In The Who’s song “Who Are You”, Pete Townsend (sung by Roger Daltrey) give this lyric, which actually works pretty well in the context of the song:
Yeah, I feel that way too sometimes.
In The Who’s “Athena” the Townsend Similie rears its ugly head again:
Romantic love song, no?
Hey ThisYearsGirl: I love The Who and Zep too. Isn’t “Going to California” the one with the “someone got punched on the nose and it flows” line? Maybe that song’s better if you play it backwards. Zep makes it up with “…So I packed my hopes inside a matchbox, cuz I know it’s time to fly!”
Worst Rhyme: Spirits in the Material World by The Police
“With words they try to jail ya
…but it’s the rhetoric of fail-ya”
Worst Grammar: Horse With No Name by America
“In the desert you can remember your name,
For there ain’t no-one for to give you no pain”
Great Song but Please: Ballad of a Thin Man by Bob Dylan
Now you see this one-eyed midget shouting the word “NOW”
And you say, “For what reason?” and he says, “How?”
And you say, “What does this mean?” and he screams back, “You’re a cow.
Give me some milk or else go home”
On one of the classic hip-hop tracks of all-time, Eric B. is President, Rakim mixes in one messed up line with the rest of the brilliant rhymes:
“You scream I’m lazy, you must be crazy
You thought I was a doughnut, you tried to glaze me”
I have no idea what he means by “glaze me”, but it does rhyme with crazy.
This is the same song that begins:
“I came in the door, i said it before
I never let the mic magnatize me no more
But it’s biting me, fighting me, inviting me to rhyme
I can’t hold it back, I’m looking for the line,
Taking off my coat, clearing my throat
My rhyme will be kicking it until I hit my last note
My mind’ll range to find all kinds of ideas
Self-esteem makes it seem like a thought took years to build
But still say a rhyme after the next one
Prepared, never scared, I’ll just bless one
And you know that I’m the soloist
So Eric B, make 'em clap to this”
The “glaze me” line by no means ruins this song, and it is as great as any other hip-hop song ever, but it seems like rakim wasn’t trying too hard when he wrote that one.
**I got these lyrics from http://www.ohhla.com where you can get lyrics for probably any hip-hop artist ever
By the time of “It’s Hard” Townshend wasn’t really trying very hard anyway, but I think the lyrics to “Athena” were intended to sound rather strange as opposed to traditionally romantic.
But as much as I respect and admire Pete Townshend’s work, he has penned his fair share of clunkers. Consider “I Don’t Even Know Myself”, with “Come on all of you big boys/come on all of you elves”. In an otherwise straightforward Who song about a confused young punk he starts on about ELVES?
I would also quite like the Pearl Jam song “MFC” if not for one line from the chorus: “Ask, I’m an ear.” Surely there must be a better way to convey the idea that you are listening, one that doesn’t bring to mind Gogol’s “The Nose”.
the great brian wilson - perhaps the best songwriter of all- came up with real lyrical clunkers sometimes - from “Solar
System” comes the line “If Mars had life on it , I might find my wife on it”
I ain’t never gonna dance again, since, of course, guilty feet have got no rhythm.
Not that the song was any good, but they were at least trying to be serious up to that point.
From the same period, there’s the Spandau Ballet song in which the singer exclaims, “With a pill in my hand/And a thrill on my tongue.” Not that I even want to think about what that might mean.
I happen to like some of these off-the-wall lyrics; especially when they all fit the song well. Phish is notorious for having these random lyrics in songs that absolutely rock. From “Chalkdust Torture” on * A Picture of Nectar * (one of the best songs on their best album) contains the opening line:
I can’t help but feel sometimes Tom Marshall is really forcing his rhymes (though, to be fair, the lines really do rhyme, even if the lines themselves are contrived). We’ll not even get into Mike Gordon’s lyrical problems…
Eve-6’s song Inside Out has a just plain disturbingly bad chorus, but the song itself is catchy enough…
“Let’s go burn ole’ Nashville down, set it all aflame. Barbecue those greeds that made Country weak and lame. Burn, burn Nash Vegas, cleanse it’s rancid soul. Burn, burn Branson too, making it a big black hole.”
– Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon “Let’s go Burn Ole’ Nashville Down.”
