# Great songs with not so great lyrics **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** music\ **Created:** [January 30, 2025, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630 "2025-01-30T17:36:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/41 "2025-01-31T09:21:55Z")
Many Metallica lyrics are pretty silly / naïve, but I think the cake goes to _Eye of the beholder_ : > Do you choose what I choose? > More alternatives > Energy derives from both the plus and negative ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/42 "2025-01-31T10:53:06Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > I’m reminded of the possibly apocryphal statement supposedly made by Peter Gabriel: “There have been many great songs with terrible lyrics. There have been no great songs with terrible music.” I’d say this is true as a generalization, but not as an absolute. For example, if you reduce Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” to just its melody and chords, it feels like you’re being attacked by a piano-shaped jackhammer. That’s a song that is _all about_ its lyrics (and consciously so, I would say). ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/43 "2025-01-31T11:47:07Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > That’s a song that is _all about_ its lyrics (and consciously so, I would say). The thing is that it’s not a great song, but a weak rip-off of R.E.M.'s “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It”. ---
**Author:** ![Jaycat.again](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat.again/32/11525_2.png) [@Jaycat.again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaycat.again)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/44 "2025-01-31T13:03:11Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > “Jelly roll” is old jazz slang for marijuana, [Among other things.](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jelly%20roll) ---
**Author:** ![iamatractorboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iamatractorboy/32/21261_2.png) [@iamatractorboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamatractorboy)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/45 "2025-01-31T13:18:00Z")
The Beatles - I Want You (She’s So Heavy): - I want you I want you so bad I want you I want you so bad It’s driving me mad It’s driving me mad Etc etc etc etc etc. And that’s it. Great song… not so great lyrics. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/46 "2025-01-31T17:00:13Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > “Jelly roll” is old jazz slang for marijuana, so it makes sense in a song called “And It Stoned Me”. I can find no evidence for this. [Link.](https://willingway.com/common-drug-slang/) [Link2.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_slang_names_for_cannabis) And many other cites. There are many cites claiming it is slang for vulva or sexual intercourse. But that doesn’t really fit in the song. I’m sure I’ve read in an interview with Morrison that it not a reference to drugs. I’m sticking with he needed a rhyme for “soul”, but who knows. ETA: I found this: _The song is about an experience Morrison had when he was 12 years old. After a day of fishing outside a village named Ballystockart in his native Ireland, Morrison and his friends stopped in one of the village’s houses, where they saw an old man sitting inside. In Steven Turner’s Van Morrison: Too Late to Stop Now, Morrison describes him as “dark weather-beaten.”_ _Morrison and his friends asked the man for water, and he gave them some he’d gotten from a nearby stream. As Morrison drank the stream water he slipped into mystical experience. “Time stood still,” he says in Too Late to Stop Now. "For five minutes everything was really quiet and I was in this other dimension. “That’s what the song is about.”_ Given that, jelly roll makes no sense - to me, anyway ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/47 "2025-01-31T17:22:09Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > But it’s a hell of a rocker. Love that guy, I used to have that album and I’d play the hell out of that song. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/48 "2025-01-31T17:32:42Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > My bucket list includes a trip to Africa just so that I can post a photo on social media with the caption “Kilimanjaro, rising like Olympus above the Serengeti”. I’ve been there and I remember the lyrics running through my head. Odd lyrics that actually work from Wrapped Around Your Finger: You consider me the young apprentice; Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/49 "2025-01-31T18:49:20Z")
