Songs with incorrect basic premises

[FairyChatMom]

There is apparently no room for poetic license in lyrics…

Paul Simon really isn’t a rock or an island.
Octopusses don’t have gardens in the shade or anywhere else.
And crocodiles don’t rock.

[Robot_Arm]

@Spiff

M.T.A. or “Charlie on the M.T.A.” is a song about Charlie, who can’t get off of a Boston subway train because he doesn’t have the nickel exit fare surcharge.

So, as the lyrics go, he’s lost forever on the M.T.A.

But, also according to the lyrics:

“Charlie’s wife goes down
To the Scollay Square station
Every day at quarter past two
And through the open window
She hands Charlie a sandwich
As the train comes rumblin’ through.”

For f**k’s sake woman, put a nickel in the sandwich bag!

I think everybody has that reaction to the song.

But to go a little deeper, I found a site once that discussed the history of the song, and a bit of analysis. Taking a guess at Charlie’s age when he boarded the train, and looking at the fares charged over the years, Charlie may have eventually qualified for a senior citizen fare, which didn’t require the nickel surcharge to exit, and would have been free to leave in the late '70s.

And the Scollay Square station is now Government Center.

[Ignotus]

Lee Hazlewood apparently had some trouble with unit conversions (in* Pray Them Bars Away*):

Four years down and twenty one to blow
Ten thousand more breakfasts to go
Fourteen million seconds of living this way
And I guess it’s time I started to pray them bars away

21 years equals 7670 days or “breakfasts” (I could accept a round number of 8000) or close to 663 million seconds (again, I could go with an estimate of “half a billion”, which would fit nicely in the meter).
Otherwise it’s a beautiful song!

[Diceman]

@hajario

No. The Southern part of Detroit.

That’s the thing; Detroit doesn’t have a “South Side.” It has an East Side (actually northeast), a Northwest Side, a Southwest side, and Downtown. (There is no Southeast side, that would be Windsor, Ontario ).

[hajario]

@Diceman

That’s the thing; Detroit doesn’t have a “South Side.” It has an East Side (actually northeast), a Northwest Side, a Southwest side, and Downtown. (There is no Southeast side, that would be Windsor, Ontario ).

Yeah. I saw that from the link that someone posted earlier. I mentioned that I am from West L.A. Los Angeles has West, East and South Central. If a song had “North L.A.” It wouldn’t make sense either so I retract that.

[bengangmo]

@botsgotme

“Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry”…um, aren’t levees supposed to be dry? and what is “American Pie”? I have had cherry pie, apple pie, pecan pie…but never American Pie.

Hasn’t he sold the original song now? Where the meanings of the various lines and his thinking was recorded

[Nava]

@Find_Friends

I’ve always assumed the second line was whimsical.

Well, if you’re in the Moon and want to calculate something like sunrise/sunset times, the easiest calculation would involve placing the Moon in the center and the Sun (and Earth) circling about it.

Or, as one of my teachers used to say, “we’re engineers because we can convert coordinates!”

I wouldn’t expect a songwriter to be either an engineer or an astrophysicist, but you never know

[Bites_When_Provoked]

@Robot_Arm

Taking a guess at Charlie’s age when he boarded the train, and looking at the fares charged over the years, Charlie may have eventually qualified for a senior citizen fare, which didn’t require the nickel surcharge to exit, and would have been free to leave in the late '70s.

Forget that…where is he pooping, if he’s somehow stuck on a train? :eek:

[drad_dog]

@bengangmo

Hasn’t he sold the original song now? Where the meanings of the various lines and his thinking was recorded

I never heard that, theres an outtake with exegesis?

It’s a little picky to pick on levee for being dry. It’s predicated on water pushing against it.

[Fubaya]

UnderstandingAmericanPie.com explains it as:

“Drove my Chevy to the levee” alludes to a drive “along a levee” mentioned in a series of popular 1950s Chevrolet television commercials sung by Dinah Shore:

Drive your Chevrolet through the USA,
America’s the greatest land of all
On a highway or a road along a levee…
…life is completer in a Chevy
So make a date today to see the USA
And see it in your Chevrolet

and which serves as a signpost to that era—just as the Chevrolet itself is a familiar icon of 1950s America. Also, given that a drive to a levee carries the suggestion of romance in a car, we can almost see him on a date here. But the date is over, the levee is dry—someone he once loved has betrayed him; something that once gave him sustenance has evaporated.

[HowSoonIsThen]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

So your best evidence of Warren Beatty’s vanity is that he’s accurate and sensible?

Not to mention, that song is totally about him. There’s nothing wrong with him probably thinking the song is about him.

[Reeses_Monkey]

@Nava

…I wouldn’t expect a songwriter to be either an engineer or an astrophysicist, but you never know

I don’t know about engineers but there’s at least one astrophysicist rockstar out there.

[bengangmo]

@drad_dog

I never heard that, theres an outtake with exegesis?

It’s a little picky to pick on levee for being dry. It’s predicated on water pushing against it.

Sorry - your england beats me here, can dumb it down a bit?
But yes, the original composition has indeed been sold

[Robot_Arm]

@Bites_When_Provoked

Forget that…where is he pooping, if he’s somehow stuck on a train? :eek:

Never ridden the T, have you?

[Superdude]

@cochrane

Billy Joel’s The Ballad of Billy the Kid is full of them. First, he mentions that Billy was from Wheeling, W. Va., when he really was born in New York, N.Y. Then he says Billy robbed a bank in Colorado. Billy the Kid never robbed a bank. Then finally Joel says:

Well, one cold day a posse captured Billy
And the judge said, “String 'im up for what he did!”
And the cowboys and their kin
Like the sea came pourin’ in
To watch the hangin’ of Billy the Kid

He wasn’t hanged. He was shot by Pat Garrett.

That’s what you get for falling asleep in history class.

In Bill’s defense, the liner notes for Songs in the Attic admit that this is 100% historically inaccurate.

[ElvisL1ves]

@Bites_When_Provoked

Forget that…where is he pooping, if he’s somehow stuck on a train? :eek:

He isn’t eating, so he doesn’t need to.

@Nava

I wouldn’t expect a songwriter to be either an engineer or an astrophysicist, but you never know

Engineer: Tom Scholz (Boston), BSME, MSME, MIT.
Astrophysicist: Brian May (Queen), PhD, Imperial College.