# Most unintelligble lyrics, not counting "Louie Louie " & "Teen Spirit" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 20, 2007, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899 "2007-02-20T02:00:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/41 "2007-02-20T21:19:36Z")
Why exclude “Smells Like Teen Spirit”? It’s not actually all that hard to understand. > [@](#): > > With the lights out > This is dangerous > Here we are now > Entertain us > This is stupid > This is stupid And I never even listened to it that much. I’ve never been able to understand why that song, in particular, got such a reputation for being incomprehensible, when there are so many less comprehensible songs out there. ---
**Author:** ![rowinator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/34f0e0/32.png) [@rowinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowinator)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/42 "2007-02-20T21:30:03Z")
What about **Bad Brains**? Ina kwest, ina test, ana owin a-seen en evaboda debegoda gada geb yoseb en eba …(okay, I honestly forgot this line…) hep yoteb e yelp so teme why deja hatalie an tritamayme aconfus aba dayouesay whenda fat uda mada isa jesdo ka taundasta ocompahe asinga wudisay That’s just the first ten seconds. I can sing along with the whole album but damn if I know what 50% of it is. ---
**Author:** ![rowinator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/34f0e0/32.png) [@rowinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowinator)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/43 "2007-02-20T21:33:30Z")
chronos, with all due respect, I think you have it wrong With the lights out It’s less dangerous Here we are now Entertain us I feel stupid and contagious Here we are now Entertain us A mulatto Alibino A mosquito My libido Going off of memory here… Agreed though, not that hard to understand, just nonsensical. See Pixies. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/44 "2007-02-20T21:33:35Z")
A local classic rock station had a daily phone in contest called “What’d He Say?”, where they would get listeners to try to decipher the lyric of the day. Steven Stills **Love the One You’re With** …first line, last verse. The caller thought it was “Why are you always/walkin into walls”. It’s actually “Turn your heartache/right into joy”/ ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/45 "2007-02-20T21:42:37Z")
[QUOTE=Promethea] “Geno” by Dexys Midnight Runners. To my ear, only about every one in three words are decipherable. Great song, but I am forced to sing along to it in a kind of moon man language. [/QUOTE] The only DMR song I know is “Come On Eileen” and when that came on the radio the other die, I realized that pretty much the only words I could figure out were the ones in the title of the song. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/46 "2007-02-20T21:45:42Z")
[QUOTE=Wee Bairn] **Max Torque** - is this song online anywhere? I have heard much about its legendary awfulness, but have never heard it. [/QUOTE] Well, you can hear a bit on iTunes if you search the music store. And, there’s a short .au clip on the LSC’s [website](http://www.stardustcowboy.com/), though it doesn’t really do justice to the full composition. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/47 "2007-02-20T21:56:21Z")
A friend of mine is a big fan of some Celtic folk singer whose name escapes me. The singer was known to have a wee bit of a problem with the bottle, and it showed in his singing. My friend could never make out the lyrics. Then one night he was out, and had a few bourbons before driving home. He popped in that CD, and lo and behold, he could understand everything! ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/48 "2007-02-20T22:33:22Z")
I think I had heard \*\*A Hard Day’s Night \*\* for 40 years, and countless times, when suddenly the light dawned and the line “But why on earth should I moan” became clear. The first 10,000 times I’d heard it – unintelligible. ---
**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:** [February 21, 2007, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/49 "2007-02-21T00:15:35Z")
90% of the **Mazzy Star** catalog. I think a few songs off of “She Hangs Brightly” actually sound as if Hope Sandoval isn’t singing with a mouthful of wet tissue. ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/50 "2007-02-21T02:45:18Z")
I was singing along in the car the other day to some Def Leppard when it occured to me that i’d be hard pressed to actually make out words of any sort for most of the song Rocket (Rocket…yeah…say the lange a laa!). Then I thought about it some more and realized that a great deal of Def Leppard is total gibberish. ---
**Author:** ![woodstockbirdybird](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/woodstockbirdybird/32/7905_2.png) [@woodstockbirdybird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woodstockbirdybird)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2007, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899/51 "2007-02-21T04:10:31Z")
[QUOTE=Subway Prophet] Most famously “Blinded by the Light”. I heard that the night before R.E.M. did their MTV “Unplugged” concert, the show’s producer was up all night with Stipe and crew as they struggled to figure out the lyrics to “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” [/QUOTE] That’s probably apocryphal; I saw R.E.M. on their _Document_ and _Green_ tours, and have heard numeorus bootlegs from the time, and he never had any trouble remembering the words live (although I do remember on the _Green_ tour he brought out a music stand that held sheets of paper supposedly with lyrics written down for him for some song or other, but I always figured it was an affectation). I just thought of another one (it was playing on my mp3 player): Husker Du’s version of “Eight Miles High”. If I hadn’t already known the Byrds’ original, I’d probably never have been able to make out a single word. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-unintelligble-lyrics-not-counting-louie-louie-teen-spirit/392899.md?page=2)