# You and me/I in song lyrics **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 1, 2010, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-and-me-i-in-song-lyrics/541565 "2010-06-01T22:42:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2010, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-and-me-i-in-song-lyrics/541565/21 "2010-06-02T14:23:38Z")
Stevie Wonder, “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”: _No one is better than I; I know I’m just an average guy_. Edit: Which is right, of course. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2010, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-and-me-i-in-song-lyrics/541565/22 "2010-06-02T14:48:24Z")
\*\*Wilco \*\*had a great duet w/ \*\*Feist \*\*on their last album called “You and I” _You and I We might be strangers How ever close we get sometimes Its like we never met But you and I I think we can take it All the good with the bad Make something that no one else has, But You and I You and I Me and You What can we do When the words we use sometimes are misconstrued_ ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2010, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-and-me-i-in-song-lyrics/541565/23 "2010-06-02T16:40:27Z")
> [@Roland\_Orzabal](#): > > Big Bad Voodoo Daddy got it right with “You and Me and the Bottles Makes Three Tonight”: > > “Man I know, I gotta go, it’s the same thing every time > But I don’t think another drink’s gonna make me lose my mind > So I think about my next drink > And it’s _you and me_ and the bottle makes three tonight.” > > ETA: Or actually, did they? Does this follow the same rule by which “Who is it / It’s me” is considered incorrect? (FWIW, I’ll argue to the ends of the Earth that this rule is nonsensical, but this thread assumes a prescriptivist stance, so correct away.) If I’m remembering my high school grammar correctly, the “me” in this case is a predicate nominitive, not an object, and so should be “I.” ---
**Author:** ![ministryman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@ministryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ministryman)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2010, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-and-me-i-in-song-lyrics/541565/24 "2010-06-02T17:09:57Z")
> [@bink](#): > > Rick James got it right with “You and I”… But then he beefed it at the end… You and I You and me will live together Eternally… ---
**Author:** ![sundog66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@sundog66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sundog66)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2010, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-and-me-i-in-song-lyrics/541565/25 "2010-06-02T23:27:50Z")
> [@Nature\_s\_Call](#): > > If I remember what my Grade 8 teacher told me, correctness is determined by whether the pronoun is a subject or an object. Things are actually not quite that simple. A more accurate descriptive generalization is that “I” is used only for subjects of **finite** clauses, and “me” is used for everything else. This explains why we find “me” in subject position of several kinds of nonfinite clauses, and also why we find “me” in positions that are neither subjects nor objects: What, me worry? (subject of bare-form verb) Me/my doing this might irritate you. (subject of gerund) Me, I don’t know what to say. (left-dislocated subject) Who did it? Me. (isolation) Poor me! (modified, isolation) [Pointing at a picture] This is me when I was six. (predicative complement) Try replacing any of the above "me"s with “I” and notice how bad the result sounds. Now, the facts become even more complicated once we introduce coordinated pronouns (“you and I”, etc.), and this is where prescriptivism has had a lot of influence. But the justification behind the prescriptivism isn’t so much “I = subject, me = object”, but rather that the choice between “I” and “me” should not be affected by coordination. This is reflected in the fact that the advice-givers recommend replacing “you and I/me” with “I/me” and seeing how it sounds in order to determine the right choice, and this is what I mean when I say that there is a tacit assumption that “you and I” and “I” should have the same grammatical distribution. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-and-me-i-in-song-lyrics/541565/26 "2010-06-03T00:49:11Z")
I think a far more sensible rule is that ‘You and I’ is correct when it could be substituted with ‘we’, and ‘you and me’ when it could be substituted with ‘us’, especially as it almost never requires changing any of the rest of the sentence to see if it ‘sounds right’. Then you can compare \*_Just we, sharing our lives together…_ to _Just us, sharing our lives together…_. \*_it’s we and the bottle makes three_ doesn’t quite work for this test only because ‘x makes three’ needs the other two to be explicit. (but to me, “It’s you and me”/“It’s us” sounds right. I don’t think I’d use ‘we’ unless the phrase is immediately followed by ‘who’. It’s also a great line in that song.) ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-and-me-i-in-song-lyrics/541565/27 "2010-06-03T02:16:47Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > However, it made for a good rhyme. That trumps grammar. This, truth is beauty, beauty is truth [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-and-me-i-in-song-lyrics/541565.md?page=1)