More than ten years
ago I started writing a magazine article about popular music and grammar.
My premise was that the songs we sing along with transmit a great deal,
including troublesome grammar — although the grammar trouble is probably not
the songwriter's intention. I also observed an extensive use of rhetorical
schemes in popular lyrics. Some day I may go back to the article, though the
impetus for writing it has long since passed out of existence.
But since I'm
thinking about grammar a lot lately, here is, in my opinion, the most obvious grammar
error in popular music, generated in the aid of pattern and rhyme: "Song
she sang to me / Song
she brang to me / Words that rang in me
/ Rhyme that sprang from me" (from Neil Diamond's
"Play Me"). Lovely song, but that line always clunks for me, a
merciless editor.
Also demonstrating pattern, as
well as the rhetorical scheme of anthimeria
(in which one part of speech is used in place of another, expected part), is Paul
Simon's cheeky "A Simple Desultory Phillipic," which opens, "I've
been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored; / I've been John O'Hara'd, McNamara'd;
/ I've been Rolling Stoned and Beatled till I'm blind" and continues on with
similar name play.
Other examples included slips from
Kate Bush, Laura Branigan, Melissa Etheridge, Rosanne Cash, and Bryan Adams. And
perhaps you'd be surprised to learn that Jim Steinman's lyrics offer a rich
vein of examples of rhetorical schemes.
Bet you haven't thought about pop
lyrics like this lately. If you have examples of your favourite grammar errors
in pop lyrics, I'd love to hear them — please share!
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