Weird Al Yankovic - Word Crimes Lyrics
Weird Al Yankovic Lyrics
Word Crimes Lyrics
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[Intro:]
Everybody shut up, WOO!
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
[Verse 1:]
If you can't write in the proper way
If you don't know how to conjugate
Maybe you flunked that class
And maybe now you find
That people mock you online
[Bridge:]
Okay, now here's the deal
I'll try to educate ya
Gonna familiarize
You with the nomenclature
You'll learn the definitions
Of nouns and prepositions
Literacy's your mission
And that's why I think it's a
[Chorus:]
Good time
To learn some grammar
Now, did I stammer
Work on that grammar
You should know when
It's "less" or it's "fewer"
Like people who were
Never raised in a sewer
I hate these word crimes
Like I could care less
That means you do care
At least a little
Don't be a moron
You better slow down
And use the right pronoun
Show the world you're a no-clown
(Everybody wise up)
[Verse 2:]
Say you got an "I-T"
Followed by apostrophe "s"
Now what does that mean?
You would not use this in this case
As a possessive
It's a contraction
What's a contraction?
Well, it's the shortening of a word, or a group of words
By the emission of a sound or letter
[Bridge:]
Okay, now here are some notes
Syntax you're always dangling
No X in "Espresso"
Your participle's danglin'
But I don't want your drama
If you really wanna
Leave out that Oxford comma
Just keep in mind
That we see
[Chorus:]
Are you
Are words not letters?
Get it together
Use your spellchecker
You should never
Write words using numbers
Unless you're seven
Or your name is Prince
I hate these word crimes
You really need a
Full time proofreader
You dumb mouthbreather
Well, you should hire
Some cunning linguist
To help you distinguish
What is proper English
(Everybody wise up)
[Verse 3:]
One thing I ask of you
Time to learn your homophones is past due
Learn to diagram a sentence too
Always say to whom
Don't ever say to who
Yeah, listen up when I tell you this
I hope you never use quotation marks for emphasis
If you finished second grade
I hope you can tell
If you're doing good or doing well
Figure out the difference
Irony is not coincidence
And, I thought that you'd gotten it through your skull
What's figurative and what's literal
Oh but, just now, you said
You literally couldn't get out of bed
That really makes me want to literally
Smack a crowbar upside your stupid head
[Chorus:]
I read your e-mail
It's quite apparent
You're grammar's errant
You're incoherent
Saw your blog post
It's really fantastic
That was sarcastic (Oh, psych!)
Cause you write like a spastic
I hate these Word Crimes
(Everybody wise up)
Your pose is dopey
Think you should only
Write in emoji
Oh, you're a lost cause
Go back to preschool
Get out of the gene pool
Try your best to not drool
[Outro:]
Never mind I give up
Really now I give up
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Go Away!
Everybody shut up, WOO!
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
[Verse 1:]
If you can't write in the proper way
If you don't know how to conjugate
Maybe you flunked that class
And maybe now you find
That people mock you online
[Bridge:]
Okay, now here's the deal
I'll try to educate ya
Gonna familiarize
You with the nomenclature
You'll learn the definitions
Of nouns and prepositions
Literacy's your mission
And that's why I think it's a
[Chorus:]
Good time
To learn some grammar
Now, did I stammer
Work on that grammar
You should know when
It's "less" or it's "fewer"
Like people who were
Never raised in a sewer
I hate these word crimes
Like I could care less
That means you do care
At least a little
Don't be a moron
You better slow down
And use the right pronoun
Show the world you're a no-clown
(Everybody wise up)
[Verse 2:]
Say you got an "I-T"
Followed by apostrophe "s"
Now what does that mean?
You would not use this in this case
As a possessive
It's a contraction
What's a contraction?
Well, it's the shortening of a word, or a group of words
By the emission of a sound or letter
[Bridge:]
Okay, now here are some notes
Syntax you're always dangling
No X in "Espresso"
Your participle's danglin'
But I don't want your drama
If you really wanna
Leave out that Oxford comma
Just keep in mind
That we see
[Chorus:]
Are you
Are words not letters?
