This deep into the thread and nobody’s mentioned Spandau Ballet’s “True”?
“I bought a ticket to the world
But now I’ve come back again
Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh, I want the truth to be said”
And let’s not forget “Daddy was a cop, on the East Side of Chicago …” Don’t they have maps in your country, Limey?
That link doesn’t support your case. I’ve always heard this song sneered at because there supposedly is no “East Side” in Chicago–which I’ve always found overly pedantic, as any region has an east side, and you can’t hear the capital letters in the song–yet the Wikipedia article you linked to points out that there is indeed an area of Chicago called East Side.
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned those two all-time hits “99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall” and “The Bear Went Over The Mountain”? Talk about giving up after writing a first verse!
I was about to defend this one, and explain that “I” is the end of the line but not the end of the sentence. I always thought it was “So open up your morning light and say a little prayer, for I know that if we are to stay alive [something unintelligible the rhymes with I].”
However, checking the video on YouTube I discovered that I had been mishearing the lines in a way that made them more grammatical than they are. The song opens with “So open up your morning light and say a little prayer for I. You know that if we are to stay alive, and find the peace in every eye.” Um, okay. 
Many of you are confusing stupid lyrics with lazy lyrics.
For illustration, here are examples from the lads:
Lazy:
“Love, love me do
You know I love you
I’ll always be true
So please, love me do.”
Stupid:
“I-I-I-I-I dug a pony
Well you can syndicate any boat you row
Yes you can syndicate any boat you row”
Get it?
mmm
I’d call “Love Me Do” simple, and “I Dig a Pony” whacky, and consider both OK (speaking as a lyricist). Whacky’s fun, and Lennon had a gift for it; as for simple, it’s often a lot more difficult than it looks on the surface.
I’ve always liked this song. But as a child, the lyrics to this song perplexed me. Then as a teenager, I realized that they were describing some sort of hallucinogenic trip.
So happy together
How is the weather?
always got to me.
“Firework” by Katy Perry has some real doozies:
“Do you ever feel/Like a plastic bag/Drifting through the wind”
“Make 'em go ‘ah! ah! ah!’/You’re gonna leave 'em all in awe awe awe”
“Boom boom boom/Even brighter than the moon moon moon”
You also have her squeaky voice to contend with.
Despite all this, I still think it’s a good song.
Ooh, this sounds fun! 
Double - Captain of Her Heart
High on my “songs that desperately needed a guitar solo” list. An easy listening bent does not excuse flogging the same effin’ four lines ad nauseum. Could you tell us how she handled this callous abandonment? Where she’s going from here? Why she never made a move on the first mate? Something?
Nazareth - Hair of the Dog
The reason it was so shocking to hear Inigo Montoya use the expression “son of a bitch” was that was the only instance of that phrase in the movie. It kind of loses its impact if you repeat it for about 95% of the frickin’ song. No, I’m not going to count.
Jefferson Starship - We Built This City
One of the most hated rock songs ever, and for good reason. Five minutes of largely incomprehensible rambling. Even by sellout standards, this is pretty sad. Anyone who actually performs this in San Francisco should be thrown under a cable car.
R.E.M. - The One I Love
Look, guys, you’re awesome, some of the best music of my college years, but you could’ve put a little more effort into this. Even George Harrison never released a song consisitng of ONE LOUSY STANZA REPEATED THREE TIMES. Not that I know of, anyway.
Enya - Anywhere Is
Sorry, just because you singlehandedly brought New Age music into the mainstream does not mean you get a free pass on this. Orinoco Flow wasn’t exactly a lyrical masterpiece either, but at least we could tell what it was about (i.e. a cruise ship that got way off course). This, as far as I can determine, is the result of a 5-minute brainstorming session that you intended to turn into a somewhat comprehensible song but never got around to. And I gotta ask this…anywhere is what, exactly?
Re. Horse With No Name. It’s America. Their songs are weird. All of it. Taking issue with “the heat was hot” or “'cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain” is like saying an Enzo Ferrari has a really kick-awesome driveshaft. Personally, I think HWNN is the perfect choice for introducing kids to creative incomprehensible weirdness. When they’re older, they can move on to They Might Be Giants.
Re. Land of 1,000 Dances - See, the thing I never understand is why nobody ever takes issue with the the two metal screams. How you can blow a gasket over “na na na na na” etc. but don’t even flinch at “WHOOOOOOAAAAAAAAHHHHWWWW!!!” is beyond me.
P.S. “Song she brang to me?” There’s a word for this, Mr. Diamond: “No.” It’s very hard to be poignant when you sound like Senor Cardgage.
P.P.S. “Achy Breaky Heart?” Achy Breaky Heart? ACHY??? BREAKY??? HEART??? Were you trying to become the most loathed country music singer of all time? (And if so, how much did Hank Williams Jr. pay you?)
DKW:
Thanks for reminding me of this, and also of a similarly lazy song - “There She Goes” by Sixpence None the Richer.
No, that’s not actually the bad bit of that lyric. The bad bit is when you watch the video and see it’s actually an earring (good luck rhyming that one)
My nomination: 80’s one-hit-wonder Right Said Fred and “I’m too Sexy for my Shirt”. Containing such gems as:
“I’m too sexy for my hat
Too sexy for my hat what do you think about that”
and
“I’m too sexy for my cat too sexy for my cat
Poor pussy poor pussy cat”
(I actually quite like that song BTW. Especially the ending.)
I would love to hear an explanation about the difference between ‘lazy’ and ‘simple’.
I will concede your other point, though; ‘whacky’ is a more apt description than ‘stupid’ with regard to Lennon’s lyrics. And yes, he was very good at whacky.
(the more you type the word whacky, the whackier it looks)
mmm
I don’t think it gets much lazier than Anal Cunt’s “Tom Arnold”. And yes, such a song by such a band exists. Here’s the full lyrics:
“Tom Arnold
Tom Arnold
Tom Arnold”
That’s the whole song. Seriously. It doesn’t help that the song itself is nine seconds long.
There was a kids TV show called “Theodore the Tugboat” (an obvious takeoff of “Thomas the Tank Engine”) I think when they asked a songwriter to write a theme song all they told him was that it was about a friendly tugboat because here are the lyrics to the theme song:
“Theodore!
He’s a tugboat and a friendly tugboat too
Theodore!
He likes to do the things that friendly tugboats do”"
That’s it. Lame
Performed by Sixpence…But originally by The LAs about 12 years earlier.
My entry is “You Are So Beautiful”, popularized by Joe Cocker.
I heard this song a million times as a kid, but one day, I really paid attention to it and thought to myself “That’s all?” Talk about songs that are just 6 words long (plus an extra 9 thrown in twice).
Well, the third line of the song does change from “A simple prop to occupy my time” to “Another prop has occupied my time” by the conclusion. Not that this transforms the song into a lyrical wonderland, obviously, but it’s something.
wow, if that’s the case then the writer committed a double offense by not only using forced bad grammar to make a rhyme, but then “rhyming” a word with its homophone!
Anal Cunt rocks! They aren’t lazy, they just embrace brevity.
My favorite lazy/stupid lyrics come from Van Hagar’s first big hit, Why Can’t This Be Love, which was played approximately 4,896,786,233,491 times per month in the mid-to-late '80s in every top 40/rock/adult contemporary market in the United States:
“Only time will tell
If we can stand the test of time”
No shit? Really? Wow, how insightful. :rolleyes:
[nitpick]
That’s from 1992, not the 1980s.
[/nitpick]