Pop not folk, but I have always thought these - from Elton john's Candle in the Wind, lyrics by Bernie Taupin - were among the worst lines ever written, if only because they are so sloppy


Even when you died
The press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Marilyn was found in the nude


It is sloppy because of one word: WAS

If Taupin had written:

Even when you died/The press still hounded you/All the papers had to say/That Marilyn was found in the nude

...he would have been making the point he intended, ie that the evil press gleefully added that the body was naked. Instead, he suggests – absurdly of course – that the papers said ONLY that she was found in the nude. The reports of MM's death would, in those circumstances, have been very short indeed.

But then, maybe only a journalist would care.