The bit about leaving the cake out in the rain is not a metaphor, in case you’re wondering. Webb told Gilbert Gottfried on Gil’s Amazing Colossal Podcast that he (Webb) and his girlfriend were having a picnic in the park, a storm blew in, and the cake got accidentally left behind.
“The Final Countdown”, by Europe.
Pretentious, or just stupid?
I listened to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (the album) recently and it isn’t any less pretentious than those other Prog Rock bands – especially the linear notes story.
And then there’s Jethro Tull. I honestly can’t tell if out of all prog rock bands, their lyrics were the most pretentious, or the least.
There are several places online in which Jimmy Webb offers an explanation for “MacArthur Park,” and some of it makes sense when he presents them.
But this part is downright ridiculous…
Between the parted pages and were pressed
In love’s hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants.
As you may recall, “striped” is pronounced “stripe-idd.”
Now that’s pretentious!
Well, “Snot is running down his nose” is definitely in the non-pretentious camp. 
Almost as pretentious as an American rock band saying music is their “aeroplane.”
How about: totally kick-ass!
I’m pretty sure the entirety of “One Night in Bangkok” is just Murray Head saying “I am smarter than you”.
The 90s band Live had some really pretentious lyrics as well.
Indeed, though it’s entirely on-brand for the character Head portrayed in the musical Chess (from which that song comes).
I was a fan of Yes when I was a teenager in the 1970s, and was very familiar with three or four of their albums that I owned. But I didn’t follow them much after that. I once asked a friend what she thought their lyrics meant, and she said she just let the words flow over her. That’s kind of what I did too.
I recently started thinking about and listening to these records again, and looked up what Anderson said about the lyrics. He seems to think he was communicating something, but I couldn’t make much sense of it even 50 years later.
Knowing and liking this music as long as I have, and still liking it, I can’t bring myself to call it pretentious, even though I don’t pretend to understand it. I think a lot of art is like that.
And You and I
Coins and crosses
Never know their fruitless worth,
Cords are broken
Locked inside the mother Earth,
They won’t hide, hold, they won’t tell you
Watching the world, watching all of the world,
Watching us go by…
(In the background under that:)
Turn around tailor
Assaulting all the morning of the interest shown
Presenting one another to the chord
All left dying rediscovered of the door
That turned round to close the cover
All the interest shown to turn one another,
To the sign at the time float your climb.
Ronnie James Dio. He had such a high opinion of himself, I’m sure he thought his lyrics were all high art, as Jim Morrison did. But in reality, his lyrics were just a bunch of babbling nonsense.
I got a clue as to the depth of his lyrics when I watched a clip of a Yes concert, and between songs Mr. Jon Anderson, Writer of Deep Prog Poetry, said:
“I have something important to say, based on the unique opportunities we’ve had to speak to people all around the world. And that is: (dramatic pause) …
Love is the most powerful force of all. Love keeps people together, and helps us overcome our differences. Love… it’s just love. Love is wonderful.”
So “He seems to think he was communicating something…” is maybe the most charitable thing you can say.
Give me
I will remember you
Your silhouette will charge the view
Of distant atmosphere
Call it morning driving through the sound of
Even in the valley
over
It was an itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie, yellow, polka dot bikini
That she wore for the first time today
An itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie, yellow, polka dot bikini
So, in the locker, she wanted to stay
any day.
Same here, though I certainly learned all the lyrics, and would sing along (even if the words often didn’t seem to make sense). Anderson has apparently said that he often sees his lyrics as being a part of the music, and are there for tone and texture rather than telling a particular story, which would explain a lot.
I think he saw himself as a poet, and I know that he was inspired by a lot of mystical and philosophical writing, which led to a lot of allegorical and florid wording.
(I also suspect that, in a lot of cases, he was high on cannabis when he was writing. 
)
Ya know, I still like Rush, but yeah, a great deal of their lyrics suck. I still can’t find anything wrong with “The Spirit of Radio”. For a song about a literal subject, those are pretty good.
But good god, some silly lyrics. “The Trees”, I’m looking at you.
God, their pretentiousness is only obscured by how stupid they are.
Yep, very nice pipes, but those lyrics are awful. I have the same problem I have with him that I have with Glenn Danzig: I can’t take you seriously because you actually take yourself seriously. Even his Sabbath songs are pretty hit and miss with me.
OTOH, I kind of love complete nonsense lyrics. Black Francis basically said he picks his words by which ones sound neato next to the others, with no other real consideration. Bowie often wrote via the cut-up method.
The Cocteau Twins didn’t really write lyrics; nobody in the band was any good at writing them, so they just sang random words and THOSE were the lyrics.
That song, and this performance in particular, seems to have spawned more G-rated reaction videos than almost anything else on the Internet.