Can you mix tenses in one phrase? (Past and present)
Today I was reading the lyrics of a song and the vocalist goes "I still love the way it moves and the details it loses when I walked off, and proved that I was more than".
I would like to know if this is right or wrong, and whether I should understand the second part of the sentence as something that happens or already happened.
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 5
1
I don't think it's correct English. I can't make much sense out of it.
This is important: do not trust song lyrics as a guide to correct English. Song lyrics are poetry. They are a compromise between sound and sense. They are intended to stir emotion, not necessarily express a clear idea. Lyrics are often in colloquial English, slang, nonstandard English. Song lyrics often use unusual words, unnatural word order, and distort the language to fit the rhythm and the rhyme. Song lyrics sometimes are intentionally confusing, to convey a mood of fantasy, or a dream state, or an altered state of consciousness.
0
Instead say " today i was reading"
0
Songs can do pretty much anything they want with the lyrics, poetry too.
I've listened to the song and read the lyrics.
"I still love the way it moves
And the details it loses when I walked out
And proved that I was more than
I was more than"
The lines seem to flow together in a way that suggests "...when I walked out" is actually part of the line "And proved that I was more than".
This is just my impression of how it is, even though it's written on the same line it seems to be part of the next line.
Later on in the song the line is further expanded on with:
"And proved that I was more than
I was more than
Just useless"
Which makes more sense than just saying "I was more than", which didn't tell you what he was more than.
It's a nice song by the way, he has a good voice.
0
No problem
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