I wasn’t sure whether to post this here or in Cafe Society, but since it’s a poll, rather than a dialogue related to a single work, I plumped for IMHO.
Lyrics that keep on surfacing in all kinds of songs and just make you sick.
The one that gets me is the Phone/Home/Alone rhyming triplet
“I called you on the phone/because I was alone/but you were not at home” - that kind of meaningless and annoying tripe.
any more?
Are there really that many lyrics out there which are so redundant they become cliches?
The one that makes me blind with rage is the “down on my knees/begging you please/baby/maybe” string that keeps showing up in this corporate pop like Britney Spears, NSync, etc.
References to life as a “big wheel” that “turns” or “keeps on turning.” I must have heard that a dozen times.
Usually in country music, but sometimes in the glurgier pop tines, the phrase “child’s eyes.” It is only a matter of time before a cow musician releases a song about 9/11 that rhymes “child’s eyes” with “high rise.” Just you wait.
Use of the word “baby.” Wouldn’t you like to hear a song that sings about a significant other that does not use “baby”?
I saw her walkin’ on down the line…
– Tommy James and the Shondells
First you love me, then you head on down the line…
– Fleetwood Mac
Etcetera.
Rhyming “rambler” with “gambler.”
It’s starting to look that way. 
Baby/maybe.
Walkin/talkin.
Heart/apart.
Home/roam (mostly C & W does this).
Kiss me/miss me (C & W, ditto).
Face/embrace.
Car/far (there’s evidently some kind of rule that if you get in a car in a song, you either have to “go pretty far” or else “not very far”.)
And of course when you leave the “bar”, you get in your “car”.
How/now (I always want to add “brown” and “cow”. “Tell me HOW… I’m supposed to live without you NOW…when you took away the BROWN COW…”)
Lyrics that consist of lists of cities. These songs tend to have “Rock and Roll” in the title, i.e., “The Heart of Rock and Roll”, by Hooey Lewis and the News. When you have to resort to listing major American cities to make a song have more than one verse, you have nothing to say, so shut up and give the airwave space to someone who does.
[hijack]Incidentally, I generally despise songs with the words “Rock and Roll” in the titles, unless they’re by Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow- somehow that Blackmore/Dio combination actually managed to write clever songs on the subject (“If You Don’t Like Rock and Roll” being the best of breed). Of course, Dio’s “Rock and Roll Children” is probably the worst song with “Rock and Roll” in the title ever written. Moral, never write a song with "Rock and Roll in the title without the supervision of a skinny, black-clad, alcoholic, Fender Stratocaster-slinging British guitarist.[/hijack]
Good, but not quite as good as rhyming “cigarette” with “figure it” (Bucks Fizz, “One of Those Nights”)
~~"Put your hands in the air, and wave’em like you just don’t
care"
How do you tell when someone is waving them like they do care?
Hey bud, you’re out of here…You broke house party rules…
Oh Jonah he lived in a whale,
Oh Jonah he lived in a whale,
For he made his home in
That fish’s abdomen
Oh Jonah he lived in a whale.
I’m sick of hearing about people living in whales. Also a whale is not a fish.
I think most people avoid it these days, but the “love/glove” or “love/above” or, for that matter, rhyming “love” with anything will force me to spontaneously projectile vomit.
Cuts like a…
…machete?
…sword?
…n editor?
No, it’s knife, it’s always knife. Usually followed by a line ending in life.
May I suggest…
And it cuts like a knife
Lyricists, get a life
It’s not really a cliche, but I really hate those kind of “too personal” lyrics
e.g. Jesse, I won’t cut Fred’s flowers for you…
I mean, who the *%#$ was Fred and why should I give a rat’s arse whether you cut his flowers or not?
Make some sense please
Rhyming “baby” with “crazy”. It happens at least once in every single teeny-bopper song out there (well, almost), and in some adult music, besides. Arrgh.
I really hope you’re joking here. Please, tell me that you are.
I’d like to second the nominations of waving your hands in the air, waving them like you just don’t care, and anything that cuts like a knife. But my personal least favorite lyric cliche ever is rhyming “fire” with “desire”. It’s been done…to…death.
The fire/desire rhyme is the first thing I thought of when I read the thread title. This has bothered me for at least a decade. But every couple of weeks, a new Top 40 song will come out and include a fire/desire line. Aren’t these “artists” even the least bit embarrassed?
I think The Doors explored that one to its fullest.
How about:
*I hope and I pray
For just one day
We’ll find a way
To show our love
From up above
And it will never die
I can see in your eye
No need for you to cry
You know I’d never lie
So give me this last dance
And give me one last chance
To save our cliched romance.*
shudder Did I just write that?!