The one-l lama
He’s a priest
The two-l llama
He’s a beast
Sinatra is clearly talking about a Tibetan priest (that’s what’s in the lyrics, not llama, which is not native to Tibet)
It’s four o’clock in the morning…
Damnit!
Listen to me good!
Not in the version I heard.
Ummm, yeah. That was my point. And that if they pronounced “llama” the way it appears on the lyric sheet, they can keep it in Peru. Otherwise, “REWRITE!”
Aren’t “llama” and “lama” pronounced identically in English?
Silenus, The Doors’ “Touch Me” is the first song to pop in my head when I saw this thread - and your version is exactly the way I’d change it. At least we can be glad they didn’t title it “Touch I”!
I actually think both of these are fine, artistic license-wise.
mmm
“Song she brang to me” 
Possibly the worst rhyme in rock and roll.
ETA: Actually, Texas-“facts is” is possibly the worst rhyme in rock and roll. Sorry.
Should be:
Song she sung to me
Song she brung to me
Song she howled at me
Song she fouled for me
Mellencamp’s ‘Little Pink Houses’ has this lyric:
And there’s a woman in the kitchen
Cleanin’ up the evenin’ slop
And he looks at her and says, "Hey darlin’
I can remember when you could stop a clock."
I always thought “hey, doesn’t it mean when you say someone’s ‘face could stop a clock’ that they’re hideously ugly?”
Then I was in a dentist waiting room or someplace similar, reading a Mellencamp interview in a Rolling Stone magazine, and the interviewer started the article describing the scene where they met Mellencamp at his home, when his friend was visiting, and witnessed a friendly argument between them in which his friend was arguing my point, and Mellencamp was saying “no, no, it means she was so beautiful she could stop a clock”.
So I was amused to read that Mellencamp’s buddy agreed with me. But I don’t know how I’d change the lyric— maybe “I remember when you could turn some heads” and just change line two a bit to rhyme, the line that now ends with the word “slop”. It’s a terrible rhyme anyway.
Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”
The words she knows
The tune she hums…
Um, shouldn’t that be just the opposite?
The tune she knows
The words she hums…
Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die:
“This ever-changing world in which we live in”
uhh…how about dropping one of those “ins”, okay?
I saw commercially printed sheet music that said the line was Hey, darlin’… starve a flower, which almost makes sense, but not really.
Or just sing “ever-changing world in which we’re living…”
And there’s a woman in the bathroom
Scrubbing the toilet bowl clean
And he looks at her and says, Hey darling
I can remember when you were a beauty queen
Or better yet, “You’re still my beauty queen.”
Nice lyric fix!
The real problem with “Come Fly With Me” isn’t any particular choice of words, it goes beyond that. The first verse starts out beautifully if we’re thinking metaphorically:
Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away
So far so good.
If you could use some exotic booze
There’s a bar in old Bombay
Uh…what?
I’m going to travel half away around the world for a drink in a bar?
And when I think of alcoholic beverages, Bombay is way way way down on my list of destinations
“I’ll be Home for Christmas”:
…and presents oo-on the tree
Who the heck puts presents ON the tree? And the meter calls for a two-syllable word, there, anyway, so they have to stretch “on” way out. Just make it presents under the tree, and fix both problems.