Like a cab on commission, I really gotta get up outta here and go somewhere.

The story:

Now, you see, I've always prided myself on my ability to correctly suss out even the most obscure and indistinct song lyrics, but not in this case. Not even close. I came up with this gem when "Shake it Off" came out, and wasn't corrected until a few years later.

See, the problem was, my lyrics made quite a bit of sense to me at the time. I thought Mariah was executing a kind of extended metaphor about being a cabbie on commission. She had to get out of there, because if she was late or missed a pick-up, she wouldn't make any money! I thought it was a strangely roundabout way of telling someone you're shaking them off, but I didn't puzzle over it.

Being a kid at the time, it didn't seem an unreasonably large jump from cabbie making a wage and tips, to cabbie on commission. It wasn't until I was clearing out an American relative's house and I found an old box of this Calgon water softener stuff that I figured out how very wrong I was. Mind you, I'm not sure I totally get the Calgon metaphor either, but that's beside the point.

It didn't click straight away. It took hearing the song on the radio on that same trip to America. The word Calgon caught in my ear because of the box I'd discovered, and I distinctly heard, for the first time, "commercial" instead of "commission", however mumbled and slurred Mariah sang it.

So there you have it. If it hadn't been for being forced to clean on my vacation, I'd have never figured out Mariah wasn't singing about a cabbie late for her next fare.