Thunder Sometimes Happens When It's NOT Raining

I had heard the song a few times, but I think it was probably the first time I ever SANG "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show that I noticed an error in the lyric.  There's a line in the last verse that states that "he's headed west from the Cumberland Gap to Johnson City, TN".  I had lived in east Tennessee for several years at that point and I was pretty familiar with the geography of the area by then.  I immediately thought, "Wait a minute.  Johnson City is about as east as you can get and still be in Tennessee.  How could it be WEST of the Cumberland Gap?"  I jumped on Google Maps and my suspicions were confirmed - Johnson City, TN is actually about 100 miles SOUTHEAST of the Cumberland Gap.  How could Ketch Secor have not verified that before fully committing to it?  I find that very strange.

It got me to thinking, though, about other songs that have just plain gotten some well-known fact wrong.  I actually came up with nine on my own before consulting Google and finding a couple more.  Here they are in order of egregiousness:

1.  Fleetwood Mac - "Dreams"

Thunder not only "happens when it's raining", it sometimes happens when it's not.  I'm not really sure what else I can even say about this one.  It's just inexplicable.

2.  U2 - "Pride (In the Name of Love)"

MLK was shot at around 6:05 p.m., not "early morning", on April 4.  Why not just say "early evening"?

3.  Sade - "Smooth Operator"

Granted, Sade wasn't born and raised in America, but the line "coast to coast, LA to Chicago" is inexcusable.  "Coast to coast, LA to New York" in that cutesy little way that she sings would've worked fine...and it wouldn't have been wrong.

4.  Bruce Springsteen - "Glory Days"

Although the term "speedball" was supposedly used in baseball as early as 1918 and at least as recently as 1955, by the early-eighties it meant something VERY different.  It was widely-known to be the cause of John Belushi's fatal drug overdose in 1982, which would have almost certainly been prior to Bruce Springsteen writing this song.  It makes no sense for him not to have used the universally-recognized pitching term "fastball".

5.  Band Aid - "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Actually, there MIGHT be snow in Africa this Christmastime.  The Atlas Mountains in Morocco get regular snowfall throughout the winter months from December through February.

6.  Toto - "Africa"

Technically, Kilimanjaro doesn't rise "like Olympus above the Serengeti".  They're 230 miles apart by car (179 miles apart by plane).

7.  AC/DC - "Shook Me All Night Long"

Brian Johnson goes on and on in the verses about how "SHE was the best damn woman that I'd ever seen".  However, in the chorus he seems to be referring to a completely different woman when he proclaims "YOU shook me all night long".  Why is he telling the woman who just shook him all night long about some other woman who was the best damn woman that he'd ever seen?  Was he deliberately trying to piss her off in order to get some angry sex from her?  Or was he trying to get rid of her after he'd gotten what he wanted?  It's very confusing.

8.  Pet Shop Boys - "Left to My Own Devices"

Neil Tennant made me look stupid once because of his mispronunciation of Debussy in this song.  It's deb-you-SEE, not duh-BOO-see.  Damn it.

9.  The Police - "Don't Stand So Close To Me"

Sting mispronounces Nabakov as NAB-uh-kof instead of nuh-BOE-kof.  Also, in "the book", Humbert is in his mid to late-thirties when he meets Delores.  That's not exactly an "old man".

10.  Geico - The commercial with Europe

The announcer states that "if you're the band Europe, you love a final countdown - it's what you do".

The truth is:  The band Europe does not LOVE a final countdown and nothing in the lyric gives any indication that they do.  If anything, the band seems to find the final countdown to be bittersweet and they appear to have a degree of apprehension as to what comes AFTER the final countdown.

The song went to number one in several countries and made it into the top ten in the U.S.  Therefore, it's probably accurate to say that the band Europe loves the song "The Final Countdown".  Somebody at that ad agency just got a little too cute for his/her own good.

Honorable Mention:  Alanis Morissette - "Ironic"

Okay, Alanis isn't, technically, an eighties artist.  However, according to her Wikipedia page, she recorded her first demo in 1987...and that was enough to get her on the list as an honorable mention.  I'm not going to dissect every single example of "non-irony" in her lyric, but "rain on your wedding day" is not ironic.  It sucks, but it's not ironic.

It's just...not.