don't instead of doesn't in songs lirycs

Question

Hello, I hope you can find an answer to my question: why in many songs lirycs the singer says" it don' " instead of "doesn't" ?. It's just for the music, the sound, the rhythm ( like in poetry where the poet can write a grammar error if it's for the riming and the rhythm), or it's considered a grammar error?
here some exemples: love don't live here anymomy love don't cost a thing
hope my boyfriend don't mind it
Can I use it while speaking or it's a sign of rude talking?
thanks
pa

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,
Hello, I hope you can find an answer to my question: why in many songs lirycs the singer says" it don' " instead of "doesn't" ?. It's just for the music, the sound, the rhythm ( like in poetry where the poet can write a grammar error if it's for the riming and the rhythm), or it's considered a grammar error?
here some exemples: love don't live here anymomy love don't cost a thing
hope my boyfriend don't mind it
Can I use it while speaking or it's a sign of rude talking?
thanks
It's a grammar error.
If you speak like that with people who have a good education, they won't comment on it, but they will think that you don't have a good education. They won't consider you rude.

If you speak like that with other people who say that, nobody will notice or care.

I think that people who write songs sometimes use those words to make it sound like the person in their song is just a very ordinary person. However, in my experience, lots of ordinary people don't speak like that.

It mat also sometimes be used in a song for the sound or rhythm. I don't know about such matters.

Best wishes,Clive

CalifJim · Answer

By replacing doesn't with don't, a lyricist imitates the speech of a mostly fictitious group in American mythology known as "the people" or "the common people" or "just folks". And it's used as a purely conventional device in styles which promote the myth. It has nothing to do with rhythm, rhyme, or sonority, and everything to do with portraying the lower economic classes, often the rural classes, in a certain light, i.e., as "authentic" and even "noble" perhaps, or sometimes perhaps "unjustly oppressed". These people are always "down and out" and "going through hard times", and "just don't care anymore" -- and nothing in a song lyric can capture these qualities better (and more easily for a lazy lyricist) than the "don't - doesn't" substitution -- although dropping the g in -ingendings has a similar effect!

(See Steinbeck'sThe Grapes of Wrath for a more serious treatment of the subject.)

In this milieu there is no such thing as grammar -- at least no concept of it that matters except within the mythology. It is a world of "art" song -- and you may take "art" to mean either "artistic" or "artificial".

Outside of the world of such styles, that is, in the "real world", the substitution of don'(t) for doesn't is only heard among the uneducated. Or rather, many of us judge a person who makes that substitution to be uneducated -- not necessarily through any fault of his own, I should add.

My recommendation is that, as a learner of English, you should consider it a grammatical error, and never use song lyrics as a model for your own English speech.
CJ

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you very much for your exhaustive replies
pa

Anonymous · Answer

Using "don't" where "doesn't" should be may also be a convention of "Black English" as so much of contemporary music has been influenced or is part of black American culture. Elton John uses it in his songs, or more precisely his lyricist Bernie Taupin does. Bernie Taupin often tries to project a folksy American flavor in his lyrics.

I think it is the same with the frequent use of "ain't" in songs. I can't imagine Elton John speaking ordinarily saying "ain't" but it features in a lot of his songs.

don't instead of doesn't in songs lirycs

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