In the chorus of Steven Page’s So. Cal., from his Vanity Project album, he sings about sunny Califor-nye-ay.
That got me thinking: what other songs can you name that include deliberate mispronunciations of words? I’m sure they’re out there, but I’ve been having no luck trying to remember them; the only thing I’ve come up with that’s even close, but which I don’t consider another example, is the g-g-g-generation
stutter in My Generation.
A shiny penny (or maybe even… wait for it… blog points!) to the person who submits the best/first/most examples.
This is essentially stealing your original example but The Beach Boys do it in "Surfin’ USA":
"Then everybody’d be surfin’
Like californi-a"
Frank Black mispronounces "Los Angeles" in his song "Los Angeles" but it could be considered a quote:
"And if you think they star-spangled us
How come we say los angeleez?"
Surfin’ USA is one I definitely should have had… excellent! I don’t know the Frank Black song, but I think it fits.
I’ve been looking around a bit and found a mention of “heaven’s dah-wah” in (presumably) the Guns’n’Roses version of the Bob Dylan tune. That one’s questionable, by my thinking; if it had been “heaven’s dew-ahr” then maybe, but I think it’s more along the lines of an accent or a stylistic choice.
So it’s been over a week. Where’s my friggin’ blog points? 🙂
I’ve been neglectful, sorry about that… wanted to give some other folks a chance, but I guess you and Donna are the only regular readers I have left. 🙂
I hereby grant John five billion points. None of that namby-pamby “thousand million” stuff, a real five times ten-to-the-twelfth-power billion. Who’s feeling the heat now, Carey?