to get disproportionately angry when songs do not make sense

'My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.'

I picture some tweenager in a farmyard, whizzing strawberries in her mother's Kenwood

yyy to all above, but the absolute worst HAS to be the grammatical ones. Snow Patrol, I'm looking at you.

If I LAY here
If I just LAY here
Would you lie with me

At what point in the long, long, painstaking recording process could not someone have whispered 'LIE' ??

Stephen 'Tin Tin' Duffy - 'Kiss me with your mouth'
Yeah, good thing to kiss people with that, Steve. I tried kissing someone with my elbow. It wasn't popular.

"Joseph of Arimethea was a merchant and trader apparently. Jesus is supposed to have spent time travelling with him." - absolutely just read that as "jesus is supposed to have been time travelling with him". And why not? If God was my dad I'd make the most of that Dr Who action as well.

We were talking about "Do They Know It's Christmas?" this morning as well - yes, because the real problem with famine-hit populations is their lack of a CALENDAR. FFS.

Elvis Costello - you know I love you, but your song "Good Year For The Roses" is very silly. For a start how can you have a "lip-print on a half-filled cup of coffee
That [someone] poured and didn't drink"? Was s/he just smooching their lips against the cups? Miming drinking? What? And why was it only half-filled? If I didn't know better, I would say that it was your stinginess with coffee that had brought your relationship to an untimely end.

BUT NO:

"After three full years of marriage
It's the first time that you haven't made the bed
I guess the reason we're not talking
There's so little left to say we haven't said."

No, Elvis, the reason you're not talking is because you're such a massively lazy arse that you haven't made the bed. Even once.

Any song at all by Girls Aloud!
I give you
"Something kinda ooh, jumping on my toot toot"
"I'll breathe underwater 'cos I like the way it feels"
"Oh, boy, I can't tell you how bad I'll feel. If tonight is just another kink in your steel"
"I'm shaking like a cool lemonade".

Were the songwriters pissed? Or did they just think "Fuck it, this'll sell".

Anything referring to going to the doctors with a broken heart is just so annoying, e.g. Nothing Compares to You

"I went to the doctor, and guess what he told me... girl you gotta have fun no matter what you do."

I wonder what my GP would do if I turned up all lovelorn .

Kelly Rowland "Stole".
"Stolen" surely?

Meatloaf-what exactly is it 'that' that you won't do?! Please tell.

I have to come and defend this one as my FIL used to say it all the time in the proper version of the song she sings
"After a while you'll forget everything,
It was a brief interlude, and a midsummer nights fling,
and you'll know that its time to move on"

and and

"I know the territory I've been around,
It'll all turn to dust and we'll all fall down,
and sooner or later you'll be screwing around"

So thats what he won't do

The last Punk I saw definitely didn't have flowers in his hair! It was superglued into eight inch spikes all over his head!!

I don't post very often but this thread is so amazing that I had to.

A bugbear of mine (and I know there are more!) is Babe by Take That:

"Then a voice I once knew
Answered in a sweet voice"

A voice answering in a sweet voice? WTF Mark?!

Also, for Hollaback Girl fans, I have this printed out at work as it always makes me laugh during dull moments:

gregstacy.wordpress.com/2006/10/29/this-shit-is-bananas-a-probing-analysis-of-gwen-stefani%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98hollaback-girl%E2%80%99/

Example analysis:

"A few times I?ve been around that track
So it?s not just gonna happen like that
Cause I ain?t no hollaback girl
I ain?t no hollaback girl
Gwen is apparently the captain of the cheerleader squad; she is the girl who ?hollas? the chants, not one of the girls who simply ?hollas? them back. Given that the squad is preparing to beat somebody up on Gwen?s behalf, she?s picked a strange time to remind them that she is their leader and they are her sheep-like followers. Gwen obviously rules her squad with an iron fist."

Love it x

Big Yes to : I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair. It's so flipping annoying. And such a good tune.

As well as : 9million bicycles in Beijing, no, it's just not a fact. At the very point she's finished counting the bicycles there's bound to be even more or maybe even less. There can't possibly be exactly nine million bicycles.

Chasing pavements, what does she mean, has she fallen over. What's it all about?

And I was feeling nostalgic at the weekend and listening to "Damn, I wish I was you lover" and heard this:
"Give you something sweet each time you come inside my jungle book" Oh, really? Although the imagery is both wierd and s**t, what bothers me is that: If there's all this jungle book action surely you already are lovers?

before me, not for me.

Ipomegranate - good point about Do they know it's Christmas. And, as many others have pointed out for me, No, they bloody don't because most of them are Muslims anyway.

Right, it was a long way upthread, but Wonderwall. I've heard an alternative explanation, which is that a wonderwall is one of those football wall charts that kids used to get in the 70s where you'd collect special tokens for each team or player. Admittedly, it makes no sense at all in the context of the song.

Bollocks Lady! You beat me to it!!!

Pishwife. Aksherly, the answer could well be yes! Those feet did! There is a theory that Jesus could well have come to Britain. His Uncle?? Joseph of Arimethea was a merchant and trader apparently. Jesus is supposed to have spent time travelling with him. They would have come here seeking to trade. apparently!

[sad git emoticon]

I thought the words of Jerusalem were a rhetorical question, rather than stating as fact that Jesus ever came to England. There is an apocryphal story about Jesus coming to England in his youth. I read Jerusalem as Blake contrasting the idea of England being a promised land with its actuality as an industrial hell (Blake wasn't keen on industry), and also suggesting that it would take a remarkable event like Jesus turning up in England to save the country from its grim industrial fate.

Sorry, not very well expressed; am simultaneously shattered and artificially hopped up on coffee and macaroons!

pishwife great minds and all that...

"And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain" (Everything But The Girl)

No. Deserts don't miss the rain. Deserts don't need the rain, they do not miss it. Its just silly. SILLY! GRRR!

Coming late to this thread, but may i say NonnoMum, your dialogue between the members of Wham back on page four is the funniest thing i have ever read on Mumsnet!

Billy Joel, songwriter extraordinaire, and yes, Billy, I have a LOT of respect for you and I like a lot of your songs HOWEVER......

I don't want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are.

So she's thick, is she Billy? How nice of you!

Ooh Badgerwife we have just suffered from Bruno Mars xposts! I read the whole thread to see if anyone else had picked it out, too.

PishWife quite

I'm also confused by Adele's Chasing Pavements. So much so that I can only sing the song as 'Chasing penguins', at least I know they can move and I will be able to, you know, chase them if the need strikes me.

Oh, and Bruno Mars 'Grenade'
Yes I would die for you baby, but you won't do the same
shortly followed by I gave you all I had and you tossed it in the trash

So sorry to disappoint Bruno, but your love life is all drama drama drama. Catch a grenade for you? What a romantic picture that is...

I never did understand why 'Grease is the word'

'It's got groove, it's got meaning' - really?

I was laughing so much I had to pull the car over when I heard Bruno Mars' "Grenade" for the first time:

"I'd catch a grenade for ya,
Throw my hand on a blade for ya,
I'd jump in front of a train for ya,
Yeah I'd do anything for ya,
I would go through all this pain,
Take a bullet straight through my brain,
Yes I would die for you baby...
...
...
...but you won't do the same!"

The self-centred bitch.