Like most industries, the music business has its occupational lingo, but lately it seems that the business has also decided to disregard a couple of grammatical conventions for reasons that are not clear but which may be related to the lack of education among musicians and those who assist/exploit them. I write of the incorrect verb number used when writing about bands and the incorrect use of the transitive verb ‘release.’ Since most folks have forgotten all that grammar stuff, let me remind you of the previous rule: nouns that describe groups take single verbs: the Army is, the team has, the set was. Somewhere in the music business (probably among the PR staff), band names recently became plural: Audio Adrenaline are, Hootie and the Blowfish were. Even more suddenly, that has spread everywhere and nearly every publicist has taken up this evil habit.

I most have missed the memo on that.

The ‘release’ usage (used when referring to when a record is made available for sale) is more curious. Release is a transitive verb and takes a direct object, e.g. ‘please release me,’ ‘release the dogs.’ Now, however, the recording industry has decreed that ‘release’ is intransitive and can be used in this sort of ugly construction: ‘Some-and-so’s record releases next week.’ The obvious question among native English speakers is: what does the record release? Of course, I understand that this is the ‘occupational imperative’: certain words used within any given industry acquire specialized meanings, but this usage is not limited to people within the industry but is used in publicity releases, intended for a general population.

Of course, given that English is an extremely loosely structured language, we understand what children and foreigners are saying when they mangle the language but we also encourage them to correct their errors. For children and those learning English as a second language, we can hope that they will make the corrections in time.

For the folks in the music business, I fear all hope is lost.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 9:55 am and is filed under LMNEditor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.