Get it together
Use your spellchecker
You should never
Write words using numbers
Unless you're seven
Or your name is Prince
I hate these word crimes
You really need a
Full time proofreader
You dumb mouthbreather
Well, you should hire
Some cunning linguist
To help you distinguish
What is proper English
(Everybody wise up)
[Verse 3:]
One thing I ask of you
Time to learn your homophones is past due
Learn to diagram a sentence too
Always say to whom
Don't ever say to who
Yeah, listen up when I tell you this
I hope you never use quotation marks for emphasis
If you finished second grade
I hope you can tell
If you're doing good or doing well
Figure out the difference
Irony is not coincidence
And, I thought that you'd gotten it through your skull
What's figurative and what's literal
Oh but, just now, you said
You literally couldn't get out of bed
That really makes me want to literally
Smack a crowbar upside your stupid head
[Chorus:]
I read your e-mail
It's quite apparent
You're grammar's errant
You're incoherent
Saw your blog post
It's really fantastic
That was sarcastic (Oh, psych!)
Cause you write like a spastic
I hate these Word Crimes
(Everybody wise up)
Your pose is dopey
Think you should only
Write in emoji
Oh, you're a lost cause
Go back to preschool
Get out of the gene pool
Try your best to not drool
[Outro:]
Never mind I give up
Really now I give up
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Go Away!
Back to: Weird Al Yankovic Lyrics
Word Crimes Info:
• Parody of
Blurred Lines
by
Robin Thicke
• Weird Al said: "There were already about 10,000 parodies of Blurred Lines and they were all rapey. And I thought nobody had done a song about grammar."
• This was Weird Al's fourth Top 40 hit, making him only the third artist in history (along with Michael Jackson and Madonna) to have a top 40 hit in every decade since the 1980s.
• Weird Al said: "There were already about 10,000 parodies of Blurred Lines and they were all rapey. And I thought nobody had done a song about grammar."
• This was Weird Al's fourth Top 40 hit, making him only the third artist in history (along with Michael Jackson and Madonna) to have a top 40 hit in every decade since the 1980s.
From the Album:
Mandatory Fun (2014)
Recorded:
December 2013
Bedrock L.A. (Los Angeles, California)
Genre:
Comedy, parody, R&B, disco, funk
Length:
3:43
Writers:
Pharrell Williams
Clifford Harris, Jr.
Robin Thicke
Al Yankovic
Producer:
"Weird Al" Yankovic
Music video:
"Word Crimes" on YouTube
•The video took about 500 hours to complete. It used Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier and After Effects.
• The graphic for the title phrase is modeled after the Merriam-Webster logo.
• During the line "You're a lost cause," a poster for ABC's Lost appears,
• with the sentence "Learn your ABC's, doofus" appearing below the ABC logo.
• The number 27, which frequently appears in previous works by Yankovic, appears throughout the video.
• The illustration on a college notebook cover includes the character Trogdor the Burninator from the Homestar Runner web animation series.
• The graphic for the lyric "irony is not coincidence" pokes fun at the use of the word by Alanis Morissette in her song Ironic, showing that a rain shower during a wedding is merely coincidence.
• The video includes cameos by Doge and the Microsoft Office Assistant "Clippit"
• The graphic for the title phrase is modeled after the Merriam-Webster logo.
• During the line "You're a lost cause," a poster for ABC's Lost appears,
• with the sentence "Learn your ABC's, doofus" appearing below the ABC logo.
• The number 27, which frequently appears in previous works by Yankovic, appears throughout the video.
• The illustration on a college notebook cover includes the character Trogdor the Burninator from the Homestar Runner web animation series.
• The graphic for the lyric "irony is not coincidence" pokes fun at the use of the word by Alanis Morissette in her song Ironic, showing that a rain shower during a wedding is merely coincidence.
• The video includes cameos by Doge and the Microsoft Office Assistant "Clippit"
Weird Al Yankovic Tour Dates: