My overall experience was that they were a very boring song with terrible lyrics. I can't ever say that any meaning clicked especially. The teacher called out the first part of the verse and I "sang" it internally and hopefully got it right. Having gotten through that it was gone by lunchtime in time for a different set of words to the same song next week.
I tried again about 30 years later as a adult and had much the same experience. You might as well have been asking me to remember items on a tray.
To me it's like this:
chicken x tree = rock
brick x kangaroo = Susan
boat x walnut = dinosaur
Now imagine you have to remember 288 of those (because you might be asked to produce either side of the equals sign) and somebody asking you to recall one arbitrarily.
How do you get your students to get them to stick?