Improper use of the objective pronoun
Bryan Adams, “Run to You” – “But that’d change if she ever found out about you and I.” Simple rule here,
folks. Take out the “you and” and see if the sentence makes sense. Sorry, Bryan. It’s supposed to be “you
and me.” I’ll give you a break because you’re Canadian.
Queen, “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy” – “I’d like for you and I to go romancing.” D’oh! I thought only
bad artists committed grammar violations! Freddie, no!
Eric Carmen, “Hungry Eyes” – “I feel the magic between you and I.” “I” doesn’t even rhyme with “eyes,”
and it’s almost the same word!
Paula Cole, “I Don’t Want to Wait” – “So open up your morning light /And say a little prayer for I.” Good
Lord. She followed the above rule and still screwed it up. And again, the verses don’t rhyme. “What about
“Have a cup of morning tea / And say a little prayer for me?” Makes about as much sense and is
grammatically correct.
Misspelled lyrics
Fergie, “Fergalicious” – “T to the A to the S-T-E -Y / Girl, you’re tasty.” Thanks, Fergie and will.i.am, a
whole generation of kids will now misspell “tasty,” and for that matter, “William.” But what do you
expect from two of the people who gave us the song that this blog is named after?
Lie vs. Lay
I learned this one from Mrs. Jenkins’ seventh grade English class. “Lie” is for lying down, to make oneself
horizontal on a surface; it does not carry an object. “Lay” requires an object, i.e., you’re laying something on a
table. Easy enough, right? Apparently not:
Eric Clapton, “Lay Down Sally”
Bob Dylan, “Lay Lady Lay.” And he’s supposed to be a poet.
Bonnie Raitt, “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” “Lay down with me, tell me no lies.” Maybe she didn’t want to
have the word “lie” in two consecutive verses. Still no excuse.
Making up words to complete a rhyme
Gwen Stefani, “Bubble Pop Electric” – “I’m restless, can’t you see I try my bestest.” You didn’t try hard
enough, Gwen.
Justin Timberlake, “What Goes Around” – “When you cheated girl, my heart bleeded girl.” I know, Justin,
it seems like the past tense of “bleed” should be “bleeded,” but it’s not. English is weird. Hey, I just had
this conversation with my 4-year-old the other day…
Trace Adkins, “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” – I hate to mention a country song, because that opens up a
whole new realm of grammar mistakes. But “badonkadonk”? Really?
Special subcategory: Just making up words
Young Rant/Shorty B, “Can We Conversate” / Case, “Conversate” – When did “conversate” become a
word? I guess instead of admiring someone, we’ll soon “admirate” someone. Or instead of authorizing
something, we’ll “authorizate” it.
Redundant redundancy
Everclear, ”I Will Buy You a New Life” - ”I will buy you a new car, perfect, shiny and new.” Yes, but will it
be new?
Subject-verb agreement
The Police, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” – “Everything she do just turns me on.” Perhaps Sting is
keeping in line with the whole reggae/ska feel of the Police’s early music. But using “does” here really
wouldn’t hurt.
Timbaland, “The Way I Are” – “Can you handle me the way I are?” Does anyone really talk like this?
The unexplainable
Dan Fogelberg, “Stars” – “Far too many stars have fell on me.” For some reason I expected more from
Fogelberg. Jeez, he even uses the word “fickle” in this song. How can you do that and get the past
participle of “fall” wrong?
Backstreet Boys, “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” – “As time goes by, you will get to know me a little more
better.” Maybe if she spends more time with you, she’ll know you much more betterer. Then she’ll know
you the betterest.
Gwen Stefani, “Rich Girl” – “If I was a rich girl…” The rule here is the past subjunctive requires the plural
form of the verb to be. That’s a tough rule, and Gwen may not have known that. But this is a remake of
the Fiddler on the Roof song, “If I WERE a Rich Man.” So for some reason, she thought the original
composers were wrong, and she, the grammar queen, would make the verse grammatically correct.
Either that, or she has an evil plot to dumb down America. Or she’s kinda stupid. I mean, who else had
two songs on this list?
Kanye West, “Jesus Walks” – “Yo, We at war/We at war with terrorism, racism, and most of all we at war
with ourselves/God show me the way because the Devil trying to break me down” Now I know targeting
Kanye West lyrics is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I find this one fascinating. Kanye doesn’t seem to
understand the concept of verbs – action words, Kanye! How hard would it be to change “We” to
“We’re”? Still the same number of syllables…