This. Which fits in with “Tiffany-twisted” and other parts of the song…
There are a lot of clever twists of phrase in the song:
Describing a woman as “terminally pretty”…
And “She held him up/and he held her for ransom”…
Clearly the Eagles (looked it up: Walsh, Frey and Henley) are trying (maybe too hard) to be clever.
Mercedes Benz? Not clever, doesn’t rhyme as well; why are we arguing for a less creative, more boring line?
What does Tiffany-twisted even mean? Likes lamps? Blue boxed jewellery? Hepburn? Highly outdated Asian impersonations? (Yeah, guessing the second.)
You’re thinking of a different song.
Not everything in the world is literal. The movement you need is on your shoulder.
It’s an evocative phrase. If you’re unable to get along without a literal interpretation, It implies her mind is warped by the trappings of wealth, but that weakens the line.
You pronounce “TZ” the same as “DS”? Do the words “bits” and “bids” sound the same to you?
In 65 years I have never heard anyone pronounce Benz with a “TZ”.
While the German pronunciation of “Benz” would have a “TZ” sound, that’s not how English speakers pronounce it. At least, I’ve always heard it pronounced to rhyme with “lens.”
If I’m being really careful to enunciate clearly, I would pronounce 'bends" (or “lends”) differently from “Benz” (or “lens”). But normally I wouldn’t be careful about pronouncing the d, and they’d sound the same.
I don’t think it’s unusual to try to interpret song lyrics. Even the great Cecil Adams addressed Hotel California (“Cool Whip in her hair”). I agree not every poetic phrase can be given a precise meaning. But if Tiffany was a drug term or whatever (Cecil claims this of words like colitas), it might be slightly more interesting. Yeah, it can still be an evocative turn if phrase without bailing it down. Probably it does relate to the numbing effects of wealth. It’s still a decent line in any case.
Tiffany Twisted, everyone!
The Tiffany Twist has been around for decades and is a Tiffany and Co. staple. It’s effectively a knot.
Thank you!
Ignorance fought.
It’s not that “Benz” has a D sound in it. It’s that “Friends” doesn’t, at least, not as usually spoken by most people. Most people, in casual speech, will pronounce “friends” as “frenz” (and likewise, “bends” as “benz”).
But yeah, when you stop to think about it, the wordplay between “twist” and “bends” was obviously intentional.
I love how in English letter sounds are just suggestions, if that, y’all just throw letters at the word until you are more or less satisfied with the result 
This entire conversation about “Friends” and “Bends” rhyming would make no sense in Spanish, “OF COURSE they rhyme, can’t you see that they both end with he same letters?”
Eh, English might be pretty bad about that, but at least we’re not French.
And I think almost all English-speakers would agree that “friends” and “bends” rhyme (though there are other words, like “tough”, “cough”, “hiccough”, “plough”, and “dough”, that end in the same letters but don’t rhyme). The question here is just whether “Benz” rhymes with both of those or not.
Oh for sure, I thought about learning French but then I realized that it’s even less phonetic than English and said “NOPE”.
Not sure if this is obvious, but Norma Desmond, the washed-up, elderly, former silent movie star in Sunset Boulevard, was supposed to be the ancient age of 50. I always assumed she was like in her 70s.
They rhymed originally.
Ah, so that’s why Homer Simpson loves Duff beer!
“D’oh” and “Duff” are supposed to rhyme.
More precisely, they shared a letter no longer in use, called yogh. Just as the thorn went to th, yogh went to gh. Words ending in yogh didn’t necessarily rhyme; the final letter could be preceded by a variety of vowel sounds, and those are what we hear today.
There was this velar fricative after the vowel, and in Middle English it gradually weakened and caused rounding of the lips (velar fricatives tend to do this because they make the sound contrast more). So plog became our word plough , and slog became the rhyming slough , because they had the vowel in “pot” plus a “w” sound. For some reason, bóg took this course too and became bough . From dáh , which naturally evolved towards the vowel in home , we got dough . The history of burg to borough and þuruh to thorough is more chaotic — in some modern English dialects, the final vowel is like “uh.” Meanwhile, we got through from þurg because it made it to Middle English with the u before the r , so it kept the “oo” sound, and then the u and r swapped places while the final fricative stopped being said.
And then there are the ones that kept a stronger stressed “wh” sound in Middle English — or that only appeared in the language then — such as the Old English genóg , tóh and ruh and the Middle English slohu and co ȝ . The strong “wh” sound at the end was dominant enough that the vowel was shortened to the one we hear in “book” (except in co ȝ , which had a short o with no u influence). But then we strengthened the “wh” sound at the end of words to make it “f.” And so we got enough , tough , rough , slough and cough.
Hiccough is nothing but early ignorance.
Oh, and what about hiccough ? That’s due to pseudo-etymological mischief. The word was hicke up or hikup — readily reflected today as hiccup — but some silly fellows decided it must come from cough and so, because they wanted words to show where they came from (that classist obsession with pedigree), they started respelling it. It’s a mere parvenu, a poseur. A hiccup.
I think that was part of the point: In Hollywood, if you were over 35 (and looked over 30) you were no longer star material. Norma’s problem wasn’t that she couldn’t get work playing women of her own middle-age, her problem was that she wasn’t willing to play anything that wasn’t a starring, romantic lead role. They pretty much don’t make starring romantic lead roles for middle-aged women, then or now (although it may be getting better).
Another Thurber cartoon. James Thurber - Well, It Makes A Difference To Me!
I saw it first long ago, and I didn’t understand it at all. I put it out of my mind completely. Recently I was reading a Thurber compilation and I saw this cartoon again. It took me a couple of minutes, but I finally got it. The man’s striped pajama bottoms clash with his dotted top.