On Adele´s song "Someone like you" there´s a part that says "Bound by the surprise of our glory days". Is it an actual Passive voice?
1 Answer
The sentence from the lyrics is:
We were born and raised / In a summer haze / bound by the surprise / Of our glory days .
The (implied) subject of "bound" is "we" so this is not a passive construction.
In any case, attempting grammatical analysis of popular song lyrics is often frustrating and of little benefit. Songwriters will freely violate grammatical rules to achieve rhythm, rhyme, and emotional effect. They may not even care about clarity of meaning.
Just to be clear, this particular lyric is not ungrammatical, and being in the passive voice certainly does not make any test ungrammatical, or in any way wrong. But song lyrics are often poor examples of English usage, and sometiems questiosn about them are of limited value here on ELL for that reason.
answered May 23, 2019 at 23:13
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Plus there's nothing wrong with the passive voice in the first place. Even if this were such an example, it wouldn't be violating anything. Commented May 23, 2019 at 23:25
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@Jason Bassford neither the questioner nor I said that there was anything wrong with using the passive voice. One might want to identify when it is being used without wanting to avoid it as an error. A recent answer of mine (ell.stackexchange.com/questions/211818) gives my views on the use of the passive voice rather fully. Commented May 23, 2019 at 23:29
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But wouldnt it be "We were bound by the surprise"? And if Im not wrong (at least following the example I looked) it would be passive like Commented May 23, 2019 at 23:42
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@Audryplier Hmm on a second look, this might be a passive construction, with the active form being "the surprise bound us". If so, it only goes to demonstrate that in some cases passive constructions are superior. Commented May 23, 2019 at 23:49
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@DavidSiegel You discussed the sentence, passive constructions, and then said that "songwriters will freely violate grammatical rules." What I'm saying is that even if it is passive, that is not a violation of grammar rules. Commented May 24, 2019 at 2:53