Till death do WE part [closed]

Despite the superficial similarity between "Till death do us part" and "Till death do we part", I believe that the structures of these lines are quite different. In this kind of poetic construction word order is typically thrown out of the window in order _^(haha!) to achieve a more pleasing metre or rhyme. This means that we need to look harder at the words to get a sense of what is happening.

In the traditional line, "us" must be the object of "do part", meaning that we need "death" to be the subject. The line can be roughly interpreted as "until death separates us". The line has the form of a conjunction introducing an independent clause and continues a sentence that began in a previous line.

In the song lyric, "we" is the subject. This means that "death" is not and must be something else. Our options seem to be either: that "death" is the object of "part", as in "until we slice Death in two"; or that "part" takes an intransitive sense in "we do part", leaving "death" to form a prepositional phrase with "until". If "until" is forming a prepositional phrase then it is not also a conjunction, meaning that we also have an unwritten full stop at the end of the preceding line. Without presuming to know the mind of the songwriter, this line should probably be interpreted as the full sentence: "We part ways until death."

Nobody really has the sense of this yet. In

Till death do us part

us is the object of the verb part.

Write it another way to make it clearer:

Till death do part us

Now, why is there a do there instead of a does? Because it is not an indicative but a subjunctive statement. Another way to say that would be

Till death should [or might, or could, or may] part us

If “Till death do us part” sounds a trifle odd to the 21st-century ear that is because it is an Early Modern English phrase, from the Form for the Solemnization of Matrimony in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. The original form there is actually “Till death us do part.” The form “Till death do we part” would literally mean that you and I are parting company, never to meet again unless and until we encounter one another in some afterlife. That is probably not the meaning that the pop-song lyricist had in mind, but I agree with Tristan about disposable pop music, so perhaps the term mind is here hyperbolic.

I don't think it's possible to know for sure what Madonna meant with this phrasing. In the context of the lyrics the ordinary "Till death do us part" would make sense, so it's possible she made a mistake.

Alternately, "till death do we part" could be a sort of reversal of the marriage vow, separating from somebody forever, as in "we'll be apart from now on until we die". So it could be a sort of kiss-off.

My own impression is that it sounds more like the former, and Madonna simply sings "we" instead of "us" as either a mistake or simply because it sounded better.