Why all the Bad Grammar in Popular Music?

I've had Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" stuck in my head for days. I was thinking this morning, when I turned off the radio on "Need You Now", that I'd much rather have Lady Gaga stuck in my head than Lady Antebellum...

Anyway, when I sing "Bad Romance", I discovered that I automatically was correcting some bad grammar. "I want your loving and I want your revenge, you and I could write a bad romance." Of course, that's not what Lady Gaga sings. She sings "You and me could write a bad romance." My mother (a former English teacher) wouldn't let me get away with that. "Would you say 'Me went to the store'?" she'd query me if I said something like "Jane and me went to the store." I learned.

But, for some reason, popular songs are full of the kind of grammar people wouldn't use in everyday speech. Why?

Years ago, when I was single again after over 20 years of marriage, I heard a song on the radio. "I don't wanna be no man's woman," Sinead O'Connor wailed. Hmm, I thought, neither do I. I'd much rather be some man's woman. Well, that wasn't what she meant at all. "I only wanna be my own woman," she sang later in the song. Well, if that's what she meant, why didn't she say so earlier?

Double negatives have been a part of popular music for generations, growing (as rock and roll did) out of the blues. I was looking for a suitable blues quote, and happened across Bessie Smith, "Downhearted Blues", recorded in 1923:

"I ain't never loved but three men in my life
No, I ain't never loved but three men in my life
'T'was my father, brother and the man who wrecked my life."

Does anybody say "ain't" any more? When I was a kid, we used to joke "'Ain't' ain't in the dictionary!" Back then it wasn't. Now it is. And for some reason, it shows up all the time in popular music. Take the chorus of Train's current hit song, "Hey, Soul Sister", for example:

"Hey soul sister, ain't that Mr. Mister on the radio, stereo, the way you move ain't fair, you know!"

I wonder if Patrick Monahan would use "ain't" in everyday speech. I'm willing to bet he wouldn't. And I like this guy; he wrote a song about somebody with my old-fashioned first name, Virginia, and made her sexy and desirable.

Anyway, I'm sure I could go on and on. But I won't.