Pop Music And Grammar

At school, people call me the “Grammar Nazi”. I usually disregard them because I know that there are so many things about the wonderful world of grammar that I ought to know, but don’t. I’m not the kind of person who goes by rules and their types, or in other words , I’m don’t have a textbook approach to the whole thing. I just go with the flow and make sure I’m sailing in the right direction. Most often than not, I try to point people around me in the right direction too, so that I can save myself from cringe-worthy moments. Quite recently, I discovered that I’ve been making a horrific grammatical error, when the whole thing was right under my nose. I was whiling away the time, reading articles on the Yahoo Inquisitor, when I stumbled upon one about Taylor Swift. Now, I love Swift’s music, but this little piece of information was a little too much even for me to handle. The whole article was about how a die-hard Swiftie who was supposedly studying hard for her SATs, stumbled upon something which she considered unforgivable. The Princeton Review had an entire section dedicated to the use of pronouns and common errors related to their usage, and what better way to highlight grammatical mistakes, than by pointing out the flaws in pop music? A line from the song Fifteen was scrutinized “When somebody tells you they love you, you got to believe them”. A Swiftie would tell you its “you’re gonna believe them”.A Grammar Nazi would know that “Somebody” and “they” just don’t go together. It ought to be he/she instead. Pretty plain sailing so far. There was picture of the page from the Princeton Review, which had the other grammatically incorrect lyrics. Katy Perry’s “In another life, I would make you stay, so I don’t have to say you were the one that got away” left me confused. I couldn’t seem to figure out the mistake. At all. Google got the better of me to put me out of my misery. It should’ve been “In another life, I would make you stay, so I don’t have to say you were the one WHO got away”. I felt ashamed of myself. Such a simplistic rule was violated and I didn’t, no, COULD’NT sniff it out. People aren’t inanimate objects!!! How could I be so stupid? I had cheated on grammar, all those days when I sang along, blissfully unaware that I was breaking a grammatical rule. Ugh. Well, I know better now. That’s my grammar pet-peeve folks! Embarrassing, but oh-so true.