A) Billy Joel sings of a “real estate novelist” in Piano Man. And, on the “Glass Houses” album, he sings “a buck 3.80 won’t buy much lately on the streets these days…” Excuse me, Mr. Joel, is that redundant, or what? Does he mean $4.80, perhaps?
B) Elton John sings of a “prince perched in her electric chair” in the song “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”. Hmm, a little gender confusion, Sir Elton? (Or, was it Bernie Taupin’s fault?)
C) John Mellencamp sings “I know a lot of things, and then I don’t know a lot of other things…” This appears on the “Scarecrow” album. IIRC, it’s “You Gotta Stand for Something”? (Please feel free to correct me!)
If such lines have bugged other SDopers, please post 'em here!
“Cheer up Sleepy Jean/Oh what can it mean/to a Daydream Believer/and a homecoming queen…” - the whole song makes no sense, but it works.
Two Tim Rice lyrics that don’t really work:
Judas referring to Jesus as a “faded jaded mandarin” in Jesus Christ Superstar… ?
Evita’s “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”… uh, why would they? You’re a beautiful 26 year old first lady who’s done nothing to be pitied, but the song works beautifully.
There’s always “In this ever changing world in which we live in…”
Live and Let Die- Paul Mcartney
What? The song’s about two people (the titular Believer and Sleepy Jean the homecomeing queen) who got married fresh out of high school with a lot of romantic ideas and now have to deal with the harsh realities of adult life like getting up early and working and of course…shaving.
The Beatles, It’s All Too Much, is in most respects a groovy and totally awsome song. Except for one lyric: “Life’s a birthday cake, so let’s take a slice, but not too much.” Yeah… right…
The “real estate novelist” is one of several examples of failed lives given in the song, i. e. the person fancies himself a novelist although he has probably never published a book and makes his living by selling real estate. Sort of like the would-be movie stars “parking cars and pumping gas” in Do You Know the Way to San Jose.
And “a buck three eighty” is an old phrase which predates Mr. Joel by quite a bit, meaning “an indeterminate (relatively small, unimportant) amount of money”, less than “umpteen dollars”, which implies a larger sum. “How much did you spend on that shirt? Oh, a buck three eighty.”
Hands down the most redundant lyrics belong to “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” performed by Aerosmith, from the movie “Armageddon.”
(Sarcastic spelling error mine.) The first line is bland. The second line is a useless repetition of the first line.
Had my third grader written this line (and make no doubt about it, a third grader could have written this line), I would have told her that the image of hearts beating together has been done to death. How about something original? Something like (and please sing it to the tune in your best Steven Tyler voice):
“I’m hungry like Ule Gibbons;
And you are my little pine.”
Hey! At least it’s original!
Okay, back to the bad song. And then we wind down with:
For all the rest of time? Egads. I’m convinced a junior high student wrote this song. The only saving grace is that it’s a rock ballad and Aerosmith gives it some life.
This gets debated into the ground on theatre forums every once in a while. Does “cry” mean “boo-hoo crying” or is it cry as in “cry out,” which works better with the next line “The truth is I never left you.” She could be saying “don’t cry out for me, I’m still here.”
The original line was “It’s Only Your Lover Returning.” They had Julie Covington (the original and BEST Evita) go into the studio to redub the lyric.
i nominate the entirety of STP’s “Creep”.
“feeling i’m [awe?]-inspired, i think i’ll start a fire,
first you think you’re really neat then she tells me i’m a creep”
at first i thought this was some horrible writing, then I thought, “hey, they are just speaking in the CHARACTER of an angst-ridden teen.” It works well when looked at from a point of view perspective.
About half of Steely Dan’s repertoire works as well, but they are more obviously of the “literary” persuasion, so the “Point of view” is more obvious.