New Year. Same Old.

As you get older you develop an instinct for these things. Or at least I did. Or maybe I’m just that much more perceptive than you. Yeah, that’s probably it.

We were watching (and I hesitate to admit this but I have to write about something) that New Year’s Eve show from New York. You know, the one with Ryan Seacrest. There was a band performing, one that I had actually heard of. And that’s about it. I knew their name and nothing else. They are called Florida Georgia Line.

I was paying enough attention to know they were doing a song called, “Sundays,” or something like that. And then I heard the line. It went, “If I’m lucky, yeah I might get paid.” And it just didn’t sound right. I suspected they had changed it.

And so, to the Internet! Where the first thing I discovered was the name of the song was actually, “Sun Daze.” Isn’t the web wonderful? I mean, years ago we would have been thinking it was called “Sundays,” right up until the day we read it on the record label. And if we never bought the record, we’d be wrong forever.

I quickly found the lyrics and sure enough, and as usual, I was right. The actual lyric was, “If I’m lucky, yeah I might get laid.” Well sure, this was probably the duo’s biggest audience ever, they were performing live and if the network said to change the word, well, what else could they do?

Well, they could have done what Jim Morrison did just before appearing for the first (and last) time on the Ed Sullivan Show. A producer had told the band that they must change the lyric to their hit “Light My Fire” from “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher,” to “Girl, we couldn’t get much better.”

Hell, that doesn’t even rhyme. History is a little fuzzy on whether the Doors verbally agreed to this, but it’s crystal clear about what happened next. Morrison sang the original lyrics, and the Doors were banned from the Sullivan Show for life. (Which for Morrison meant less than four years.)

So, can you really blame Florida Georgia Line for caving? I mean, a gig’s a gig, right? And with Ryan Seacrest, no less. Still, when I went on to read all of the lyrics in “Sun Daze” I was somewhat surprised. There were references to getting stoned, the corn hole game and sitting a girl up on the kitchen sink and putting “a pink umbrella in her drink.” Okay, maybe I’m reading too much into that last one, but I don’t think ol’ Ed would have liked it. Nope, not one little bit. 

The Doors on Ed Sullivan