Case 19: Fleetwood Mac make a mistake that me absolutely detest

Filed by: Officer Taylor

The Offence

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Fleetwood Mac's rather anodyne 1987 album Tango in the Night, but perhaps the strongest is the closing song, You and I, Part II, in which songsters Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie observe:

I wake up
With my eyes shut tight
Hoping tomorrow will never come
For you and I

Oh the phantoms
Crawl out of the night
Hoping the daylight will never come
For you and I

The Verdict

We of the SAGP have to take a very deep breath before returning our verdict on this particular monstrosity. First, we invite Mr. Buckingham to consider how his song would have gone had he written it alone, without reference to Ms. McVie. Would he have written:

I wake up
With my eyes shut tight
Hoping tomorrow will never come
For I

Oh the phantoms
Crawl out of the night
Hoping the daylight will never come
For I

Let us be charitable and assume that he would not.

Then what in the name of all that is rational makes him think that the presence of ``you'' makes any difference here? Does he switch ``me'' and ``I'' at the start of sentences when ``you'' is introduced? Does ``I went to the cinema'' become ``Me and you went to the cinema''? Maybe it does. That's certainly a common enough error - indeed it may be an over-reaction against this pervasive mistake that leads people to erroneously assume that ``I'' is always correct.

In grammatical terms, ``I'' and ``me'' (and indeed ``you'') are pronouns. They stand for nouns - in this case, the people that the song is about. So instead of Mr. Buckingham having to laboriously say ``Lindsey loves Christine'', he can simply say ``I love you''. Or ``you love me''. But not ``me love you'' or ``you love I''.

Why is this? Because ``I'' is used for the first person when it is the subject of a sentence - when it is the person doing the loving (or the hating, or the detesting, or whatever). And ``me'' is used when it is the object - when it is the person being loved (or hated, or detested, or whatever). In case you missed it, they teach you this stuff in school when you're about seven or eight. (Fortunately for Fleetwood Mac, the second person pronoun is ``you'' when used as either a subject or an object - we simply can't bear to think of this mess they would have made of this perfectly simple song were it otherwise.)

The Sentence

In view of the grave nature of the offence, we have no hesitation in imposing the harshest punishment that the law allows. Accordingly, we sentence Buckingham and McVie to be sent back to school and not allowed to write more songs until they've successfully passed 'O'-level English Language (or GCSE, or a Vocational Communication Diploma, or whatever it's called this week.)

* Other Offences to be Taken Into Consideration *

Honorary Officer Turner reports that Bernie Taupin's song Crocodile Rock contains a fine example of the opposite error from Fleetwood Mac's:

I remember when rock was young
Me and Suzie had so much fun

Back to school for Bernie, too, then!

Next case!