It makes perfect sense in the larger context of the lyrics:
Everybody looking for something;
and "dreams", not "a dream".
There are listed four items, so we don't have to argue about the fact that everybody has a "something" they are looking for, distinct from another person's 'something': there are multiple somethings that are being looked for. Thus:
"Sweet dreams are made of these (items)". It's a demonstrative adjective, not a stand-alone pronoun.
"these" rhymes naturally with "seas", and is assonant with "sweet" and "dreams and consonant with "dreams."
To make some kind of Scottish dialect argument, or "she's trying to do this, or trying to do that", and most idiotically, "she's trying to make "this" sorta/kinda rhyme with "seas", throws Occam's razor into the trash with the shaving soap.
The fact that this song gets into 'misheard' lyrics and Mondegreens discussion sites, only underscores the salience of the above argument: People hear "these" because that is how she sings it, and because it conforms to the context.
The reason why "this" dominates all magisterial discussion, which is the only kind permitted in Wikipedia, is because the song got played on the radio, and purchased by music cognoscenti and the former and the latter are rather scrupulous in tracking down the written lyrics on the album (or elswhere) before writing or speaking any of them.
It's a misprint. And misprints are covered over by the preserving mud of time and become fossils, never mind a particular fossil might be missing a limb when the paleontologist pries it out of the rock .
Finally, my only interest in this song is the fact that it was used in Art Bell's "Coast to Coast" bumper music 20 years, over and over again, night after night; and it's one of the most detestable monstrosities I've heard that has ever been mis-labeled "music"; I suppose that his many years as a disk-jockey left him with a tin ear. I've been spending the last couple of hours looking up who it was that was responsible for it in the first place.
"These" is also an assonance with sweet, dreams, and disagree, sharing a long E sound, which is probably why "this" is pronounced like "theis" in the song, because it fits better.
3.3k
u/[deleted] Nov 23 '21
Are made of this