It took me a minute to figure out what was going on here. Yes, of course it’s a parody of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” but what seem to be surreal mid-’60s Dylan lyrics all have something in common. The title itself is a clue, but I didn’t catch on until he got to “Madam I’m Adam.”
The song appeared on Yankovic’s 2003 album “Poodle Hat,” but he wrote it in 2002, a numerical palindrome. He explained, “Well, I thought, ‘I wonder if I could write a song completely out of palindromes?’ … So I started putting the rhymes together and putting the verses together and basically making a poem out of these palindromes. And I looked at them and I thought, ‘Well, this … this is really just a random jumble, but it looks like it should mean something.'” That’s when he realized it sounded like an outtake from “Highway 61 Revisited.”
I, man, am regal a German am I
Never odd or even
If I had a hi-fi
Madam, I’m Adam
Too hot to hoot
No lemons, no melon
Too bad I hid a boot
Lisa Bonet ate no basil
Warsaw was raw
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
Rise to vote, sir
Do geese see God?
“Do nine men interpret?” “Nine men, ” I nod
Rats live on no evil star
Won’t lovers revolt now?
Race fast, safe car
Pa’s a sap
Ma is as selfless as I am
May a moody baby doom a yam?
Ah, Satan sees Natasha
No devil lived on
Lonely Tylenol
Not a banana baton
No “x” in “Nixon”
O, stone, be not so
O Geronimo, no minor ego
“Naomi, ” I moan
“A Toyota’s a Toyota”
A dog, a panic in a pagoda
Oh no! Don Ho!
Nurse, I spy gypsies run!
Senile felines
Now I see bees I won
UFO tofu
We panic in a pew
Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo
God! A red nugget! A fat egg under a dog!
Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog
Just–wow!