Sting, “Mad About You”. It’s a beautiful song, but one line makes me cringe every time I hear it:
“And though I claim *dominions *over all I see…”
The only instance in which you can correctly add an “s” to that word is when you’re discussing multiple locations of a particular Canadian grocery store, and that’s really pushing it…
Creative spelling usually doesn’t bother me (paging “Cum On Feel the Noize”) but this one does… Oasis has a song where each line of the chorus begins “Around our way, …”
So they decided to title the song “Round Are Way.” Round short for around is pretty standard, but are for our? There’s no reason for it, and it makes the title look grammatically retarded.
This isn’t really a goof but I might as well post it anyway.
I love the Bangles song “The Real World”, but there’s one thing that bugs me: they pronounce the word “insecure” as “insecurr”. It’s already a great song, but it would be even better if they didn’t pronounce it like that.
Before you go slamming Morrison as “illiterate”–which is obvious bullshit anyway–note that two of the three Doors songs mentioned so far in this thread have lyrics by Robbie Krieger, not Morrison.
I’ve got two:
Happy Together by The Turtles.
Me and you, and you and me,
No matter how they toss the dice,
It had to be
The only one for me is you
And you for me
So happy together
What he means is that they are the only ones for each other. But all he says is that she is the only one for him TWICE. It should go: “The only one for me is you, and you, IS me.”
Dumas Walker by The Kentucky Headhunters.
He takes all his orders down one at a time
Don’t need a pad, he’s got a PHOTOGENIC mind.
Uh…his brain looks good in photos? I think what they mean to refer to is a photoGRAPHIC memory (but I’d accept “mind” for “memory” for the sake of the rhyme). I love the song, but that little mistake gets on my nerves anyway!
The Metallica song “Of Wolf And Man” contains this lyric:
It’s later than you realized
Now, it can be later than you think it is, but how can it be later than you realize? Once you realize something, you perceive it as a fact.
Also, STILL no discussion of Alanis Morrissette’s “Ironic”? Shocking!
-Steven-
In “Cotton Fields” by Credence Clearwater Revival we have:
“It was down in Louisiana
Just about a mile from Texarkana
In them old cotton fields back home”
I’m here to tell you that Texarkana is a good 30 miles from the Louisiana state line.
I imagine Sly and the Family Stone’s Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) would drive you bonkers, then.
You’re right. It’s wrong. It should be “…the answer is I”. (Still “I” because it’s a predicate nominative, and not an object.)
Yeah, but I’ve seen countless examples of lyrics being just plain wrong on those things. I always imagine some intern sitting there and listening to the songs, trying to keep up with typing them out before he can go home. I still willing to give Paul the benefit of the doubt on this one.
As for my contribution, how about Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait”?
So open up your morning light,
And say a little prayer for I.
True, printed lyrics on an album sleeve are not proof positive. In fact, if you get really picky, they are rarely 100% accurate. But given that Paul McCartney has much more clout with his record label than the average recording artist, and so can control his own packaging; and given that this compilation came out after McCartney had endured years of criticism for that particular line; then if he let it go out with that line not printed the way he wanted it, he was rather careless.
Local band called Cloud Cult (I don’t know how popular they are outside of MN, but they’ve got a large record deal, etc.) did a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and botched the lyrics in an inexcusably stupid way:
Not only is it wrong, but it doesn’t even make any sense.
Do They Know it’s Christmas:
And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life(Oooh)
Where nothing ever grows
No rain or rivers flow
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?
So, in all of Africa, nothing grows, and there’s no water, huh? And what’s that stuff on Mt Kilimanjaro, anyway? Or on Mt Kenya? And what’s the big deal about there being no snow for Christmas, anyway? Plenty of places don’t get white Christmases. Doesn’t mean areas of Africa don’t get snow at other times of the year.
I’ve always hated that song for the ignorant “Africa is one big, barren, shithole” crap that it perpetuates. They could have limited it to some of the countries hardest hit by drought and famine at the time, but even then it still would have been full of ignorant crap.
In the song “Be Prepared,” from Disney’s The Lion King, Scar declares:
“… When at last I am given my dues!”
Unless he’s the treasurer for the Lion’s Club, I think he means something else.
Sting sings, in “We Work the Black Seam”:
“But deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon fourteen.”
I’m not even sure what he’s talking about. I think he’s whining about nuclear power, but Carbon 14? What has that got to do with it, and how is it deadly?
I may be wrong here, but Joni Mitchell, “Raised on Robbery”
“First he bought a '57 Biscayne, he put it in a ditch”
Didn’t the first Biscayne come out in '58?
mm
Actually, this makes perfect sense. “Realized” is past tense. So it is NOW later than it was in the past when you realized what time it was then. Even if it was a mere 5 seconds ago.
Alanis Morrisette’s song Isn’t It Ironic? is full of examples not of irony but simply annoying coincidences, which is not the same thing at all.
While an old man who turned 98, hit the lottery and died the next day may be ironic, rain on your wedding day is not particularly ironic, unless you happen to hold it in the deserts of the Sierra Madre in the north of Mexico only to discover when the day arrives that one of the bridesmaids just had Lasik eye surgery, uses rewetting eye drops all the time, and has a tatoo of Tlaloc the Aztec Rain God on the small of her back.
And what about a free ride when you’re already late? How is that ironic? Would she rather be even later, or (if she’s on a bus or train) pay for already being late?
“Gypsys Tramps & Thieves” has a line about picking up a boy “just south of Mobile”- not sure that is possible, unless he was on a raft.
I totally agree with you about this song, but I think that last line you quoted is a free ride when you’ve already paid.
Funny, I always thought it was a free ride when you’re already there.
I would look it up, but Googling Alanis Morrisette would make my eyes bleed.
