eggs / Oh, my baby, how I love your legs.” Eventually I realized that the songwriters of the past had churned out plenty of faux-meaningful material, and material that meant completely different things to different people. Folk music has plenty of material that’s survived because it’s especially good, and also material that’s just survived. “You can sing along if you want,” said one singer after a hey-diddle-down type chorus at the festival. “But you don’t have to, it’s pretty daft…