"Music, We Have A Problem."

I assumed incorporating music for two of my lessons would make them more entertaining. I was wrong. Oh so wrong
My two Friday evening lessons are one-to-one affairs. The first is with a sullen 12 year old girl called Yuko. The other is with a happy-go-lucky 17 year old Maths wizard called Manabu.
I wanted to play them a song, whilst they read the printed lyrics sheet in front of them. But I had deliberately left out certain words and would ask them to fill-in-the-gaps as they heard the particular word sung.
I scanned my CD collection and figured the gnarly, aggressive sounds of Tom Waits was inappropriate, as was the thrashing volatile punk of The Damned. And unless they wanted to learn African instead of English, then the tribal shouts of Fela Kuti would be lost on them.
For Yuko, I needed simple, happy songs and nothing to scare the living crap out of her. So I put aside songs by the Sex Pistols, Wu-tang Clan and NWA. I decided to use The Beatles' Hello Goodbye to help practice opposites, and Sam Cookes' Wonderful World to practice the names of school subjects.
Recently I have been teaching her from a boring textbook, so her eyes widened when I came into the room with my laptop which stored all my music. I told her we were going to have a special lesson and got her to close the dusty, rotting textbook.
I set up the laptop and then theatrically clapped my hands together excitedly. "Do you like MUSIC?!" I said like a circus master addressing an expectant crowd.
"No," was her terse reply.
This wasn't in the script. I expected her to nod energetically and clap her hands whilst yipping, "Yay!"
This was not forthcoming and she remained looking miserable throughout Wonderful World.
She filled out the words without any trouble, but she was clearly not enjoying the lesson. She would constantly sigh and blow through her cheeks. The awkwardness of this moment was accentuated during the middle eight of Hello Goodbye when she wasn't required to do anything whilst the orchestra blared and the guitars twanged for what seemed like a lifetime. I tried to introduce some humour into the proceedings by pretending to conduct the orchestra in the song by waving my hands back and forth in the air. I thought this would be funny. Yuko thought otherwise and let out an audible yawn.
I had hoped Manabu would react differently to my proposed lesson because I always saw him wandering around the school with a huge bass guitar slung over his shoulder. I figured a musician would like music. He did, just not my music.
When I told him about teaching him English with music, he seemed pleased and asked what music I would be playing. I told him I had chosen the songs Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon because he was interested in London; Johnny B Goode by Chuck Berry because he liked fast guitar sounds and You Can't Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones because I like it.
I began Werewolves and he wrote down the correct answers but stopped me mid way. "What's a werewolf?" he asked.
I assumed he knew what one was, and even if he didn't, Warren Zevon shed some light on the matter by consistently howling AaaaaaWoooooo throughout the song.
I told him it was a fictional wolf beast and did an impression of one. He looked at me as if I were sick in the head so I drew a picture of one on the board. He seemed to understand, but insisted on taking the song at face value.
"Why would there be a werewolf in London if they are not real?" he asked.
"I dunno, it's just a song," I said.
He also couldn’t understand the lyric: I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand walking through the streets of Soho in the rain.
"How can a werewolf look at a menu while walking. They walk on four legs, right?." He asked, scratching his head.
Manabu had just crushed the life out of this song by failing to use his imagination.
I resumed the song but Manabu didn't have a thirst for this lesson anymore. His analytical brain was disappointed with the fantastical content of the song.
As with Yuko I garnered the worst reactions during the uncomfortable middle eight section.
As the guitar solos squealed, I pretended to air-guitar much to Manabu's non-amusement. I gave up and stared intently at the screen as if I was figuring out a complex mathematical equation.
Johnny B Goode didn't fare to well either because Chuck Berry just sang too damn fast. This was my fault. I should have put myself in a non-native English speaker's shoes and realized Chuck Berry's staccato rap during his bouncy chord work would have been impossible to decipher. This proved to be the case when Manabu handed me back his lyric sheet with question marks filled in where the missing words should have been.
The Stones had never failed me in the past, and I pinned my hope on their song ending the lesson on a marginally more positive note, rather than the wreck of a lesson it was turning out to be. But the truth is Mick Jagger has one of the most distinct vocals in rock music. In other words, you can never understand what the bloody hell he is saying.
The lesson was officially labelled woeful when Manabu filled in his sheet at the end of the song and asked, "What does this sentence mean when he sings, with a glass of wine in her hyyyyyy-aaaaaand? What does hyyyyyy-aaaand mean?"