Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

    It'll take more than a few "whom"s to top this effort:

    The first flush of youth was upon you when our eyes first met
    And I knew that to you and into your life I had to get
    I felt light-headed at the touch of this stranger's hand
    An assault my defences systematically failed to withstand

    'Cos you came at a time
    When the pursuit of one true love in which to fall
    Was the be all and end all

    #2
    Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

    Tune. And the grammatical fastidiousness makes it feel more romantic, somehow. There's something Elizabethan about it.

    Comment


      #3
      Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

      That's the sort of grammatical fastidiousness you'd expect from a rock star who did all the extra-curricular activities and wasn't particularly cool.

      Comment


        #4
        Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

        A For instead of the 'Cos might have been more appropriate.

        Comment


          #5
          Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

          Perhaps "into you life I had to get" is a touch cumbersome?

          Not to be pedantic.

          Comment


            #6
            Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

            It may not be as grammatically fastidious, but a lot of Prefab Sprout's lyrics were beautifully crafted. I think like XTC and some others they may have been considered "too clever for their own good" in some quarters and it may have counted against them commercially. How deliciously ironic that their biggest hit featured the chorus "Hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque".

            From the fabulous Steve McQueen album, Desire As:

            So tell me you must have thought it all out in advance
            Or goodness, goodness knows why you'd throw it to the birds
            You mock the good things, you play the heart strings, play them one by one

            But there it is, and there we are
            And all I ever want to be is far from the eyes that ask me

            In whose bed you gonna be and is it true you only see
            Desire as a sylph-figured creature who changes her mind ?
            It's perfect as it stands so why then crush it in your perfect hands ?
            Desire as a sylph-figured creature who changes her mind ?

            Comment


              #7
              Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

              "When Bobby Fischer's plane (plane, plane)
              Touches the ground (plane, plane)
              He'll take those Russian boys
              and play them out of town.

              Playing for blood,
              like Grandmasters should"

              is one of the simplest/finest lyrics I have heard.

              (It certainly beats the crap out of 'One Knight in Bangkok')

              Comment


                #8
                Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                Didn't Pat Boone rework Ain't That a Shame into Isn't That a Shame?

                Comment


                  #9
                  Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                  I've often longed for a Noel Coward-esque reworking of PE's song to read "I am unable to do anything for you, my man"

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                    La Roux's song In For The Kill contains the line 'we get ever so hot.'

                    Frightfully posh, methinks.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                      Elbow's "Grounds for Divorce"

                      'There's a hole in my neighborhood down which of late I cannot help but fall'

                      The beauty of the line is that although it is the sort of English up with which Churchill could not put (apocryphally), in fact the phrasing suits the metre and melody perfectly.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                        Perhaps "into you life I had to get" is a touch cumbersome?

                        Not to be pedantic.
                        Pointing out stylistic shortcomings isn't being pedantic. OTF is surely the only place in the world that still takes The Darkness even semi-seriously.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                          Is...

                          "You and I - it had to be
                          The standing joke of the year!"


                          ...actually misguided in its attempt at grammatical fastidiousness? Isn't it now accepted that "You and me" is the correct form? ...Plus it would have rhymed too, of course.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                            evilC wrote:
                            Is...

                            "You and I - it had to be
                            The standing joke of the year!"


                            ...actually misguided in its attempt at grammatical fastidiousness? Isn't it now accepted that "You and me" is the correct form? ...Plus it would have rhymed too, of course.
                            When to use 'you and I' and when to use 'you and me'.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                              (I've mentioned this before)

                              In Gene Clark's otherwise very lovely For A Spanish Guitar:

                              The beggar whom sits in the street
                              On his miserable throne of defeat

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                                Stumpy Pepys wrote:
                                To put it more simply than your woman there: if you can replace it with "we" it should be "you and I", and if you can replace it with "us" it should be "you and me". So "You and I are history" but "Just between you and me".

                                But arguably, that doesn't cover the case (ha ha!) that evilC refers to, where the pronoun phrase is just sort of floating free like that, acting as neither subject nor object. I'd say "you and me" feels slightly more idiomatic, but I reckon you can pretty much do what you like in those circumstances.

                                Mind you, Pinker argues, as I recall, that you can pretty much do as you like in all circumstances, and only people who don't understand how language really works will cavil. I think he's on to something, but I dunno, I'm cowardly enough to want to be seen to get it "right".

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Great grammatical fastidiousness in rock

                                  Why at Last! wrote:
                                  Stumpy Pepys wrote:
                                  To put it more simply than your woman there: if you can replace it with "we" it should be "you and I", and if you can replace it with "us" it should be "you and me". So "You and I are history" but "Just between you and me".

                                  Comment

                                  Working...
                                  X