What about A Shot In the Arm, where he sings:
We fell in love
In the key of C
We walked along
Down by the sea
You followed me down
The neck to D
We fell again
Into the sea
It’s very easy to mock lyrics when they’re in cold print, because they were never meant to be experienced that way. The real test is whether they work when heard in the context of the accompanying music. And that’s why “Ah-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom” seems ridiculous in print, but sublime when Little Richard screams it at just the right moment in Tutti Fruiti.
That said, Sham 69’s If The Kids Are United still deserves a place in any Hall of Shame: “Freedom is given, / Speak how you feel, / I have no freedom, / How do you feel?”
“I kissed a girl, and I liked i-i-i-i-it.”
When I first heard “I Kissed A Girl”, I wasn’t sure whether or not I liked it. The five-syllable “it” was what decided it for me.
Or, as it was put in the Stephen King episode of Family Guy, “Piano Riff Woo!”
The lyrics to the Lolita Yah Yah song (from the film LOLITA) are as follows:
Yah Yah
Wah Wah
Yah Yah
Wah Wah
What genius wracked his brain to compose those?
Also, the last line in the MY FAIR LADY song “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” reads as follows:
Loverly, loverly, loverly, loverly, loverly.
(I think there are 5 loverlys, but could be six - I didn’t bother to do an exact count)
“i would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that”
Repeated about 100 times. Put a little more effort into it next time, wouldja, Mr. Loaf?
Oh. I wondered why he flew to Nice instead of DeGaulle. I vaguely thought there might be a well-know flight to Nice people took after an evening of gambling in Monte Carlo.
“Jungle love, jungle love…its drivin me crazzee”?
Very profound-goood for a Ph.D thesis.
Bonus tracks are great for this. Often they’re not quite finished. My current favorite is Alone by Assemblage 23. It’s a great song - the music is perfect, the vocals are perfect, and I couldn’t imagine why they didn’t put it on the album. The I listened to the lyrics and the songwriter explained to me:
The rain comes down like angry bees
And the streetlight flickers on
I thought that I could overcome this song
But now I see I was wrong.
The thing about America’s lyrics was, they were streaky.
You got your “plants and rocks and things” lyrics … I mean … what sort of things? and you have your “the heat was hot” … orly? lyrics … then you got “and the story it told/about a river that flowed/made me sad to think it was dead” which is … pretty good … you never knew where they were coming from. I’d class “gator lizards in the air” as coming from their inspired side …
“Simple” is when you’ve managed to reduce it down to just the right words. “We Shall Overcome” is simple, and that’s how it got to be super-iconic. The Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is simple.
“San Francisco (Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)” was also pretty iconic, but it was lazy, haphazardly rhyming words with themselves and making little real sense.
On the contrary, I imagine that it helps a great deal.
From the same song, "They headed down to, ooh, old El Paso.
That’s where they ran into a great big …(I want to say “asshole”, because it fits better than “hassel”.)
O Holy Night
They get about 2/3 through the first verse and just give up.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!
I was in the US over Christmas and heard this gem
*I wanna be a billionaire so freaking bad
Buy all of the things I never had…
It’s been a couple months since I been single so
You can call me Travis Claus minus the ho ho
Yeah, can’t forget about me stupid
Everywhere I go I’ma have my own theme music*
The first time I heard it, I found myself pissed off at the inanity. It sounded like a stream-of-consciousness whine.
aaaaaaaaagghhh, just lazy lazy lazy.
Fair enough. I would still categorize ‘Love Me Do’ as lazy - rather than simple - though.
Someone to love
Somebody new
Someone to love
Someone like you
(not that I don’t dig the song, mind you)
mmm
But these simple lyrics are the perfect ones for the song. Lazy is when the line clearly isn’t right for the song, but you leave it in because you can’t come up with anything better.
Someone to love
Somebody new
Someone to love
Someone named Lou
That would be lazy.
See post #49.
I think we should we exclude all novelty tunes and musicals, I mean, they’re both stupid and lazy by nature.
We used to make fun of The Offspring because we imagined Dexter in the studio saying “I didn’t write any lyrics yet but if I did they would go like this…Ohh Yeah…Yaaa…Yaaa, Yaaa Yaaa!”
There was an 80’s Japanese metal band called Loudness who barely spoke english and had a minor hit with “Crazy Nights”. Apparently, the lead singer during recording, randomly chanted M-Z-A for a bridge, intending to come up with something later. That take was used and it took on a life of it’s own, even though it has no meaning at all.
The wild and windy night that the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears crying for the day.
Since when do pools of tears cry? Aren’t they a result of crying?