the list of 9 for july 29, 2009:
NINE HIT SONGS WITH FACTUAL ERRORS IN THE LYRICS
Pop/rock songwriters are notorious for their bad grammar. Any English teacher can tell you that.But some are equally clueless about geography and history. Such as the writers of the followingnine tunes:

  1. "Pride (in the Name of Love)", U2, 1984. Probably the mostfamous lyrical error, Bono pinpointed the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. as occurring on "earlymorning, April 4th..." The problem? King was assassinated in the early evening on April 4,1968. Yes, it may have been early morning in Ireland during that fatal moment... but it wasalready April 5.

  2. "Kids in America", Kim Wilde, 1981. "New York to EastCalifornia/There's a new wave coming, I warn ya." Technically, there is an East California. Butnobody lives there. So while New Wave might have been big in Los Angeles and San Francisco in theearly '80s, it wasn't so much in Barstow, or Needles, or Lake Tahoe - nearly the only towns in theeastern part of the state. Don't blame Kim for this boo-boo; her father Marty and her brotherRicky, Britons both, were the songwriters.

  3. "Smooth Operator", Sade, 1984. Soulful British singer SadeAdu and Raymond St. John wrote this song, which contains a blunder obvious to any American: "Coastto coast, L.A. to Chicago..." Chicago isn't exactly on the East Coast. It's on the shore of LakeMichigan, which is not at all the same thing.

  4. "Do They Know It's Christmas", Band Aid, 1984. A year ofgoofups, 1984. Written by Ultravox's Midge Ure and the Boomtown Rats' Bob Geldof, this UK charitysingle intended to raise money to feed those starving in drought-plagued Ethiopia contained thedubious line about the entire continent of Africa: "Where nothing ever grows/No rain or riversflow..." Of course the continent is rich with vegetation and precipitation, and is home to themighty Nile and Congo rivers. Even if you claim that they're only singing about Ethiopia, guesswhere the source of the Blue Nile is?

  5. "We Are the World", USA for Africa, 1985. Not to beoutdone by the English, the Americans were determined to feed even more Ethiopians, and soMichael Jackson and Lionel Richie penned this anthem. Willie Nelson's line "As God has shown us,by turning stone to bread..." is the boner here. According to the Bible, it was the devilwho tried to get Jesus to turn stone into bread. (The big J.C. refused, uttering his famous "Mandoes not live by bread alone" bit.) Nowhere else in the good book does it state that either God orJesus performed this miracle.

  6. "The Night Chicago Died", Paper Lace, 1974. Back we go tothe United Kingdom to find more Brits (in this case, Peter Callander and Mitch Murray) revealingtheir ignorance of American geography. And so this saga of gangland battles during Prohibitionfeatures the nugget "My daddy was a cop on the East Side of Chicago..." Chicago has no East Side.East of downtown Chicago you'll find nothing but Lake Michigan, as mentioned above.

  7. "Tuff Enuff", The Fabulous Thunderbirds, 1986. Rememberthese blues-rock dudes who copped a 1950s vibe? "Tuff Enuff" was their biggest hit. Their mathwasn't so good, however. Frontman Kim Wilson vows, "I'd work twenty four hours, seven days aweek/Just so I could come home and kiss your cheek" but doesn't acknowledge that, when working24/7, one has no time to come home or kiss anyone's cheek. An empty promise, I say!

  8. "Nashville Cats", The Lovin' Spoonful, 1966. EvenAmericans can be bad at American history and geography, and so this band - more famous for theirhits "Summer in the City", "Do You Believe in Magic" and "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?"- bungled their facts in their since-forgotten #8 pop hit, wherein they sang, "And the record mansaid every one is a yellow Sun Record from Nashville..." Surely you know that Sun Records was in Memphis?

  9. "Another Saturday Night", Sam Cooke, 1963. The great SamCooke wrote this chart-topper (later covered by Cat Stevens) about being unlucky in love andcrooned about getting set up with an ugly girl: "She had a strange resemblance to a cat namedFrankenstein." We can forgive Cooke, since almost everybody confuses Frankenstein's monster withDr. Frankenstein himself. But as you've probably heard, Frankenstein's monster was just "themonster". He was not Frankenstein. Though I guess Cooke could be implying that the girl didlook a bit like the noted mad scientist. I'll leave you to your own conclusions.

Copyright © Mark Tapio Kines 2011