The original version of I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, for those who imagine that Joan Jett wrote it.
“But in this everchanging world in which we live in”, from Live and Let Die is a high point of Paul McCartney’s execrable post-Beatles output.
“If this ever-changing world in which we’re living” works, though.
Damn my ears! shakes fist at self
Michael Sembello’s “Maniac” from Flashdance:
There’s a cold kinetic heat…
'The hell?
They sit at the bar and put bread in my jar.
By the time Piano Man came out, the word “bread” to refer to money had pretty much disappeared. Why not “tips”?
Piano Man has a bunch of clunky lyrics. That is also the song that just drops the well-known profession “real estate novelist” on us out of nowhere and also has cringe-worthy, sophomoric rhymes such as “And he’s talking with Davy…who’s still in the navy”. It is a great song overall but could certainly use some lyrical polish.
Even Billy Joel himself thinks so “The melody is not very good and very repetitious, while the lyrics are like limericks. I was shocked and embarrassed when it became a hit.”.
Virtually any line in Hey Soul Sister by Train. IIRC, the lyrics of this song inspired its own thread here at the SDMB.
Some of the more egregious examples:
If you’re referring to your brain, the organ, use the singular. If you’re referring to your intelligence, you can use the plural. But you can’t interchange them.
There is no reason for him to describe his chest as untrimmed, other than to lenghthen that particular line. He probably just grabbed the first adjective that he could find. Which leads to:
Unless the song takes place in 1985, there is no way that Mr. Mister is playing on the radio, or stereo. Again, he just picked the first band he thought of that rhymes with “sister.”
I’ve always enjoyed this lyric, because it fit the song so well. Nabokov most famous English work is Lolita. A book about a middle aged teacher attracted to a school girl. The same theme of Don’t Stand too Close to Me. I don’t find this pretentious, I find it a kind of sly humor for those of us who remember part of Lit class. For others its an obvious teacher like reference that still works in the song.
I’m not exactly a big fan of Billy Joel, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with “real estate novelist.” To me, it quite obviously connotes the idea of somebody who is in real estate, but who really, in his heart, wants to think of himself as a novelist. And, judging by the confusion over this line, my idea of “quite obviously” is not congruent to the rest of humanity’s.
I will not defend the “Davy”/“navy” rhyme though. It’s a bit of a clunker, but not majorly so, in my opinion.
And to give the audience an unpleasant image to lodge in their brains. :dubious:
Agree about the rhyme, but does the phrase “Hits of the '80s, '90s and today!” intoned by a radio announcer ring any bells? :smack:
My usual contribution to these types of threads: Sammy Hagar, “Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy.”
Hot, sweet cherries on the vine…
We all know cherries grow on trees, not vines. Sammy probably went with vine for the rhyme scheme, but why not “berries” instead of “cherries”? What possible image was he after to require him using that particular fruit? And why are they hot?
Yes, I know, I know. Hagar was never particularly known for his subtlety.
Doris Day’s big hit from 1954 or so:
Once I had a secret love
That lived within the heart of me [WTF?]
All too soon my secret love
Became impatient to be free
So I told a friendly star
The way that dreamers often do
Just how wonderful you are
And why I am so in love with you
Now I shout it from the highest hills
Even told the golden daffodils
At last my heart’s an open door
And my secret love’s no secret anymore
Now I shout it from the highest hills
Even told the golden daffodils
At last my heart’s an open door
And my secret love’s no secret anymore
Read more: Doris Day - Secret Love Lyrics | MetroLyrics
The standard “Cry Me A River” has a weird one:
“You told me love was too plebeian. Told me you were through with me and…”
That might have been inspired by:
I am a Billy Joel fan but there is more where that came from. Piano Man is almost like a parody of a hack lounge singer as performed by a really talented person.
We also also get lyrics like “There’s an old man sitting next to me…
Making love to his tonic and gin”. Have you ever heard of such a drink in real life? No because they are referred to as a “gin and tonic” but that song has to reverse the name to make a forced rhyme in a desperation play.
Piano Man is exceptional because the lyrics read like a high school freshman’s last minute poetry attempt but the song still works somehow. I think it works a lot better as a satire of 1970’s Los Angeles lounge culture however.
See, “tonic and gin” doesn’t bug me either. Maybe it’s because I have a friend who wrote a song called “Tonic and Gin,” so it doesn’t ping my weirdness radar. Anyhow, I really don’t like “Piano Man” as a song, but those lyrics don’t bug me in particular–that sort of poetic inversion is fine.
Soy latte
High shoes with your “heels” a clickin’. 
The classic Moody Blues concept album Days of Future Passed is overbloated and pompous, musically and lyrically (but I still love it). It begins and ends with spoken poems. In the closing poem, there is a real clunker: “senior citizens wish they were young.” They should have used any term for old people than this cold, bureaucratic, emotionless option.