In "Sad Song" by the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed is confused. He claims to be in love with Mary, Queen of Scots, stating that in 1493 'everything is like it should be'. However Mary was not born until 1542. Moreover he claims Henry V would have broken his heart, yet Henry died in 1422.
― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Tuesday, 22 June 2021 16:57 (two years ago) link
Maybe his European History class which covered those dates was that same afternoon.
― search term: buttrock (morrisp), Tuesday, 22 June 2021 17:05 (two years ago) link
tbf a lot of his study time was probably spent trying to comprehend how someone shot John Kennedy in the face.
― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Tuesday, 22 June 2021 17:08 (two years ago) link
In "Sad Song", Lou did admit "how wrong (he) can be".
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 22 June 2021 17:12 (two years ago) link
in that fucking journey song steve perry sings that his character was "born and raised in south detroit". there is no area in detroit referred to as south detroit, though there is a neighbourhood called southwest detroit
― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, 22 June 2021 17:12 (two years ago) link
Compare "Kids in America"
New York to East CaliforniaThere's a new wave coming, I warn ya
wtf is "East California"?
― Champagne Heathernova (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 22 June 2021 17:15 (two years ago) link
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Eastern_California_county_map.png/250px-Eastern_California_county_map.png
I don't know either, but it looks like it has something to do with going back to Annandale.
― pplains, Tuesday, 22 June 2021 20:23 (two years ago) link
it's near south detroit
― the mai tai quinn (voodoo chili), Tuesday, 22 June 2021 20:25 (two years ago) link
I always take a cue from Woody Guthrie and tell people that Amityville is located on the New York island.
― pplains, Tuesday, 22 June 2021 20:34 (two years ago) link
there’s clearly an east here where did it go
https://external-preview.redd.it/aIdezuom1VZW6iGaLAb2VJj_a276ZCpKlz0Ov7D8IV0.png?auto=webp&s=aba2c462e6853f536826cda274c4e1249e367e69
― Left, Tuesday, 22 June 2021 20:38 (two years ago) link
Kim Wilde was just giving a shout out to all the hip new wave kids in Death Valley
― Josefa, Tuesday, 22 June 2021 20:39 (two years ago) link
shoutout to Lone Pine
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 22 June 2021 20:41 (two years ago) link
The west takes what the east delivers.
― pplains, Tuesday, 22 June 2021 21:06 (two years ago) link
Daddy was a cop, on the east siiide of Chicago
― Bobo Honk, real name, no gimmicks (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 23 June 2021 05:12 (two years ago) link
John Couger confused sucking with chewing in Jack & Diane.
― BrianB, Wednesday, 23 June 2021 22:45 (two years ago) link
often confused rocking with sucking in other songs
― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Wednesday, 23 June 2021 23:17 (two years ago) link
Sucking in the USA
― cancel culture club (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 23 June 2021 23:36 (two years ago) link
In "Life", Des'ree confuses a rabbit's tail with a rabbit's foot.
Doo, doot doot doo.
― Fauna Sukkot (Deflatormouse), Thursday, 24 June 2021 03:01 (two years ago) link
In "Teenage Lobotomy", the Ramones confuse severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex with the removal of the cerebellum.
― Halfway there but for you, Saturday, 26 June 2021 17:25 (two years ago) link
From She's Gone:
Think I'll spend eternity in the cityLet the carbon and monoxide choke my thoughts away
I know they were just trying to fit the rhythm of the song, but I'm pretty sure carbon on it's own isn't toxic, and one oxygen molecule isn't stable by itself.
Of course, if they'd spent more of their Philly youth in chemistry class (rather than standing on a street corner singing around a trash can on fire), then they wouldn't be Hall & Oates.
― enochroot, Wednesday, 26 January 2022 12:48 (two years ago) link
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/V0AAAOSwS8FhwHmO/s-l1600.jpg
― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Wednesday, 26 January 2022 12:54 (two years ago) link
one oxygen molecule isn't stable by itself
It is, actually, though a single atom (which the lyric appears to posit) isn't.
