Good songs, Bad lines

Here’s the rule to this thread:
The song itself must be good or at least tolerable.
(this rules out McArther Park, Young Girl,etc.)
So the song is great, but there is one line you find
stupid, silly, ridiculous, or whatever.

RULES: the song must be good or at least tolerable.
(This rules out MacArther Park, Having My Baby, Girl You’ll Be A Woman Soon, etc.)

My entries:
Riders On The Storm The Doors
“There’s a killer on the road;
His brain is squirming like a toad.”

Stairway To Heaven Led Zeppelin
I realize that this may fall into the “intolerable”
category, but that is more from overplay than the song itself. It’s actually a pretty good tune, except for:
“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow
don’t be alarmed now;
It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen.”
I’m drawing a blank (much to your relief)…so help me out here…

Drawing a blank (much to your relief)…
Help out here!

It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen,"

Sorry for the repetition and redunancy.
I tend to repeat myself, especially when I say things over and over again.

Can I use that for a sig?

As for the OP, I have nothing to add. All I can do is agree with you on Stairway to Heaven. Spring clean? May Queen? Huh?

One of my favorite songs of all time that has the most idiotic lyrics:

Paint It Black, by the Stones.

I see a red door and I want to paint it black? WTF?

Anyway, I love that song. Too bad they couldn’t have come up with better lyrics…

Creed has this gem on the Human Clay album:

In life, there are many quotients
And I hope I find the mean.

Can you tell these guys got out of school recently?

I think any Beatles song will have at least one bad line in it, though I like many of the songs. If you think about their drug-induced phase…

Magical Mystery Tour album, I am the Walrus:
“I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.”

Hey, that could be a sig.
I don’t know if this qualifies on second thought, there are just too many weird lines in these songs.

You people probably don’t know this, but I am a big fan of Rush :slight_smile:

Way back in the past, before Neil Peart joined the band, all lyrics were written by Geddy Lee. But let’s not go there. Even Peart, who is widely regarded as a great lyrcist (is that a word?), has a few blunders.

From The Alien Shore, which in itself is a great song:
"*For you and me–We hold these truths to be self-evident
For you and me–We’d elect each other president
For you and me–We might agree
But that’s just us

Reaching for the alien shore*"

We’d elect each other President? Woohoo, how romantic, dude! A very rare example of Peart struggling to rhyme his lines.

Well it would be, Coldy, if you spelled it right. :smiley:

L-Y-R-I-C-I-S-T.

I don’t do this often, but couldn’t resist that one.

As for the “we’d elect each other president,” I have to say that’s one of the best bad lines I’ve heard in a while. Is that even * possible? *

Not in Canada, it ain’t :smiley:

Would you believe that leaving the “i” out or lyricist was actually a typo? I meant to type lyricist! Really!

Good quote tradesilicon, NOT :rolleyes:
If you were gonna quote a Beatles song, you should have gone with “Don’t Pass Me By” *
“You were in a carwreck
And you lost your hair.”*
I’ll think of more later.

Yeah, like typing OR instead of OF was a typo too? Just too many to be believeable, Coldfire. :wink:

Most of these aren’t truly LAME, but rather just ridiculous, like most of They Might Be Giants or the Pixies. As far as suddenly BAD goes, in some Dead Can Dance song Jarboe sings this line very fast as it doesn’t even fit the meter of the music: “sonambulistic, maniacal, in the dark,” where it definitely doesn’t belong.

I’d participate, but the lyrics of the music I listen to don’t make any sense to begin with.

Alice in Chains:
“20 hours a day/
won’t let you paint/
my picture/
milk carton sized.”

Soul Coughing:
“Normalize the signal and you’re banging on freon
paleolithic eon
put the fake goatee on
and it booms as cool as
sugar free jazz”

Hooverphonic:
“Prophet 60091
This is the flight number
of our galactic sun.”

Well, one of my all-time favorites is the Grateful Dead’s “China Cat Sunflower,” lyrics by Robert Hunter:

Look for a while at the China Cat Sunflower
proud-walking jingle in the midnight sun
Copper-dome bodhi drip a silver kimono
Like a crazy-quilt star gown
Through a dream night wind

Krazy Kat peeking through a lace bandanna
Like a one-eyed Cheshire
Like a diamond-eye Jack
A leaf of all colors plays
A golden-string fiddle
To a double-e waterfall over my back

Comic book colors on a violin river
Crying Leonardo words
From out a silk trombone
I rang a silent bell
Beneath a shower of pearls
In the eagle wing palace
Of the Queen Chinee.

So just what the hell is a “double-e waterfall” ? And how does it go “over my back” ? I mean, that just doesn’t fucking make any SENSE.

I always laugh when I here the local ‘Oldies’ station play In The Ghetto by Elvis Presley I think??
"And then one day in desperation, the young man breaks the law
“He fires a gun, he steals a car, he tries to run, but he don’t get far.”

Ummm…if he just stole a car, why is he running? If he’d just got in the damn car and drove off he might have gotten a lot further!

You can “run” from the cops on a bicycle if you want. It isn’t to be taken literally, which is to say he wasn’t really running.

Or maybe he stole the car from Fred Flintstone.

Pete Townsend, truly one of the all-time great rock lyricists, came up with this clinker in The Who’s otherwise fine song Naked Eye:

 "you can cover up your guts,
 but when you cover up your nuts
 you're admiting that there must be something wrong."

Well I’m sure it sounded profound when he wrote it, but it makes me wince.

Most of the Led Zeppelin song “Going to California”–“There’s a woman with love in her heart and flowers in her hair” and then that line about the queen with no king who plays guitar and cries. Yes, I know it’s about Joni Mitchell, but I still think it’s stupid.
My “Stairway” vote-intolerable.

Hmmm–I should point out, despite this post, I’m actually a huge Zeppelin fan.

It makes perfect sense when in the umm… right state of mind! Maybe I’ve been to too many dead shows?

V.