I was listening to the Talking Head’s “Burning Down the House” today. The line “don’t wanna hurt nobody” has been looping in my head all day.
I remember riding in a car with my father a long time ago, when I was a young teen. Lenny Kravitz’s song “It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over” was playing on the radio, and my father started trashing it because of the “a” word. Nevermind this is a guy who is a lover of rock and roll music. There probably isn’t a rock and roll song that doesn’t significantly depart from the King’s English. But the “ain’t” was gratuitous in his opinion, so the song sucked. Which meant I thought it was totally awesome.
The song wouldn’t have been the same if Lenny had sang, “It’s not over…”. It just wouldn’t have conveyed the same emotion or attitude. Rock and roll is supposed to be cool. For whatever reason, dropped syllables and consonants, double negatives, and deftly placed “ain’ts” sound cool.
So now I’m wondering: Do song lyrics in other languages subvert their respective rules of grammar like American songs often do? Or is this an American thing likely stemming from the roots of rock and roll in black culture?
Certain “bad grammar” is genuine colloquial speech. Things like “ain’t” and “he don’t” don’t bother me.
The “for you and I” thing, however, is just ignorant. Yes, people really say that, but it is not a generally accepted term within the dialect (it’s usually people trying to speak “correct English” and failing).
This error is egregiously prominent in Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait”:
It’s often used for a rhyme, as in this case.
“Ain’t” absolutely necessary in a lot of songs for rhythm, since words like “isn’t” and “aren’t” typically don’t fit. I wouldn’t even consider it dialect at this point; it’s more of a necessary song lyrics trope.
Good call. I hadn’t considered that. I’m going to listen to it, but my memory tells me that in both the McCartney and Guns N Roses version the “we live in" is distinct.
When Pat Boone decided to cover Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame”, he wanted to change the title to “Isn’t That a Shame” because “ain’t” is poor grammar. Does that give you a reason why rock and rollers like poor grammar?
It is. When people bring this up it makes ME cringe.
Here’s an entry about the song on The Grammarphobia Blog in which the writer also writes “In fact, we don’t generally get all hot and bothered about ungrammatical song lyrics. As we’ve written before on the blog, lyric writers are exempt from the rules of grammar, syntax, usage, spelling, pronunciation, and even logic!”
