"Ticket to Ride" lyric change

[Actorman]

Does anyone know or have an educated guess as to why Carpenters changed the lyrics in "Ticket to Ride" from "she ought to think twice, she ought to do right by me" to "he ought to do right, he ought to do right by me" for their version? (And I'm obviously not referring to the pronoun change.) I'm assuming Richard was the one who made the change, but if not, he would at least have had the final approval on it. Richard was such a huge Beatles fan, I'm surprised he would change one of their lyrics. Especially on a number one hit of which millions would have known the lyrics by heart. The change doesn't really add anything to song. In fact, it just makes it unnecessarily repetitive in my opinion.

It was obviously deliberate (unlike the "began to pray" mistake in "California Dreaming") since it was done on both the 1969 original and 1973 re-recording.

Thoughts?

 

[Simon KC1950]

Interesting point - I never really thought about that, I hope we find out why.

Maybe it just sounded better with all of their overdubs to sing it like that?

On a side note (from one NS fan to another ) doesn't Nancy Sinatra also sing "Began" to pray on her version of "California Dreamin'"?

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I suspect Richard thought it would "roll off the tongue" better. Or, I suppose there is the slim possibility that the lyrics were transcribed incorrectly?

Similarly, I always wondered why Lani Hall (on her debut solo album) changed the lyrics to Elton John's "Tiny Dancer." Elton John's version is:

The words she knows, the tune she hums

Lani's version reverses it, as in:

The tune she knows, words she hums

Elton's makes more sense, so I have always thought that either Lani just flubbed it, and the "take" was otherwise good, so they decided not to fix it... or else they just didn't even notice or realize it.

With the Carpenters recording, since they did it twice, it's a pretty good indicator that they did it on purpose.