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Something that really irritates me is when listening to a song and coming across something like this:
"I can't stay on your life support, there's a shortage in the switch" -- Pink, Just Like A Pill
I love that song, really I do. But I cringe every time I hear "shortage in the switch". I realize that the tune flows better with that phrase, but c'mon, it's not slang or idiom, it's an intentional misuse of a word that makes it nonsense. You can have a short in a switch, but not a shortage.
Nitpicky? You bet.
Need another example? How about in Maria Muldaur's Midnight at the Oasis. A very sexy song with a wonderful melody, sung by a singer with a great voice for it, and the word play and imaging is excellent. Oasis, sultan, camel, sheik, belly dancer, nomad, and so on, right up until the line:
Come on, Cactus is our friend
Cactus?!?!?!?! Where the hell did the cactus come from? I thought we were in a thousand and one Arabian nights, not a Roadrunner cartoon. You say cactus and I'm picturing the American southwest or Mexico. Your romantic camel just became a burro refusing to budge for no damn reason while Gabby Hayes mutters "dagnabbit". Talk about a mood breaker.
What about you? Got some song lyric that just grates on your nerves?
Posted by Ted at June 10, 2005 05:57 AMREM, 'losing my religion'. The lyric is '...consider this, consider this, the hint of the century..." Except the 'hint of the century' part is so garbled it's hard to understand. In truth, I didn't even know what he was saying until I looked it up just now. I always assumed he was singing in Mandarin or something "Hugh don't a cinch a weeeeee...."
But yeah, my pet peeve is lyrics that can't be made out. Eddie Vedder sings 'Yellow Ledbetter' in it's entirety in this fashion.
Posted by: shank at June 10, 2005 08:18 AMAnd now that REM song is in my head, and it's been there since I posted the above comment. Damn!
Posted by: shank at June 10, 2005 09:14 AMI kind of assumed the cactus was peyote...
As for stupid lyrics, in the otherwise excellent Hotel California;
"Please give me my wine.. we haven't had that SPIRIT here since 1969."
Wines are not spirits! Vintage would have scanned perfectly and been appropriate. Which is a mighty small nit in one of my favorite songs.
Posted by: Jim Gwyn at June 10, 2005 09:38 AMFrom "I Melt With You":
Moving forward using all my breath
Making love to you was never second best
I saw the world crashing all around your face
Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace
HATE IT! I think it's the whole pretentious art-school reject whiny emo-boy sound of it, plus the forced-into-meter thing.
I tell you how much I hate this song... Tom Hanks *genuflect* could mime it and I'd still spit.
"Lady In Red". UGH! But, it's not even the lyric so much as the way the singer pronounces "dance" as "dahnce" (snooty English accent) but then rhymes it with "romance" in an American accent. What the huh?!
And I like Joni Mitchell and all, but in her song "For Free" she pronounces "jewels" as two two syllables, "jewwwww- wels", and then has to pronounce "schools" as "schoooo- wels" to make it rhyme. Rediculous!
And as fer misunderstood lyrics, in the song "Jet", Paul McCartney sings "I thought the only place was on the moon" but for years I thought the line was ?I thought the only lonely FACE was on the moon," which I think is a better line!
Posted by: Tuning Spork at June 12, 2005 11:55 AMRod Stewart, "Tonight's the Night."
When he gets to the part, "Just let your inhibitions run wild" I think, if she does that, he's NEVER getting any.
Posted by: wheels at June 16, 2005 11:21 PM