I remember an article years ago by Nick Hornby where he talked about how, even though he loves Al Green’s “Let’s Get Married”, it almost ruins the song when Al Green says “might as well, might as well”, since it’s just not something you’d say to someone while proposing.
Today, I was listening to “American Without Tears”, which is probably one of my top five all-time Elvis Costello songs and I remembered just how much this lyric bothers me
Outside in New Orleans the heat was almost frightening
But my hotel room as usual was freezing and unkind
On TV they prosecute anyone who’s exciting
So I put on my overcoat and went down to find
If the heat is almost frightening, why is he putting on his overcoat?
Another example is any song where they use “I” as a direct object (“Redemption Songs” gets a pass because “I” has some rastafarian meaning there, I think.) Granted many of those songs are awful anyway, e.g. “Touch Me, Baby” and the Dawson’s Creek song.
What otherwise good songs are ruined for you by small, silly lyrical imperfections?
ALurkSupreme
” I was born a wrangler and a rambler and I guess I always will”
Doug!
@ALurkSupreme:
You see, I love that one, I think it’s poetic.
Hiram Goldberg
King Tut by Steve Martin. If ‘born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia’ were switched, it would almost be accurate.
Steve in the ATL
Lay Down Sally and Lay Lady Lay, though those errors are not small
“If I was to say to you” in Light My Fire is small. The subjunctive gets no love.
Major Major Major Major
Africa would be a guilty pleasure but for “sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti,” I just anticipate hating it the whole song instead.
Adam L Silverman
It is easier to conceal a firearm or other weapon when wearing an overcoat.
Nicole
He’s British. They are always anticipating rain.
ranchandsyrup
The Postal Service – Nothing Better
I can’t accept that it’s over…
And I will block the door like a goalie tending the net
In the third quarter of a tied-game rivalry
hockey has 3 periods. soccer has 2 halves. i’m a pedant and refuse to think of other sporps.
ALurkSupreme
“But if this ever changin’ world in which we live in”
Friends tell me McCartney is actually singing “…in which we’re livin’,” but I’ve never heard it that way.
If a Tree Falls
“Taught the fear of Jesus in a small town”, from John Mellencamp’s Small Town. I thought for years that it was “taught to feel Jesus in a small town.” When I found out the truth, I was shocked and appalled.
Nicole
So many. Astrid Gilberto’s version of “The Girl From Ipanema.” (But each day when she goes to the sea, she looks straight ahead not at heeeee-eeee.”
Rick Springfield- Jessie’s Girl. Listen, there, Dick- there’s a liquid “u” in “cute.” There is no “u” at all in “moot.”
Geoduck
Maybe this isn’t exactly what is being discussed, but the original version of the otherwise pleasantly goofy song “Tie Me Kangaroo Down” sadly includes a racist line about Aboriginals.
trollhattan
“Loan me a dime” should be “Lend.”
zhena gogolia
@ALurkSupreme:
that one drives me crazy too, but I don’t like the song in general
Ric Drywall
If the heat is almost frightening, why is he putting on his overcoat?
Because the air conditioning was too strong (“freezing” – which is a great detail when trying to show someone from the British Isles feeling out of place in the US).
He was wearing the coat indoors. The English war brides weren’t hanging around outside.
Zach
Heat = dangerous excitement. Cold = boredom. Wants to be part of the excitement instead of watching it on TV, but too shy to jump right in so the overcoat is kind of a shield. Plus it’s a joke because, taken literally, it’s absurd. But also it’s not so absurd because lots of cool kids where too-hot clothes in hot places.
Edit: Al Green’s lyrics make sense, too. It’s all about “settling” for marriage: “I found out, I, I don’t love nobody anyway.”
Shana
“Coast to coast, LA to Chicago” Arrggh.
Nicole
“I wish I was homeward bound.” Oh Paul, I wish you were paying attention during the subjunctive mood in English class.
FridayNext
Kid Charlemagne
“Is there gas in the car?
Yes, there’s gas in the car
I think the people down the hall know who you are ”
It reads stupid and in context it just sounds awkward.
MP
“I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me” ruins an otherwise exquisite song.
efgoldman
@Shana:
Chicago’s on the coast of a Great Lake, no?
Ric Drywall
My stupid nitpick: Whiskeytown’s great Houses on the Hill has a line “Eisenhower sent him to war,” when Eisenhower really sent him to battle. FDR and Congress sent him to war. But the lyric doesn’t fit with “battle.”
And then there’s “Born and raised in South Detroit” (where?), but I don’t like Journey anyway.
Nicole
@If a Tree Falls: Huh. And all this time I thought it was “taught to fear Jesus in a small town.”
Oh, that Mellencamp feller. Why use one word when you can jam in three?
raven
Such a great hook out damn!!! The Police – De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
HinTN
@Adam L Silverman: And it could be raining.
raven
@FridayNext:
Nicole
@MP: And see, for me, the part about how a woman who travelled the world and had lots of sexy adventures wishes she’d just stayed home and married some generally acceptable person ruins the song. Oh wait. That’s the whole song.
