Songs in which the speaker is unwilling or unable to make consistent use of personal pronouns

1. The Script - "Nothing"

And my mates are all there tryna calm me down
Cuz I'm shouting your name all over town
...
Dialed her number & confessed to her
That I'm still in love

(in his defense, the quoted lines come right after "They all think I'm crazy, but to me it's perfect sense")

I know this is petty, but at the same time: Come the fuck on, bands!

2. Bruno Mars - When I Was Your Man

This one tries to be poetic, recasting the roles in its final chorus ("I shoulda bought you flowers" becomes "I hope that he buys you flowers"), and it *almost* works. Slipping into 3rd person for "Now my baby's dancing with another man" is distracting but forgivable; but shit really goes off the rails at the end, where the omission of pronouns and the inexcusable substitution of "do" for "does" (in the sense of 'I hope that he do...') leaves poor Bruno sadly repeating the nonsense line "Do all the things I shoulda done when I was your man."

bonus points for inventing alternate-reality scenarios to justify the abuse of language, e.g. Bruno Mars singing to the mother of his child outside the daddy-daughter dance to which he was not invited

Tangled up in blue seems to have some pronoun issues.

I would appreciate it if posts to this thread came with citations; as it is, all I can do is nod at your post and move on, because I know jackshit* about the work of Bob Dylan

*: ... except the names of the songs, evidently

.... no I'm just kidding, of course I googled, not being the asshole I want y'all to take me for. I assume you're referencing the "he" & "them" who seem to inexplicably replace "me" & "us" in verse 6? Dylan's artistic reputation + the fact that he ends the song with "We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view" inclines me to file him among the "unwilling", even though I can't really see what the song gains from the shift.

Do these work?

White Town, "Your Woman"
Well, I guess what you say is true
I could never be the right kind of girl for you
I could never be your woman

Mazzy Star, "Halah"
Maybe nobody else could understand
I guess that you believe you are a woman
And that I am someone else's man

gender confusion =/= pronoun confusion, altho I do rather like the number of possible explanations Mishra proposes for "I could never be your woman" (straight man to lesbian, gay man to straight man)

This thread is driving me nuts because I'm sure there are easily a dozen of these that I've complained about before, and none of them are coming to mind.

Yeah, totally—it's the kind of thing that jars, but is quickly forgotten—hence the need for a thread like this to keep tabs on the worst offenders!

I think Costello is an offender but see xpost

Ok, welp, not exactly the same but in the same family: In "Oliver's Army" he shifts from the (correct) singular pronoun "Oliver's army is here to stay" and follows it up with (ignorable perhaps on its own but not adjacent to the aforementioned) "Oliver's army are on their way." Always bugged me. And while I'm griping, shouldn't it be "I would rather be anywhere else than here" instead of "but here"?

2. Bruno Mars - When I Was Your Man
This one tries to be poetic, recasting the roles in its final chorus ("I shoulda bought you flowers" becomes "I hope that he buys you flowers"), and it *almost* works. Slipping into 3rd person for "Now my baby's dancing with another man" is distracting but forgivable; but shit really goes off the rails at the end, where the omission of pronouns and the inexcusable substitution of "do" for "does" (in the sense of 'I hope that he do...') leaves poor Bruno sadly repeating the nonsense line "Do all the things I shoulda done when I was your man."

bruno may be guilty of bad grammar, but there is nothing inconsistent about the pronoun use. first he's talking about himself, and then later in the song he's talking about another guy, and so he switches pronouns, because what else exactly would you expect a songwriter to do in that situation?

the beatles' "i want you (she's so heavy)" does it in adjacent words in the title, inasmuch as "you" and "she" are clearly referring to the same person. and i think it works, in both title and song. first he's addressing her directly, then he's telling the world about her. why not?

xpost My point was that the bad grammar makes the final line ambiguous — outside the context of the song, any reasonable person would hear the sentence "Do all the things I should have done when I was your man" as a command — so in context, it sounds like he's shifted from addressing the girl to the new man, except that for some reason he's still saying "when I was your man" instead of "when I was her man"

"Now my baby's dancing / But she's dancing with another man" ends all of the choruses except the final one, and it sounds weird because every line preceding it is directly addressed to the girl—I shoulda bought YOU flowers, I shoulda held YOUR hand, now my baby's dancing, but SHE's dancing with another man—again, I respect the artistic intent behind this but I just don't think it works as a chorus

I don't know much about Bruno Mars so I don't want to clown him too hard, I think he was just trying to do too much here. The song would've been fine pulling the (sappy-but-graceful) "I should have (x)" / "I hope that he (x)" trick, if there wasn't so much other bad writing getting in the way.

