That Hawaiian dance song “My little grass shack in Kealakua”: “Where the humu-humu-nuku-nuku-apua-a’s swimming by.”
In “One night in Bangkok,” how did Iceland figure in the song?
Also, this one. (in the second verse of Sign O’ The Times).
One Night in Bangkok is about an elite chess tournament. The singer was listing other exotic places the tournaments are held. The song is from the musical Chess, about chess tournaments and US-USSR hostilities. Act I was held in a spa town in Italy, in the Tyrol region.
Lyrics:
Time flies – doesn’t seem a minute
Since the Tirolean spa had the chess boys in it
All change – don’t you know that when you
Play at this level there’s no ordinary venue
It’s Iceland – or the Philippines – or Hastings – or –
or this place!
It would have been better if he’d quoted Samuel Taylor Coleridge and said “stately pleasure dome”.
Marginally better, if that. 
Pleasure dome makes me think of fun-sexy-time Mad Max
He is quoting Coleridge already. Where else, before 1797 and Kubla Khan, has there been a “pleasure dome”?
Which is not to say that his cheesifying the phrase isn’t awful.
Got it!. But then, why would he think the devil’s walking next to him? 
“Columnated ruins domino.”
Not actually all that inaccessible unless you’re Mike Love I guess.
::
Mention of “the record machine” reminded me of Ernie Maresca’s “Shout shout, Knock Yourself Out”, which starts out with these oddly chosen words:
Wop wop wop, wop wop adada dada
Wop wop wop, wop wop adada dada
Wop wop wop, wop wop adada dada
Wop wop wop, wop wop adada dada
One that bugs me is the line from Scissor Sisters’ "Let’s Have a Kiki:’
We’re spilling tea and serving just desserts one might deserve
Why “spilling” tea? “Pouring” would work just as well there.
Verbing weirds language.
Spilling tea means ‘gossiping’ and coupled with ‘getting just desserts’ could it mean something about gossiping and having it come back to bite you?
Some songs, like “Quintessence” and “Synchronicity,” give me the impression that the bandleader just learned a new word.
No it ain’t since a-thumpin’ suggests a-humping
The second line of this one:
“You even worry my pet”? You can’t even say it’s for the sake of rhyming–because it doesn’t!
Now, I can understand that it would set a bad example to include a line like “Are you strung out on meth?”–but “You never run out of breath” would rhyme, and makes way more sense in context!
The oddly chosen word in that song is “dime” as in “put another dime in the jukebox” since all jukeboxes required a quarter by that point in time. She could have said “coin.” (I know, the original had come out earlier, during the dime period).
Fried chicken.
Are you kidding? “Coin” would have been far more awkward. Literal and period-correct accuracy has nothing to do with it. How long did people speak of “dropping a dime” for making a phone call?
The Stray Cats had a song out the same year (1982) called “Rock This Town” which correctly evaluated the price of a jukebox play at one quarter.
(I prefer the Joan Jett song, to be honest).
This one always shivers my spine (from Bowie’s “Starman”):
It’s not the lyrics that take me out of the song, but the way he pronounces the word ‘boogie’.
mmm
Billy Joel’s Light as the Breeze:
“… and I turn in disgust,
from my hatred, from my love …”
Love?? It shouldda been lust, which would make a lot more sense in the contect – and it would rhyme!