They call me Baby Driver

Posted on May 26, 2017April 21, 2021 by Matt Todd

This post about the film, Baby Driver, contains affiliate links. I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. Learn more in my Disclosure Policy. As always, thank you for your support.

Have you seen the trailers for the movie, Baby Driver? It looks like it could be a fun movie. It also looks like it’s similar to other movies with similar themes. But that’s OK. As of this writing, it has a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

And the American public is never wrong. Right?

Don’t answer that.

Every time I see this trailer, though, I expect to hear Baby Driver from Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. Are you familiar with this song? It’s pretty great. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I really think this song should be part of its soundtrack. I haven’t found it in any of the film’s soundtrack listings. That’s unfortunate.

If you haven’t heard it before, you should go ahead and check it out here. And if you have heard it, go ahead and click the link, too. Because I know you’ll want to hear it again.

I love this album. It was on regular rotation in the tape player in dad’s car. I learned The Boxer, Cecilia, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Keep the Customer Satisfied, Baby Driver, and the rest of the songs by heart. I was innocent enough that I took the songs at face-value.

This album entered my car stereo’s rotation when I crawled under my pop cultural rock and played my Metallica/Simon and Garfunkel mixtape quite frequently. I initially took the songs at face-value.

Then it happened.

I was driving along, minding my own business, when Baby Driver came on. I sung along with the lyrics when I came to the chorus. Paul, Art, and I started singing about engines and the skies parted before me and it was like my eyes had been opened for the first time.

I had to pull over.

I hit “rewind” and listened to the chorus again. Yes. I’d heard it right. I’d been singing it right the whole time. But I had misunderstood the song for years. Years, I tell you.

Much to my dismay, this song wasn’t about a kid who liked to play with toy cars. And it wasn’t about someone who likes to race cars. He wasn’t inviting someone to check out the car he’d been working on in his garage.

And he aint’ talking bout no race car engines.

Are you picking up what I’m laying down?

I was in shock. I was horrified. And I might have been a little bit embarrassed as I sat in my pulled over car, contemplating the song’s meaning that had been sitting right in front of me for years. Years, I tell you!

Baby Driver didn’t mean what I thought it meant.

I started to wonder what other songs didn’t mean what I thought they meant. Turned out that there were several songs on that album that weren’t quite as innocent as I originally thought.

Don’t even get me started on Cecilia…

Has something like this happened to you? Did you misunderstand the meaning of a song or a phrase when you were a kid, only to find out much later that it had much more “adult” meaning?

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Matt Todd

Howdy. I'm Matt. My wife, Christy, and I have four kids and two dogs, I'm passionate about orphan care. I'm a die-hard fan of the Evansville Aces, the Indiana Hoosiers, and Star Wars. I'm trying to live life by the Todd family motto: "It behooves us to live!"