In “End of the Innocence,” Don Henley sings…
“Lay your head back on the ground,
And let your hair fall all around me.”
HUH?
Does this girl’s hair defy gravity??? How can her hair fall all around him if she has her head laid back on the ground?
Elton John (who seems to be a repeat offender in this thread):
If I was a sculptor…
But then again, no.
WTF? Why bring it up then? It’s not like it has anything to do with the song.
Another one that bugs me is Smooth Operator:
Coast to coast, LA to …Chicago?
The most annoying thing about this one is that it never seemed odd to me until I read someone else bitching about it (possibly on the SDMB), and now I can’t hear the song without being irritated.
Nah, the singular them is widely accepted by grammar mavens. That’s a myth like the split infinitive. Would you really want Sting to sing:
“If you love somebody, set him or her free.”
Now Paul is a real estate novelist
Who never had time for a wife
Maybe this is just my naivete of the brokerage business, but I don’t believe “real estate novelist” is a thing.
I always assumed that they were laying on the ground (or a blanket or something), with their heads side by side, bodies pointed in different directions, kinda like the two girls here:
For the record, this picture came from a google image search, not from any personal files.
Those lyrics always bugged me too. I guess your explanation is possible. Sounds kind of silly when you imagine it like that though.
He’s a real estate agent during the day who’s working on his Great American Novel at night. Maybe he’s been published, maybe he never will be. Like an actor who waits tables.
Exactly- EVERYBODY in the piano bar Billy Joel is singing about dreams of being somewhere else and doing something else.
“John at the bar” is an actor who started working as a bartender to pay the bills until he got his big break in show biz… but he hates the job now, and is starting to realize his big break may never come.
The waitress is a law student (which is why she’s “practicing politics” between rounds) who’s just working here until she gets her degree.
Bill himself dreams of being a rock star, but is stuck playing “Misty” for middle-aged drunks.
And as you say, Paul “the real estate novelist” is a middle-aged real estate salesman who’s been telling everybody for years about the great novel he’s going to write some day… but which he’ll probably never really write.
When they say “we have the right to clean up the streets for our wives and our daughters” it very much echoes the Nixonian Law and Order which was a right wing trope at the time. I assure you, when you listened to that song when it came out, which I did, there was no doubt it was an insult to the cops. Kind of like Joni Mitchell singing “I’ll even kiss a Sunset pig.” Today, no big deal, back then it stressed how happy she was going to be to be back home in California.
Plus Bulldog Connor, the famous Alabama chief who attacked civil rights marches, was only a few years in the past back then.
Similar to the redundancy of “Live and Let Die”, here’s the most ear-grating lyric I’ve ever heard, from “I’ve Known No War” by the Who:
“On the nineteenth day of a Spring day in May, Albert Speer was deleted”
WTF Pete?
That’s not just redundant, it’s downright incoherent. (The 19th day of a day?) And historically inaccurate, to boot–the Nazi government was dissolved on May 23, not the 19th.
Same song, “If they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar” I’m not a grammar nazi, but that make me turn off the radio.
Not the same song; that’s “L.A. Woman.”
I misheard it as this for a LONG TIME, the lyric is “realistic novelist”
I’m not seeing the redundancy of “Live and let die.” I’ll live, and I’ll let others die. Even in the original “live and let live”, the two "live"s referred to the speaker and to others respectively.
I have often pondered the “nineteenth day of a Spring day in May”, but never could come up with a good meaning. All I could think of was that he got stuck.
I don’t think this was released as a single, but on Bryan Adams’ album Reckless, in the song “Ain’t Gonna Cry”
I got reckless baby
Put you in your place
Next time maybe re-arrange your face
:eek:
The sad thing is, except for that one part I really love the song. But I’ve always wondered, was really that hard up for a rhyme or does he think that abuse and assault are OK?
Hold on to your youth? :dubious:
If he’s kissing her, her hair would get on his face/head.
the lyric is (as I hear it):“but then again, who knows”
I’m pretty sure it’s, “But then again, no.” Because it rhymes with, “Or a man who makes potions in a traveling show.”
That’s pretty much it. No and show rhyme, that’s why he sang it like that.