There is a great disease afflicting Western society which has recently been occupying WAKE UP's attention. This disease is, it would seem, finely calculated to bring our society down by attacking its roots. Without the proper physic, this malady could soon bring an end to everything we love. It is necessary, therefore, to rally the troops, as it were, so that this plague may be combated (if you will excuse the mixed metaphor). This plague is, of course, the problem of incorrect grammar in songs.
This problem has been afflicting us for a long time, of course. Kris Kristofferson did not sing of "Bobby McGee and I" (nor did Janis Joplin in her more famous version of the same song) nor did John Lennon attribute the keeping of secrets to all but "My monkey and me". As for Bob Dylan's idiomatic colloquialisms, they verge on the incoherent. While it is not difficult to accept the imminence of nuclear war (particularly in the early 1960s), it is far harder to credit this concept when said "hard rain" is "a-gonna" fall; here Mr. Dylan prefixes a painful and all-too-common colloquialism with an utterly superfluous vowel and hyphen, presumably in a lazy attempt to fulfil his metrical responsibilities. To take a further example, let us examine "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (for a start, a semi-colon would be somewhat more appropriate in the song's title than a comma). The song begins: "Well, it ain't no use to sit and wonder why babe, if'n you don't know by now". The double negative in the first line is quite painful enough, but "if'n"? Really? How exactly is the word "if" improved or even changed by the addition of an extra letter and apostrophe? Thankfully, Nick Drake excised this second line in his cover of the song, for which WAKE UP is eternally grateful.
Sadly, even WAKE UP's heroes are not immune to strange lyrical choices. Consider one of those luminaries, Ian Curtis of Joy Division, a man much admired for his dancing. Quite aside from the obvious tautology of Transmission's refrain ("Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio"), the man was prone to some odd rhyming schemes. Consider the last verse of "Love Will Tear Us Apart":
"Do you cry out in your sleep;
All my failings exposed.
Get a taste in my mouth
As desperation takes hold.
Is it something so good,
Just can't function no more?"Leaving aside another double negative in the last line (a sad plague, perpetuated by people who inexplicably seem to revert to medieval English to make their negatives more emphatic), let us examine the rhyming scheme (which is ABCBDB, supposedly). "Exposed" is rhymed with "hold", which isn't ideal, but is acceptable; worse is to be seen quite widely. Then, however, the latter is rhymed with "more". "Hold" and "more" share a single vowel, but nothing else; not even the same vowel sound. Given that this was the last song released by the band, one might legitimately argue that Curtis had other things on his mind. WAKE UP maintains, however, that suicidal thoughts are no excuse for a sloppy rhyming scheme.
There is a caveat to be made here: the songs mentioned so far all happen to be excellent songs. Moreover, few would argue with the status of Messrs Dylan, Lennon and Curtis as luminaries of the art of song writing. The problem becomes more acute, however, when applied to lyrics which don't have the defence of being set to excellent music, or of being masterful poetry. To take one example that regularly sets teeth grinding at the metaphorical WAKE UP office, let us examine the inexplicably popular Lady Gaga. Take, for instance, the song "Bad Romance", which appears to be set to some kind of mash-up of her previous songs. Firstly, the song begins with what appears to be some form of Hindu chant, ending with "want your bad romance". Now, it is entirely possible that Ms. Gaga is in fact praying for this "bad romance" she seems to desire so thoroughly, yet it seems unlikely. This is, however, a digression; we have no qualms with the chant's grammar. There are rather large problems with the remainder of the song. Take, for instance, the line "I want your ugly, I want your disease". Why exactly has the adjective "ugly" now become a noun? It is, perhaps, possible that the line was meant to be simply "I want your disease", but Ms. Gaga interrupted it in order to inform a studio engineer (apparently apropos of absolutely nothing) that he/she was ugly; i.e. the line is in fact "I want - you're ugly - I want your disease", which is quite acceptable. The chorus should of course say "You and I could write a bad romance", but at least it's not "Me and you could...". It should be pointed out that Ms. Gaga is in fact blameless in all this; the song was not written by her (though the chant and interjection may be her own inventions).
Now, I am sure that in response to all this, some people will plead poetic licence. Poetic licence should, however, be seen as being like a licence to kill (in many respects); it is to be used only when necessary. Otherwise, songwriters and poets find themselves breaking down the very foundations of society (and speaking of "Foundations", we should very much like a word with you and your loveable Cockney idiom, Ms. Nash). Be warned, however; when the WAKE UP-funded task force of Grammar Enforcers is set up, they will strike with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy the beauty of grammar, regardless of occupation (though not of artistic merit). You have collectively been warned.
Next in this series: Nonsensical Song Lyrics (for which we intend to leave aside 60s psychedelia and 70s prog rock, having no intention of being engaged in such documentation all day).
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