"I don't understand," she said mondegreenly

Just got through with a hilarious conversation about Taylor Swift's song "Blank Space," in which she sings "Got a long list of ex-lovers; they'll tell you I'm insane," but tons of people hear something like "All the lonely Starbucks lovers...."

Haha!! There have been a couple of articles about it. They only give us half-baked ruminations on mondegreens. But they don't really tell you why you misheard the lyric.

The main reason is that she disobeys the laws of English lyric-writing. A pop song should rhyme and scan seemingly effortlessly. When you have to put THE acCENT on THE wrong sylLABle in order to make it fit the musical phrase, you'll always murder the phrase.

For instance, if she were to write a boppy melody that goes, with a steady BOM baBOM BOM baBOM BOMba, "GOT a LONG LIST of EX LOVers," the exact same phrase would be perfectly understood.

Or, conversely, if she kept the same melody and rhythm but changed the lyrics to "Got a longish list of exes" (admittedly a terrible line), then the scansion of the music would match the natural accents of the phrase and you'd understand it.

As it stands, she's constrained herself to say "Gotta long lst-OV-x-LOV-rs"— English is especially strict because of our tendency to assign any non-stressed syllable a schwa sound (that "eh" or "uh") rather than the vowel's normal value. So, speaking it, you'd say "LONG LIST əv EX LOVərs," something very different from the song's "LONG ləst OV əx LOVərs".

Yeouch! "LONG ləst OV əx LOVərs"?!?! Madness!!

That is why your brain goes to the trochaic "Lonely Starbucks." It's the closest thing you can land on.

So, in the language of scansion, the melody, which goes "badaBAAdump BAAdump BAAdump," asks for four trochaic feet in a row (or a pyrrhic and three trochees), but her lyric, "Got a long list of ex-lovers," consists of a pyrrhic, a spondee, an iamb, and a trochee.

got a | LONG LIST | of EX | LOV ers.

Catherine suggests replacing my awkward suggestion with "Got a longish list of lovers." PERFECT!!

got a | LONG ish | LIST of | LOV ers

Swift is pretty much a pop genius, but even pop geniuses can have off days. The best pop songs just pop right out of your mouth, with the spoken inflection matched perfectly by the rhythm and melody. Most "mondegreens" in modern pop result from the songwriter's failure to do that.

Also bothersome: the Nashville girl suddenly goes Cockney with "They'll tell you oim insane." Where on earth did she get that??

My experience tells me some misguided enunciation coach (called, wrongly, "diction coaches" for some reason), heard her "ahm" on the first take and told her to fix it. That's doubly funny because one of the nudgy things that nudges our ears toward "Starbucks" is the long history of r-dropping in American pop music, which is strongly influenced by singers from r-dropping areas, who also "ahh" out our "i" sounds. Ironic!