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Real Lyrics -> Bad Grammar in Song Lyrics -> Waylon Jennings

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, Waylon Jennings

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Dreaming My Dreams album at Amazon.com
Waylon Jennings', "Luckenbach, Texas"
The Lyrics:
This successful life we're livin''s
Got us feudin' like the Hatfields and McCoys.
Between Hank Williams' pain songs
And Newberry's train songs
And 'Blue Eyes Cryin In The Rain',
Back in Luckenbach, Texas,
There ain't nobody feelin' no pain.
Why:
First, there isn't any such contraction as "livin''s". Even if there were, it would be more formally "living's", but even that would be agrammatical. Still, trying to shorten "living" to "livin'" and make a contraction with "'s" would force two adjacent apostrophes, as indicated, a quite unheard-of construction. The only remotely grammatical way to say what the song is saying here would use "living has" or "livin' has" instead. Secondly, The word "Between" in these lyrics should be replaced by "Among". Correct use of "between" is reasticted to reference to something between only two entities. So grouping more than two calls for "among" instead. The number of songs referred to after "Between" is indefinite, but it must be at least five, since the two song categories referred to are both plural, and then "Blue Eyes Cryin" In The Rain" is specifically added in addtion to those categories. Thirdly, the last line above uses the agrammatical "ain't" and is furthermore a triple negative. A correct way to state it would be either "There isn't anybody feelin' any pain." or "There is nobody feelin' any pain."
Submitted by: Audrey Ruiz

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