This Is This

Some folks basked in the glow of the Falklands War, others thought otherwise. The year was 1984, and in the hills behind Antibes it promised to stay that way forever. George’s Orwellian nightmare was running late, as nightmares tend to do, and Paul Young was threatening to tear our playhouse down, room by room.

But another sound sifted softly across the pop charts towards which I played my part, as any rightly constructed thirteen year old would. Bryan Adam’s clear punchy riffs announced the determined verses of Run To You.

She says her love for me could never die.

Nice, I thought.

But that’d change if she ever found out about you and I.

Now.

For a boy learning about grammar, it struck me as odd that he said “I” instead of “me”.

That’s wrong isn’t it? If she found out about “me”. It’s “you and me”, not I. “…if she ever found out about you and me.”

I know grammar is a fluid thing, and that’s cool, but when people try and sound correct and get it wrong, that’s worse than not trying at all. It’s like when cockneys (and I love accents - I use that term as a distinction and nothing more) when cockneys pronounce their H’s where there aren’t any. It’s h’information I don’t need. My neighbours do it when they talk to me sometimes and they don’t need to. It’s like me giving it all “apples and pears gawd bless ya guvna, oi oi  ‘ow’s yer cockles, Awbert Skwayuh” when I’m talking over the fence to them. Silly.

Anyway, it’s “you and me.” If in doubt - always “me”. Think it up.

Fly I Too The Moon
I And Bobby Magee
Please Please I
Rescue I
Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except I and I’s Monkey

Anyway, Bryan Adams, though. He’s an enigma. He wasn’t even ten in the summer of sixty nine when he claimed to by his first real six string to start a band from which one band member quit and another got married. It’s another empty premise.

He’s not even The Groover From Vancouver - in fact he’s neither. He doen’t groove and he didn’t move to British Columbia until he was fifteen. Technically, I guess you’d say at best he’s The Man On Your Stereo From Ontario, but that’s not exactly going to take us to the news, is it?

Anyway, keep watching your lyrics, and don’t get taken in. That’s what they want. Stay sharp, and I’ll be right here.

Also on This Is This
Rudyard said the "N" word.
Read this post...

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 7:14 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.