Pedanticallier than yours,
― anatol_merklich, Wednesday, 26 January 2022 14:44 (two years ago) link
Touche
― enochroot, Wednesday, 26 January 2022 15:20 (two years ago) link
Baby when you're at the wheelI can't believe the way I feelIt's such a rush just being with youWe're driving in the rush hour
As fond as I am of this song, I've always been rankled by the fact that the central simile... just doesn't work. Wiedlin equates the thrill of new love with the sensation of driving at speed "in the rush hour". But of course, what the occupants of a car actually experience while inching slowly forward during rush hour traffic is boredom, irritation and transient micro-hatreds.She would know this if she'd spent more of her LA youth driving to work, rather than performing with the premier distaff new wave band. But then she wouldn't be Jane Wiedlin.
― Vast Halo, Wednesday, 26 January 2022 16:10 (two years ago) link
Maybe it's like "being with you is such a rush, it feels like we're driving even though it's rush hour and we've been motionless for 15 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic."
― I Am Fribbulus (Xax) (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 26 January 2022 16:36 (two years ago) link
I thought she was making a contrast: "This rush hour is actually great!"
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 26 January 2022 16:38 (two years ago) link
Not a songwriter but there is a reasonably famous William Carlos Williams poem that goes
Your thighs are appletreeswhose blossoms touch the sky.Which sky? The skywhere Watteau hung a lady'sslipper.
And numerous explicators have pointed out that WCW was probably thinking of a painting by Fragonard ("The Swing"), not Watteau.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49758842643_2c60422232_b.jpg
It's so nerdy and yet it's the ur-example of "confusing A with B"
Me, I feel like we could delve a bit deeper on the misattribution of Mary Magdalene as a penitent prostitute, but the horse has left the barn on that one
― Emanuel Axolotl (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 26 January 2022 17:07 (two years ago) link
If we're going to bring in poetry, then this glorious poem by Kay Ryan got past the New Yorker factchecker, despite getting the basic biology of tree growth wrong
Tree Heart/True HeartThe hearts of treesare serially displacedpressed annuallyoutward to a ring.They aren’t reallywhat we meanby hearts, they soeasily acquiesce,willing to thin andstretch around someupstart green. Areal heart does notgive way to spring.A heart is true.I say no more springswithout you.
Ryan has subsequently disowned the poem :(
― Piedie Gimbel, Wednesday, 26 January 2022 17:27 (two years ago) link
not a song, but the original short video that Hank Azaria did for the show "Brockmire", he was using Godfather references in his sportscasting, and at one point said "Barzini's a pimp, he never coulda outfought Santino!", and I was angry because the line is "Tattaglia's a pimp"...and then in one of the episodes, they had the same piece of dialogue, but he'd fixed the reference!
― they were written with a ouija board and a rhyming dictionary (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 26 January 2022 18:03 (two years ago) link
From She's Gone:_Think I'll spend eternity in the cityLet the carbon and monoxide choke my thoughts away_I know they were just trying to fit the rhythm of the song, but I'm pretty sure carbon on it's own isn't toxic, and one oxygen molecule isn't stable by itself. Of course, if they'd spent more of their Philly youth in chemistry class (rather than standing on a street corner singing around a trash can on fire), then they wouldn't be Hall & Oates.
― Apollo and the Aqueducts (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 21 May 2022 00:44 (one year ago) link
I think "Inertia" by the Wonder Stuff fits here. It's not completely wrong that a heavy object given a sufficient force and momentum will keep moving for a while and it would be hard to stop it, but they seem to think inertia means you can't stop moving.
― even the birds in the trees seemed to whisper "get fucked" (bovarism), Saturday, 21 May 2022 01:48 (one year ago) link
It doesn't?
