10) Last Christmas - Verse 1

Once bitten and twice shy
I keep my distance, but you still catch my eye
Tell me, baby, do you recognize me?
Well, it's been a year, it doesn't surprise me

Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics, I am your host Jake, and today I'm very excited to be jumping into verse 1 of the song "Last Christmas", originally by Wham!. If you haven't heard episode 1 of this series, I'd suggest that you pause right here, and go back to the first episode of this series where we discuss the chorus of the song. If this is your first time ever listening to this podcast, I'd recommend finding the episode titled "Introduction" and giving it a listen before continuing!

Before we get to the song itself, it's time for another listener shoutout!. Abderahman from Mauritania wrote in with some really encouraging words a few weeks ago. He told me he listens to the podcast over 10 times a day! Wow! I don't know if he really does listen to it that much, but if so, that's pretty impressive. He must be very tired of my voice by now! In any case, thanks so much to Abderahman for writing in and for being such a big fan! I asked him what his favorite English language song was, and he said it was "Rise" by Josh Garrels. I had never heard it, so thanks for letting me know about it! I'll include a link to the song in the podcast description.

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Alright, let's get back to the song!

We start out with a really fantastic idiom. This is one that you are going to want to start using! The phrase is "Once bitten and twice shy." The actual phrase that we use doesn't usually include the word "and". You can just say "once bitten, twice shy." If you've never heard this phrase, take a minute and see if you can figure out what it means. It relates directly with what we've learned about our singer in the last episode. Let's say, for example, that you meet a dog for the first time, and it bites you! The next time you see a dog...ANY dog, you are going to be scared to put your hand out to pet them. This is because you were bitten once...so the next time you're going to be timid or shy. The wording of the idiom doesn't make perfect sense, but even so we can understand the meaning. The word "twice" here is a bit odd, but it's playing on the word "once". You can think of the phrase as "If you are bitten once, the second time you are going to be nervous."

So what does this mean in our song? Well, the singer was hurt by the person they are singing too. Hurt emotionally. Last Christmas, this other person broke our singer's heart! That is to say, our singer was in love with them, and this person didn't love them bk in the same way. So now our singer is nervous...let's jump to the next line.

"I keep my distance, but you still catch my eye"

Another great phrase for us, right at the beginning here. "I keep my distance." This phrase can be a bit difficult for an English learner. How can you "keep" distance? It doesn't really make a lot of sense! But the idea itself is relatively simple. Let's say again that you were bit by a dog...you really have to find some friendlier dogs. So you're bit by a dog and the next day you see that same dog again. There is however, some amount of distance between you and the dog. Let's say that the dog is 100 feet away. If you "keep your distance", you're going to maintain a large amount of distance from the dog. That is to say, you are going to make sure that you stay far away from the dog. There are other ways that you can use this same phrase. For example, if we were a couple and we had broken up, I might say to say "Let's keep our distance for a while okay?" That means, I think we should BOTH stay away from each other, in fact, we should avoid each other. Another example, let's say that I am addicted to cookies, and I see a box of cookies on the kitchen counter. I might "keep my distance" from the cookies, in order to keep myself from eating them. It wouldn't be a large distance, because they are in my home, but I am purposely trying to stay away from them.

So our singer is keeping his distance from someone. We're going to find out in a moment, that it's the same person who broke our singer's heart the year before.

The second half of the line says "but you still catch my eye"

So what does this mean? Interestingly enough, this phrase has two similar, but subtly different meanings, and either one could work here. Let's go through them both.

If somebody or something "catches your eye" that means that you have noticed them or it. For example, if I see the famous actor and singer Will Smith while I'm shopping for groceries, he'd probably catch my eye. Or, if I see a box of cookies sitting on the counter, that might "catch my eye" as I'm walking past (and that's why I need to keep my distance!) My attention is DRAWN towards the person or the thing that catches my eye. Something is making me want to look at them. In the case of Will Smith, it's because he's very famous. In the case of the cookies, it's because I want to eat one, really, really, really, really badly.

But as I said before, there is a second possible meaning to this phrase. This meaning is that two people are both looking at each other. This sounds similar, but it's not exactly the same thing. In this case, the idea is that one person's eyes "caught" the other person's eyes. The two pairs of eyes are looking at each other. This is called "making eye contact". I know that probably sounds weird. When we think of "contact", normally that refers to something touching something else physically. An eyeball touching another eyeball is a pretty gross idea. Thankfully, eye contact is simply two people looking at each other's eyes.

With what the song has revealed so far, it's unclear which one of these he means. Does he mean that he spotted this person somewhere? Or does he mean that they both saw each other, making eye contact?

Our next line clears up the mystery.

"Tell me, baby, do you recognize me?"

The word "baby" here is simply an affectionate term for somebody that you have romantic interest in. The singer is asking if the other person recognizes him (or her if you're listening to the Taylor Swift cover!). Normally, you can only recognize someone if you see them or hear them. In this case, we can safely assume that they have both seen each other, which means...they've made eye contact. Mystery solved!

So he asks if the other person recognizes him. This is the same thing as asking if he looks familiar to them. This is because our singer recognizes THEM, so he wants to know if they recognize HIM.

The final line says "Well, it's been a year, it doesn't surprise me."

This an interesting line. At first glance it seems kind of strange that he's saying "it doesn't surprise me". What doesn't surprise him? Well, there is an implied answer to his question in the previous line. He asks "Do you recognize me?" and then we are supposed to assume that he receives a response, either yes or no, and then he responds to that response by saying "It's been a year, it doesn't surprise me."

It's not really clear what the response was! I can see both as a possibility. If the person had responded "Yes, I recognize you", then we can read his answer as "It's ONLY been a year, it doesn't surprise me." A year isn't a very long time, so it wouldn't be surprising if somebody recognized somebody else a year later.

However, while a year isn't a long time, it's long enough that somebody could have changed. It's possible that the response was "No" and the singer is saying that isn't surprising, because the singer himself has changed quite a bit over the past year. What do you think? Do you think our singer was recognized by this person who broke his heart or not? Let me know what you think!

Well, that finishes up our episode. I hope that no matter how this podcast caught your eye, you're still enjoying it! Join us next time, as we look at verse 2 of Last Christmas!

As always, you can find the transcript for this episode in the description. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate it and subscribe! We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday! And of course, don't forget to tell your friends about us! We would love to hear from you! e pot even more English learning related content every day on Instagram, username "lelpodcast". There you can interact with us, as well as other English learners. There are weekly questions, as well as helpful images related to our podcast episodes. We’re also active on Reddit and Twitter under the same username, lelpodcast. Finally, if you have any questions, comments, critiques, or suggestions for songs, send us a message to any of our social media accounts, or to our email address "[email protected]". We hope to hear from you soon!