Math Errors in Songs

I’m far north of you and know how awful it is to breath in that smoke. Take care.

 

That's a bloody good photo

 

Oh, right, I forgot it was a mixture of English and Spanish!
Incidentally, it's "cuatro".

 

Setting the record straight on the idea that 1 + 1 = 9:

 

Interestingly, the line was written by Lerner's mentor Lorenz Hart

 

Particularly when the toasters don't share the same point of departure (hence the different times in the clocks)

 

not quite sure if this mathematically correct

"You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt"

and slightly exaggerated ...

"Hadn't traveled very far when suddenly I saw
Three small ships a sailin' towards a distant shore
So lighting up a cigarette I followed in pursuit
And found a secret cave where they obviously stashed their loot
Filling up my pockets even stuffed it up my nose
I must have weighed a hundred tons between my head and toes"

40.000 headmen / Traffic

 

I think you need to allow for what's called 'artistic licence', but I'm tickled by your thread

 

Not really a math error, but something has always irked me in an otherwise nearly perfect song:

Two, three count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stands
Rounding third he was headed for home
It was a brown eyed handsome man
That won the game
It was a brown eyed handsome man

As any baseball fan knows, there's no such thing as a "2-3 count." If the count was two & three, there'd have been no opportunity to hit that high fly because the batter would already have 3 strikes and thus have struck out. Baseball counts are stated as balls, then strikes.

Ahh, those Cardinals fans...whaddaya gonna do?

 

This is two of my favorite threads.

 

He told me red means run
Numbers add up to nothing

Neil Young, “Powderfinger”

On the other hand, the Grateful Dead pass the practical example pop quiz in “New Speedway Boogie”:

I don’t know but I’ve been told
It’s hard to run with the weight of gold
Other hand I’ve heard it said
It’s just as hard with a weight of lead

 

He’s not comparing the passing of time in the mountains to anywhere else, just noting how it feels.

That’s relativity.

 

Introduction by Tonight Show host Jack Paar, circa 1960:
“Ladies and gentlemen, here they are — Jayne Mansfield.”

(This line was actually written by future talk show host Dick Cavett, then on Paar's staff.)

 

Maybe I'm remembering wrong (this was on Cavett's PBS show, so I saw it when I fairly young). I do recall he said he disliked various "heart" lyrics. He listed some he didn't care for, then another guest (Sammy Cahn?) said "What about 'My Heart's In The Highlands'?" and AJL replied that that was "an acceptable metaphor".

 

I find it hard to believe Nena and her friend were able to accurately count 99 red balloons in the sky.

 

An example from my country.
This album is titled "18 Minutes From The Sun", expressed of course in light minutes. Earth is actually 8 light minutes and 18 light seconds from the sun.
It must be said, though, that Luis Alberto Spinetta realized of his miscalculation but decided to keep the title that way for poetic reasons.

 

He later did a variation of this line about Woody Allen's dislike of the outdoors: "Woody is at two with nature"

 

"One and one don't make two.
One and one make one."

 

All this science, I don't understand.
It's just my job 5 days a week.

 

???

 

How about album titles, Two Virgins?

 

Elton John - Rocket Man

 

Lots of people work five days per week.

 

Yes, I knew the song but I don't get how that's a math error.

The "typical" job these days is five days working and two days off. The point of that line is that "It's just my job", i.e., he hasn't bothered to learn the science behind it. "Five days a week" is an ironic commentary on how disassociated the narrator is from his job, even though he obviously couldn't literally take the weekends off if he was in space.