Song Lyrics that Get on My Nerves

[lvstephanie]

Some of you may remember my rant a couple of summers ago about Carly Rae Jepsen's song "Call Me Maybe" (see http://www.fusioncash.net/forum.php?topic=41002.msg534198#msg534198) where I pulled apart the lyrics of the song and analyzed how the lyrics didn't state what they were intended to say (eg "Before you came into my life / I missed you so bad" doesn't make sense since to miss someone, you had to know them first and noted their absence to miss them).

Well I've got a new summer hit that I too have a problem with its lyrics... The song is Magic!'s "Rude" (here's the official video with the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjqQfVY0yAc). The song is about a young man going to his girlfriend's parents' house and asking her father for the family's blessing to marry the dad's daughter. However the father refuses to bless their union so the young man retaliates by calling the father "rude" and stating that he's going to marry her anyway.

The first issue I have with the song is the word "Rude" in the title that is used throughout the refrain of the song. The definition of "rude" is "offensively impolite or ill-mannered". So in the song's refrain "Why you gotta be so rude / Don't you know I'm human too", the lyrics imply that the singer is upset that the father was being ill-mannered in refusing the request to marry the girl. However I'd think that no matter how polite the father was in refusing the request, the singer would still be upset in not getting the dad's blessing. If so, then "rude" is not the correct word to use but rather "cruel" would be a better replacement. Not only does "cruel" address the actual rejection and not just the way that the rejection was issued, it also has the near-rhyme to "too" in the next line of the refrain. In fact part of the bridge leading to the refrain says "Tough luck, my friend" suggesting that the father was trying to be nice (by calling the singer "friend") so again it doesn't sound like the father was being rude but rather cruel.

The second issue I have is with the bridge. It starts out sounding like the singer is paraphrasing what the father says, but then it later sounds like it is a direct quote. Since in songs (esp. when there is only one singer that doesn't change their voice, etc.) it is hard to know what are quotes vs. a paraphrase, so you have to use the actual words in order to understand the Point of View (POV). So in the bridge "You say I'll never get your blessings 'til the day I die / Tough luck my friend but 'No' still means 'No'" the singer sounds like he is paraphrasing what the father says by saying "I'll" never get "your" blessings, but then in the very next line it sounds like a direct quote since "my friend" would have been spoken by the father. To confuse the issue even more is the phrase "'til the day I die"... I could see the father saying that, esp. considering that under most normal circumstances the father would presumably die before the singer so the refusal would last until the father's death. Yet that phrase is in the same line as what appears to be a paraphrase of what the father said suggesting that the "day I die" refers to the singer. Thus it should be written as either:

You say "You'll never get my blessings 'til the day I die"
OR
You say I'll never get your blessings 'til the day you die

so that all of the pronouns used in that sentence have the correct POV in order to ascertain whether the line is a direct quote or a paraphrase. And likewise the POV for the next line should also be kept consistent (although I guess that could be given a little more leeway since it is a new line and thus could be a new sentence spoken from the opposite POV).