That reminds me of Kim Wilde’s “Kids In America,” where there’s a powerful new feeling sweeping the nation … well, from “New York to East California,” at least. What a strange place for this feeling to call it a day. I suppose the kids in San Francisco and Los Angeles are simply going to have to miss out.
Yeah, but the kids in Death Valley are rockin’.
If you do not like “Surfin’ Bird”'s lyrics or fail to recognize that it is a classic, you are a Communist.
Same for “Nobody But Me”.
Next, they’ll be ragging on “Land Of A Thousand Dances”.
*Na na-na-na-na na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na na-na-na-na
Come on y’all, let’s say it one more time
(Na na-na-na-na na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na na-na-na-na) *
I like it like that.
Bob Dylan, “Masters of War”:
And you turn and run faster
When the fast bullets fly
First of all, you just said “faster”. Then you use “fast” to describe bullets? Yeah, no use running from slow bullets, I guess.
A recent one that annoys the shit out of me every time I hear it is Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind Part II”:
Now I’m in New York
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
“Where dreams are made of”? Jesus Christ.
The Chordettes croon another “lolli”, seen here (with the wacky mis-transcribed lyrics). These look adequate, and the song’s enough to get my feet tapping.
As are several Chordettes confections. Mr. Sandman also has lots of repeated “bungs” (or whatever you imagine), with similar results to Lollipop. And, any song that (thanks to Pat Ballard) rhymes “Pagliacci” with “Liberace”…
Thanks to the canned music at an old job, about three times a week I got to hear:
and you take my breath away
and I don’t know what to say
Why, you might wonder, doesn’t he know what to say? Don’t worry, he explains in the very next line:
cause you take my breath away
I don’t know the singer, writer or name of this song because I refuse to search for it. The only reasonable explanation is a 15 year old wrote it hoping to get laid.
Rex Smith! You Take My Breath Away
We had the record when I was a kid. :o
Men Without Hats, “Pop Goes the World”
Every time I wonder where the world went wrong
End up lying on my face saying ring-a-ding-a-ding-dong
enough said.
Good old Sammy Hagar, the Red Rocker. “Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy” features this little couplet:
Right on time, a tight fit right on the money
So sublime, hot sweet cherries on the vine
Umm, Sammy, while we appreciate the salaciousness of the cherry imagery … cherries don’t grow on vines. Ask George Washington sometime where cherries come from.
And if you say it was all about the rhyme, he earlier sings (same musical phrasing):
What I like, is what you’ve got to offer
Just my type, I don’t mind playing on the edge
He didn’t need the freakin’ rhyme!
Yeah, cherries on the vine has bugged me for years.
Survivor’s “I Can’t Hold Back”:
“And in the night the silence
Speaks to you and I”
America lyrics are famously lazy and poor anyhow. Witness “Ventura Highway”:
‘Cause the free wind is blowin’ through your hair
and the days surround your daylight there,
Seasons cryin’ no despair
Alligator lizards in the air
Ha, I love that. It’s not only a bizarre non-sequitur (I think they explained it as describing the shape of the clouds), but it’s so pointlessly specific. It’s not just any old lizards floating around in the air, it’s them alligator lizards.
I would make the argument that while those lyrics are bad, they are not necessarily lazy. It does follow the theme of the song. The fault goes in writing a song lamenting leaving your beautiful cake out on the rain in a park. And “MacArthur Park is melting in the rain, all the sweet green icing, flowing down” is actually rather evocative. I just don’t understand why you want me to visualize your rained-on park-cake.
The more I think about it, the more I want to make the case for Journey’s “Feelin’ That Way” from my original post. (And again, I love that song and how it rolls into “Anytime”):
*Give me all of your sunshine,
A spark is all I need,
To take it away, all of the shadows,
Well what more can I say? *
It doesn’t get lazier than that. No bad rhyme. No tortured syntax. That is complete surrender. It’s especially jarring because the first three lines are decent.
Though the Neil Diamond and Emerson, Lake and Palmer examples are admittedly hard to top.
The answer is drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
Well all the main points of “Horse with No Name” have been covered (and uh-uh, Biffy, we already know “the heat was hot” by the simple fact that we’ve been told it was heat, which is, by definition, hot); the Turtles’ reputation has been properly defended by explaining the parodic nature of their Battle of the Bands album; and still there are so many to choose from…!
One that always annoyed me was that Leonard Nimoy horror "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins." Clearly, some Tin-pan Alley green-visor guy was handed The Hobbit by a higher-up and told, "I hear the kids are eating this one up, see what you can do with it." After about ten minutes of browsing, he wrote the song, touching on the major points, and weirdly skewing details in the manner of "In the middle of the Earth in the land of Shire"--which is like saying "In the recent settlement of York in the nation of Bronx."
No one's said anything about Joe Jones's "You Talk Too Much," which rhymes "You worry me to death" with "You even worry my pet." "You worry me to death" is a little cliched, but I'll accept it, but if you simply must choose the assonant word, at least choose one that makes sense. I'd probably make it "What--are you strung out on meth?" but I recognize that that's inappropriate for a pop tune. But they couldn't have figured out "You never run out of breath"? Weird.
Also, repetition is perfectly all right in lyrics, as are scat syllables. You could sing Hamlet's soliloquy to "Surfin' Bird," but that's not what the song was meant, uh, "to be." It's fine for what it is. And I wouldn't trade the Marcels' "Blue Moon" for the moon itself!When I hear Wilco’s Hummingbird, I always wonder if Jeff Tweedy could have done better than:
A cheap sunset
On a television set
Could upset her
But he never could
Or to paraphrase Dave Barry describing his stint in a band back in his college days, “We chiefly played Land Of A Thousand Dances to drunk frat boys because they didn’t care that we didn’t know the lyrics beyond I said a Na”.
I have always been sure that Paul McCartney, songsmith extraordinaire, at some point took it as a personal challenge to prove he could take any ol’ blather for lyrics, set it to catchy pop fluff and make a hit song out of it. Especially in his “Wings” era. As if to proclaim to the world, I defy you to find another person who could make a song with the following lyrics and have it reach #2 in the UK and #3 in the US charts (even if it was in 1976).
*Someone’s knockin’ at the door;
Somebody’s ringing the bell.
Do me a favor,
Open the door,
And let 'em in.
*
Followed by a roll call of his friends and family (by first name).
Sorry OP, I don’t know if this is laziness, or trying really, really hard: It’s Eminem rhyming “balcony” with “how can he” (but I love it) 
**"And all those who look down on me, I’m tearing down your balcony
No ifs ands or buts, don’t ask him why or how can he."
**
from Not Afraid
I am also convinced that it was intentional. We have his previous work to demonstrate that he wasn’t a complete hack at writing lyrics. However when this thread was started I could easily name ten of his songs that qualified.
I recently went through his entire catalog because I did not like his post-Beatles career at all. I wanted to form an opinion before he kicked off and the media performed a Michael Jackson-like reassessment of his talent.
I came away impressed. He was much more experimental than I had given him credit for, but he kept those songs separate from what he offered as singles. Still hate almost all of his Wings albums and most stuff up to the mid Eighties. He seems to be putting much more effort into his albums since his wife died.
John had always been my favorite and I know his work well. After listening to all of Paul’s stuff I believe that John was the superior lyricist and Paul better with melodies.
I vote for anything written in the past 10 years and sung with auto tune.
In other words, pretty much any pop music.