Re: Love-Hounds digest V12 #22

[cbullard@HiWAAY.net (Len Bullard)]

[Andrew Marvick]

> Oddly, the oft-puzzled-over use of the word "worst" in "Babooshka" 
>(instead of the "correct" worse, in the line "She couldn't have made a 
>worse move") is an example of such a slip which Kate must have 
>decided was after all preferable to the original (which can be confirmed 
>as "worse" in the two demo recordings of the song, available on bootlegs).

Not having read those, I don't know if this was debated,
but sometimes a bit of grammatical fudging is done
to get the notes to sound correctly.  The rule of thumb
is, vowels carry sound, consonants chop air.  So a morph
combination like "..se mo.." comes out as "smoo" unless
an extra rest beat is stuck in and that kills the phrasing.
We don't pay much attention to these things in speaking,
but in singing and particularly in recording where the
performance is listened to and analyzed *to death*,
a singer often chooses phrasing over grammar.  

There are a lot of tricks used that are similar to 
ventriloquism to get these things to work right. 
Have you ever noticed the way Kate often comes
down hard on consonants at the end of words
such as very hard Ts that you don't hear in 
her almost consonantless speech?  This
is taught in a lot of vocal styles particularly when
a strong, ballsy vocal is needed.

cheers,
len