Pop, Rock, Prescriptivism

As a "linguist" (I have the degree to prove it, dammit), I know that it is my duty to describe the uses of language and not prescribe a "correct" usage.  There is no one English language, but rather each one of us holds an idea of English in our heads, and hopefully they correspond for the most part.

On the other hand, Mrs. Hill was a damn good English teacher in 10 grade and I'll forever be a stickler for grammar and usage.

Over the past few weeks I've noticed some pretty glaring errors in the lyrics to some pretty popular songs on the radio.  Instead of ranting to everyone who'll listen (read: no one), I'll just post my complaints here.

1.  Miley Cyrus's new song "Seven Things" details seven things that she hates about her old boyfriend.  I'm going against my better judgment when I say I think about Nick Jonas whenever I hear this song (did you know they used to DATE?).  That was not the point.  The point is, her seven things are listed in a grammatical series. That is, she concatenates the reasons, omitting conjunctions and replacing them with commas.
Let me cut to the chase - when you make a series like this, the items must be parallel. they should all be nouns, or verbs, or even sentences.  There are lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!).  I like to run, jump, and play games.  She's stupid, she has no sense of humor, and she's got a snaggletooth.
Miley ALMOST does this, but fails in a way that makes me cringe every time I hear this song.  Here are the first three things things she hates about Nick Jonas:

The seven things I hate about you! - You're vain, your games, you're insecure.

While she repeats the "jυr" sound three times, these homophones differ greatly in meaning and part of speech.  I didn't even understand what she was saying because I was expecting "You're vain, you're ____, you're insecure."  I thought she called Nick Jonas gay, to be quite honest.  This is why parallelism is important in a series.

2.  "Touch My Body" by Mariah Carey might possibly be deserving of some slack because it's such a terrible song, but there's one part that gets to me every time and I have to share it.

I want you to caress me
Like a tropical breeze
And float away with you
In the Caribbean Sea

Clearly Mariah Carey wants him (Nick Cannon? Wow. They're both about guys named Nick. Even more deserving of a wow [or perhaps a groan], I read way too much Perez Hilton.) to do one thing, and she wants to do another. It doesn't make grammatical sense for her to simply add her activity to the sentence. The verb "want" serves many grammatical and syntactic uses, but it can't serve more than one at a time. It would make more sense for her to ask him to do both activities. All she'd have to do is change the phrasing to "float away with me." It essentially means the same thing, and the grammar police would allow it, too.

3. This last one does not fit with the other two, as it is not a question of grammar, but I don't want to write a completely new post, and I'm on a roll. Jordin Sparks's newest song "One Step At a Time" is all right although I can't for the life of me figure out what needs to be done one step at a time. Anyway, she describes the situation as being similar to other things that take time, including falling in love and... learning to fly. Now, I'm no pilot, so when I think of things learning to fly, I think of birds. Now, not only does flying take no literal steps, it also doesn't seem to take many steps of an abstract nature. Once that fledgling jumps out of the nest, it'd better damn well fly in one step or it's done. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.


I guess I'm done griping. The worst thing about this is that now you all know what shitty music I listen to.