You know when you’re riding in a car, windows down, belting out the words to your favourite tune having the absolute time of your life, but then the vibe is completely ruined because the artist gets the lyrics wrong? It’s always super embarrassing for them and you chuckle and shake your head at their foolishness.
Alright we’ll fess up, the artist obviously knows their own lyrics; you’re literally listening to a studio recorded track produced by a team of people. But honestly, fancy us all song writers because sometimes we think we can do better than actual Grammy award winning artists.
WATCH: Harry Styles performs Watermelon Sugar at the Grammys 2021
Yes, it’s a big call to make, but it’s not as if we’re claiming we could have written Yesterday by The Beatles. It’s just that sometimes maybe a musician is just tired, or out of rhymes, or the studio is closing in two minutes, because there are plenty of examples of songs where one particular word or line just seems…. not quite right.
As always, the place where people are calling out these semi-flawed songs is TikTok.
It all started with a question that TikToker @aaronthecopywriter posed to the app’s users. “What’s a song lyric that drives you crazy because they should have used a different word?” he asked.
Aaron personally gave the example of the DJ Khaled and Drake collab POPSTAR, citing the lyric, “Bodyguards don’t look like Kevin Costner, you tweakin’. Just pulled up to Whitney Houston, Texas for the evenin’.”
The TikToker questioned why Drake didn’t say “weekend” instead of “evening”.
You can see his point. “Weekend” rhymes wayyy better with tweakin’ than evening. That’s 1 Aaron and 0 Drake & Khlaed.
After his highly solid blue-print, Aaron’s comments section and duets were soon inundated with many other valid examples.
Scroll down for some lyric faux pas.
Ed Sheeran was one lyricist to be taken to task, specifically when it came to his song Thinking Out Loud.
A commenter raised issue with the line, “I’ll be loving you until we are 70,” asking, “Why didn’t he say eternity, what happens at 71, Ed?”
Sheeran, you have three business days to respond.
Taylor Swift was also a repeat offender in the comments section and duets.
Now, before our fellow Swifties come for us, we acknowledge that Taylor Swift is one of most talented musicians out there, Her re-release of Fearless scored her three number one albums in 259 days, beating The Beatles’ 54-year-old record.
Objectively, T Swift is killing it in the music game, her bridges warrant her an honorary degree in architecture and we’re not here for any unwarranted Tay Tay slander.
…. However, there have been a few *ahem* oopsies? on Taylor’s behalf when it comes to certain lyrics. And TikTok has wasted no time calling them out.
One user in particular queried why Taylor’s 2006 country hit Our Song contained the lyric, “When we’re on the phone and you talk real slow, ‘cause it’s late and your mama don’t know”, instead of the much more sensical “talk real low”.
Another questioned why the singer-songwriter chose to write “wishing on a wishing star” rather than “shooting star” in Teardrops on My Guitar.
Tay Tay’s claim that she and her beau could “leave the Christmas lights up ‘til Jaunary” in Lover also prompted some head scratches by avid Christmas lovers who suggested that this behaviour was normal and she would have been better writing “February” instead.
One truly perplexed Swiftie named Dean even duetted Aaron’s video to take issue with the line “Hang your head low in the glow of the vending machine I’m not dying” from Cruel Summer.
“I’m not dying??” he exclaimed, “You’re not buying!! You’re at a vending machine, you’re buying something! UGH!”
Don’t worry Tay Tay, you’re the one with 11 Grammys to your name, so clearly you know better than us.
But if somehow you’ve stumbled across this article and you’re really stressed, feel free to change up the lyrics when you re-record your other albums. We can’t wait.
A slightly more pedantic group of users, us included, took issue with a few songs’ grammar… or rather lack thereof.
One user commented with regards to Olivia Rodrigo’s smash hit Driver’s License.
“’Never felt this way for no one’ literally means she has felt this way for every single person ever! The grammar drives me insane.” the user wrote.
But Olivia’s not the only culprit of foregoing grammar rules when it comes to music.
There is one line in Justin Bieber and Sean Kingston’s song Eenie Meenie that is so tautological that we can’t help but laugh. It is, of course, the classic “She’s indecisive. She can’t decide” line sung by Sean. Thanks for clearing that up bud, we never would have known what you meant by “indecisive” x.
Another artist who has been known to throw the rules of grammar out the studio window is Queen Bey herself.
In her 2008 hit Single Ladies, Beyoncé sings the phrase “I could care less what you think”. And look, we want to sing along with the icon but we just can’t get past the fact she’s implying that she cares at least a little bit when she really wants to say that she doesn’t give any hoots.
That being said, she is literally Beyoncé so if she is sticking by “could care less” then maybe it’s time to update the rules of grammar. Like a great viner once said: “Anything for you Beyoncé.”
But it’s not just grammatical issues driving listeners up the wall, songs with numerical mistakes seem to have a similarly frustrating impact on many music lovers.
One passionate user wrote under Aaron’s initial TikTok, “DID A FULL 180° Damn it Dua!!!!!!!” referring to Dua Lipa’s Don’t Start Now which famously prompted a bunch of TikTokers to do a 360° degree jump as they danced to the song.
We know she’s talking about turning in the opposite direction, i.e. doing a 180°, but you’ve got to admit the word “full” is oh-so-confusing.
Speaking of confusing, we’re not sure if you’ll remember this next track. It was super underground and honestly flew well and truly under the radar.
It went something like “Let it go, let it go”, yeah we doubt you’ll remember it. But for that niche group that do, maybe you can also recall the one lyric that has disgruntled many.
The line “Let it go, let it go. I am one with the wind and sky.” Has led some to beg the question… why not “snow”? It rhymes with “go” and the movie was literally called Frozen. C’mon Disney.
Those are just some examples of the many, many songs where the lyricists clearly didn’t have rent due on they day they wrote them.
But in all seriousness, these artists remain killing it while we’re sitting here on our high horses correcting Beyoncé’s grammar. And we’re 100% sure Bey “could care less” as she counts her Single Ladies royalty cash. As she should.
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