A way-too-far deep dive into my favorite lyric in the song 'You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch"
Because if I can't do something like this on my own blog what am I even here for?
“You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” is the greatest diss track ever put down on wax. Move over, “The Bridge is Over”, forget “Hit ‘Em Up”, don’t even think about bringing up “Not Like Us.” They all pale in comparison to the GOAT takedown by Thurl Ravenscroft.1 Every line is another dart. Every couplet is a knock-out blow. Every stanza opens with a straightforward declaration and ends in a flourishing crescendo, making you say, “stop it, he’s had enough!” And he does it all in a family-friendly, G-rated way that Tupac could never.2
My favorite line in the beatdown-disguised-as-a-song3 comes in the sixth and final verse, and it stands out to the ear as a flowing composition of consonants and vowels that dance in the ear (and on the tongue, because make no mistake about it, we are singing along with ol’ Thurl in our deepest register) like nothing that has come before it. The line is something that could not exist in the first stanza of the song, because the listener wouldn’t be able to pay attention to anything that came next. We’d fall into a rewind loop of playing it over and over and never get to hear about all the other ways Mr. Grinch is an unpleasant ass. We’d never know about the termites in his smile or the fact that his heart is simultaneously both a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots and full of unwashed socks. The line is something that needs to be built toward and prepared for by everything that comes before it.4
Famously, J.R.R. Tolkien (and many others) has spoken about the pleasant, beautiful sound of the phrase “cellar door.” The way the words fit together creates a musical flow that is pleasing to hear and say. In a 1955 lecture, Tolkien said, of the phrase:
“Most English-speaking people ... will admit that cellar door is ‘beautiful’, especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.”
My version of cellar door is the line “You’re a crooked jerky jockey, and you drive a crooked hoss, Mister Grinch.” Read that again. Not in your head, read it out loud. Don’t sing it5, just speak it. Slow down. Say it again. Now close your eyes and repeat it. Fall into a trance, repeating it until you’re floating on a raft in the ocean, peaceful and serene, riding the waves of the “ooks” “erks” and “ocks” until all your mangled-up, tangled-up knots have evaporated into thin air and disappeared from your previously stress-filled body.
Doesn’t that feel great?
Just like “cellar door,” the phrase needs to be dissociated from its sense in order to appreciate its beauty. Its sense is that Mr. Grinch is a dishonest, foolish, irregular rider of horses and that the horse he rides upon also shares those same disreputable qualities. The man is so toxic that he infects the beasts around him (save for his beautiful-souled dog Max, although he is complicit in the sins of his father) with his vile, obnoxious stink.6 But the words themself are pure poetry. Ravenscroft is Shakespeare, frolicking through a field of contempt, floating in the clouds, and ascending to join the gods of language to drink ambrosia and look down at the earth, made more beautiful because of his lyrical creation.
If Thurl can mix metaphors, then so can I.
I can feel it in my toes as the song approaches this line. When we learn that the singer is nauseated by Mr. Grinch with a “nauseous super naus,” I know the only thing that will calm the storm brewing inside our collective upset bellies is to sing the next line with our full hearts. And I do, each and every time. I am Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras combined, belting with my entire soul, shaking the walls of my home (or, frequently, the windows of the car) with a vibrato my high school choir teacher would call “alarming” and “far too much.”
When I come back down, I barely have time to catch my breath before joining in to sing along with the daily special from the twisted mind of our tortured-genius word-chef: three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich. With arsenic sauce, of course. Sounds delicious. Not to eat, but to hear.
Actually, can I get that sauce on the side, please? This song has provided me with all the sauce that I’ll need for quite a while.7
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What a fucking name, am I right? Who named this dude, Thomas Pynchon?
He probably could, but let me cook for a minute, okay?
And possibly my favorite lyric in any song ever I’m not even kidding for comedic effect.
Both in the song and, obviously, in this essay. Yes, this in an “essay” and not a “goof-around.”
I know you sang it.
…stank…stunk.
Also, there’s arsenic in that sauce! No, thank you!
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Support my comedy and get members-only exclusive content here on my website, or with a paid subscription through Substack or Patreon. You can also send a one-time tip through Venmo.
