Entertainment For Lively Minds
Songs Which Use Words From Different Lexicons
I always like it when a song throws in a word from a different vocabulary or linguistic register to the rest of the lyric. For example, the Middle 8 from Cry Me A River:
Told me love was too plebeian
Told me you were through with me and ...
You don't expect a word like 'plebeian' in a pop song, but here it is, skilfully drawing a picture of the whole relationship. He's a bookish clown who is dumping the girl because he's decided love is what common people do, (or at least that's the reason he's giving her). The chiming rhyme of '... through with me and ...' suggests that she finds it difficult to believe what she's hearing.
Another example is I Predict a Riot by the Kaiser Chiefs, with the unexpected appearance of the word 'Leodensian'. It's an academic word, and it separates the singer out from the rough characters he encounters in the song.
Both these words sit very nicely with the melodies in their respective songs. Both are fine demonstrations of the songwriter's craft.
Anyone else taken with this (minor) phenomenon? Any good examples you'd like to share with the class?
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Couple more from the Chiefs
Ppp-pneumothorax is a word that is long
We're just trying to put the punk back into punctured lung
AND
Time on your side that will never end
The most beautiful thing you can ever spend
But you work in a shirt with your name tag on it
Drifting apart like a plate tectonic
And then, of course, there is the classic from Shriekback
Big black nemesis
Parthenogenesis
No-one move a muscle as the dead come home
Oh, I remember the other example I was going to use ...
From Grandmaster Flash's The Message:
Me on king kong standin on my back
Cant stop to turn around, broke my sacroiliac
which in the context of the song says 'I'm not in this situation because I'm thick, you know'.
10cc had a dance called The Sacroiliac
on Sheet Music
Don't Forget Lemmy...
My favourite is Motorhead's :
"Fourth day, five day marathon
We're moving like a parallelogram"
Sheer brilliance !!
Teenage Fanclub
Verisimilitude.
Ian Brown
When interviewed by Zane Lowe on MTV2 recently claimed he tried to put in different words when he comes to making an album.
Some choice ones:
Stellify
Solarized
Gracile
Quibbling
Conquistadors
Dispensation
Pestilence
makes you wonder why so many settle for the obvious "baby", "I love you", "oooh ooh ooh" combinations.
I remember Conquistadors
being specifically on My Star, which is a quality song in anyone's lexicon, I humbly aver.
James Grant seems to be also aiming for this
three good examples from his new album (from different songs)
"Where lilies and roses in their furbelows
Scream like harlots and harridans"
"But on the way back to the bus
I saw two drunk goths fucking on a sarcophagus"
"So will I follow you
Cross some liminal plain?"
SDP
...
In a similar vein...
...References to "Montagues and Capulets" in "I bet that you look good on the dancefloor". Or am I being a snob?
The Decemberists like the odd big odd word or seven, too.
Decemberists
- Don't they just. What a splendid band.
Good Grammar
I always like the fact that in Nothing Compares 2 U, for all its textspeak and street slang, Prince still opted for 'whomever' in the first verse:
Since you been gone I can do whatever I want
I can see whomever I choose
It's a really nice touch - it emphasises how particular the singer could be if she so chose.
or indeed he...
(I much prefer the Prince version of NC2U)
Or Elbow for that matter
"There's a hole in my neighbourhood down which of late I cannot help but fall" or something to that effect. Brings great joy to the hearts of pedants everywhere.
A fine line ...
... and one which reminds me of the closing speech from Withnail and I:
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth
which by all accounts is from Hamlet. All of which I mention for no other reason than it is fantastic!
Neocatechumenate
appears in NC by Cathal Coughlan, officially the greatest living Irishman.
conditional tense
I presume Martin Fry chose to say If I WERE (rather than I WAS) to tell you a secret because it the conditional tense and not just because he's a Northerner.
Paddy McAloon has several lovely turns of phrase, especially in his earlier albums.
Or he may have had
a very particular French teacher who, ahem, rubbed off on him. They're very particular about the subjonctif are the French, apparently.