Sure, but then change the rhythm of the melody, or change the lyric, right?
I’ll go out on a limb and say that your ear have heard the lines this way for so long that it sounds “right”…what about, using my original example, the line was “when the warm rain WASHes you clean…” or. if the rhythm was changed:
when the rain <1 1/2 beat rest> WASHes you clean
My guess is that they tried alternatives, and they settled on what came out on the record. Or not.
It’s an unusual time signature. “Sensitivity” (at least that part of it) is in 5/4. Cite: I played The Wizard a few years ago.
How many of you are old enough to remember “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight,” by the immortal England Dan & John Ford Coley? It surely has the classic example of misplaced emphasis, so much so that many people have trouble figuring out what they’re singing:
“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout movIN’ in.”
More than one listener has assumed that he’s not talkin’ 'bout “the linen,” because that’s sure what it sounds like!
Excellent example.
The key to this example, and the one in the OP, is that the words are sung so unnaturally that it’s hard to tell what they are.
No, a rise in pitch is the way a composer writes a melody. You wouldn’t find fault in melodies for rising or falling unless you were advocating for speech instead of music.
Think about the word: You can emphasize the first syllable
Ten Der Lee
You can emphasize the second
Ten Der Lee (Line a word in Indian)
But you can’t emphasize the third syllable alone. Try it.
In the song he accents the first syllable as much as any other. You are objecting to the melody of the song.
Well that doesn’t scan. You have an extra syllable after the beat.
Could have been “Feel the warm rain wash you clean, you’ll know” but I wouldn’t prefer that.
What the hell is a crew ook?
Might be the right choice, musically speaking, but that doesn’t make it any less grating.
No. I have no problem with the melody; I have a problem with how Paul squished that word into it I’ve never done anything tender-LEEE-EEEEEE.
Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want to argue about it?
OK, now you found one I do have a problem with.
mmm
Then my work here is done! 
Here’s a few more examples, among others, that showed up via Google-fu…some more painful than others:
Andy Gibb - “sha-DOW dan-CING”
Pink Floyd - Another Brick (Pt. 2) - “no dark sarCASm…”
Also, looks like Wordman brought this topic up over 14 years ago :eek:(link), but never got a response…till now.
Rolling Stones’ * Paint it Black*
“. . . I could not FORsee this thing happening to you”
In a different thread about music I mentioned Ozzy Osbourne as someone who does this kind of thing though I cannot for the life of me come up with an example :smack: Probably any of his songs will contain one but I have other music playing at the moment and I can’t quite hear it in my mind’s ear.
Kayleigh by Marillion is interesting because, toward the end of the song, on adjacent lines the stress for the same word moves to a different syllable:
KAY-leigh, I’m still trying to write that love song
kay-LEIGH it’s more important to me now you’re gone
Okay, I didn’t know that, and I’ve never ever heard it pronounced that way outside of the song.
Still hits this American ear with a clunk.
I agree it would be a terrible argument to defend.
That line is up there with some of the most elegantly expressed diction of the decade.
Next you’ll say Stevie Wonder is a bum.
When I go to the fridge I look for some “thing” to eat. But I don’t throw a good song under the bus for not complying.
But don’t you worry bout a thih hihihi hihihi hi hihi ing.
“People think I’m IN-sane…”
But it works.
For Paint it Black.: I don’t hear an accent on either syllable stressed. They seem equal.
Simon & Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence
Every verse has a terrible syllable in it – usually a one-syllable word beaten savagely.
“Left its seeds while I wa-AAs SLEEping…”
“People talking withOOOUT SPEeaking…”
“Hear my words that I mi-IIght teach you…”
Paul Simon is no hack - I just chalk this up to youth and inexperience.
How about Alicia Bridges “I Love The Nightlife”
I want to go where the people dance,
I want some ackSHONE… I want to live!
AckSHONE I got so much to give.
I want to give it. I want to get some too…
I have never heard anyone stress the 2nd part of “Action”…nor have I ever heard anyone pronounced it AckSHONE.
Yeah, I heard that as “No darks our chasm” for a long time.
Makes it sound vaguely french, doesn’t it? Imagine a Fracois Truffaut shouting “Actione!”