Factual errors in songs.

[pcolbeck]

The old woman would have choked by the time she tried swallowing the cat.

[Sergeant Pluck]

Kate Bush - "Pi". Great song, but really...

Sweet and gentle sensitive man
With an obsessive nature and deep fascination
For numbers
And a complete infatuation with the calculation
Of PI

Oh he love, he love, he love
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity

3.1415926535 897932
3846 264 338 3279

Oh he love, he love, he love
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity
But he must, he must, he must
Put a number to it

50288419 716939937510
582319749 44 59230781
6406286208 821 4808651 32

Oh he love, he love, he love
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity

 

[PhilO]

I was 18 when my dad first took me to a pub
and I've never ever seen him quite so mad
"A pint of your usual, sir?" the barman said,
But he was asking me, not dad.
"By surfeiting the appetite will sicken and so die
I'll not long have a boozer for a son
They say there's 27 pubs from here to Odsal Top
and tonight you'll have a pint in every one.

The 'phone book only lists four... 

 

[clarion]

What's that from?

[clarion]

And this isn't the road to hell.  It's the M40.

Hang on! The M40 still goes to Birmingham doesn't it?

No, it goes from Birmingham to (nearly) London...

Absolutely right, then! 

I believe the song is either about the M25 or the M1 - either way, the road to London/Hell

[PhilO]

What's that from?

"Doin' the Manch.", Cockersdale, written by Keith Marsden.

 

[Really Ancien]

And this isn't the road to hell.  It's the M40.

Hang on! The M40 still goes to Birmingham doesn't it?

No, it goes from Birmingham to (nearly) London...

Absolutely right, then! 

I believe the song is either about the M25 or the M1 - either way, the road to London/Hell

It was the M4, when it was being touted as the 'High Tech Corridor', Chris had an excellent grasp of the facts in that song.

And all the roads jam up with credit
And there's nothing you can do
It's all just pieces of paper flying away from you
Oh look out world, take a good look
What comes down here
You must learn this lesson fast and learn it well
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the road
Said this is the road
This is the road to hell

Damon.

[rower40]

Not factually incorrect, but a glaringly obvious tautology:

4am in the morning

[Bluebottle]

But is the title of the song alone not incorrect?  If we are being pedantic (heaven forbid) then the light that casts the eponymous shadow does not come from the moon: it is reflected/scattered from by the moon but originates from the sun.

[Martin]

Up the Junction by Squeeze;

This morning at 4.50
I took her rather nifty
Down to an incubator
where 30 minutes later

She gave birth to a daughter

lay an egg did she? 

(and really nerdy; Clapham Junction is not in Clapham)

Not factually incorrect, but a glaringly obvious tautology:

4am in the morning

I was once invited to a wedding starting at 14.30pm; I don't think anybody took it literally...

[clarion]

(and really nerdy; Clapham Junction is not in Clapham)

Really really nerdy: Oh yes it was!  No, you're right - it's about two miles outside the village. renamed Clapham Junction

[Basil]

My mostest favourite is in Wyclef Jean's cover of Shine on You Crazy Diamond.  (Quite a good version, by the way)

I can't be bothered to dig it out so I'll try to paraphrase it.

About half way through he talks about how he came across the song.
How he grew up in the "blocks" (projects), how his brother was into British rock and this particular band (the Floyd) who grew up "In the British Blocks"

Yeah, right. 

[rogerzilla]

I know it's just the leftpondian pronunciation, but Martha and The Muffins' rhyming of "work" with "clerk" always grates for me.

[red marley]

I can't prove it, but I suspect Ludacris was probably not telling the entire truth when he boasted of his "hoes" in "Area Codes". The evidence is in the map<sup>*

*</sup>This work really was presented at an academic mapping/visualisation conference I attended in Ohio last year.

[Martin]

(and really nerdy; Clapham Junction is not in Clapham)

Really really nerdy: Oh yes it was!  No, you're right - it's about two miles outside the village. renamed Clapham Junction

wrong Clapham; Clapham Junction (Britains' busiest railway station) is actually in Battersea in the Borough of Wandsworth

[clarion]

No.  Mine is the right Clapham.  IIRC, Clapham in Lahndan is named after the Yorkshire family

And I do know about the ugly Clapham/Clapham Junction that has the misfortune not ot be in Yorkshire

[tiermat]

"You could be a big fish" as my colleague keeps singing

No I bloody couldn't, nor have I any wish to be a little fish, or a box!!!

[Martin]

No.  Mine is the right Clapham.  IIRC, Clapham in Lahndan is named after the Yorkshire family

And I do know about the ugly Clapham/Clapham Junction that has the misfortune not ot be in Yorkshire

so the Squeeze song was about a girl from Yorkshire?

[Zoidburg]

I'm a fire starter.

No Mr Flint

If you were you would currently be serving an inditerminate sentence at Rampton high security hospital.

[clifftaylor]

I'm a fire starter.
No Mr Flint
If you were you would currently be serving an inditerminate sentence at Rampton high security hospital.

I feel that the song would have lost some of it's menace, as it were, if it had been called "I'm a fire lighter" 

[rogerzilla]

In "The Day Before You Came" by ABBA, it takes Agnetha 75 minutes to get to work but three hours to get home.  OK, she stops off for a Chinese, but it's a takeaway.

[Andrij]

In "The Day Before You Came" by ABBA, it takes Agnetha 75 minutes to get to work but three hours to get home.  OK, she stops off for a Chinese, but it's a takeaway.

Was she working in London at the time? 

[hellymedic]

another Chris de Burgh (just for rower 40)

A Spaceman came travelling
In his ship from afar
Twas light years of time
Since his mission did start

Light years are distance thicko!

[rogerzilla]

Short whiny philandering thicko, I think you mean.

[Wascally Weasel]

In "The Day Before You Came" by ABBA, it takes Agnetha 75 minutes to get to work but three hours to get home.  OK, she stops off for a Chinese, but it's a takeaway.

And what's more ABBA, Napoleon did *not* surrender at Waterloo.  Technically he never surrendered at all, he instead sought asylum almost a month later from the British on 15th July.