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When lyrics break the rules: Grammar errors in famous songs!

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Can bad grammar make a good song? We all have that one tune that makes us sing at the top of our lungs the moment we hear the first note. But even the best songs can have a few mistakes! Of course, that doesn’t stop us from enjoying them, but here are 10 popular songs that have some surprising grammatical errors. Can you spot them? Let’s find out!

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We know it’s impossible not to shout, "Hey, teacher!" even if you actually liked school. But here’s the thing: In "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2," Pink Floyd sings, "We don’t need no education." This is a classic double negative. "Don’t" already does the job, so it should be "We don’t need any education." Grammatically correct, yes, but definitely not as catchy.

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With his incredible voice and timeless hits, we can’t blame James Brown for grammar. Still, the little slip in "I Got You (I Feel Good)" could’ve been avoided. To be perfectly proper, the verb "feel" needs an adverb ("well"), not an adjective ("good"). But does it really matter when it sounds that amazing?

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While the guys from The Rolling Stones are musical geniuses, grammar isn’t exactly their top priority. And that’s okay, because they gave us many classics, like: "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction." As you may have noticed, this case is very similar to Pink Floyd’s, with the double negative once again taking center stage in this grammatical slip-up.

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Of course, poetic intent played a big role in Bill Withers’ choice of words when he sang, "Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone…" But it seems double negatives are a recurring crime in the world of song lyrics. The contraction "ain’t" already carries the negation, which is repeated in the words that follow: "no sunshine."

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Okay, when singing this song, we don’t notice the mistake because it only becomes obvious when reading it. But Paul Young’s "Everytime You Go Away" has a clear error. "Everytime" isn’t actually a word, though perhaps they removed the space between "every" and "time" to make the title four words instead of five.

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Bob Dylan may have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he slipped up in "Lay Lady Lay." To "lay" means to put something down gently or carefully, and it is a transitive verb, which usually requires a direct object, for example, "I lay the notebook on the table." In contrast, "lie" means to rest or recline and is an intransitive verb, so it only requires a subject—for example, "I lie down every afternoon." Since the girl in Dylan’s song is probably reclining by herself, the verb he chose isn’t technically correct.

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The history of music wouldn’t be the same without the brilliance of The Police. But even legends slip up sometimes. Take their line, "Everything she do just turns me on." As we know, with a third-person singular subject like "she," the verb should be "does," not "do."

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We’re still trying to understand why Gwen Stefani sings, "If I was a rich girl..." In English, conditional sentences about hypothetical situations call for the subjunctive mood, which uses "were" with all subjects. And since her song is based on Fiddler on the Roof’s "If I Were a Rich Man," we know she had the correct example. Plus, singing "were" wouldn’t even mess up the rhythm. We need answers, Gwen!

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The ’90s weren’t just a decade; they were a feeling, and many will remember Paula Cole’s 1996 song "I Don’t Want to Wait." She sings, "Say a little prayer for I." Beautiful? Yes. Grammatically correct? No. "I" is a subject (performing the action), but here she needed "me" as the object (receiving the action). Still, we’ll forgive it for the sake of the rhyme.

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It only takes a few seconds of Ray Parker Jr.’s "Ghostbusters" to bring back the glory of the ’80s. But in the line "Who you gonna call?" there’s a tiny slip. Technically, it should be "Whom," since it’s the object (receiving the call), not the subject. In any case, we must admit that Ray Parker Jr.’s way of saying it is quite common.

Behind-the-scenes secrets

What do Star Wars and the Vatican have in common? Here's the answer

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There's a lot more to movies than what we see on the big screen. As viewers, we get to enjoy the finished product, but the amount of work that goes into making a film is huge. And along the way, plenty of surprising things happen on set—some you’d never imagine! From unscripted slaps to actors stepping in to save their co-stars' lives, here are 10 unusual behind-the-scenes moments from some of our favorite movies.

Credit: Carrie Fisher (aka Princess Leia) by Gerald England

Dan Aykroyd is not only a renowned actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer—he’s also a hero! In 1980, during the filming of the now-classic The Blues Brothers, something unexpected happened: Aykroyd literally saved Carrie Fisher's life by performing the Heimlich maneuver when she choked on a Brussels sprout.

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Margot Robbie landed the role of Naomi in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) on her very first audition. How? During a moment of improvisation, she delivered a hard, genuine slap to co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, totally surprising Martin Scorsese and securing the role. And she was only 22 at the time! Fortunately, Leo took it very well.

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You probably remember the enigmatic green code in The Matrix (1999). While it looks sophisticated and impossible to decipher, production designer Simon Whiteley revealed a surprising truth. In a 2017 interview, he explained that the code was actually inspired by a sushi recipe, created using the characters in a Japanese cookbook his wife had at home.

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As we know, Schindler’s List is an emotionally difficult film to watch, and filming it was no easier. Director Steven Spielberg later shared that his friend, the great Robin Williams, would call him at least once a week to perform little comedy routines, helping him cope with the difficulty of directing the movie.

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What could the Star Wars universe and the Vatican possibly have in common? Well, in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), one scene was filmed on the grand staircase of Italy's Royal Palace of Caserta. The very same location appears 25 years later in Conclave (2024), the film about the election of popes.

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Some say things aren't as good as they used to be, especially when it comes to special effects. Remember "Edgar," the evil farmer whose skin is taken by an alien in Men in Black (1997)? It turns out the actor's costume and makeup were carefully designed to progressively decompose scene by scene, creating a realistic depiction of the character’s physical deterioration.

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In American Psycho, Willem Dafoe filmed the scene in which Detective Kimball interviews the dangerous Patrick Bateman several times. Why? The director asked him to play it three different ways: one in which Kimball knows Bateman is the killer, another in which he is suspicious but unsure, and a third in which he is completely unaware. The three versions were then edited together, creating the legendary scene that leaves viewers paranoid and disoriented.

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For Interstellar (2014), Christopher Nolan needed a large cornfield for the scenes on Cooper’s farm. But he didn’t use an existing field or create one digitally; he had a massive 500-acre cornfield planted from scratch! The bonus? The studio later harvested and sold the corn, earning around $162,000.

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Since Interstellar premiered in October 2014, only about 1.5 hours have passed on Miller’s Planet.

Okay, this might not be strictly a behind-the-scenes fact, but it’s a fun way the fictional world connects to our own. According to the film, one hour on Miller’s Planet equals seven years on Earth. That means the 11 years that have passed since the premiere amount to just 94 minutes on the distant planet.

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In the 2002 Spider-Man movie, there’s a famous scene where Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker catches Mary Jane’s falling tray of food with the precision and speed of a true superhero. Although it looks like a special effect, no VFX were involved—the actor really did it! The catch, however, required 156 takes to get right.