Monday, January 11, 2016

Herman's Hermits' "The Most Beautiful Thing in My Life"

A couple months ago, I discovered some ambiguities in the lyrics of Herman's Hermits' "The Most Beautiful Thing in My Life," specifically the second half of the second verse:
She glows to me, arose to me
A shining star she is by far
The most beautiful thing in my life
Almost each one of these lines could be parsed a different way.  First, I found just "arose"/"a rose."  So either "she... arose to me" or "[She's] a rose to me," almost the same as the "A shining star she is by far" in the next line - listing metaphors for the girl.

But once I transcribed that part of the lyrics, I found something else.  The last two lines could have a break in two different places.  It could follow the line break: "A shining star she is by far / The most beautiful thing in my life," or it could be "A shining star" (either a metaphor like "a rose" or "A shining star arose to me" inverted as "Arose to me a shining star") and "She is by far the most beautiful thing in my life."