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Poetic License


kbobam

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I completely understand the concept, and most often it's okay.
But it goes a little far at times.

I was thinking tonight how musicians are frequently guilty of overdoing it.
Robert Palmer was always one of the worst offenders when it came to
making up words because he needed things to rhyme.  "No pill's gonna
cure my ill".  God!  Sometimes I want to hold him personally responsible
for the situation these days where it seems to be completely acceptable
to suddenly turn adjectives into nouns and vice-versa.  

Okay.  Hold onto your hats.  I'm going to tick off a lot of people.
Elton John.  He's great, right?  I certainly think so.
But he's one of the worst when it comes to his words making no sense.
Let's take a particularly awful example.
Candle in the wind!  One of the most beautiful songs of all time!
He went farther than playing around with individual words.  He went so far
as to play around with the meaning of words and hope no one would notice.

"Your candle burned out long before... your legend ever did."
What did he just say?  He said, one, that her candle burned out.  Okay.
But then he said, two, that her legend burned out.  Just quite a bit later.
This is the exact opposite of the intended meaning of the song.
But Elton doesn't care, as long as millions of fans blindly accept it!

Am I being neurotic here?  It seems to me that the concepts of being
loose with language and the associated 'mass hypnosis' that comes from
it could be seriously detrimental to future situations where we have to
discuss how not to stupidly destroy our planet and all the life forms on it.

Sorry to be so serious!  But I think it's important sometimes!  :) 


 

 

  

 

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The lyrics to "All Those Years Ago" always make me sad.  Should be making me sad for John Lennon.  But they make me sad because there's one line in there that doesn't make sense!

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/georgeharrison/allthoseyearsago.html

 

In this section:

Deep in the darkest night
I send out a prayer to you
Now in the world of light
Where the spirit free of the lies
And all else that we despised.

 

"Where the spirit free of the lies" .... he seems to be missing a word.  I let it bother me.

 

Also the word "weird" in the song makes it seem a little silly.  

 

 

I still love the song.  Love George Harrison.  Love the album.  It's 99.9% good.  Is just a little jarring.   

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I considered the possibility that "...the spirit, free of the lies,..." would be okay
if there was maybe a verb after it somewhere where we weren't hearing it,
but that didn't work out either.  It does seem like something's missing.

  

 

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On ‎17‎.‎05‎.‎2016 at 7:17 AM, kbobam said:

"Your candle burned out long before... your legend ever did."

Is this the orignal lyrics? I could swear he sings "your legend never did."

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 5 years later...

I guess that's why people make music. They are free to express anything and only they really know what their songs are about, unless we are lucky enough to know them personally. It sometimes frustrates me, but then I think that maybe I should just write my own song. Kind of like the post on entropy. Gives the brain a chance to release pressure from the things that it wants to say but maybe feels it can't. LOL. (Okay, now my brain has gone beyond strained.)

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10 minutes ago, Marbleized said:

I guess that's why people make music. They are free to express anything and only they really know what their songs are about, unless we are lucky enough to know them personally. It sometimes frustrates me, but then I think that maybe I should just write my own song. Kind of like the post on entropy. Gives the brain a chance to release pressure from the things that it wants to say but maybe feels it can't. LOL. (Okay, now my brain has gone beyond strained.)

OMG! Sorry! I'm posting to a really old post!

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