Typing the lyrics

When I first knew the song, You’re Beautiful used to make me quite depressed. I was living in Germany at the time and going through a few relationship dramas, you know the kind, when suddenly the lyrics of every song seem to describe your personal situation, and just turning on the radio can result in tears. I tried to listen to German-language music instead, since I couldn’t understand the lyrics so well, and I put this song out of my mind for a year or so.

Fast forward to a return to Australia, and I got a job teaching English to students who came from all over the world – Europe, South America, Asia – to improve their English skill. I loved this job and was always striving to make my students happy.

One activity they particularly enjoyed was spending an afternoon in the school computer labs listening to music. Someone had set up a great piece of software to help students improve their listening skills. You simply typed in the lyrics to a popular song, then the software created something like a puzzle, and the students could listen to the song and type in words they heard from the lyrics. When they got a word correct, it would show up on screen in the right place in the lyrics. Students quickly figured out that even before I played the song, they could start typing words like “love”, “and” or “blue” and they’d often find the words in the lyrics.

For some reason, our afternoon trying to type the lyrics in for You’re Beautiful was one of my most successful ever. The students each sat at their own computer and were competitive about seeing who got the right lyrics the fastest. I probably played You’re Beautiful about eight times in a row, but nobody seemed to care. At the end, when everybody had all the words in front of them, I played it once more and everyone sang along. And that was a great way to end another day at school.