Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Pop music is built for immediacy. Its melodies are designed to move quickly, to register emotionally before the lyrics fully land.

Kids learning the national anthem could be forgiven for hearing the lyric "by the dawnzer lee light"—even though the latter doesn't make any sense, in any language. The actual line is "by the dawn's ...

Music history is full of songs with lyrics that don’t make any sense. I’m not talking about whether or not something is grammatically correct. I’m talking about songs with either no discernible ...