So? He released the song in 1960. And if you asked most people to name a prison in San Francisco, most would probably say, “Alcatraz,” even though its technically federal land located in the San Francisco bay.
Shari Lewis
“This is the song that never ends” 
**Shake a hand
**
Not impossible, just an incredibly stupid set of lyrics. :rolleyes:
http://www.lyricstime.com/ruth-brown-shake-a-hand-lyrics.html
Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust has the infamous line:
“A couple of light-years ago…”
and the context makes it absolutely clear this is a chronological reference, not a measure of interstellar distances. Arg!
Also, the song sucks.
“So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas…”
Christmas is not after New Years, John. Jesus.
“ISN’T IT IRONIC…DON’T YOU THINK!”
Just kidding.
The one I always bring up is **Don’t Stop Believin’ ** by Journey.
“Born and raised in South Detroit.”
There sorta is no South Detroit. South of Detroit is Windsor.
Again, I guess it depends on your starting point.
Ease up on John, let’s hit Paul next:
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be,
There’s a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.
The first verse only makes sense if you interpret the last line as “… I believe that my head and my life should be where it was yesterday”. I’m being literal, poetically I guess it’s fine.
But I can’t explain the last line of the second verse. “Yesterday went suddenly” would make sense.
What’s more, “Bear arms against a sea of troubles” is a fucking MIXED METAPHOR! “Immortal Bard,” my ass! :mad:
I see it as there wasn’t really this metaphorical “yesterday” in his life until just now.
I’ve been hearing this song “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Zee…not my kind of music, but I happened to be in NYC the first time I heard it, so it made an impression.
“New York–concrete jungle where dreams are made of”
I heard the song a number of times while I was up there…I guess it gets a lot of airplay in New York. The third or fourth time I heard it, I realized what the girl is singing and that it doesn’t make any sense. I guess if the “of” wasn’t there, it wouldn’t sound right either, although it would be grammatically correct.
That’s the Canadian pronunciation. 
“Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay** me** down”
How DARE you blaspheme beloved Saint John in heaven!
Yeah, that has always irritated me too. I’m not sure I’d call it “hypocrisy”, but it sure took a lot of damn nerve.*
Ditto “All You Need Is Love”; as much as I love the Fabs and liked John, it’s grating to hear that message being preached by one of the world’s richest and most famous men.
- On second thought, I would call it hypocrisy.
Well, this explains Philo Vance’s post – Frisco State Prison is west of San Francisco, and Cher and Johnny Cash are actually merpeople.
(To finish the hat trick, Johnny Horton’s “North to Alaska” – which I think was the theme song to a forgettable movie. What’s south of Alaska? The Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean, that’s what! :smack:
Do Disney songs count? In “God Help the Outcasts” from Hunchback of Notre Dame, an otherwise lovely and poignant song, there is this unfortunate line:
“I ask for nothing. I can get by. But I know so many less lucky than I.”
Less lucky than me! Or unluckier than me! Makes my teeth grind every time I hear it (I have little kids, I hear Disney songs more often than I’d like).
This one is excusable. To lie down is often rendered as to lay oneself down, particularly in colloquial speech.
There is no dark side of the moon.
Matter of fact it’s all dark…
Yes, oneself. Not one. “I will lay myself down.”
But I always assume that, if you understand it, it’s fine.
Johnny Horton also mixed up the Bismarck’s shells and guns.
I don’t think the lyric is incorrect. There is an implied “am” at the end of the sentence: “But I know so many less lucky than I [am].”
Wow, you’re really trying too hard here.
The audience for Horton’s song was composed almost exclusively of North Americans. With the exception of the small number of listeners who lived in Canada’s northernmost territories, every one of them would have to undertake travel in a northerly direction in order to arrive in Alaska.