Though it made for a perfect opening for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
It doesn’t ruin the song, but: “Why is water wet?”
Given that I’m not aware of any viruses that cause lymphatic swelling, “bubonic flu” also irks me.
Also: “I’m wanted by the states, 52 at least” (“War,” Infamous Mobb)
swiftfox
Switch to movies. The last scene in Bourne Identity when Marie asks him if he has ID, and he says “not really”. “Several” or “which one” would have been perfect. It’s a great ending anyway.
Major Major Major Major
@raven: the way he sings it does the lyric no favors either.
Ivana Whisky
You don’t have to read my mind
To know what I have in mind
Blech. Couldn’t spend five more minutes on the lyrics, Lou?
The Dangerman
I have two:
The lyrics say “After all that we’ve been through” but what I hear is “After all the hoo you been through”; fuck Chicago, a normally quite good band.
Also, and talk about good band, but Hey Jude’s “the movement you need is on your shoulder” is bogus, but I’ll blame whatever herb was being smoked at the time.
Steeplejack (phone)
Can’t think of the specific song right now for the life of me, but there’s one lyric that goes “[something something] better for you and I.” It always jangles, and it’s made worse because “you and me” wouldn’t rhyme with the previous line.
Related to this, it always bugs me in movies and TV shows when some supposedly literate, super sophisticated character makes the same mistake. Holmes on Elementary the other night: “It would be better for Watson and I if [blah blah blah] . . .” Somehow worse when a British accent is involved.
Nobody ever says, “It would be better for I,” so why does it get thrown in when another person is added? The only thing I can think is getting whacked in grade school for saying “Billy and me are gonna,” so people use “and I” in every situation to be on the safe side and sound “correct.”
trollhattan
Surely, not everybody was kung fu fighting. (observed on a brewpub reader board)
Sandia Blanca
@ALurkSupreme: Yes! I was just about to submit this one. Really annoying.
Amaranthine RBG
@If a Tree Falls:
And the lines: Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town/ And people let me be just what I want to be
Yeah, no, that’s not how small towns work.
Roger Moore
@Ric Drywall:
That one bothers me way more than it ought to.
opiejeanne
Anything with the me-I confused, anything with Me and X bugs me but I do like Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard”.
I really hate that people on tv and movies sometimes use “I” when “me” is proper, because they think it makes them sound educated. Also, did no one ever explain to them that in English your friend comes before you? It’s not “me and him”, it’s “he and I” the first of which works in dialogue when portraying someone of less education; not so much when it’s in the mouth of a supposedly well-educated person.
debbie
So much for poetic license, I guess.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack (phone):
A Yes song is literally titled “And you and I”
MP
@Nicole: The whole song is just a masterpiece, really. The fact that both Charlene and the all-male writing team behind the song escaped the notice of the Grammys still shocks me.
brendancalling
Re: Elvi’s overcoat: Maybe it was raining?
“otherwise good songs are ruined for you by small, silly lyrical imperfections”? Well, I wouldn’t use the word “ruined” but the second verse of “Lulu Walls” by the Carter Family always drives the Grammar Nazi in me berzerk.
“If she were only mine, I would build a house so fine
Around it so many fences tall,
It would make me jealous free, that no one else but me
Could gaze on that beauty, Lulu Walls“.
NO ONE ELSE BUT I.
maurinsky
“If I was a sculptor, but then again, no.”
wtf does that even mean?
Ric Drywall
@The Dangerman:
Paul used the “moment you need” line as a placeholder, intending to change it. John told him not to.
Matt Smith
@Steve in the ATL: “What if God was one of us” also shows the subjunctive no love.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Nicole:
Sometimes you get some contortions when the gender of the song’s narrator is changed. Of course the original is “looks straight ahead, not at me.”
Major Major Major Major
@opiejeanne: oh you, always with that.
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: Ha!
MP
@maurinsky: There are a lot of Bernie Taupin lyrics that are like that.
Ric Drywall
@trollhattan:
I don’t know the song, but “And you and I” isn’t necessarily wrong. it depends on the sentence.
cervantes
I got here too late for anyone to see this, but the answer is obvious. He doesn’t go outside, he goes to the hotel bar. And the AC in the hotel is freezing, as he has already stipulated. (It’s a fact, when you go to hot climates they keep the AC turned up so high you need a jacket.)
maurinsky
Hesitating Beauty by Wilco & Billy Bragg has a line I don’t care for
“We can build a house and home
Where the flowers come to bloom
Around our yard I’ll nail a fence so high
That the boys with peeping eyes
Cannot see that angel face”
I believe Noralee is hesitating because you want to hold her prisoner in a compound, so stfu, Wilco & Billy Bragg.
Doug!
