Wrong Word Choices in Lyrics

[3 Colours Red]

Billy Joel and his "tonic and gin"

"Crannies and the nooks" in Sowing The Seeds Of Love, to rhyme with "books".

[irony towers]

Does Needles and Pins get the klaxon?

[Amor de Cosmos]

No

[Auntie Beryl]

Stan Ridgway's Camouflage is also lyrically a bit suspect:

"You may be tellin' the truth boy,
But this here is Camouflage!
He's been here since he passed away last night -
In fact he's been here all week long!"

Well, which is it, doc?

Somebody's not for tellin' the truth, that's for sure...

Injured in combat seven days ago, died yesterday. It's feasible.

[Various Artist]

For some reason I've had it fixed in my mind that it was a Pulp song, but I now find it was by Space. Anyway, "the female of the species is more deadlier than the male" has always grated.

This is weird, I've never heard the Space line as anything but "more deadly than the male".

I've just gone back and listened to it now specifically to check this out, and... it's actually sort of ambiguous. I think it might've just been his accent and/or his style of singing that kind of 'smears' the end of the word, but I see at least one person on the YouTube comments has made the same sort of querying comment as you, gjw. Unless it was you, of course.

[gjw100]

Heh, no that wasn't me. I've just listened to it again and I still hear 'deadlier'. Checking a few of those song lyric sites, four went for 'deadlier' and two for 'deadly', so opinion seems mixed.

[DCI Harry Batt]

It sounds like "deadlier" to me too.

[Eggchaser]

I've checked the lyrics in the CD booklet, folks. It's "deadly".

[DCI Harry Batt]

That don't prove nuffink.

[Jah Womble]

Injured in combat seven days ago, died yesterday. It's feasible.

Then ‘he’s been here since...last night’ is redundant, given that he was apparently already ‘there’ since last week.

Unless the two ‘heres’ are different parts of what I imagine would be a fairly basic hospital facility. Which would nonetheless be a very ambiguous statement.

[jwdd27]

The "here" that he's been since last night is described in a previous line as a green tent on the right, presumably the temporary morgue.

PFC Ridgway is obviously not familiar with its purpose, so it's different to the field hospital tent, which he would presumably know the location of, and wouldn't describe in a generic way - the standard field hospital is the "here" Camouflage has been for a week.
The medic probably made a downward pointing gesture on the first "here" and a sweeping arm movement on the second "here", but PFC Ridgway couldn't fit them in the song.

Although he does find room to repeatedly tell us what an "awfully big marine" Camo was. He's obsessed with his size, rather than his ghostly status.

[Satchmo Distel]

It's "deadlier" because it's an homage to earlier titles with that phrase referenced. It starts with Kipling in 1911* and then moves into music with Scott Walker doing a movie title song in 1966:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_of_the_Species

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlier_Than_the_Male

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadli...the_Male_(song)

I don't know why the Space song conflates "more deadly" and "deadlier" into "more deadlier"; perhaps an in-joke? This site suggests he was drunk when he recorded it:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/Space

*Kipling's poem actually has both phrases:

"The female of the species must be deadlier than the male."

"And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male."

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poet...f_species.html

[Jah Womble]

The "here" that he's been since last night is described in a previous line as a green tent on the right, presumably the temporary morgue.

PFC Ridgway is obviously not familiar with its purpose, so it's different to the field hospital tent, which he would presumably know the location of, and wouldn't describe in a generic way - the standard field hospital is the "here" Camouflage has been for a week.
The medic probably made a downward pointing gesture on the first "here" and a sweeping arm movement on the second "here", but PFC Ridgway couldn't fit them in the song.

Although he does find room to repeatedly tell us what an "awfully big marine" Camo was. He's obsessed with his size, rather than his ghostly status.

You’re giving him an awful lot of leeway here! It’s at best ambiguous and superficially-contradictory.

But Stan was the front man of Wall Of Voodoo, who were great - so he’s fine by me.

[Snake Plissken]

Me popping up with the inevitable Terrorvision, I love you Tony, but I still wince at "The doggio and the cattio are fighting on the patio".

[Nocturnal Submission]

I think Difford and Tilbrook are overrated anyway, but from Pulling Mussels (From The Shell) isn't:

"And I feel like William Tell,
Maid Marian or her tiptoed feet"

all kinds of historical wrong?

[jwdd27]

I think Difford and Tilbrook are overrated anyway, but from Pulling Mussels (From The Shell) isn't:

"And I feel like William Tell,
Maid Marian or her tiptoed feet"

all kinds of historical wrong?

And in Up the Junction, they took their pregnant partner:

"down to an incubator
where 30 minutes later
she gave birth to a daughter"

An incubator? Not to the maternity ward? 30 minutes is also a short labour for a first time mother, I would have thought.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Heh, yes, I was thinking about that line too!

UTJ has got some good lines but some real clunkers too, usually slang phrasing bent out of shape to provide a rhyme or half-rhyme.

[Jah Womble]

'She left me when my drinking
Became a proper stinging.'

...might be another one. I know what he means obviously, but that's a slightly odd way of expressing it.

[Nocturnal Submission]

'She left me when my drinking
Became a proper stinging.'

...might be another one. I know what he means obviously, but that's a slightly odd way of expressing it.

Absolutely.

"When she dealt out the rations,
With some or other passions"

All over the place. What's the second line even approximating to? I mean, I know what he's getting at but he's chucking words in to make it scan.

What about something like "A rich array of passions" instead?

[Capybara]

Absolutely.

"When she dealt out the rations,
With some or other passions"

All over the place. What's the second line even approximating to? I mean, I know what he's getting at but he's chucking words in to make it scan.

What about something like "A rich array of passions" instead?

The whole song is chaos. He took her to the incubator this morning, and next line it's a year later and the 'daughter' is a 'walker' (meant to rhyme), and one verse on from that she's two years 'older' and the mother's with a 'soldier' (another rhyme). And all this sung in the present tense.

[DCI Harry Batt]

What about something like "A rich array of passions" instead?

No no no no, that's totally the wrong...register?

The incubator thing occurred to me again the other day when I was re-listening to the singles album. The bloke takes his pregnant partner to an incubator? And they give birth in the incubator?

[Sporting]

And all this sung in the present tense

A fair enough narrative technique.

I think Difford and Tilbrook are overrated anyway

Well, selective quotes upthread prove that they made lyrical mistakes, but I still like a lot of their outtake.

[Nocturnal Submission]

No no no no, that's totally the wrong...register?

The incubator thing occurred to me again the other day when I was re-listening to the singles album. The bloke takes his pregnant partner to an incubator? And they give birth in the incubator?

Ooooooooooo.

Yeh, I'm not sure what the situation was like in maternity wards in the late-70s, but two decades later you had a delivery room with an incubator in it should the need for it arise.

[Nocturnal Submission]

A fair enough narrative technique.



Well, selective quotes upthread prove that they made lyrical mistakes, but I still like a lot of their outtake.

Presume you mean "output". I dread to think about the state of the lyrics that didn't make the cut!

[Capybara]

A fair enough narrative technique.

I'm sure it is but is it when you cover three years in less than a verse I don't think it works. And to be honest don't often listen too closely to the words in songs but this one you really can't avoid. It's such a mess. And I actually like Squeeze.