Problems With Liner Notes
From This Might Be A Wiki
Songs whose lyrics are misquoted in their albums' liner notes.
[edit] Lyrics not present
- AKA Driver - Lyrics not present in the John Henry liner notes due to fears of legal problems with the manufacturers of NyQuil.
- Spider
- Yeh Yeh - Lyrics not present in the Mink Car liners because it was a cover of a song administered by a different label.
[edit] Incomplete lyrics
[edit] Extra lyrics
- Road Movie To Berlin - Has two extra lines printed in the Flood liner notes. These two lines were deleted from the final version because the Johns felt they made the song too long.
- Violin - The No! liners print an extra "mop."
- Wearing A Raincoat - The lines "And once they have that attention / They use it to ask for attention" are printed twice.
[edit] Alternate lyrics
[edit] Wrong lyrics
- Ant (Indestructible Object Version) - The liner notes retain the line "But you think that's okay..." in the fourth verse from an older version of the song, whereas this recording has it as "And that will spoil your dreams..."
- A Self Called Nowhere - In the John Henry liner notes, the lyric is "It's a thing named 'it', in a bottomless pit" although it has been decided that the correct lyric uses the word "id," as in the instinctive part of the unconscious according to Freud
- Au Contraire - In the liner notes for both The Spine and Indestructible Object, the lines "Hate to contradict you, but" and "Hate to rain on your parade" switch places. In addition, the latter line is changed to "Not to rain..."
- Bastard Wants To Hit Me - The line beginning "How has it..." is printed as "How have we..."
- Become A Robot - The Then liners change the line "Here's hoping you don't harbor a death wish" to "Here's hoping you don't harbor a wishnik" in order to protect the faint of heart.
- Bee Of The Bird Of The Moth - The liner notes change the line "Everyone's deforming..." to "Everything's deforming..."
- Broke In Two - "But when I looked" is written as "But while I looked."
- The Cap'm - The liner notes change the line "My hat looks good on me?" to "This hat looks good on me?"
- Damn Good Times - In the second verse, "Yeah, I know a girl..." is printed as "Yeah, I got a friend..." and "when he turned twenty-one" is changed to "before he turned twenty-one."
- Hot Cha - The liners say that Hot Cha had to "run back home" instead of "come back home."
- Lucky Ball & Chain - The Flood liner notes say "When she told me of that day" instead of "When she told me off that day"
- Memo To Human Resources - In The Spine's liner notes, the line "Talk you through the finer points..." instead is "Walk you through...", while in the liner notes for Indestructible Object, the written line is "With finer points..." In both sets of liner notes, the line "I stuck around..." becomes "I hung around..."
- The Shadow Government - The liner notes change the line "...I saw the mayor stealing my junk," to "...I saw the mayor stealing my stuff."
- Stalk Of Wheat - "And I'll have it for the rest of my life" becomes "And it lasted..."
- Thunderbird - The line "Before you fall, you have to learn to crawl" becomes "Before you crawl, you have to learn to fall."
- With The Dark - The liners change the line "Rusted, incrusted, combusted, and dusted" to "Rusted incrusted combusted to ashes."
- The World Before Later On - The line "Where are all the complications..." is changed to "Where's all the complication..."
[edit] Heard vs. written lyrics
- It's Not My Birthday - liner notes say "Never more will be around", but some hear "Never more we'll be around"
- Snail Shell - liner notes say "Sir hand", but some hear "Sirhan", a reference to the assassin
[edit] Honorable mentions
- Apollo 18 - The Dial-A-Song number listed is incorrect
- Factory Showroom - Though definitely an intentional move and therefore not technically a problem, the album's liner notes do not contain lyrics to any of the songs. The Japanese release of the album includes liner notes that include lyrics in both English and Japanese.
- The Else - Packaging contains no tracklist, publishing information, etc. for the bonus disc packaged with it (Cast Your Pod To The Wind).
- They Got Lost - Accidentally credits Dan Hickey and Danny Weinkauf as playing on Certain People I Could Name when, in actuality, it should credit Brian Doherty and Graham Maby, respectively.
- A User's Guide To They Might Be Giants: Melody, Fidelity, Quantity - Says on the timeline that Child's Play's release is related to track 3, Particle Man. It should say it's related to track 6, Cyclops Rock.