@Nicole:
Ha!
dnfree
@ALurkSupreme: That’s what I was going to say also. And that’s how it’s written on lyrics sites:
You used to say life and let life
(you know you did, you know you did you know you did)
But in this ever changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry
Doug!
@maurinsky:
He starts thinking about being sculptor but then decides no he’d rather think about being a man who makes potions in a traveling show.
raven
I and I
Used in the rastafarian religion in place of “you and me” to show that all people are equal under Jah.
The Golux
@zhena gogolia: It’s especially annoying because it would have been easy to fix, just leave out the first “in”, and draw out “world”:
But that still wouldn’t rescue it from being a crappy, obviously-written-for-hire song.
Matt Smith
@MP: “I’ve Never Been to Me” also has the line: “I’ve been to Nice and the isle of Greece.” Like there’s only the one. Sigh. Otherwise, I love this song for its utterly ridiculous message. It’s one of my karaoke favorites, and I make sure everyone realizes I’m singing it tongue in cheek.
The Dangerman
Another one that always gets me, and Bono has stated he fucked it up, but “early morning, April 4” in “Pride” always kills an otherwise fine song. Seriously lazy songwriting.
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: Ex English major. I know what I know, I say what I say.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: and they’re the subjects of the sentence in the lyrics. “And you and I go something something”
Ric Drywall
@maurinsky: Don’t blame Billy Bragg and Wilco for Woody Guthrie’s lyrics.
Doug!
@Shana:
God, I forgot about that one.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
@Nicole: I give them a pass because they were translating from Portuguese so to me it’s like a charming attempt from a non-native speaker. And “sea” fits that part of the melody better than “ocean” “shore” “water” or any other rhymes. Plus there’s the later echo of “he smiles…and she doesn’t see…”
opiejeanne
@maurinsky: Also, flowers are not like birds. Mostly what you get coming into a yard are weeds, without some management
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
I actually don’t like either song, but these drive me nuts anyway:
Guns N Roses, Sweet Child Of Mine — waiting for thunder and rain to quietly pass him by? If it’s quiet, why was he hiding?
Van Hagar, Why Can’t This Be Love. “Only time will tell if we stand the test of time.” Ya think?
The Moar You Know
All of them or none of them depending on my mood.
MP
@Matt Smith: “I’ll take Geography for Songwriters for $200, Alex.”
Ric Drywall
@Doug!:
Yeah, it has a whiff of Strawberry Fields about it, with the indecision written into the lyrics.
dnfree
MacArthur Park, just about the whole song. How does a park melt? Like a cake?
ranchandsyrup
This verse in Wilco’s Shot in the Arm also bugs me. the homonym rhyming falls flat compared to the first verse.
We fell in love
In the key of C
We walked along
Down by the sea
You followed me down
The neck to D
And fell again
Into the sea
different-church-lady
Just yesterday I realized: time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping… into the PAST, not the future.
zhena gogolia
@maurinsky:
YES, YES, YES, HATE THAT ONE!
trollhattan
@Ric Drywall: @Major Major Major Major:
Here’s one fix: “Me and Mrs. Jones, we got a thing goin’ on.”
raven
@Ric Drywall: I was gonna say. . .
zhena gogolia
On the positive side, I only recently realized when hearing Stevie Wonder sing it that the lyrics to “Alfie” are magnificent.
different-church-lady
@trollhattan: God, the 70s were creepy…
Steeplejack (phone)
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.:
The clanger’s not because of the translation, it’s because the song was originally written for a male narrator. “She looks straight ahead, not at me.”
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: Time travel is an allowed topic.
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack (phone):”Touch Me”, by the Doors. (Which it isn’t “Touch I”, now is it, Jim?). “I’m gonna love ya/Till the stars fall from the sky for you and I”. And this one would be my candidate not only for the grammar fail, but because the line just don’t make no damn sense, grammar fail or no!
Ric Drywall
Another geography puzzler:
There was a girl in Portland
Before the winter chill
We used to go a-courtin’
Along October Hill
People have been trying to figure out where October Hill is.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan:
Neither that, nor “Me and Julio,” nor the use of “was” when it should be the subjunctive “were” bother me at all. Those are just the songs trying to sound the way people speak, not write. But “for you and I,” “in this world in which we live in,” and “a sculptor, but then again, no” are not things anyone ever said ever.
MJS
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: Sammy Hagar so has a glaring error in, “Your Love is Drivin’ Me Crazy” – “Hot, sweet cherries on the vine.” Grapes – vines. Cherries – trees.
MelissaM
Tom Cochrane’s Life is a HIghway:
There was a distance between you and I [grrr! you and ME! you and ME!]
I get that it won’t rhyme with “now we look it in the eye,” but please, find a new rhyme rather than promoting bad grammar.
zhena gogolia
When is this discussion going to slide into misunderstandings of the lyrics to “Blinded by the Light.” I love those.