― joni mitchell jarre (anagram), Saturday, 21 May 2022 07:10 (one year ago) link
*mean you can't stop moving?
well it can do but also means it's really hard to start moving
― even the birds in the trees seemed to whisper "get fucked" (bovarism), Saturday, 21 May 2022 10:53 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXnoWb88Jr4
― Doodles Diamond (Tom D.), Saturday, 21 May 2022 10:57 (one year ago) link
Ha!
― Apollo and the Aqueducts (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 21 May 2022 12:27 (one year ago) link
In "The Dean and I," at the moment of a critical confession of love, 10cc proclaim that "The elevator in my heart has gone AWOL, AWOL, AWOL, AWOL." Which sounds cool, but doesn't really make a lot of sense:
* This is the only use of the "elevator" metaphor in the song, and it's a concept (going AWOL) that has no particular association or clear meaning with regard to elevators.* At a stretch, they might be suggesting that the elevator is not where it's supposed to be, like it's dropped rapidly or something, which would fit the emotional stakes of the situation, but is just really labored to my ears. Nobody either in or waiting for the elevator would ever proclaim "This elevator's gone AWOL" upon realizing it's plummeting to the bottom of the shaft.* MAYBE they want to suggest that the elevator has flown up and out of the heart's building, like Willy Wonka's Great Glass Elevator. After all, the song was released just two years after the original Wonka film, and one year after Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator hit bookstores. But nothing else in the text supports this reach.
My conclusion: they meant to say "haywire."
― Doctor Casino, Thursday, 25 August 2022 21:18 (one year ago) link
think they need to see a cardiologist quickly
― and the worms, they entered his ass (Neanderthal), Thursday, 25 August 2022 21:22 (one year ago) link
Now explain what the rest of the song is about.
― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, 25 August 2022 21:26 (one year ago) link
Not sure that this one fits exactly with the theme of this thread, but it strikes me as the same kind of sacrifice of sense for the sake of the rhythm or the rhyme:
"Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreakSomewhere in this town"
Uh, yeah, it's gonna be somewhere in this town . . . at the jail.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 25 August 2022 21:29 (one year ago) link
There might be more than one jail in the town.
― Buckfast At Tiffany's (Tom D.), Thursday, 25 August 2022 21:32 (one year ago) link
Hackd iphone could be anywhere.
― pplains, Thursday, 25 August 2022 21:35 (one year ago) link
xxp great minds…
I always had trouble with this classic by Thin Lizzy:"Tonight there's gonna be a Jailbreak/Somewhere in this town!""Somewhere in this town?" Ummmm.....the jail, maybe?― Alex in NYC, Wednesday, January 2, 2002 5:00 PM (twenty years ago)
― Porcine-lina of the Pig Oceans (morrisp), Thursday, 25 August 2022 21:58 (one year ago) link
There is nothing new under the sun.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 25 August 2022 21:59 (one year ago) link
"Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak, somewhere in this town"I'd imagine it'll be taking place at the jail, Phil. Great track though, and great band.― does it look like i'm here (jon123), Tuesday, December 3, 2019 4:21 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink
I'd imagine it'll be taking place at the jail, Phil. Great track though, and great band.
― does it look like i'm here (jon123), Tuesday, December 3, 2019 4:21 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink
― budo jeru, Friday, 26 August 2022 00:31 (one year ago) link
The whole town is like one big jail, and the name of the jail is Society
― Sonned by a comedy podcast after a dairy network beef (bernard snowy), Friday, 26 August 2022 01:31 (one year ago) link
Singer doesn’t know where the jail is exactly
― President Keyes, Friday, 26 August 2022 01:50 (one year ago) link
iirc the original liner notes lay out a narrative that more or less matches bernard snowy's summary
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 26 August 2022 02:07 (one year ago) link
Just got the iPhone joke, that’s pretty funny.
― Porcine-lina of the Pig Oceans (morrisp), Friday, 26 August 2022 02:16 (one year ago) link
xxxxxpost some towns have multiple jails.
― henry s, Friday, 26 August 2022 03:47 (one year ago) link