I definitely have to second Alanis Morissette - Is that supposed to be a Canadian accent?! Well, I’m from Canada, albeit it’s a big place with many local accents, but her “Canadian” accent really bugs me. Shakes head so many mangled lyrics.
I always got tired of Johnny Rivers singing about “Secret Asian Man.”
Also, Gladys Knight made my hair fall out with her soundtrack opus “License To Kil-cha.”
Even though I’m sure the pronunciation is common in the UK, it always irritated me to hear ELP say “not BEAN such a fool” in “From the Beginning”- an awesome song, btw.
Deep Purple sings “My Woman From To-kee-yo…”
A friend of mine who knows a little Chinese and Japanese tells me this is entirely wrong. He says the correct parsing of syllables is To-KYO. Having the “ee” sound in the middle drives him nuts. Now that I am more aware of how it’s supposed to sound, it bothers me, too.
Look no further than Axl Rose.
“Its so eeeeezay…”
“You could be MIIIIIIIIIIYIIIIIIIIINEYIIIIIIIIIIINEYIIIIIIIINE…Yeah!”
And don’t even get me started on that whack-ass cover they did of “Since I Don’t Have You.”
How could I possibly have forgotten Chrissie Hynde’s retard-seizes-the-microphone elocutions on “Brass In Pocket?”
"Goh uuus mah ahms
Goh uuus mah legs
Goh uuus mah stahl . . . "
I think the “Goh” for “gonna” may rise to the level of worst phrasing ever.
I guess she thought it sounded black, or sexy, or something. If you think Down’s Syndrome is sexy.
Avril Lavigne and I are from pretty much the same place in southeastern Ontario - my best friend went to the same high school, actually, NDSS. Her accent’s 100% affected; nobody from there, including her, pronounces vowels that way. “I’m with you” sounds like “I’m with yeeee-ow,” which is certainly not central Canadian.
To be honest, some of her weird vowels sound… just like the Green Day guy. I’ve never heard anyone from either California or Kentucky pronouce “September” as “Saiptember” or “Wake” as “Wike.” It’s like the pop-punk vowel shift or something.
I should have been clearer in my “Mancunian punk” dig at Billie Joe. I didn’t mean that he sounded Mancunian (or that there was such a thing as a Mancunian punk sound, which for all I know, there isn’t). I meant only that his weird vocalizations were (to my mind) most likely the result of an Anaheimite trying to blend together the Smiths and the Sex Pistols (what he might have heard on the radio) and failing. And given that the Sex Pistols were kind of poseurs to begin with, the levels of poseurdom are stacked onion-like upon each other in multiple layers, so it’s no surprise that his accent resembles nothing found elsewhere on Earth (except in the songs of other would-be punk poseurs).
I’d like to toss Rob Thomas in the ring for his (intentional) mutilation of the phrase:
“…Like you do your girlfriends…”
into
“…I can do your girlfriends…”
I saw this thread when it had only two replies and almost posted, but then I figured someone witter than I would be sure to mention Lady Marma-lard and that I should just wait for them to come along…
Imagine my surprise to find that no one has mentioned it!
The Brandy and Monica duet from a few years back used to grate on my nerves because Brandy sang “I cannot excape”
:::shudder:::
Hehe. I think the lyric sheet for Pretty Tied Up in the album cover had the line:
Cool and stressing (*pronounced: *“Kool Ranch Dressing”).
Michael Jackson’ Billie JEan has the line
“She says that I am the one
But the child is not my son.”
Except it sound like
“She says I am the one
But the the Chad is not my son”
And I even remember Lettermen so many years ago doing a bit on it where he thought it sounded like Jackson said Chair. Then he played the song, but they had dubbed over the word child with some one who was clearly not Michael Jackson saying (not singing) “Chair”.
I love the Google ad at the bottom right now, exhorting us to buy the book “How Democrats Can Take Back Congress” today! Apparently, a Dem government would never allow such abominations in the music of America! 
I don’t know the band name for sure, because I dismissed them from my brainspace after this. Perhaps it was the Fixx.
Back when MTV was new, there was a song that came on quite a lot in which the credited title did not match the pronunciation in the song.
As a horse fell over in the video, the band clearly enunciated “Stanitor Fall!” One could clearly hear the “it” sound in the middle of the word.
But when the credits rolled at the end, for some unknown reason the song was named “Stand or Fall”.
I was bothered enough to listen to it a few more times – and there could be no mistaking it; the singer(s) indeed said “STAN-it-tor FALL”. Neither the rhyme scheme nor the rhythm seemed to require it; they could easily have made “stand or Fall” fit if they’d cared to, so it was doubtless intentional.
Sailboat
:smack:
Winner. Game over.
Green Day are from Berkeley.
I’ve got the oldest nominee, I believe.
The First Noel and its pronunciation of Is-RYE-el has always annoyed the bejeezus out of me.
Loreena McKennitt’s pie-gun in “All Soul’s Night” never bothered me until I heard her speak. She sounds about as Irish as I do. Now the whole thing bugs me.
Rolling heelsides?
Your ears and mine must work completely differently because I’ve always heard it as “stand or fall”. I might have given you a pass if you said “Stan door fall”.
Dr. John is another NO singer who clearly has that same ‘oi’ in stead of ‘r’ thing going on.
I always thought it was: “but the KID is not my son.”
Mary J. Blige:
"for seven years I was your sec a terry working every day of the week.
She corrected it the second or third time she sang it, but man - it irks me.