Monday, March 12, 2007

It is not, Completely necessary, To ruin lyrics, With punctuation!

Is it really only me who gets annoyed by people who use too much punctuation in lyrics? I mean, the occasional comma or question-mark is necessary, of course, but aside from that lyrics aren't your typical piece of prose. It's not like you need full stops, exclamations, commas etc. at every new line. I've noticed this particularly in church, and on lyrics websites. There was one song - I can't remember the line offhand but it went something like "You are amazing," - and if you were to sing it normally you'd go:
"You are amazing"
but with the addition of the exclamation mark (at least in my mind) it becomes
"YOU ARE AMAZING!"
And this can be at some really intimate, quiet point in a song. The same goes with full stops - people put them in all over the place, and okay, in a sentence it would be appropriate but this is a song! It's like. Putting in pauses. Every few. Words. ie. Really. Rather. Annoying.

Okay, I'm very fussy about these things but I feel that it is a very important issue that is having an increasingly negative effect on society and is probably the sole reason why our bloody kids are so bloody in the first place.
Another thing that really bugs me is with choruses, writing a line that is obviously repeated many times - take this example of a Damien Rice song.

How I'd write it:

I can't take my eyes off you

How the lyrics website puts it (note use of annoying full stops):

I can't take my eyes off you.
I can't take my eyes off you.
I can't take my eyes off you.
I can't take my eyes off you.
I can't take my eyes off you.
I can't take my eyes off you.
I can't take my eyes off you.

2 comments:

Finn said...

Yup, that's the thing that annoys me............why fret about world hunger when you can worry about Punctuation.,:;In!?.Lyrics\"

MattCrossman said...

at soul survivor in the summer on the first night the lyrics to 'see His love' read

'Such love,
such love
such love is this for me?'

Made me laugh . . . thought it might be the most british thing that's ever happened on worship music . . 'pardon me, i'm terribly sorry, but is this love for me?'