There are certain songs that have phrases that bug the crap out of me because they sound… stupid, mismatched, out of place. Things that make me think the songwriter didn’t know what he was talking about. Examples:
Glory Days by Springstein :
Line: “He could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool”
Everybody who has minimal knowledge of baseball would say fastball, not speedball. Sounds awkward, and bugs the snot out of me.
Magic by The Cars:
Line: “High shoes with the cleats a clickin’…”
I don’t even know where to start complaining about this. A cool song but this line makes me cringe.
Does anybody else have such cringe-worthy song lines, or am I just too into the words of the songs I listen to?
Although I like Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence,” there’s one thing that bugs me. He tells his girlfriend, “Lay your head back on the ground, and let your hair fall all around me.”
Don- if she’s lying on the ground with her head back, how the hell is her hair supposed to fall all around you? Does her hair defy gravity or something?
Anyway, about the Springsteen:
“He could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool.”
D’oh - even worse than the baseball mistake, a speedball is an injection of heroin and cocaine. That’s sort of awkward.
Then again, it’s not as bad as “Put Me In, Coach.” :smack:
True. But such an injection would nake someone look like a fool!
Richard Hung Himself by D.I. The last line is “Your answer is non seglidur.” First, it’s “non sequitur”. Come on; at least get the word right! Second, non sequitur is a noun; not an adjective.
“But she never lost her head, even when she was giv’n head.” - Lou Reed, “Walk on the Wild Side”
This is the single dumbest line in music history. Somewhere in his dope fugue he forgot that rhymes should sound the same but not be the exact same word.
I cringe almost every time a songwriter uses a variation of that hackneyed old “fire/desire” rhyme (with the possible exception of Hendrix’s “Fire” and U2’s “Desire”).
Makes me want to say “Here’s a dollar, buddy - go buy some creativity, or at least a thesaurus.”
ABBA’s ** Fernando **–“Since many years I haven’t seen a rifle in your hand.”
An ungrammatical line that ruins a great song, and proves that you shouldn’t write lyrics in a language you don’t know really, really well. In the translation from Frida’s Swedish version to Abba’s English version, the idiom wasn’t corrected.
Just mentioned this on another thread, but this has got to be the single all time worst lyric in the history of the world:
“Nobody call him on the phone, 'cept for the Pope maybe in Rome” speaks for itself
Then there’s Love & Rockets: “I don’t know what colour your eyes are baby but your hair is long and brown” ewwwwwwww!
And for a recent(ish) candidate, I don’t know who sings it but it goes “In the land of the living I will search no more 'cause it’s you I’m looking for” what would you do if you didn’t find him, go gravedigging or something?
Another one from Bob Dylan. (The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol):
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now’s the time for your tears.
Okay, I get why I, the sympathetic listener, would philosophize disgrace. But why, in the context of a song about injustice and racism, would I criticize all fears? No time to think it though, what with the instruction to bury a rag in my face.
Oh and by now I’m sure someone has told the Indigo Girls that you don’t multiply by a power. You raise to a power.
