Is Lyrics Grammatical Or Wot?

Not necessarily.

Very funnycolumn by Saptarshi Ray who has been getting folks to send in their pet grammatical hates in pop song lyrics. The list is long. My personal favourite is this comment from BrianC:

“’We don't need no education.’ Well... you've slightly undermined yourself there, haven't you?”

Now try and do the same for musical theatre songs and it seems to me to be a lot harder. There is, I think, a simple reason for this: musical theatre songs need to make sense.

If pop lyrics don’t need grammar it’s because there’s less need to ensure a clear expression of meaning. So this sort of Paul Simon thing would sound awful in a musical:

A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
Bonedigger Bonedigger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly Beerbelly
Get these mutts away from me
You know I don't find this stuff amusing anymore

This is a wonderfully singable stream of consciousness, associations and wordplay. But it is also nonsense or, to put it more favourably, it’s meaning is allusive. 


That’s fine for Paul Simon but stick this in a musical and the audience would be scratching its collective head. There’s no way to express character, situation or drama in this kind of lyric. Musical lyrics need to mean something and that meaning needs to be clear. If grammar helps, then bring it on. Innit?