songs where singers pronounce words incorrectly

beyonce "1+1": algebra is pronounced algerba

Wasn't there a song on Stankonia where Andre Benjamin pronounces "Robin" like it's a French word ("raw-ban") so he can get it to rhyme with "Batman"?

haha tori amos to thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aD4egZFxw8

"va - neee - llyuuuhhh"

(it's meant to be "vanilla")

Hey Midnight Dancer by Arabesque manages to rhyme "Venezuela" with "tequila".

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - "Huntin' the horny-backed taaaOO-oad" and "It'll take you a couple of vodker and tonics"

Vodka sounds OK in that line to me - although couple sounds oddly like caaple.

I YAM AN AN-AR-KYST!

I don't think he's pronouncing in incorrectly there so much as he's over enunciating?

he's mispronouncing so it will rhyme

Oh yeah nm I just sang it in my head - he definitely does.

lady marmalard?

Springsteen: My Hometown
They're closing down the textile mill....

It's correctly pronounced like next aisle, not next ill.

i wanna live in los an-ga-liss
i wanna live in los an-ga-liss

probably a nod to people pronouncing it that way in early 20th c.

XTC "Season Cycle" - umbil-eye-cal

I thought of this first too. Such a tortured rhyme but he gets points for trying, no?

I can think of a lot of foreign-language singers who do this but those are kind of cheap shots. Though Cornelius does have a song which (I think) kind of riffs on his inability to distinguish "clash" and "crash"

Peter Hammill, "A Chronic Catalepsy":

"like some automaton..."

He pronounces it OR-to-mayton whereas afaik it should be or-TOM-a-ton

Favorite mispronounced words in songs

Any time Pete Hammill pronounces something in an unusual way, I assume I'm the one who had it wrong

Silver Jews, "Seventeen doctors couldn't decide whether I should be allowed in the gime."

For now I say with sorrow until this time tomorrow
We'll bid you all a find adieu

ROLLING STONES - ON WITH THE SHOW

Basically, pronouncing "Tomorrow" to rhyme with "Adieu" is very difficult.

Unless you say it like "tomorrowwooooooo"

big one for me is always "venus de meelo" in "venus" by television

i dunno if that's incorrect

"mass-a-cree" is old timey legit!

I think that's just how UK ppl say it.

meelo, i mean

this has "my-lo" for both UK and US ... LOOK I CHECKED BEFORE POSTING

http://www.forvo.com/word/venus_de_milo/

SORRY!

or the greeks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milos

Springsteen: My Hometown
They're closing down the textile mill....

It's correctly pronounced like next aisle, not next ill.

Both pronunciations are "correct," although the former is more common.

Silver Jews, "Seventeen doctors couldn't decide whether I should be allowed in the gime."

That's gotta be a Simpsons nod.

Naked Raygun - Metastasis ("metatastasize")

Silver Jews, "Seventeen doctors couldn't decide whether I should be allowed in the gime."

That's gotta be a Simpsons nod.

I believe someone dared him to sing that line like Mick Jagger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ0nFQgRApY

lady marmalard?

― second only to popcorn (or something), jeudi 30 août 2012 15:06 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Makes sense because that's how you pronouce it in French (she's Creole).

I always wondered why Neil Tennant pronouces years as "yours" in "This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave".
Is that an accent from northern England?

Will you just take a look over there? / Is she tryin' to get outta that clit-AR-is?

(The Stranglers, Peaches)

xpost

His pronounciation of it is closer to "ye-ahs", I think, which to my ears is a posh RP take on the word. Tennant, by force of will I think, doesn't speak with a particularly northern accent.

"whispered in my ear that she's celivent"

Cappadonna in "Camay"

Doesn't Jay Z mispronounce Kanye's name on some of Kanye's earlier productions that he produced for him?

― MarkoP, Thursday, August 30, 2012 12:44 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also Lil B, surely(?) on purpose, in the song "Myspace": Send money through the wire like KAI-yon West / I bounce back, double up, that was all I get?

Tennant does so speak with a Northern accent, btw. Rendered, yes, but

lady marmalard?

― second only to popcorn (or something), jeudi 30 août 2012 15:06 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Makes sense because that's how you pronouce it in French (she's Creole).

― LeRooLeRoo, Thursday, 30 August 2012 19:27 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always wondered why Neil Tennant pronouces years as "yours" in "This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave".
Is that an accent from northern England?

