Before I begin, I must stress that I’m not a grammatical Hitler. I don’t pedantically peruse the daily newspapers berating any spelling mistake or sloppy syntax I find. In fact, I’m often oblivious to a misplaced semi-colon or apostrophe. But, what does set my irritation levels to throbbing vein status is lyrics that just don’t make sense. That is until I had my lyrical epiphany.
My hatred had always simmered under the surface. Songs such as Sean Paul’s ‘We Be Burning’ and Timbaland’s ‘The Way I Are’ have always troubled my inner pedant, but I have put that down to the sad fact that perhaps I am old before my time and slang has begun to pass me by.
However, recently a song became ingrained in radio playlists and cheesy dancefloors across the nations stereos. ‘Take Me Back’ by Tinchy Stryder and Taio Cruz (the names in themselves seem to be the result of a drunken game of scrabble) includes the line “I’m sorry I misleaded you pretty lady”. A sweet lyric in essence, but a cringeworthy error all the same, especially considering it’s the chorus. How could a mistake from young Tinchy have gone unnoticed by a producer, a record company, and what seems to be hundreds of thousands of the record buying public? Surely someone could have mentioned “Erm…tinchy… I think you might…ahem…mean misled”.
Maybe I’m missing the point and Mr Stryder is subtly demonstrating the state of education for kids from his background, or highlighting the problem of unnoticed dyslexia. Or perhaps he’s just an idiot.
Either way, I began to listen to my music collection differently. Every lyric came under close scrutiny. Now, I’m not proud to admit this, but for the purposes of this article, I will concede that Fergie is a guilty pleasure. And whilst listening to the underrated gem ‘Fergielicious’, I realised that Will.i.am had spent a lot more time rapping than reading in his youth as he sang “T, to the A, to the S-T-E-Y, girl, you tasty.”
So in search of more mistakes, i looked to the encyclopedia of useless information; the internet. I soon found myself in a world of lyrical OCD sufferers. It was here that my grammatical obsession was cut short by a vision of what I might become in the future. The following excerpt is a genuine article found on www.amiright.com:
ABBA’s ’The Winner Takes It All’
The Lyrics:
The gods may throw a dice.
Their minds as cold as ice.
And someone way down here
Loses someone dear.Why:
Since the noun “dice” is plural, the singular being “die”, the phrase “a dice” cannot be correct; it would need to be “a die” to be correct. But then that wouldn’t rhyme with “cold as ice”. On can wonder whether the writer(s) of these lyrics were unaware that “dice” as a noun is obligatorily plural, or whether they knew that, but went ahead with “a dice” anyway to facilitate the rhyme.Submitted by: Renee Keener
Poor Renee keener, she too probably had a similar experience to mine. But without anyone to stop her, she is now lost to the obsession. She can no longer even listen to ABBA without hyperventilating over obligatory plurals. She did stop me though and thanks to Renee I can now sing “I’m sorry I misleaded you” without even a hint of irritation.