Much of the early Beach Boys’ songs are about high school and teenagers. Some of them are quite funny, but they aren’t as naughty and knowing as Chuck Berry’s celebrations of teenage life. The Beach Boys’ Fun, Fun, Fun, for example, is as infectious and more filled with harmony than anything composed by Chuck Berry, but the lyrics aren’t in the same league as a Chuck Berry classic like Nadine. In fact, I was about to describe the early Beach Boys’ lyrics as "jejune". Not "childish" or "juvenile" but something "adolescent".
Adolescent they are but they can’t be called "jejune". Though "jejune" is lumped together with "juvenile" and "puerile" in the thesaurus, there is a difference according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. According to it, "jejune" means "naive and simplistic" and can also mean "dull". The Beach Boys are by no means dull. But that’s what "jejune" means according to the COED. It says the word comes from the Latin "jejunus", which means "fasting, barren".
I am surprised that a word derived from the Latin for "barren" became a synonym for "juvenile". The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary categorically says "jejune" means "juvenile" and "puerile". "Juvenile", "puerile", "infantile" all come from Latin words for children. But "jejune" originally had nothing to do with children. How did it come to be associated with "juvenile"?
Meanwhile, here’s Chuck Berry performing Roll over Beethoven. I did find a clip of him performing Nadine with Keith Richard. But this is an all-time classic.
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