Let's nitpick some lyrics

Point taken, but he actually sang "But if this ever changing world in which we live in...". Still redundant, but only once. When he does that song in concert these days he sings "But if this ever changing world in which we're livin'..."

 

Well, if she's smacking it on her *** she can feel the beat.

 

The tambourine is a gospel instrument. You bet your butt you can play a song with a tambourine.

Jason

 

The same grammo occurs in Anna, which I can never listen to it without hearing the mistake:

"...You say he loves you more than me, so I will set you free..."

which to me means "You say that he loves you more than he loves me"

Probably my favorite John Lennon vocal, by the way. And yes I know he didn't write it.

 

Really, the line should be "I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than see you with another man."

 

From the Wikipedia entry for Hey Jude:

McCartney recalled in 1974: "I remember I played it to John and Yoko, and I was saying, 'These words won't be on the finished version.' Some of the words were: 'The movement you need is on your shoulder,' and John was saying, 'It's great!' I'm saying, 'It's crazy, it doesn't make any sense at all.' He's saying, 'Sure it does, it's great.'"

 

The town is the jail. Break out into the danger of the big city. Ready for trouble.

Tonight there's gonna be a break-out
Into the city zones
Don't you dare to try and stop us
No one could for long

 

Thus giving Paul permission to write tons of nonsensical lyrics in his solo career.

 

Oh - watch out! The voices are coming down fast - but you're miles above them.

Silly

 

"Fat Man"

 

"Don't have much money but boy if I did I'd buy a big house where we both could live!" I know "boy" is just an impersonal interjection in this context, but it sounds strange to me.

"Tonight thank God it's them instead of you." from "Do They Know It's Christmas". I mean, should you be thankful for other people's misery?

 

'They do respect her but,
They love to watch her strut.'

-Bob Seger 'Her Strut' (1980)

ONE OF THE GREATEST LYRICS EVER!

 

How'd we go two pages without bringing up McCartney's eloquent, "In this everchanging world in which we live in"?

 

It's mentioned in at least two previous posts.

 

hmmm... never though of it that way

 

That's a bit harsh. I think he's being ironic - "I'm alright Jack"

 

plus they are muslims, so they maybe don't really care that it's Christmas....

"there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas"... what a disappointment! none of the usual Ethiopian snowmen and sleighbells. ho ho hum...

okay, then, so Bob comes off a little like Rudyard Kipling in that one

anyway, my personal fave is

"don't know what I want, but I know how to get it"- Sex Pistols

oh I see, the same methodology for any circumstance

 

SF author Ted Sturgeon said once that "99% of everything is crud". It certainly applies to song lyrics. Add artistic license to the mix and nothing should surprise in pop lyrics.

 

Seeing a voice? Poets use this technique all the time--it's called synaesthesia, which is a kind of conscious jumbling of the senses.

The difference: if you're John Keats and you're dead and published in a literary anthology, you're a genius. If you're a very-much-alive Robert Plant and wear tight trousers, people make fun of you.

 

Abra-abra-cadabra
I want to reach out and grab ya

-Steve Miller

 

I hope you aren't comparing Plant to Keats. Keats is not considered a genius because he's dead and published, but because he was a genius. Plant is a clunky wordsmith, at best.

 

Keats never wrote a poem about the darkest depths of Mordor, iirc.

 

Ethiopia is 62% Christian, 33% Muslim, and 5% other faiths.

Not all Africans are Muslims, you know. Band-Aid and We Are the World were primarily formed to combat the 1980's famine in Ethiopia.

 

Kind-a like sugar
Kind-a like spices
Kind-a like, like what you do
Kind-a sounds funny
But your love honey
And honey, I love you

Gotta love the Ohio Express