Flip side of this thread from a year ago.
If curious about what might be the “correct” lyrics from a song, you can always roll the dice on Google and consult the zillions of lyrics sites out there and see how they have it. The problem with that is threefold:
A. Virtually all of them are “unofficial” sites, which means that they often are merely just some best guess of whatever bozo typed in the lyrics.
B. They shamelessly copy from each other; the lyrics you are reading probably have been passed down from site to site umpteen times before you have had a chance to read them, and
C. Even if you can locate the “official” lyrics, on perhaps the artist’s official site, even then they were unlikely to have directly originated from the lyricist in question, and probably was just the best guess of the band’s publicist, or someone.
So here’s my several suspects:
- Rush, “Fly By Night”.
Almost all sites that I’ve encountered have the chorus as
Fly by night, away from here
Change my life again
Fly by night goodbye my dear
My ship isn’t coming and I just can’t pretend
The problem there is that, at full volume with headphones on, there’s absolutely no “My” sound at the start of that last line, and in addition there’s a definite “f” sound at the start of the second syllable. The third problem is that there are only 4 syllables before the “and”, not 5. Geddy almost certainly is instead singing
She feels it coming and I just can’t pretend
Which means he’s (well, Neal Peart) actually talking about two different people-the former lover he is leaving, and the new one waiting at the end of his journey.
- Renaissance, “Can You Hear Me?”
This romantic epic contains the chorus
Fly like a song, fly
while you’re singing
A song without you, is a
bird without winging
Some city flights leave in the morning
Some city nights end without warning
Can you hear me call
“Winging”? Really? :dubious: This from an inveterate lifelong English poet (the late Betty Thatcher, who wrote all their lyrics)-she would mangle the English language that badly? Bullshit. I mean that makes no sense either grammatically OR semantically. It instead has to be “wings”, doesn’t it? Annie Haslam the lead singer does kind of drag in an extra syllable to make it fit the line, but it isn’t “ing” by a long shot-“wing-ings” is much more likely. This is disguised by the “s” sound at the start of the very next line.
- Loreena McKennitt, “Moon Cradle”
I’m adding this otherwise somewhat obscure cut to illustrate how specific professional (or informed amateur) knowledge can make the correct lyric crystal clear:
The snipe they are cryng and crying
Liadine, liadine, liadine,
Where no track’s on the bog they are flying
A lonely dream will be mine
She’s singing about snipe, who, as part of their courtship ritual will typically (depends on the species) be seen and heard flying about in predictable and repetitive flyways about their bogs while making what is often described as “winnowing” sound. A Google search of “winnowing snipe” brings up oodles of hits. Thus the pentultimate line is instead
Winnow tracks on the bog, they are flying
Feel free to add your own pet peeves in this vein.
