numb

[diana]

That's not her fault... pronounciation is up to the the singer

Rubbish. She WROTE the lyrics. Neil hasn't changed them. They're pronounced perfectly by Neil. It's the grammar that's wrong. She has written double negatives that cancel each other out to make a positive.
'I don't wanna feel nothing' actually means 'I want to feel something'.

I can't see this being the case. It's like the 'new street' talk - 'I don't know nothing' - it's apalling grammar because 'nothing' should be 'anything'

The song is all about NOT wanting to feel anything

No, not wanting to feel nothing.

[Burj]

But if you want to be numb, then you don't want to feel anything at all

[mantooth]

Can't believe how contoversial this track is. However, I think it's fantastic - almost as good as Minimal.

I bet PSB are kicking themselves not releasing a double A-side of Minimal and Numb now. Would have been a top three hit for sure. Their first for 13 years.

[Burj]

boyjohn wrote:

And this line from excuses doesn't really seem grammatically right to me either
-- I walked into the room
-- imagine my surprise
-- you were sitting close to him
-- staring in each other's eyes


English isn't my native language so I can't claim to be an expert, but with the possible exception of the last line ("staring inTO each other's eyes" might be more correct) I can't see anything wrong in these lines. Can anybody elaborate on this?

The reason I think it's not grammatical is because if your read the last 2 lines as a sentence - "you were sitting close to him staring in each other's eyes", the person that is doing the staring is "you" ("you" has to be singular, because of the "him" in the sentence) . Obviously "you" can't stare into your own eyes.

If you want the staring to be reciprical, then the sentence should say "You were sitting close together", or some such, because that way, the "you" means 2 people, not 1.

Hope that makes sense.

Yes, in the same way that you are not likely to say "each of you looked up" - you would say "you both looked up", but it doesn't scan right for the purposes of the song.

[No Muscle Mary]

That's not her fault... pronounciation is up to the the singer

Rubbish. She WROTE the lyrics. Neil hasn't changed them. They're pronounced perfectly by Neil. It's the grammar that's wrong. She has written double negatives that cancel each other out to make a positive.
'I don't wanna feel nothing' actually means 'I want to feel something'.

I can't see this being the case. It's like the 'new street' talk - 'I don't know nothing' - it's apalling grammar because 'nothing' should be 'anything'

The song is all about NOT wanting to feel anything

Exactly. So she should have written 'Don't wanna feel anything'. Which is the point I was trying to make.

[Hillbilly]

As a linguist I find discussions like these very fascinating...

I'm not fond of double negatives like "I don't know nothing", but maybe that's because school hasn't taught me so?

I have also found the line "staring in each other's eyes" strange after "sitting close to him"...

However, if Diane Warren had written anything instead of nothing, the two-syllables-at-most structure of the song had been destroyed.

[Grover]

Well, I first heard the song properly when I watched the BBC Football thing on YouTube. I thought it was just Amazing. Since then I played it often through the PSB website (because I haven't bought Fundamental yet) and I heard it last monday in Bonn. I felt rather emotional during the song, but it wasn't until the next that I got home and played the song again on my PC and just cried.

What an emotional song. One of the best songs of the album, maybe even the best.