The Golux
@dnfree:
Upon which misheard lyrics have never, ever been written. [/sarcasm]
OldClark
“get it up again” from Running On Empty. Utterly unnecessary weenie joke in an otherwise decent song by a sometimes brilliant lyricist.
janeform
OT (sort of). EVERYONE uses I as a direct object in everyday speech these days. Including academics. I get a knot in my stomach every time I hear it, which is several times a day.
Tsukune
@Roger Moore:
I always hear the line as Windsor, Ontario.
Major Major Major Major
@zhena gogolia:
I dunno, those dastardly millennials talk like that.
opiejeanne
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: Linda Ronstadt recorded “Allison” without adjusting the lyrics, which was a bit startling when it was recorded in 1978, now most people would just shrug. It’s a cover of the Elvis Costello recording.
KithKanan
“It was raining hard in ‘Frisco” in Taxi.
Though Sequel is even worse with “And so we rolled back into the city/Up to a five-story old brownstone” just to make it even more obvious the songs were about the east coast and then quickly and shoddily moved to the west coast (to be more exotic?)
opiejeanne
@dnfree: If you’ve had enough acid it does.
Ric Drywall
I can’t believe no one has mentioned “My anaconda don’t want none/Unless you’ve got buns, hon.”
It should be “doesn’t.” Also, same song:
So your girlfriend rolls a Honda
Playing workout tapes by Fonda
But Fonda ain’t got a motor in the back of her Honda
“Ain’t” isn’t proper English. I’m really disappointed that Sir Mix-A-Lot didn’t spend more time on his grammar.
zhena gogolia
@Ric Drywall:
This is my point. I’m not bothered by the kind of grammatical mistakes that are commonly made in oral speech. I’m bothered by tortured, pseudo-classical constructions like “in this world in which we live in.”
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia: That wasn’t Sir Paul’s best effort — it was George Martin who rescued it from the crapper. Tune out the lyrics and listen to the orchestration.
Amir Khalid
For me, the lyricist’s error that spoils a song is in the album version of Bruce Springsteen’s We Take Care of Our Own:
Where’s the promise, from sea to shining sea
Wherever this flag is flown,
We take care of our own
Bruce only spotted the error himself after the Wrecking Ball album came out. This is how he sings it live:
Where’s the promise, from sea to shining sea
That wherever this flag is flown,
We take care of our own?
His mispronunciation, earlier in the same song, of “cavalry” as Calvary does bother me too, but for some reason not as much.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
“I” is substituted for “me” among Rastafarians as a reference to Ras Tafar-I (one of many terms for Haillie Selassie). Like “it’s not about me, it’s about ‘I’.” You’ll also see the phrase “I and I say/ think/ believe” meaning “both I and Ras Tafari/ scripture…”
burnspbesq
“Why don’t we get drunk and screw.” Forty years ago it was transgressive in a kinda-cute way. Attitudes about what constitutes consent have changed drastically.
opiejeanne
@Ric Drywall: Nice. Made me laugh.
SFAW
“Every day a little sadder
A little madder?
Someone get me a ladder”
That last line is perhaps the stupidest ever written by someone whose first/primary language is/was English.
NoraLenderbee
I’m gonna love you
Till the stars fall from the sky
For you and I
Argh.
burnspbesq
@OldClark:
Isn’t that from ” The Pretender?”
Steeplejack (phone)
@Ric Drywall:
Please. “My anaconda doesn’t want any.” Or the panel will accept “My anaconda wants none.” But then that sounds like the anaconda lacks none. Oh, dear.
Steeplejack (phone)
@zhena gogolia:
What you said.
Major Major Major Major
@Ric Drywall: @Steeplejack (phone): Also it should be Sir-Mixes-A-Lot.
burnspbesq
“I know a pretty little place in Southern California, down San Diego way'” was clearly not written by a Southern Californian or a San Diegan. Neither is part of the other, as residents of either will tell you. Camp Pendleton serves as an 18-mile-wide DMZ.
Amir Khalid
@zhena gogolia:
I remember Bruce grumbling that when Manfred Mann covered that song, he sang “cut loose like a douche” instead of “cut loose like a deuce”.
Mike J
Who’s Zooming Whom.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Major Major Major Major:
LOL.
Olivia
“The wheat fields of St Paul”. (Me and You and a dog named Boo)
Even in 1973, there were no wheat fields in St. Paul.
These two make me cringe as much as “the world in which we live in”
“I remember well the well where I drew water” Coal Miner’s Daughter
“That one is only poor, only if they choose to be” Coat of Many Colors
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mike J:
Also LOL.
Mom Says I*m Handsome
I have made peace with this line by changing “in” to “it” — as in, “it” refers to the ever-changin’ world.
One does what one must to maintain sanity.
ETA: Shit, that doesn’t even make sense. Maybe “it” refers to this life? I don’t know. I’m still mad at Paul McCartney about this, but you can’t stay mad for long, it’s Sir Paul!
