Pop Lyric Pedantry
Every now and then I take issue with factual errors in pop songs. Here I have two for your education and amusement:
Was Not Was, Walk the Dinosaur. "It was a night like this 40,000,000 years ago...". Well, Dinosaurs became extinct 65,000,000 years ago except for some of the theropods in family Aves. Also some of those giant crocodiles and other megafauna associated with the Mesozoic period that popularly get lumped in with Dinosauria-proper probably had living descendants at the time. But. Nevertheless. I know they're suggesting that cavemen and dinosaurs coexisted, but could they at least pick a period with one or the other in rather than split the difference?
ABBA, Waterloo. "My, My. At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender....". No he didn't. He was beaten at Waterloo on 18 June, but didn't surrender until 15 July on board HMS Bellerophon. On the other hand the history of Sweden at that moment is pretty interesting, so maybe these events were skipped over a bit in Swedish History classes. But you'd hope that some of the Eurovision voters would have spotted this error and turned against them. It's not like there weren't some acceptable alternatives. (The Youtube search results for Eurovision 1974 linked here).
Was Not Was, Walk the Dinosaur. "It was a night like this 40,000,000 years ago...". Well, Dinosaurs became extinct 65,000,000 years ago except for some of the theropods in family Aves. Also some of those giant crocodiles and other megafauna associated with the Mesozoic period that popularly get lumped in with Dinosauria-proper probably had living descendants at the time. But. Nevertheless. I know they're suggesting that cavemen and dinosaurs coexisted, but could they at least pick a period with one or the other in rather than split the difference?
ABBA, Waterloo. "My, My. At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender....". No he didn't. He was beaten at Waterloo on 18 June, but didn't surrender until 15 July on board HMS Bellerophon. On the other hand the history of Sweden at that moment is pretty interesting, so maybe these events were skipped over a bit in Swedish History classes. But you'd hope that some of the Eurovision voters would have spotted this error and turned against them. It's not like there weren't some acceptable alternatives. (The Youtube search results for Eurovision 1974 linked here).
Comments
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Dinoglyfs.htm
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Pay especial attention to the cave paintings.
The up to 68% poll-toll that man saw dinosaurs is well established. You see, in some medieval G*d forsaken places it is still possible for the media to show the evidence.
Pauli Ojala
Biochemist, Finland