Survivor - "High on You"

There you stood, that'll teach her
To look so good and feel so right
Let me tell you about
The girl I met last night

It's understood, I had to reach her
I let the wheel of fortune spin
I touched your hand before
The crowd started crashin' in

Now I'm higher than a kite
I know I'm getting hooked on your love
Talkin' to myself, runnin' in the heat
Beggin' for your touch
In the middle of the street

And I, I can't stop thinkin' about you, girl
I must be livin' in a fantasy world
I'm so high on you

Smart and coy, a little crazy
The kind of face that starts a fight
Let me tell you about
The girl I had last night

Piercin' eyes, like a raven
You seemed to share my secret sin
We were high before
The night started kickin' in

Now I'm screamin' in the night
I know I'm getting hooked on your love
Talkin' to myself, runnin' in the heat
Beggin' for your touch
In the middle of the street

I have a very hard time parsing this song! is this basically correct?

1st verse, lines 1-2: the "you" is a male friend of the speaker (or the generic male listener, i.e. us) and the "her" is a girl that the male friend/listener is attracted to. translation: "if you want her to be hot, ready, and willing, the best thing you can do is just stand there passively and wait for her to make the first move" (/sarcasm)

1st verse, lines 3-4: the "you" in "let me tell me" is the same male friend/listener, but I'm not sure if the girl the speaker met is the same person as the "her" in line 1. is the speaker competing with another man for the same woman's affection (and succeeding where the meeker man doesn't), or is he simply comparing his seduction skills with those of other men in general?

2nd verse, lines 1-2: the speaker continues to describe his meeting with the girl in the third person

2nd verse, lines 3-4, leading into the prechorus and chorus: the speaker is now directly addressing the girl he met

3rd verse lines 1-4: the speaker again tells "you" about the girl

4th verse, lines 1-4: the speaker again addresses the girl directly

it's misleading how he says he's going to tell us about the girl he met, only to spend the remainder of the song talking to the girl, as if he forgets about his audience halfway through the second verse. is there any thought behind these sudden POV shifts, or is it just sloppy buttrock songwriting by committee?

(oops, that should read, "the 'you' in 'let me tell you)

One that always annoyed me was the ending of "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" when Whitney sings:

"Don't you wanna dance, say you wanna dance, don't you wanna dance?
Don't you wanna dance, say you wanna dance, don't you wanna dance?
Don't you wanna dance... with somebody who loves me?"

"Don't you wanna dance with me baby?
Don't you wanna dance with me boy?
Don't you wanna dance with somebody who loves me?"

Does she want him to dance with her or with somebody who loves her ? Makes no sense.

over the course of the song, her confidence has grown & she has come to love herself; don't that make you wanna dance with her??

nah but seriously, this is one where the fix is so obvious that they probably tried it & realized it sounded clunkier to mess with the refrain than to leave it as-is

She wants you to dance with her best friend.

brb, mentally replacing all instances of "somebody" with "my best friend", okay yes the song is now hilariously twee

What is this that stands before me
Figure in black which points at me

it's like, come on guys, learn to differentiate between restrictive clauses and nonrestrictive clauses already

nah but seriously, this is one where the fix is so obvious that they probably tried it & realized it sounded clunkier to mess with the refrain than to leave it as-is

― merciless to accomplish the truth in his intelligence (bernard snowy), samedi 8 mars 2014 07:29 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Could've easily been something like:

"Boy I wanna dance, yes I wanna dance, boy I wanna dance
Yes I wanna dance... with somebody who loves me"

"Oh I wanna dance with you baby,
Yes I wanna dance with you boy,
Oh I wanna dance... with somebody who loves me"

Yeahhhh but the ''don't'' really does leap out of the speakers in a way that that doesn't, logic be damned.

Oh shit, I thought it was "Don't you wanna dance with somebody who gloves me"

the first verse of "rikki don't lose that number" has always fascinated/perplexed me:

We hear you're leaving, that's OK
I thought our little wild time had just begun...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exophora

juliana hatfield "little pieces"

verse 1
you left the state without me
shows how much you care about me
i could call but you could hang up
you could take my loving cup

verse 2
you've got a life without me
don't know a thing about me
it's no wonder i can't get through
on the phone he said "i love you"

that switch to third person in the last line would work as a sort of stage whisper but nothing in the delivery suggests that's what it is. i lost an hour of sleep last night because of this.