Olivia
@opiejeanne: My thoughts exactly.
Amir Khalid
Another lyricist’s error that bugs me is in Celine Dion’s song from that Titanic movie:
My heart will go on and on
“To go on” and “to go on and on” mean two very different things.
SFAW
@Mom Says I*m Handsome:
Fixed
Olivia
“Having my Baby” by Paul Anka needs to be buried in the trash dump and the dump should be hit with an atomic bomb. I first heard it a few hours after giving birth and it made me want to puke.
SFAW
@Olivia:
Agreed
Hungry Joe
This isn’t a lyrical complaint, but one of phrasing. From “The Sounds of Silence”:
” ‘neath the halo of a-a street lamp”
and
“And the sign flashed out i-its warning
In the words that it wa-as forming … ”
Sorry, Paul — you need two syllables in all three of those cases. I originally thought the lyric was ” ‘neath the halo of an Eighth Street lamp,” which sounded pretty good.
Amir Khalid
@ranchandsyrup:
Those mixed sporping metaphors could be intentional.
narya
@The Golux: Of course, then it should be “…THAT we live in.”
ranchandsyrup
@Amir Khalid: yeah that’s possible and fair.
is the third quarter when you are most anxious? why not 4th?
Carnacki
And that time over at Johnny’s place,
Well, this chick got up and she slapped Johnny’s face
Man, we just fell about the place
If that chick don’t want to know, forget her
…
Know what? Did Johnny say something terribly inappropriate?
Betty Cracker
Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue” is a fine bit of poetry — he earned the Nobel for that song alone, IMO. But I think there’s a geographic impossibility in the verse below:
The “them” is a couple in New Orleans, and if you dig a hole anywhere in New Orleans, it fills up with water, so I don’t think basements are a thing there.
Also, there’s this a dumb verse from Thin Lizzy’s “Boys Are Back In Town:”
“Fell about the place?” If that chick don’t want to know WHAT?
I generally give bad grammar a pass in song lyrics if the error contributes to the rhyme or meter, but nonsensical lyrics bug me.
gbear
I’ve always hated almost all of the lyrics to ‘If I Fell’ by the Beatles. I have since it came out. The only thing I like about the song is the moment in A Hard Day’s Night when Paul starts cracking up because George leans against his amp, it slips out of it’s stand, and they both almost fall over.
Betty Cracker
@Carnacki: Pinch poke! I owe you a coke!
Steeplejack (phone)
@Carnacki:
Next you’ll want to know what Billy Joe McAllister threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
Mayur
Wow: serious mishearing of a pretty basic line here. It’s “in this world in which we’re livin,'” which is both cogent and grammatical.
SFAW
@ranchandsyrup:
Lacrosse has four quarters. And your refusal to consider other sporps is not pedantry, it’s being anti-American, since lacrosse is the one true American sport. And THE national sporp of Canadia, too — or it was, until those WATB hockey fans wanted their “sport” recognized, and got LAX declared the “National Summer Sport” (or some such). for Canadiania.
jpopec
Toward the end of Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” he sings “Bottle of red. Oooooo…bottle white.” Not so much a lyric, but cringely awkward.
Terp
@maurinsky:
Wilco and Billy Bragg didn’t write the Mermaid Avenue lyrics. Woody Guthrie did. They put the lyrics to music.
SFAW
@Steeplejack (phone):
It was either dime bags, or trash bags from a Thansgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat.
ranchandsyrup
@SFAW: there’s my answer! thanks man.
we’re getting an MLL franchise where i live. this is a very good thing IMO.
catclub
@Amir Khalid:
I thought the writer did not want to write ‘third chukker at the polo club.’
reverse snobbism.
NobodySpecial
@Amir Khalid: Since that song is tedious, as well as the vocalist, I find that lyric correctly written.
Heidi Mom
@If a Tree Falls: Agreed, that phrase was shocking and appalling. Saying “taught to fear God” would go unnoticed, as would “taught to love” or “know” Jesus. Do even the strictest of fundamentalists teach the fear of Jesus? Mainstream Protestant background, don’t know.
NoraLenderbee
@Olivia: For years and years, that song was always in the top 10 of Worst Songs Ever. I think it fell out just because younger people have never heard it.
SFAW
@ranchandsyrup:
Which is where? (Yes, I’m lazy)
Agreed.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack (phone):
I’ve always wanted to know that.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Irish English is a lot like British English.
