There's all this hype about Colin Firth's performance in 'The King's Speech,' and I'm sure he's terrific in it (he usually is), but I'm not sure I want to see a movie where the lead character has to deal with a debilitating stammer, because it's something I've had to grapple with ever since I could speak, and it might be difficult for me to watch, squirming in empathy.

Rock has, over the years, found considerable usefulness for the stutter. It's like a hook, or a signifier of inarticulateness or frustration, or simply a way to get enough syllables into a line without having to write actual words. Very handy that way. Like in The Who's 'My Generation,' or Bowie's 'Changes,' or the Bachman-Turner Overdrive's 'You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet.'

Why the machine-gun repetitive B's at the start of the hooks of 'Bad To The Bone' and 'Bennie and The Jets'? Why does 'Barbara Ann' have those four extraneous Ba's appended to her name? The Runaways: 'I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.' The Knack: 'M-m-m-my Sharona.' It's an emphatic thing, a percussive thing, a metaphoric thing. Strangely, in rock, it's rarely supposed to be funny. It was in the songs of the '30s (see above), and it usually is in cartoons and movies, but in rock, there's almost no mockery involved. It's just a tick.

Johnny Otis wrote a rockin' song called 'Mumblin' Mosie,' and the Mosie in question doesn't really mumble at all, she 'stutters like mad.' I can't find a Johnny Otis version anywhere, or the swinging accapella 'Mumbling Boy' version by The Mint Juleps (you should try to find their 'One Time' album), but Cliff Richard cut it as a single:

There are two pretty recent stuttering songs. Fefe Dobson's 'Stutterin' uses the speech impediment as a clue to her boyfriend's deception (i.e., he stammers because he's nervous). In Friday Night Boy's 'Stuttering,' the singer can't speak to a girl at a party (i.e., he stammers because he's shy, or he's shy because he stammers).

What's kind of amusing, to me at least, is that when most of these songs are performed live, the audience cheerfully sings along, copying the stutter, because it's catchy, it's part of the fun. B-b-b-Bennie and the Jets. B-b-b-Bad to the Bone. Ch-ch-changes. And this classic: