10 Songs That Got Stuff Completely Wrong
Rewriting History.
As much as people might not like to admit it, song lyrics aren't all that important. After all, if you have a pleasing enough melody to tie everything together, you can get away with putting any old thing on top of the music and have people singing along. While there are definitely some questionable lyrics throughout history, there are songs that just get things inaccurate too.
This isn't meant to criticize the writing of the songs though. Sometimes these kind of lyrics are put together with the melody perfectly, using the exact right amount of syllables to get their point across. No, for something to end up on this list, you need to go the extra mile a little bit. Most of these songs have the makings of a great lyric in there somewhere, only to fall on their faces when getting down to specifics. These range from the origins being a little touched up in places to just not having the facts straight on basic figures of history.
Aside from the melody being stellar on these songs, they start to make less and less sense when you decide to dwell on the them for more than a few seconds. Even with the massive track record you might think you have, you aren't above looking at a proofreader every now and again.
10. Vertigo - U2
Over the course of their career, U2 have practically made a trademark of their universal appeal across albums like the Joshua Tree. Even though the foundations of these songs were clearly rock, there seemed to be a universal feeling to every song they made, as if the tracks belonged to the entire world instead of just a couple of guys from Ireland. It's always nice to branch into the international market like that...if you're able to at least understand the language.
As a little bit of fun coming off of the late period triumph All That You Can't Leave Behind, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb kicks things off right with Vertigo, bringing a little bit more aggro into the mix than what most U2 fans were probably expecting. Though you can feel the live energy coming off the studio floor, you can get sucked out of it for a split second when Bono counts the whole thing off.
While the sound of "uno, dos, tres, catorce" is not something you have to focus on for too long, anyone even slightly familiar with Spanish will know what's wrong here. Although the tune is great, you can't ignore that Bono just counted "1, 2, 3" and then jumped straight to 14 at the end. For as much as this version might roll off the tongue better, it's such an easy fix just to count it off again.