Man, we just fell about the place
Translation: We were ROTFL
If that chick don’t want to know
Translation: If she doesn’t respond favourably to your advances
Tokyokie
I’ve always hated God Bless America for its mindless jingoism, and I deeply resent that it’s become a 7th-inning stretch tradition (one with which I refuse to comply). But really, it’s one of worst things Irving Berlin ever wrote (or at least is still performed). Rhyming “white with foam” with “home sweet home” is unspeakably tortured, and had Irv merely switched the order to “from the mountains to the oceans to the prairies,” then he could have had “black with loam” as his rhyme with “home sweet home.” And the wordplay of, say, Putin’ on the Ritz shows he knew how to do much, much better.
zhena gogolia
@Tokyokie:
I’ve recently been giving Berlin a lot more credit — I hate “God Bless America” and “White Christmas.” But “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” and many, many more masterpieces are also his.
MP
@Tokyokie: Mindless Jingoism would make a pretty solid band name.
DanR2
Guy Clark’s “Magnolia Wind” has a word that kind of ruins an otherwise beautiful song…
I’d rather sleep in a box like a bum on the street
Than a fine feather bed without your little ol’ cold feet
I’d rather be deaf, dumb, and stone blind
Than to know that your mornings will never be mine
I’d rather die young than to live without you
I’d rather go hungry than eat lonesome stew
It’s once in a lifetime and it won’t come again
It’s here and it’s gone on a magnolia wind
I’d rather not walk through the garden again
If I can’t catch your scent on a magnolia wind
Gravenstone
@Amir Khalid: I’ve tended to view the line with a more biblical sense of “know”. But yes, realizing that the idioms were Irish/British makes much more sense.
cleek
also Elvis C, from Oliver’s Army:
Thin Lizzy:
what do you mean “somewhere” ? it’s going to be at the jail.
Beatles, “if i fell”
pronoun trouble.
Big Picture Pathologist
“That famous book by Nabokov.”
Undisputed champion.
Steve in the ATL
@Heidi Mom:
Have you never heard the term “God-fearing Christian”? Very common in fundie/evangelical/southern baptist areas. It is, of course, based on a misunderstanding of what “fear” means in that context. “Fear” meant respect, not be afraid of. (In contrast, the “terrible” in Ivan the Terrible means feared, not bad or evil.)
Not sure if the Bible thumpers are taught to fear Jesus as well as God. They are stupid enough to do that, but Mr. Cougar may have been taking a bit of poetic license.
On an earlier subject, Honda does not sell any rear engine cars. Sir Mixes-A-Lot (has he actually been knighted?) should have researched that.
cleek
@Big Picture Pathologist:
worse than
or
?
(Wrapped Around Your Finger)
Amir Khalid
@ranchandsyrup:
Manchester United’s legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson once described time added on for stoppages in a football match as “squeaky-bum time”.
Amir Khalid
@cleek:
Maybe the song is addressed to a bisexual girl.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid:
If you’ve heard her sing you know she means “on and on”
different-church-lady
@Olivia: As I said…
cleek
Duran Duran, Rio:
‘or something’. sure, why not.
lowcountryboil
I’m always amused when Bono starts “Vertigo” with “Uno – dos – tres – catorce!” 1 – 2 – 3 – 14!
Also, I get a chuckle when Bruce Springsteen sings in “Glory Days” about his old high school friend who was a baseball star that “he could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool.” What was that dude throwing, a syringe filled with cocaine and heroin? In baseball, it’s usually referred to as a fastball.
JCJ
@Shana:
No love for the coast of Lake Michigan? Sade is not specifying the coast of an ocean.//
Steve in the ATL
@JCJ: I’m originally from Chicago, but in common usage oceans have coasts but lakes don’t
henqiguai
@raven (#56):
Yep. And Doug, get over your language parochialism; “I” is not infrequently used in place of “me” or “my” in fast-talking Caribbean speech. Or at least it was back when the bulk of my friends were from the West Indies.
Honoré De Ballsack
From “Kids In America” (Kim Wilde, 1981):
“New York to East California
There’s a new wave comin’, I warn ya.”
East California…huh? Truckee? Needles? Blythe?
Not to mention rhyming “California” with “Wanna warn ya.” It is left as an exercise for the reader to list *all* the pop lyricists who were lazy enough to use that one.
cgordon
There’s a line in Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” where he says “And the the students still respect the college dean.” I love that line, lets me know he was just messin’ with our heads.
meander
Talking Heads “Life During Wartime,” on Stop Making Sense:
“No time for dancing, or lovey-dovey,
I ain’t got time for that now”
It makes sense but I find the double time annoying. Call it poetry, I guess.
(Time to listen to Stop Making Sense…)
opiejeanne
@SFAW: Reminiscent of
“Stop rhyming! I mean it!”
“Anybody want a peanut?”
catclub
@Heidi Mom:
It could be a good thing. Remember the Jesus that says (at the final judgement) ‘where were you when I was cold and hungry’?
Fear of THAT Jesus.
opiejeanne
@burnspbesq: If San Diego isn’t Southern California, then is it Northern Baja?
stinger
@Ric Drywall: So Paul has always said, but John’s motives vis-a-vis Paul were not always of the purest, and his advice not always of the soundest.
opiejeanne
@Olivia: Such syrupy sentimental nonsense.
