Bad English

From This Might Be A Wiki

No, not the 80s band. Songs with nonstandard uses of English (that some would consider to be "incorrect" or "bad").

  • 3 Chords, 2 Teeth, 1 Eye - "I got a question" should be "I have/have got a question"
  • Aaa - "That if you peel apart a golf ball / That deep inside / They put some alien blood?". Should be something along the lines of if you peel apart a golf ball, deep inside you'll find some alien blood.
  • Alienation's For The Rich - "I gotta get a job" should be "I've got to get a job"
  • All The Lazy Boyfriends - The correct lyric should be "And the weekly to-do list was as white as the snow"
  • All Time What - "Complete, completely, completelier" - Adverbs with more than one syllable may not use the comparative form "-er". The correct way to say it would be "more completely".
  • Alphabet Lost And Found - "Where they gonna go" - should be "Where are they gonna go"
  • Am I Awake? - "When I get through this day, can someone tell me how, and how much longer now, am I awake?"
  • Ana Ng - "If there was a me for you" - should be "If there were a me for you" (past subjunctive [formal] rather than past indicative [vernacular])
  • Asbury Park - "Me got kicked in the head"
  • Brain Problem Situation - "And I think, maybe, but I don't know, but I'm starting to feel like I got a brain problem situation on my hands."
  • Bread Hair - "I be the wheat for you"
  • Broke In Two - "Then is when I maybe should have wrote it down". Wrote is past tense of write. Should be have written.
  • Cabbagetown - "I was laying on the porch" - should be "I was lying on the porch", "Time and tide are one thing that no one understands"
  • Call You Mom - "You and her are the same" - "her" should be "she"
  • Can't Keep Johnny Down - "None of them once has found a way" should be "have". The singer also uses many disconnected phrases that could be construed as bad grammar (for example, "Outnumbered a million to one / All of the dicks in this dick town can't keep Johnny down"). And then "Plus which..." is an extremely outdated and obscure phrase, but it is permissible.
  • Cupid - "I'd kill myself if I was somebody else" should be "were".
  • Cut The Strings - "I don't need no ten dimensions / Ain't afraid of quantum jitter"
  • Dee Dee And Dexter - "Don't need no super powers"
  • Don't Let's Start (Live) - "When you are alone you are the cat, you are the phone, you are a animal."
  • Eight Hundred And Thirteen Mile Car Trip - While acceptable in most varieties, "and" should not succeed the hundreds value in American English.
  • The End Of The Tour - "If there's any more people around" - should be "If there are"
  • Fake-Believe (Type B) - "And wavin' my antennas" - "Antennas" is used to refer to electrical instruments, while antennae is used to refer to the protuberances found on the heads of insects, which is what the context of the song calls for.
  • The Fellowship Of Hell - "Ain't no loathin' / Like self-loathin'"
  • Half A Boy - "You never took me serious"
  • Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal - "And no one ever seemed to care if it's not", "something else that I've got" - the rest of the song is in the past tense, so these lines would normally be "if it wasn't" and "I'd got"
  • I Left My Body - "You got to act like you're not abandoned" - should be "You have to act"
  • If I Wasn't Shy - Should be If I Weren't Shy (past subjunctive [formal] rather than past indicative [vernacular])
  • Iowa - "And if that broom don't fly" - should be "doesn't fly"
  • I'll Sink Manhattan - "A river of tiny tears flow from your crocodile eyes" subject/verb agreement ("the river flows", not "the tears flow")
  • I've Got A Fang - "Her head exploded like 'a' atom bomb" should be "Her head exploded like 'an' atom bomb"
  • It Said Something - "Now I have to lay down" should be "lie down" because the usage of the verb is intransitive
  • John Postal - "You know I've withdrew from my life of violence" - should have the past participle form "withdrawn"*
  • The Lady And The Tiger - "I'm sick of this job, I don't know what we're waiting here fors" (should be "for"); "To have laser beams emitting from your eyes" — the transitive verb "emit" is used intransitively (should be e.g. "To emit laser beams from your eyes" or, more rhythmically, "To have laser beams emitted from your eyes")
  • Let's Get This Over With - ' ' ' Even when you don't know what it is/ Your job knows what it is/What it is is it's coming to get you.
  • Less Than One- "I turned around and I got almost home". Adverb of degree should come before the verb.
  • Los Angeles - "And they're listening good"; "Now listen good"
  • Maybe I Know - "I feel so badly" -- This would mean that the singer does a bad job of feeling. Strangely, the line is "He really loves me" in the original. Although the Johns reverse the gender throughout the song, it is unknown why they changed this line entirely.
  • Metal Detector - "Don't need no volleyball / don't need no squawking gull" (double negatives)
  • Mountain Flowers - "All I'm saying, it's suspicious" should be something like "All I'm saying is that it's suspicious"
  • Number Three - "There's only two songs in me..." - "songs" is plural, therefore the sentence should read "there are only two songs in me..."
  • Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head - "Didn't have to write no-one a good-bye note" (double negative)
  • Rat Patrol - "Wilderness of mirrors shine"
  • Reptiles Eat With The Bones We Hear With - "A preposition / Never end / A sentence with"
  • Rest Awhile - "Out of the burning wreckage I fell, wanting only to lay where I fell" should be "lie where I fell".
  • Robot Parade - "There's electric cars. There's electric trains."
  • Rowboat Mayor - "But he's not one now and he's not one lat-or"
  • Santa's Beard - "Now I can't help but feeling jealous" - The "but" is unnecessary here (correct grammar would be either "help feeling" or "help but feel").
  • The Shadow Government - "I doth protest" - "Doth" is an antiquated conjugation of the verb "to do," but for the third-person singular (as in, "The lady doth protest") and not the first-person singular as it is used here.
  • Snowball In Hell - "If it wasn't for disappointment" should be "If it weren't for disappointment" (subjunctive)
  • Stalk Of Wheat - "And I was out of ideas, like I is, like I is" - should be like I am
  • Stuff Is Way - Most of the lyrics are mangled English, such as "Is what you yes?" and "As it the drag / That has you are"
  • Subliminal - "While lying there in my bed there was a message for me" - This technically means the message was lying in his bed.
  • Thinking Machine - The entire song is made up of scrambled words trying to convey sentences.
  • Thunderbird - "We like fun, me and my girl" - Me is one of the subjects in this phrase. Should be I. Also, when there are other subjects in a sentence, the first-person pronoun follows the other: "We like fun, my girl and I."
  • Tigerella - After work she gets the polish out and paints 'em pretty claws -- 'em as contraction of them; should be those
  • Till My Head Falls Off - "Now there's thirty left" - Should be "There are."
  • Token Back To Brooklyn - "And we're just watching it sinking" should be "And we're just watching it sink"
  • Twisting - "There's not a lot of things that she'll take back" - Should be "There are not..."
  • Untitled - Multiple "Don't make no sense"'s and "Well, he don't make any money, right?"
  • Wicked Little Critta - "I got problems"
  • You're On Fire - "You must've got one of them combustible heads" - Should be "those"
  • Your Racist Friend - "I know politics bore you" -- Used in this context, "politics" is singular, so the line should be "I know politics bores you."