I recently encountered one of the more pointless and irritating social media threads I’ve seen, at least since the 2024 election. It had to do with lyrics of the Christmas song, I’ll Be Home For Christmas. In the thread I saw, which was on Meta’s relatively new Twitter/X alternative, Threads—the post had over 500 comments at last count—there was a great deal of incredulity and offense taken that anyone would attempt to suggest that the correct lyrics in the first verse of the song are, “you can plan on me,” when the lyrics, according to the author of the post, are “you can count on me.” A number of people felt strongly about it and continued the unnecessary argument, which we’ll come back to momentarily.
Apparently this is all related to a TikTok video of just over a year ago about the same subject, which suggested that our belief that “you can count on me” is the correct way to sing that line is another example of the “Mandela Effect,” which I believe is the phenomenon in which people (mostly of the Gen X age group) remember Nelson Mandela as Jimmy Martin’s mandolin player in the early 1970s. I could be wrong about the specifics, but it’s about collective memory and people reinforcing their false memories of past events.
Here’s the problem with all of this, at least where song lyrics are concerned: there are really no arguments to be had about song lyrics in this day and age in which we have these little handheld devices that enable us to look these things up. Even when we didn’t, the song lyric question has always been very cut and dried. It’s just that in days of yore, we could argue about it in a bar, and occasionally place bets on it, until someone was able to find a source for the answer. If someone wrote the song and had it copyrighted and published—and, we assume, recorded, which is the only reason we’d know about it—then those lyrics are the correct ones. End of story.
In the case of I’ll Be Home For Christmas, the lyrics were written by Kim Gannon and were published in 1943. The lyrics were and are:
I’ll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
That’s how the line was sung on the original recording by Bing Crosby. Even if “you can count on me” feels more like what someone would say nowadays, or we’re just more used to hearing that phrase, the lyrics remain what they are. However, it’s not some mystical collective memory error either, because the song has also been recorded countless (or “planless”?) times since then, using the phrase “You can count on me,” from Johnny Mathis to the Carpenters.
Some Carpenters devotees even suggested that whatever lyrics Karen Carpenter sang are by definition correct. “The Carpenters can do no wrong,” is their position. These same people probably believe that “birds suddenly appear” around certain attractive people just because they want to be close to them.
The lyrics are still the lyrics as written by Kim Gannon, and arguing about it is just a waste of time and energy. Is it wrong to sing “you can count on me”? Of course it isn’t. But suggesting that the altered lyrics are actually the correct ones and always have been is a little gaslighty.
In bluegrass music we have whole generations of people who sing “When I die won’t you bury me on the mountain” in the chorus of Blue Ridge Cabin Home, because they learned it from the Bluegrass Album Band that way, or from someone else who learned it from from the Bluegrass Album Band, when the original lyrics are “when I die won’t you bury me in the mountains.” Listen to the Flatt & Scruggs original. Granted, the “s” is hard to hear, but the “in” is quite clear. Is there something wrong with singing “on the mountain?” Well, it would be better if it were a deliberate choice: “I think the guy should be buried on the mountain. Doesn’t that seem nicer?” but it’s not a big deal. We know who wrote the song, though, and there is an original recording, so there is actually no debate to be had about what the right lyrics are, no matter how commonly the wrong lyrics are sung and recorded.
On the other hand, we have very old songs we do in bluegrass music that are of unknown origin, like some of the murder ballads that came to us from the British Isles, with all sorts of lyric variations through the years as the song has been passed down through aural tradition. There can be no debate about those lyrics, either, because there is no “correct” or “incorrect” in this case. The original was probably sung at a party in the north of England somewhere in 1844 by someone long-forgotten (and that’s just as well because he may be the guy who actually killed Pretty Polly). So if some mansplainer comes up to you at a jam session and says, “I’m sorry but the second line of the chorus of Banks of the Ohio is ‘in no other’s arms entwined,’ not ‘in our home we’ll happy be’; that’s how Olivia Newton John sang it. Your way doesn’t even rhyme!” you can reply, “Hey, my drink is just about done; could you go get me a refill?” (note: I didn’t make the Olivia Newton John part up. You can look it up).
In short, there are no circumstances under which we should be debating about the lyrics of any song at all. We can argue about which ones we prefer, but that’s a whole other discussion, and a subjective one.
Returning to I’ll Be Home For Christmas, I always thought the truly controversial lyrics of that song were:
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree
Many consider the notion of putting presents on, rather than under the tree, to be pretty unusual and downright impractical for any presents larger or heavier than earbuds. This is why numerous artists have amended that line to be presents “round,” “neath,” “by,” or the poorly-metering “under” the tree. Do those choices make more sense? Yes. Are they better for the tree? No doubt. Are any of them more correct than the original? No they aren’t. The writer wanted those presents “on the tree.” The writer also asked for snow, which in many climates is also a pretty unreasonable request. Should we have a Florida version?
Please have rain and and candy cane
And presents somewhere in the general vicinity of the tree
Sure. Why not? And let’s go ahead and request a mountaintop burial, while we’re asking for stuff, but let’s not waste valuable social media energy (an almost never-used phrase) or even barroom energy on what the right lyrics of a song are.