Tokyokie
@zhena gogolia: I tend to love Irving Berlin, and I, too, dislike White Christmas, but it’s thankfully short. Easter Parade is another stinker, and every tune from Annie Get Your Gun is better, especially the Ethel Merman versions. Maybe Sammy Cahn was the better Jewish composer in terms of writing ditties about Christian holidays.
JCJ
@Olivia:
Hey! No decent person would bring up this atrocious pile of crap in the presence of polite company or jackals!
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: Fell out or fell about the place implies a missing word: laughing. It’s a colloquialism that some people use.
Amir Khalid
@Olivia: That song came out when I was a kid, and I’ve always hated it too. It just reeks of male condescension, doesn’t it?
Ridnik Chrome
Britt Daniel from Spoon has a knack for making nonsensical lyrics work. One of my personal favorites is “I spent the night in the map room, I humanized the vacuum” from “Black Like Me”. Cracks me up every time I hear it, but somehow he pulls it off. If I ever meet the guy in person, the first thing I’m going to ask him is “how the hell do you humanize a vacuum?”
eemom
oooh oooh, I have a good one. Wild Horses has always bugged me because the melody is lovely but the lyrics make no sense. Recently I read that Keith Richards started out writing it about his son “Childhood living…..the things you wanted…” and then Mick took over and made it a love song. That just seems so fucking SLOPPY.
More generally, all of Mick’s lyrics are wtf-ers. “Graceless lady”? “I’ve dreamed you a sin and a lie”? Sheeeyit.
DanF
@MP: Yes … The Tauplin lyric that bothers me the most is “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kid, in fact it’s cold as hell, and there is no one there to raise them, if you did.” Just what in the good holy fucking hell is that mess? I’m raising my kid on Mars, but there is no one there to raise them? Wait, what?
Ridnik Chrome
@eemom: I always thought that Jagger wrote that song for Marianne Faithfull when she was in the hospital recovering from a drug overdose. The story I read is that she asked him to stay with her there in the room, and he said to her, “wild horses couldn’t drag me away”.
RSA
The Clash of nominative versus objective case:
Amanda
Daddy was a cop. On the east side of Chicago.
Huh?
Matt McIrvin
In the Turtles’ “So Happy Together”: “The only one for me is you, and you for me”. You just said the same thing twice!
Unfortunately rewriting the verse to make it correct sounds bad.
Matt McIrvin
@Heidi Mom: Premillenial dispensationalists (think “Left Behind”) imagine Jesus coming back as a terrifying warlord out to vaporize the ungodly. So it’d fit.
eemom
@Ridnik Chrome:
Oh. Now I feel bad. :(
eemom
@Steeplejack (phone):
Or what the mama saw that was against the law.
Amir Khalid
@cgordon:
According to legend, Okie from Muskogee was written after a ganja-smoking session on the tour bus. It was meant to be a send-up of the “squares” of the day, rather than an affirmation of them.
SFAW
@Big Picture Pathologist:
“Famous” is not part of that/those lyric(s)
Meyerman
Fucking subjunctive how does that work? And you quibble with Elvis? WTF? 50,000,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong!
J R in WV
@Miss Bianca:
Good call, that song has bothered me for at least 45 years, even tho I was a big Doors fan.
mr_gravity
@The Dangerman: It’s been said that McCartney didn’t like it but John convinced him to leave it in. Lennon could be an ass when he wanted to so who knows?
Sir Bedevere
Roland aimed his Thompson gun
He didn’t say a word
well, that might be due to the fact that he’s The Headless Thompson Gunner
Steve in the ATL
@mr_gravity: in general, Paul’s lyrics were worse than Paul’s music, while John’s lyrics were better than John’s music
eemom
@MP:
@DanF:
He was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas day when the New York Times said God is dead and the war’s begun
Alvin Tostig has a son today
MP
@eemom: I heard an excerpt from an interview with Taupin in which he discussed the lyrics from Levin. If memory serves (and it may not), he said he was just some guy he saw on a bench, and Taupin just let his imagination go from there.
Ridnik Chrome
@eemom: Sorry. I was trying to make you feel better.
eemom
@Ridnik Chrome:
Appreciate that.
Wallis Lane
Lou Reed being insufferably patronizing about “the colored girls” in Walk on the Wild Side is always a big nails on the chalkboard moment for me.
Also, “gazed a gazely stare” in Man Who Sold the World, is a bit of uncharacteristically lazy writing. Bowie couldn’t have come up with an actual two-syllable adjective?
“Burns like a wooden flame” in “Breathless” cheeses me off for some reason.
And don’t get me started on “A Horse With No Name” “In the desert you can remember your name ‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain” “There were plants and birds and rocks and things.” That whole song is one long crime against the profession of songwriting.
