What bothers me is people changing little words that change the sense of a song, or wreck a line, because they aren't paying attention, or don't think it matters. A lot of this is the shift from hypotaxis to parataxis, which is normal in folk and popular literature (that is, the elimination of causality and subordinate clauses, and their replacement with simple additions, "and", "and"). It is understandable, but for people who know the original, there is a loss of structure that is painful. For example, Alison Kraus does a beautiful version of the Beatles "I Will" on one of her albums (actually from a Tony Rice album originally), but it is marred by the loss of one word. The line is: "And when at last I find you, your song will fill the air, sing it loud so I can hear you, make it easy to be near you, for the things you do endear you...." She changes "for the things you do" to "and the things you do", which eliminates the specific causality of the line. To me it is exactly like Rick Fielding's sensitivity to a missing chord. Drives me crazy.

yours, Peter T.