― LeRooLeRoo, Thursday, 30 August 2012 19:30 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is exactly how it should work. thank you for your info, that has annoyed me for years but now i'm at peace with it. and yes neil tennant is from the north east of england and that is a credible shout for how "years" could possibly be heard to be pronounced from somebody up that way. i'm struggling to bring it to mind tho and can't be buggered to youtube as in the middle of something.

what is the scientific term for mark e. smith's diction

'venus de my-low' just sounds kinda stupid

now i am putting off doing things by reading about greek vowel sounds

Ivor Cutler had a song called "I Got No Common Sense" on his album Velvet Donkey, where he sings the line "I got no common sense, and neither has nobody else" a few times. But one time he sings "and neither has nobody esle" - he was probably just singing what he wrote and had misspelled it!

randy newman, "louisiana 1927" -- "river has busted through clear down to plaquemines." he rhymes it with "line." but it should rhyme with "lin," as in jeremy lin, right?

Orange Juice - In A Nutshell
mer-sen-REE instead of mer-sen-AIR-ee

The first one I remember was Ronnie Hazlehurst's "In a windmill in old Amsterdam"

"They sang every morning "How lucky we are
living in a windmill, in Amsterdam? Ja!"

He pronounces Ja like it was Jar. As a three yer old, I just thought it was the postcode like "Philadelphia PA" sort of thing.

Can we talk about Nat King Cole's Spanish album here because omg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDGgUGBD-90

there's a song by the chemistry set from '87 about minas tirith. they pronounce it "minus tirith".

A lot of these aren't mispronunciations, they're just not being pronounced the way the poster pronounces them or thinks they should be pronounced, e.g. mercenary.

xp
are you seriously complaining about the pronunciation of tolkein place names

In his song of the same name, Robin Gibb pronounces "Farmer Ferdinand Hudson", "Farmer FERNIDAD Hudson". This is even more obvious in the full 12 minute three part version released on his recent boxset, because it's the very first line of the second part of the song, "Farmer FERNIDAD Hudson"... I mean, WTFLOL?!?!?

― The Manner of Crawly (Tom D.), Tuesday, 23 June 2015 17:39 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is there another way to pronounce the name "Deirdre" that I am not aware of, or are the Beach Boys pulling a "texas chainsaw massacree" bit here?

How should it be pronounced?

I know at least one Deirdre, and she pronounces it "dear-druh," and that's how I've always heard it pronounced

It's usually pronounced Deirdri over here.

Arlo Guthrie - "Coming Into Los Angel-eees"

Seems wrong, but what do I know, I live on the est coast.

In "Tupelo Honey," Van Morrison rhymes "insight" with "granite," and I don't think that's a dialect thing at all.

I've heard "gran-ight" once in a blue moon, out in the world, but remain unclear on whether it's actually an accepted pronunciation in any region or community.

Arlo Guthrie - "Coming Into Los Angel-eees"

Seems wrong, but what do I know, I live on the est coast.

― henry s, Friday, December 15, 2023 10:16 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

the correct way is how Sam Elliott pronounces it in THE BIG LEBOWSKI

I’ve been obsessed for years with how Sam Elliott enunciates “Sacramento” in this one Coors commercial

Manic Street Preachers when they made a new album from Richey's notebooks years after he vanished:

"Shards, shards,
the androgyny fails,
Odalisque by Ingres, extra bones for sale"

sabotaged maybe the best lyric on the album by pronouncing Ingres so that it rhymes with 'embrace'.

Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell on "I Missed Your Party" pronounces Billy Joel as Billy "jo-EL".

xp Ingres rhymes with Hongro, right?

David Sylvian in "The Devil's Own"...

"the ticking of the clock in-ex-OR-a-bly goes on"

I recall Green Gartside saying he only learnt how to pronounce Jacques Derrida correctly after he'd recorded and released the song

xxp Uhh YES, yes it does!! ROFL!

wait, how are you pronouncing Ingres/Hongro for them to rhyme?

correctly

Ingres should be pronounced 'Ang%#'

"o" is apparently pronounced "ooh" in Norwegian, and "ø" is the u sound in "ur"

gonna start calling Ingres "Oongrur" (ok I will probably never say Ingres out loud ever, but if I do)

You mean it isn't pronounced HANG-grə?

Another painter: on Game Theory's "Chardonnay", Scott Miller sings, "gonna take Ernst, Dali and De Chirico", pronounced "CHEER-i-co". Funny, since he had been a student of painting.

"o" is apparently pronounced "ooh" in Norwegian

can confirm as I once heard a pack of teenage girls in Bergen shout "YOOLOO"