I remember some commercial with a young woman in her apartment staring dreamily at the man in his apartment across the way and the narrator listing all his flaws. Then finishing with “…but he knows all the words to the greatest rock & roll song ever” as he sings Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me” Immediately my outraged brain thought “There’s only, like, twenty words in that song over and over! It’s not like the guy memorized American Pie!” ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/50 "2025-01-31T19:31:44Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > > [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > > > “Jelly roll” is old jazz slang for marijuana, so it makes sense in a song called “And It Stoned Me”. > > I can find no evidence for this. [Link.](https://willingway.com/common-drug-slang/) [Link2.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_slang_names_for_cannabis) And many other cites. > There are many cites claiming it is slang for vulva or sexual intercourse. But that doesn’t really fit in the song. Strange, you’re right, I can also only find references to sexual practices but not to drugs. I remember to have learned it in a book about music years ago, so either I’m misremembering or my source was wrong. ETA: at least it was known that Jelly Roll Morton had a liking for marijuana, maybe that’s what Van Morrison alluded at. ---
**Author:** ![Sauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Sauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sauron)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/51 "2025-01-31T19:53:48Z")
Supposedly Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” is about grief and loss, and was inspired by the murder of John Lennon and the death of Nicks’ uncle within a few days of each other. If I had 100 years I never would have guessed that based on the lyrics: _The clouds never expect it when it rains_ _But the sea changes colours_ _But the sea does not change_ _So with the slow, graceful flow of age_ _I went forth with an age old desire to please_ _On the edge of seventeen_ So … the sea changes colors, but it doesn’t. And she goes out with the graceful flow of age with an age-old desire. Gotcha. It doesn’t help that for literally YEARS I heard the chorus talking about a “one-winged dove.” It wasn’t until I was an adult that it occurred to me singing about a one-winged dove doesn’t make sense and I really focused on the song to understand what she was saying. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/52 "2025-01-31T20:13:31Z")
The old, old song “Body And Soul” is one of my favorites as an instrumental, but ruined when the lyrics are sung. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/53 "2025-01-31T20:23:13Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Immediately my outraged brain thought “There’s only, like, twenty words in that song over and over! It’s not like the guy memorized American Pie!” Funny. I remember in school when Joe Cocker’s You Are So Beautiful To Me came out, the big things was how few unique words were in the song. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/54 "2025-01-31T21:54:31Z")
Most KISS songs, I would say. ---
**Author:** ![Al128](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/al128/32/16541_2.png) [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/55 "2025-01-31T22:21:39Z")
… or Led Zep ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/56 "2025-01-31T22:23:58Z")
> [@Al128](#): > > … or Led Zep Let’s be fair, the lyrics to a lot of there songs were stolen. ;~) ---
**Author:** ![Chad\_Sudan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chad_sudan/32/4509_2.png) [@Chad\_Sudan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chad_Sudan)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2025, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/57 "2025-01-31T22:31:55Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me” Let’s also pay tribute to Cheap Trick’s signature song, “Surrender.” The lyrics (which rarely even rhyme) sound like a monologue from someone going senile: > Father says, "Your mother’s right > She’s really up on things > Before we married, Mommy served > In the WACs in the Philippines” > Now, I had heard the WACs recruited > Old maids for the war > But mommy isn’t one of those > I’ve known her all these years ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2025, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/58 "2025-02-01T04:32:40Z")
The bass line of Captain Sensible’s “Wot?” is jaw-dropping. This song would be a legend as an instrumental. But it’s got some of the most inane lyrics out there. _He said ‘Captain’, I said ‘Wot?’_ _He said ‘Captain’, I said ‘Wot?’_ Over and over and over … ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2025, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/59 "2025-02-01T04:59:55Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > Except that Kilimanjaro is about 250 miles from the Serengeti, so they can’t be in the same photo. So, you see, they were right. Kilimanjaro rises above the Serengeti in exactly the same way as Olympus. ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2025, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630/60 "2025-02-01T05:03:20Z")
I mentioned The Sandman in another thread. “He flies the skies like an eagle in the eye of a hurricane that’s abandoned.”. I have no idea WTF an abandoned hurricane is, but I do know that an eagle in the eye of a hurricane is one deeply fucked eagle. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-songs-with-not-so-great-lyrics/1013630.md?page=4)