Song Lyrics With errors and/or Impossible Statements

[RTFirefly]

@Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew

Since Sting doubled the half-life in the song, it would seem that he knew that figure, but didn’t understand what half-lives are.

Maybe he understood them perfectly well. The half-life of a radioactive element “is the time when the expected value of the number of entities that have decayed is equal to half the original number,” according to Wikipedia. It’s not like a radioactive substance ceases to be lethal after one half-life elapses; it just means that you need exposure to twice as much of it to kill you.

So if you’ve got 4X a lethal dose of Unobtainium at T=0, then you’ve still got a lethal dose of Unobtainium after two Unobtainium half-lives have passed.

[Finagle]

Dar Williams has a song called “We Learned the Sea” with the lyrics:

“I am the captain and I have been told
That tomorrow we land and my ship has been sold
Now losing this boat is worth scarce a mention
I think of the crew, most of all the first ensign”
First ensign? Ensign is a rank, but I don’t think there’s such a thing as the First Ensign. Certainly not on a commercial vessel. Sometimes when you stretch for a rhyme, the result is just … painful.

Then, later:

“I am the captain and I have been told
But I am not shaken, I am eight years old
And you are still young, but you’ll understand”
So the captain is eight years old? So the song is a metaphor? But nothing else in the song suggests this. At this point, I just decided that Dar had been imbibing hippy folksinger substances while writing this particular ditty, and eliminated it from my iPod.

[Chicagojeff]

"The salvation army band played… and the children drunk lemonade… and the MORNING LASTED ALL DAY…ALL DAY??
Perhaps it was one of those scandanavian winters?
From “Life in a Northern Town”…
Also… "Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids… in fact its cold as hell…
That always amused me… “Rocket Man”…

[Annie-Xmas]

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tell Me On A Sunday had lyrics by Don Black. It’s about an English woman who moves to New York City and sings “He’s doing some deal up in Baltimore now…”

Anyone who has been in NYC loger than five minutes knows that Baltimore is DOWN.

[kaylasdad99]

@Aspidistra

Also the half-life of C14 is something under six thousand years.

@Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew

Since Sting doubled the half-life in the song, it would seem that he knew that figure, but didn’t understand what half-lives are.

I was given to understand that it takes at least five half-lifes for the decay of an isotope to bring it down to a non-lethal level.

If this is the case, Sting is low-balling it.

Who knew he was such a partisan shill?

[TreacherousCretin]

@Aspidistra

If you have never listened to Mitch Benn’s “Not Everybody Has to Imagine”, then you must, right now

I just did. It would be funnier if it weren’t so accurate. Thanks for the link.

[TreacherousCretin]

@Bakhesh

Another Paul Simon one (although also used by Billy Bragg/Kirsty McColl)

“I was 21 years when I wrote this song
I’m 22 now, but I won’t be for long”

So, you wrote this song when you were 21, but never sang it, and somehow managed to predict that you wouldn’t get round to singing it for another year

I think this is the best one so far.

[kaylasdad99]

@Boulter_s_Canary

Not so much an error, just staggering hypocrisy:

“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can”

This is the man with (at the time he wrote those lines) the hand-painted rolls royce, the mansion, the hand-made white grand piano, several herds of cattle in upstate New York, millions in the bank… and he’s fecking asking me if I can imagine no possessions? :mad:

Heh.

In National Lampoon, they used to run a “Letters From the Editors” page. It was some years after Lennon’s death, when they ran this one:

Dear Editors,

Imagine no possessions

What a horrible thought.

–Yoko Ono

[TreacherousCretin]

@Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew

All you people who call John Lennon a hypocrite for “Imagine no possessions” completely fail to understand the song. He might be a hypocrite if he advised the listener to give up all possessions, but that’s not what the song says. Here’s a hint: the song is called Imagine. Lennon is singing about a state of mind, not advocating that everyone literally give up everything and go live in the wilderness.

A semantic distinction that makes the song no less preachy and arrogant, in my view.

[TreacherousCretin]

@JKellyMap

Word. He also “imagine[s] there’s no countries”, but no one is calling him a hypocrite for living in a certified nation-state.

Wasn’t he resisting Hoover’s efforts to have him deported at the time?

Does this undercut the “hypocrite” accusation, or reinforce it?

Discuss.

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@TreacherousCretin

A semantic distinction that makes the song no less preachy and arrogant, in my view.

No, it’s not just a semantic distinction; it’s a completely different concept. “Imagine” is of a piece with John and Yoko’s sort of wishing-will-make-it-so philosophy, quite consistent with Yoko’s conceptual thought-pieces in Grapefruit, John’s “All You Need Is Love,” and the duo’s “War is over–if you want it” campaign.

Preachy, sure, that’s rather the whole point. Arrogant I don’t see, unless you assume that anyone who presumes to preach in the first place is automatically arrogant. “Naive” would be a more apposite criticism.

[TreacherousCretin]

Speaking of John Lennon, my absolute favorite vocal of his is “Anna”, from the first Fabs album. Unfortunately, the lyrics (by Arthur Alexander, I think) include this line:

“You say he loves you more than me, so I will set you free.”

What?? He loves you more than he loves me?? Yow!!
I respectfully offer this alternative which just occurred to me:

“You say he loves you more than I, so I will say Buh-Bye”
.

[statsman1982]

@Toxgoddess

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).

Another vote that “less lucky than I” is grammatically correct.

[Gagundathar]

Thomas Dolby’s “I Love You, Goodbye” begins with these lyrics:

I would never normally go bowling
On a friday morning in New Orleans
But I like to come here to remember
The kind of places you took me
Like the time we stole a Datsun
And drove all night to the everglades
Until we crashed it in a big electric storm

The Everglades are in Florida, not Louisiana.

It is still a great song, but that lyric always bother me.

[TreacherousCretin]

@Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew

“Naive” would be a more apposite criticism.

Hm. You’re right.

[Skywatcher]

@Gagundathar

The Everglades are in Florida, not Louisiana.

Why do you think they drove all night to get there?

[Malleus_Incus_Stapes]

@lissener

90% of the examples in this thread are either whooshes, or perfectly acceptable poetic license.

But Conquistador is not pronounced kon-KWIST-uh-door.

It isn’t?

(Not entirely a whoosh. As with many words, I cannot recall ever having had occasion to verbally discuss conquistadors. And I’m really bad at figuring how to pronounce foreign words. It looks like con-quist-a-door to me. Then again, I thought Don Quixote was “Don Quick-sote”).

[Marley23]

@Malleus_Incus_Stapes

It isn’t?

(Not entirely a whoosh. As with many words, I cannot recall ever having had occasion to verbally discuss conquistadors. And I’m really bad at figuring how to pronounce foreign words. It looks like con-quist-a-door to me. Then again, I thought Don Quixote was “Don Quick-sote”).

It’s a Spanish word, like Quixote. So it’s kon-KEE-sta-dor. Apparently the British pronounce it differently because they like to make English words sound lovely and words in every other language sound as bad as possible.

[cjepson]

@Malleus_Incus_Stapes

It isn’t?

(Not entirely a whoosh. As with many words, I cannot recall ever having had occasion to verbally discuss conquistadors. And I’m really bad at figuring how to pronounce foreign words. It looks like con-quist-a-door to me. Then again, I thought Don Quixote was “Don Quick-sote”).

I believe it would be “con-KEEST-a-door” (or something close to that).

[Marley23]

@cjepson

I believe it would be “con-KEEST-a-door” (or something close to that).

KEEST is better than KEE-st. But I stand by my theory about the British.