What’s that rhyme?

Now that I have the file-count limit sorted out on the audio system in my car, it’s much better at playing songs in random order. Now I’m hearing Yes, Linda Ronstadt, Steely Dan, Toni Price, and Jackson Browne, and not just artists in the alphabetic A’s and B’s.

Thus, the other day I heard a song from Los Lobos’ great album The Neighborhood. The song that came on was the one that opens the album, Down on the Riverbed, and it struck me, as it has before, that there’s a slight oddness to the rhyme in the chorus. It goes like this (emphases mine):

Down on the riverbed,
Down on the riverbed,
Down on the riverbed,
I asked my lover for her h...

...for her h...

You want it to be head, don’t you? I certainly do. They set you up with bed thrice, and what rhymes with bed? Well, head, most assuredly.

Of course, it’s hand; Down on the riverbed, I asked my lover for her hand.

Trips my brain up every time I hear that song.