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Real Lyrics -> Bad Grammar in Song Lyrics -> Neil Diamond

Song lyrics aren't supposed to be a fountain of perfect english, but on the other hand some are just so atrocious, they need to get called out. We're not looking for sentance fragments or the word ain't since there are too many instances to count.

Bad Grammar in Song Lyrics, Neil Diamond

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"Neil Diamond - 12 Greatest Hits, Vol. 2" album at Amazon.com
Neil Diamond's, "Cracklin' Rosie"
The Lyrics:
Oh, I love my Rosie child.
She got the way to make me happy.
You and me, we go in style.
Cracklin' Rose, you're a store bought woman.
You make me sing like a guitar hummin'.
So hang on to me, girl,
Our song keeps runnin' on.
Why:
The most distinctly grammatical error here is in the second line above, which ought to be "She has the way to make me happy." A usual grammatically incorrect substitution for "He has" or "She has", etc., is "He's got" or "She's got", etc., which sometimes get transformed still more by omitting the apostrophe and "s", as in the second line above. But more grammatically confusing in this whole passage is the sudden shift from singing of the title character in the third person in the first two lines above to addressing someone in the second person thereafter. Technically the third line above is ambiguous as to whom he's addressing, because "You" in that line has no antecedent. In the fourth line he calls the addressee by name, so I guess listeners are meant to assume in retrospect that he was already addressing her in the third line. But that is technically ambiguous since immediately before the third line he was referring to her in the third person.
Submitted by: Karen Smith
Neil Diamond's, "Play Me"
The Lyrics:
Song, she sang to me; Song, she brang to me
Why:
"Sang" is indeed the past tense of "sing", but that doesn't mean that "brang" is the past tense of "bring"
Submitted by: RJSchex

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