Mispronunciations in music

In "Addicted to Love", Robert Palmer sings 'your teeth grind', pronouncing 'grind' as a two-syllable word. And it's like fingernails on a blackboard.

 

Abba

Lot's of examples. All of them I find very charming, though

 

"Dunker Shane", arrrgh! That really is like nails on a blackboard

 

Yes, ROM-ney is probably correct. Didn't know exactly how to write it so English speakers would know what I meant.

 

What! He sings 'SAW'! I mean... ??

Huh? He sings 'saw' plain and simple, EXACTLY the same as in I Saw Her Standing There. What is it with you guys??

 

I meant to type it as "ROM-nee".

 

Listen only to the right channel of the stereo.

 

Yes, 'SAW', I hear it.

 

Well, must be an accent thing that us non-Britons hear. I'm guessing you don't hear Liam Gallagher of Oasis sing "Champagne Supernover in the sky" on "Champagne Supernova" either?

 

I always heard it as "soar," and always assumed it was some sort of pun ("birds"..."soar"..."winging").

 

Drives me nuts, luckily I don't hear the song often

Rihanna rhymes owe me, with money.
Quite a feat.

 

I always found that amusing.

 

I hate to break it to you, but that's just how linguistics works. When you have two distinct vowels together, you need to break them up with something, and it's almost certainly going to be an approximant (e.g. y, r, w), determined by which combination of vowels you're trying to differentiate and where your tongue is passing through as it moves from one vowel sound to another.

This is why there's a 'w' sound in the middle of "whoever" (hoo-WEV-ə), a 'y' sound in the middle of "biology" (bi-YOL-ə-gee), and an 'r' in the middle of "Champagne Supernova in the sky". Everyday speech is full of these phantom passing phonemes.

You could prissily insert glottal stops everywhere, but that would sound extremely artificial, especially in the context of a pop song.

 

You don't have to have a liaison sound. Intrusive /r/ is an English phenomenon that doesn't happen in North American accents. Perfect example is the name Paula Abdul; most English people will say Pauler Abdul, but North Americans usually just glide from the ə to the æ.

 

If that bothers you, I can think of another song that you REALLY won't like.... XD

 

Though North American English has post-vocalic r as standard where it's long been eroded away in UK English, so I think things work out about even on the continuant continuum.

 

In English?

 

Has anybody mentioned any and every word Shane MacGowan has ever said and/or sang? I feel like that should count in some way...

 

Yes, this one. Oh boy.

 

In North America (and some regional UK dialects of English, e.g. Scottish, Irish), the 'r' that comes after a vowel in words like 'heart', 'over' or 'burn' is pronounced. Everywhere else, this stopped happening centuries ago and those words have no 'r' sound in them.

 

XTC - "Season Cycle", Andy Partridge makes "umbilical" rhyme with "cycle"

 

What I always considered it to be I was able to find referred to at beatles books for calm:

 

I am positive Lou put that line in just because he knew it would sound hilarious coming out of Nico.

 

No, I genuinely love it.

 

Sounds OK to me. How else can it possibly be pronounced??