46) Dear McCracken

Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics! I am your host Jake, and today we are discussing the song "Dear McCracken" by the band Bughunter. If you've never heard of this song or this band, don't worry. They are not super well-known, but this song is a very fun one. I could honestly spend a long time on this song, there are so many fun phrases and words in it. Today, however, we're just going to talk about a few interesting words. Let's get started!

The song is called "Dear McCracken", and it tells the story of a flight that the singer took, where he sat next to a woman writing an email. "Dear McCracken" is the opening of the email, and as the song goes on, we learn more about this woman and this man "McCracken" that she's writing to. You'll have to listen to the song to find out more about it, but trust me, it's worth it!

Today however, we're just going to talk about a line from the first verse. Our singer begins to read the email, and sees the opening line, "Dear McCracken". He immediately stops reading and tells us his thoughts about it.

"This is already great!" he says, excited to continue reading. But what does he think is great about it?

The singer continues to explain what he thinks is great. "Dude's got a pen pal, and a killer last name."

This might be a little confusing to read at first, but let's break it down, step by step.

The first difficulty is the word "Dude's". This is a contraction, that is to say, two words that have been pushed together to make a new word. Can you figure out what the two words are? The two words are "Dude" and "has". The phrase should say "Dude has got a pen pal", which we can make simpler and just say "This dude has a pen pal". The word "Dude" is just a very casual way of saying "guy" or "man". This of course doesn't mean that a woman can't be called "dude", but just keep in mind, it is primarily masculine. In this case, it is referring to a guy, the person the woman is writing to, whose last name we know is "McCracken".

So "This dude has a pen pal...". What on earth is a pen pal?

Well, "pen pal" is a rather cute and childlike expression, to refer to someone you send letters back and forth with. Traditionally, these were ACTUAL letters, written with...pens! You would send a letter to your pen pal, and they would send one back. Pre-internet, this might have even been someone you didn't know! Nowadays, we talk to strangers online all the time, and we have access to all sorts of information about the world. But in the days of "pen pals" that wasn't the case. You might have a pen pal in another country who would teach you all sorts of things about their daily life through their letters, just as you shared with them!

In our song, our singer is making a bit of a joke. He knows that these two adults writing emails to each other aren't actually "pen pals", but it's a funny image for us to think about.

The end of the line says, "and a killer last name". So, "This dude has a killer last name". What does it mean that a name is "killer"? That sounds a bit...morbid.

Well it's not so bad as all that. "Killer" just means "very good". For example, "I had a killer time at the concert last night!" or "These donuts I just bought are killer!".

It's a bit of an old term, sort of outdated, but still used quite a bit! See if you can find a place to use it!

That's all we have for today. I hope that you have a "killer" week, and I hope to talk to you soon!