One of my favorite lines comes from Metallica's cover of the Thin Lizzy version of "Whiskey in the Jar," which from what I gather is actually some kind of Irish folk song or, failing that, one that was at least at one point performed by a band known as The Dubliners.
The line in question, sung by Hetfield, goes, "Here I am the ball and chain." It follows the line "Here I am in prison."
Other versions insert the grammatically correct "with," and though the words are slurred (Irish), the ball article may switch to indefinite. If that's the case, the metaphor and/or metonymy implicit in the line get totally wrecked, leaving the listener with some bland-ass lyric unfit for even a facebook profile shoutout.
[Side note: It's kind of a good idea to just drop this construction in everyday and not so everyday situations. When blogging: "here I am the keys and blogspot"; when swimming: "here i am the suit and water." Like, what if someone called you on the phone and said "what's up" and you answered "here I am the beer and TV."? The world would be a little better.]
So my favorite line is technically incorrect. This happens fairly often, and not only to me, I imagine. But it shouldn't really be wrong to have favorite lines where the blanks have been filled "incorrectly." The words in place are usually better -- I picked them out.
So to all you pedants, I'm just writing my own lyrics when I get em inaccurate so don't correct me because whoever wrote them in the first place did just a first draft and I'm a good editor. Plus I don't like blushing about being wrong about things.
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