And finally the moist awkward rhyme scheme ever in Take the Money and Run “Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas You know he knows just exactly what the facts is. He makes his livin’ off of the people’s taxes.”
zhena gogolia
@Tokyokie:
“You’ll find that you’re / in the rotogravure” — what’s not to like about that?
Chet
“Empire State of Mind” has this in the chorus: “New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of.” So the dreams are made of the jungle?
I think they put in “of” just to add a syllable.
zhena gogolia
@Wallis Lane:
Ditto on “Horse with No Name.” Excruciating.
eclare
Pride (In the name of love) – U2. “Early morning April 4, shots ring high in the Memphis sky”…Nope, shot in the late afternoon. Bugs the shit out of me, can’t help it. Get your goddamn facts straight.
eemom
@Wallis Lane: @zhena gogolia:
I believe it was Dave Barry who said “You’re in the desert. Name the fucking horse.”
Mrearl
Pancho And Lefty: “His horse was fast as polished steel.” Beautiful image, but just how fast is polished steel anyway?
Mom Says I*m Handsome
@Mayur: Dang it, you are so correct.
Mel
@MJS: Ahhg!! I hate that one, as well.
And then there’s Sheryl Crow, also mangling the basics of botany:
“I light your cigarette / I bring you apples from the vine…”
Roland Stone
@Miss Bianca: A worse Doors offense is in L.A. Woman:
Can we get better number agreement please?! Thanks.
Luthe
Not a lyric problem per se, but it bugs the hell out of me when men cover “Bread and Roses.” It’s a song meant to be sung by a woman! It has the lyric “we battle too for men/For they are women’s children/and we mother them again.” Not a man’s song.
/obscure song pedantry
smintheus
“The godness on the mountain top”
You get the impression that English wasn’t Mariska Veres’ best language.
ranchandsyrup
@SFAW: oh sorry San Diego
ranchandsyrup
@Amir Khalid: lol I did not know that. Thx
Splitting Image
Paul Simon: “The way we look at a distant constellation that’s dying in a corner of the sky.”
Constellations are all relatively nearby, and anyway they aren’t real astronomical objects, so they aren’t really dying.
I think he means that we are looking at distant galaxies and quasars which are so far away we don’t even know if they are still there anymore. Or he might be describing a planetary nebula, which is the death throes of a dying star. A lot of things in the sky are dying, but not constellations.
frosty
@Wallis Lane:
Hear hear. I was going to post this but then I saw we were talking about good songs that were ruined by one bad lyric, and this one didn’t qualify. Which you noted as well.
ETA I always heard the lyric as “… ain’t no one for to give you no fame.” Which is a better reason to not remember your name.
ETA2 Jeez, why not throw a multisyllable word in there to make it scan instead of adding too many single syllable words that make no sense.
ewrunning
No one’s going to mention “Songs she sang to me. Songs she brang to me.”? Definitely not a good song, but in a class of its own when it comes to “lyrical imperfections.”
Doug R
@Ric Drywall: Even Steve Perry admits that “South Detroit” is Windsor, he just used it because it rhymes.
OldClark
@burnspbesq: Ack! Yes.
gbear
@Matt McIrvin:
The Turtles definitely have some tongue-in-cheek lyrics. They were a great band but also very silly.
Elenore, gee, I think you’re swell
And you really do me well
You’re my pride and joy, et cetera
Fred Wertham, Jr.
@Nicole:
“I wish I was homeward bound.”
I’d give Paul a break. “Were” would sound quite ugly if used there. It just doesn’t “sing” well–you can’t sing it with an open mouth.
arrieve
Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you’ll know by.
That “picks” has been bugging me for almost 50 years now.
Olivia
@arrieve: pick’s as in “the one they pick is the one your known by” or something like that.
Gemina13
@Major Major Major Major: I hate that line as well. I misheard it as a kid as, “like a lepress above the Serengeti.” I prefer my mondegreen.
dn
“Can’t You See” by the Marshall Tucker Band. If one is going to take a freight train all the way to Georgia, one does not go down to the station. One goes to the freight yard. And one does not buy a ticket; one sneaks aboard a boxcar, or onto the porch of a grain hopper, so as to remain out of sight of the bull. Exactly the kind of thing that tells you that the writer’s familiarity with the blues is purely theoretical.
HeartlandLiberal
@Steve in the ATL: Ha, the subjunctive, what is that? I suspect that a out 95% of Americans would have no frickin’ idea what the subjunctive is. They would probably think you were talking about an eye infection.
Big Picture Pathologist
@SFAW:
We’re both right. “Famous” was in the 1986 version.
Nice XTC reference BTW, Doug…
SteverinoCT
@DanF: what irks me about “Rocketman” is the line, “It’s just my job, five days a week…” what, does the rocket just pull over to the curb on weekends? As a former sailor, this really bugs me.
Evan
Joni Mitchell, “I sat up all the night and watched thee / to see / who in the world you might be”
The rhyme scheme isn’t that important, Joni, you can just use regular pronouns.