41) Bad Habits

Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics! I am your host Jake, and today we are discussing some lyrics from the song "Bad Habit" by Steve Lacy.

This is not to be confused with another recent song called "Bad Habits" by Ed Sheeran (notice the plural title).

A bit of a warning about today's song. In English, when someone says a song has "language" in it, what that means is that the song has words in it that many would consider offensive or at the very least, impolite. Today's song has "language", and it is "explicit" language. That is to say, it uses words that talk about sexual things, in an overt, or explicit, way.

We won't be discussing those lyrics today, but I wanted to let you know, just in case you wanted to avoid listening to the song as a result.

Alright, let's jump into the lyrics we *will* be discussing.

The line I want to talk about today says "I bit my tongue, it's a bad habit, kinda mad that I didn't take a stab at it"

This is a pretty fun lyric, so let's discuss it.

To begin with, what exactly is a bad habit? A bad habit is something we do regularly, that we shouldn't do, or that is not good for us. For example, if you bite your fingernails, that is considered a bad habit. In many places, smoking cigarettes is considered a bad habit, though it could also be considered an addiction. If you never sit up straight, that could also be a bad habit.

Personally, I bite my fingernails all the time. I do it when I'm bored, when I'm frustrated, or when I'm nervous. It's constant! It's not a good thing to do, and I really should try to stop!

Often bad habits are small, harmful activities that we do, though usually they aren't very destructive. They shouldn't be done, but it's not going to kill you tomorrow.

So what is our singer's bad habit? Well, he says that it's "biting his tongue". Now of course, literally biting your tongue all the time would be a bad habit, but it's not a very common thing that people do. So instead of looking at the literal meaning of the phrase, we'll look at the figurative meaning. "Biting your tongue" means that you want to say something, but you stop yourself from doing it. You can think of your tongue as wanting to say something, so you bite it to stop it from saying it. It's similar to the phrase "hold your tongue" that we discussed in the episode 3 of the podcast. It's the opposite of "loosening your tongue", which we discussed in episode 5.

So our singer is saying that he often doesn't say what he wants to say. He does this so often, it's become, a "bad habit".

He builds on this in the next line. "Kinda mad that I didn't take a stab at it."

To "stab" something, means to push a blade into it. Normally, this verb is associated with knives and swords. Their action that they do is stabbing. To "take a stab" at something, means that you try something that you know might not succeed. You might be unsure about applying for a job that you aren't completely qualified for, but decide to "take a stab at it" anyway. You might not be sure of the answer to a question, but choose to "take a stab at it".

In this case, the singer "bit his tongue" instead of saying something. He wished he had said something, that he had "taken a stab at it". Whatever "it" is...I'll leave that to you to figure out. Reading the lyrics, can you figure out what he is regretting that he didn't say? Let me know if you figure it out!

You can reach out to us on instagram at lelpodcast, or by email at [email protected].

Well, that's all we have for today. I hope that you take a stab at using a new English phrase this week! I'll talk to you soon.