Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge How important is Grammar to you?

My friend and I heard a song at Ravinia that went something like this:

Later, we joked about it, singing "Judy and I," which, of course, would be proper grammar, but it just didn't rhyme with the rest of the song.

Where do you, as a lyricist, stand?

1- If the grammar's improper, I'll change that part into something else that conveys the same thing.

2- I break grammar rules occasionally.

3- It's the music that counts. (In other words, you break grammar rules all the time.)

I'm with #1.

You make me feel so tingle-ish, I'll even overlook your Engl-ish!...Ira Gershwin.

Lyrics can be serious or silly, poignant or punnish. I think it really depends on what you're after (shouldn't that be "depends after what you are on"? Not really better.)

Oh, well, "Poor grammar is something up with which I will not put!" (Churchill, I think.)

the best thing about song writing is the grammer can be as bad as you want, What counts is that it is musical writing, it fits the context of the music (the melody, the rhythm, the harmonies) and that it flows and makes sense. And I use the term "make sense" extremely loosely since many songs don't make anysense at all but sound great...like "Come Together"

If I remember correctly,

She's got the ticket to Riiide
and she don't care!!!

Well of course I'd like to use proper grammer all the time. But proper grammer can sound so stilted and sometimes improper grammer just works. Improper grammer can call attention to the intention behind the words.

BTW, Galois, it's, "She's got A ticket to ride." And it's the fact that she doesn't care that's the tragedy to the author. Don'tcha just loooove double entendres?