It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing

 

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!