Is "alright" all right?

[Brian Cady]

The New York Times on The Who's contribution to
spelling:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/02/news/edaaron.php

Language: When alright is all right  
Aaron Britt The New York Times
Published: July 2, 2006
NEW YORK LANGUAGE
 
Rock 'n' roll has told us lots of things over the
years. It has told us that "all we are is dust in the
wind" and that it wants "to hold your hand" and then
"spend the night together." Aside from its many
cooing, snarling and pleading invitations to the
boudoir, pop music has promised nothing more often
than the optimistically vague: "Everything's gonna be
alright." Why does alright sound just, well, all
right?
 
When seeking clarity in the language game, a good bet
is to consult Shakespeare. Here we turn to the
Shakespeares of rock: John, Paul, George and Ringo.
 
In the song "A Hard Day's Night," John Lennon sings,
"But when I get home to you/ I find the things that
you do/ Will make me feel alright." Just alright?
Here's U2 with a poetic explication of the same
sentiment from 1991's "Mysterious Ways": "It's
alright, it's alright, it's alright/ She moves in
mysterious ways/ It's alright, it's alright, it's
alright/ Lift my days, light up my nights."
 
The two groups mean something different from the
"satisfactory, average or mediocre" that all right
conveys. What they and countless other pop musicians
mean is "sublime, fantastic, second to none." Alright
is better than just all right; it's the best, the
greatest, the tops.
 
A single spin will assure the listener that the
singers here do not mean "decent" or "acceptable." As
Sasha Frere- Jones, the pop music critic at The New
Yorker, told me, "When alright comes up in rock 'n'
roll, it's often in a poetic sense, where it means
that something is really good, much better than the
vernacular all right."
 
More on this later, but first let's clear up what has
grandfatherly grammarians griping and English teachers
clawing the chalkboards. The prominence of alright in
pop music is clear, but some usagists insist that
alright is all wrong, proscribing the curt conflation
in favor of the standard all right. Rockers themselves
are split: some stick to the standards, and others
stick it to the Man. The New York Times Manual of
Style and Usage and The Associated Press Stylebook are
in complete agreement on this issue: never alright.
 
According to Wendalyn Nichols, editor of Copy Editor
newsletter: "All right is still a two-word locution.
We do have a higher tolerance for creative spellings
in creative spheres, although 'The Kids Are Alright'"
- a 1965 hit for the Who - "gave everyone permission
to spell it wrong. One hundred years from now I'll bet
they'll be two separate words."
 
Alright has all the same meanings in pop music that it
does outside: as an intensifier of a statement, as in
Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" ("Stay on
the streets of this town and they'll be carving you up
alright") or as an attention grabber or exhortation,
as in Eazy-E's "Nobody Move" ("Alright/ Empty your
pockets, but do it slow").
 
But rock 'n' roll has added another meaning to the
word, suggesting that all is, indeed, right. In his
1972 glam anthem "Lady Stardust," David Bowie offers a
useful rock definition for alright: "He was alright
the band was altogether/ Yes he was alright the song
went on forever:/ And he was awful nice/ Really quite
paradise."
 
How do we know that the tepid term doesn't actually
mean the mild approval it suggests? When John Lennon
needed the term to mean "just O.K.," he had to supply
the definition himself. In "Strawberry Fields Forever"
he sings, "But it's all right, that is I think it's
not too bad."
 
Whence the superlative sense of all right? As Erin
McKean, editor of The New Oxford American Dictionary,
suggests: "In rock 'n' roll the affect is to be cool.
To play it cool you say that something is 'alright'
instead of 'wonderful' or 'amazing.'" She calls the
superlative sense of alright "a contextually derived
meaning where all right is imbued with the best
possible meaning."
 
As well as causing a continual crisis with the
red-pencil set, alright has also made it into the most
hallowed spots in the rock lexicon: a word you can
repeat endlessly regardless of context. All right has
joined such stalwarts as "baby" and "yeah" in the
halls of song- ending melodramatic melisma, the
practice of singing multiple scale-scaling notes on
one syllable.
 
Jump to 2003 for the incandescent single "Hey Ya!"
from the rappers OutKast. Here is perhaps the most
emphatic use of the term in pop music. Andre 3000
repeats the word 14 times in the song's breakdown.
It's a far cry from Lennon's plangent repetition that
closes the Beatles' "Revolution," but 35 years on and
in a different genre altogether, alright is all right.

 
(Aaron Britt is the researcher for the Language
column. William Safire is on vacation.)

-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com

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