Poetic Licence or Bad Grammar?
Speaking of anal translators...
I first remember being introduced to the concept of poetic licence in grade 9 English class when I had to memorize the poem "Silver" by Walter de la Mare, which starts out:
Slowly silently now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon.
Walks the night in her silver shoon.
The teacher then explained to us that a shoon was really shoes but that the author was using poetic licence to change the word to make it rhyme, yadda yadda. It was mind boggling to me that you could just change words any way you liked and have an excuse for it. In any case, I later found out (no thanks to my teacher) that shoon is actually old British dialect for shoe anyway, so really it wasn’t as much of a stretch as I had initially imagined.
Anyway, more recently, the song "Don’t cha" came along. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love its catchy beat and girl power attitude. The one small thing that bugs me is the bad grammar. "Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" Without even touching on this whole "cha" business, this song drives me a little insane because the sentence really should take the subjunctive. Don’t cha (ahem) wish your girlfriend WERE hot like me. I always find myself singing along with the wrong words, because I just naturally use the subjunctive.
This got me thinking about other uses of bad grammar/poetic licence in music. One of the classic examples would have to be the Rolling Stones song, "I Can’t Get No Satisfaction". The Beatles are also in there with "She’s got a ticket to ride and she don’t care."
And of course, who can forget the excellent rhyming abilities of Steve Miller in "Take the Money and Run". "Billy Mac is a detective down in Texas. You know he knows just exactly what the facts is." Facts is??! Also, don't forget the other lyrics in this song: "this here's a story" and "Bobbie Sue took the money and run". EEP!
I think probably the most upsetting of the examples I can think of is found in one of my very own favourite songs, Aerosmith’s Deuces Are Wild. "Been lovin you since you was a child girl, cause you and me is two of a kind."
This raises the following questions? Can a language "professional" have a favourite song that has such blatant errors in verb usage? Is it impossible to rock and use proper grammar at the same time? Do they realize they are making errors? Is it just part of the whole bad boy rock scene? Actually, come to think of it, I can live with that.
However, since the Pussycat dolls are not bad boys and do not rock, they have no excuse.
posted by Dish @ 10:37 PM
5 Comments:
What? You're always picking on the non-subjunctive users. It's not fair. I feel like an old shoon right now.
You're a nerd!
Was it the grammar or the star trek captains that gave it away? ;o)
yes and check out this monstrosity from the lizard king:
You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher
I'm from Mexico and yet, I can see that bad english. To me, it is very important that everyone use their language properly because otherwise, in 20 years or something like that, what today is "funny" tomorrow will be teached in the schools as a valid expression!
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