Saturday, April 25, 2009

things that make ya go ARGH.

Or at least things that make ME go ARGH.

-- Awful song lyrics.

Putting aside AC/DC (great music for beating the crap out of inanimate objects when you're pissed, frighteningly antisocial lyrics), there is one that has always bugged me.

From "Save a Prayer," off the Duran Duran album "Rio":

"Some people call it a one-night stand, but we can call it paradise."

ARGHARGHARGHARGHARGH.

Look: I know that in 1984 or so when that came out, they were all horny 23-year-old boys. (Which is redundant, but you know what I mean.) In 1984 I was 19 -- nowhere near the old fart of 2009 -- and even *then* it offended the shit out of me. And before you go telling me about how it doesn't matter, to me, it matters. Nobody really grasps that I have more affection for language than for most humans and critters. (Not that there aren't plenty of absolutely lovely specimens of either group). But since I knew what a book was, I was a fan, and once I learned how to hold a pencil and make comprehensible marks on paper -- well, I've been in love ever since. Many is the time that I read a phrase, or a sentence, or a paragraph in a book and say "DAMN, I wish I'd written that!" And so with lyrics, too. To me the music has always been just a backdrop for the poetry.

So yeah, I get irked when language is abused, whether out of snark or ignorance. (Let's not get me started on the horrendous decline of people's ability to write standard English.....) Seeing words misused or abused is damn near the same as seeing those things happen to a human or critter I care about.

Anyway, the point of this blustery blather was to open a discussion on least-favorite song lyrics. So go to it. :-)

Another thing that makes me go ARGH is to come in a future post, as it deserves its own....

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Now playing: The English Beat - The Limits We Set
via FoxyTunes

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