I’m going to push back against this a bit and say this applies to some, but far from all, rock lyrics. There are many different approaches to songwriting, including some that take the lyrics very seriously.
First thing in my head was Hallelujah. The very definition of pretentious lyrics.
Indeed, that’s the one Tull song with lyrics by someone other than Ian Anderson (they’re by his then-wife Jennie).
The one I was going to mention. First time I heard that song it was actually on one of those rhythm games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I was familiar with all of Rush’s radio play songs, but this one didn’t get radio play around here. I just about doubled over in laughter at the hamfisted metaphor/allegory, nursery rhyme-like lyrics, and hit-you-over-the-head “moral of story.” Ugh. What a terrible, terrible song.
I want to put both the Cars and REM into the same class of lyrics. Intentionally obscure, but at the end of the day we discover they were hiding no big secrets.
Assuming the definition of pretentious to mean “pretending to be smarter than one is, by using highfalutin’ namedropping and pseudo-intellectual references” I can think of a few. I like the song, but Library Voices’ “Generation Handclap” ends one verse with “You say you are what you read/You can be Coupland/I’ll be Murakami” and I can just imagine an annoying English Lit. major using that line on someone at the university library and getting some serious sideeye for it.
Sting has been mentioned above and yeah, he’s an endless fount of horsecrap, particularly on Synchronicity (he’d been reading a lot of Jung, apparently) and his first couple of solo records.
Trying to not turn this into a “most hated lyrics” recollection because that would differ thematically from the OP, but some of U2’s lyrics, and overall concepts, would fit the bill here. Though Bono’s smugness rubs me so much the wrong way that my mind goes to “pretentious” for a lot of his lyrics, even if it’s more the vibe they give me than the actual words. I remember the exact moment I fell off the U2 train was the day in the mid-aughts when he curled up in his zillion-dollar penthouse, fired up his iPad, stroked his chin pensively, and pecked out “Every generation gets the chance to change the world…” Still, when you get approached by arthouse kings like Wenders and Antonioni within a few years of each other to contribute soundtrack songs, I suppose that’ll go to your head and make you think Passengers is a winning effort. I mean, I like the melody of “Miss Sarajevo” but at the same time it’s “War in the Balkans! And opera! Aren’t we grand?”
Duran Duran were never profound (self-described at their outset as “Chic meets the Sex Pistols” they really couldn’t be) but by the Liberty album, LeBon was cranking out lyrics like "Divine blasphemer tempting/Holy beads of jism/With the scarlet catechism…”
I like Queen a lot, but I’m not sure if it works to their advantage or not that most of their songs are about nothing at all. (“Gimme gimme fried chicken!”) And Freddie had the vocal talent to immerse himself in opera as a side project and not come across as a dilettante. I still think Bohemian Rhapsody is a joke on the audience, but I bang my head when it comes on the radio like any normal human does.
For decades now, I have privately referred to U2 as “The Pretentious Wankers”, so I’m with you.
Dear Mr Bono, MLK was killed in the evening.
I love their arty lyrics, but Wire could perhaps fit this, although I find their lyrics willfully playful moreso than pretentious. But from one of my favorites, “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W”:
Thread winner…uh, hang on…
…shall we call it a tie?
Now, I love Hunky Dory, but what to make of The Bewlay Brothers? I mean, I’m giving Bowie a pass on the song in any case, even though:
Bowie himself is said to have told producer Ken Scott that it was a track for the American market, because “the Americans always like to read things into things”, even though the lyrics “make absolutely no sense”.
Kinda dismissive, huh? But the pièce de résistance* is this commentary on the song:
In 2008 Bowie revealed that “Bewlay” was taken from the tobacconist shop chain, House of Bewlay. This he used as “a cognomen - in place of my own. This wasn’t just a song about brotherhood so I didn’t want to misrepresent it by using my true name. Having said that, I wouldn’t know how to interpret the lyric of this song other than suggesting that there are layers of ghosts within it. It’s a palimpsest, then”.
j
* - getting into the spirit of the thread.
He finally, finally corrected the lyric when he sang it at Obama’s inauguration. Only took 25 years.
Chuck Klosterman nailed it in an article on U2 in which he wrote that Bono always acts as if he’s being filmed for a documentary. A friend of mine has spent some time with him (Bono, not Klosterman) and tells me that he’s not at all an obnoxious twit when he’s one on one, but all the public ever sees is the media face.
All Rock lyrics are either insipid or pretentious; particularly when divorced from the music. The nature of Rock is that it is supposed to be cool. The moment a lyricist tries is the moment they fail. Someone, somewhere will say it’s not cool. It’s schoolyard rules.
Part of the problem is it’s a concise art form (some prog excepted). The lyricist doesn’t have that many words to work with so evocative lyrics are about the only thing that can tread the fine line between insipid and pretentious.
To answer the OP:
I thought “Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)” by Cracker was pretentious and didn’t like it much when it was out. However I’ve since accepted that it’s intentionally pretentious which makes it on-point and I enjoy it now.
For me it is most anything by the Decemberists, a band I really kind of like musically. But their lyrics, my God…
from “Calamity Song”
Hetty Green, queen of supply side bonhomie, you know what I mean…
from “The abduction of Margaret”
All a’gallop with Margaret slung rude 'cross withers. Having clamped her innocent fingers in fetters
there are many, many more examples
edited to add - upon a quick search, even Slate wrote an article about their pretentious lyrics (The eight most pretentious lyrics from the new Decemberists album.)
I don’t mind stealin’ bread from the mouths of decadence!
Huh. Never thought of that as pretentious, but rather a good expression of, well, teen bravado/rebellion/cockiness/angst. The lines “'Cause what the world needs now are some true words of wisdom
Like la la la la la la la la la
'Cause what the world needs now is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head” are some of my favorite humorous lyrics in rock music. It’s a fun and funny song.
This thread brings to mind Robert Christgau’s review of “All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes”
“Townshend has somehow managed to conceive, record, and release a confessional song suite the pretentiousness of which could barely be imagined by an acid-damaged Bard drama major. That is, it’s pretentious at an unprecedented level of difficulty–you have to pay years of dues before you can twist such long words into such unlikely rhymes and images and marshal arrangements of such intricate meaninglessness. A stupendous achievement. D PLUS”
Ha! I’d never attempt to convince anyone that Pete wasn’t pretentious (or pompous, for that matter), I love the guy all the same. But being labeled as pretentious has never bothered him. He even wrote a song about it.
Let’s get pretentious
Put on an act
Let’s be portentous
And embroider facts
Exaggerate it
Dress up the bland
Let’s overrate it
Let the critics be damned
Maybe it doesn’t count, but I think “Late Lament” (the poem spoken in the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin”) was pretty damn pretentious.
I disagree; some lyrics are very “cool” and non-pretentious, IMO. Consider Jailbreak or Ain’t No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire) by AC/DC. Tons more examples by punk rock bands.
“I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” by Panic! at the Disco, gets two Pretentious Points for the title alone. First point for having nothing to do with the content of the song, the second for not meaning anything (how does one write a sin?). Two more Pretentious Points for a pretentious band name. One for the unnecessary (viz, devoid of any necessity or context) punctuation, one for not making any sense (who goes to discos these days?).
Lyrics-wise, I guess it’s about a sham marriage? Billy Idol did it better three decades earlier with “White Wedding,” but never mind that. Anywyay, here’s a sample of the lyrics:
I chime in with a
“Haven’t you people ever heard of closing the goddamn door?”
No, it’s much better to face these kinds of things
With a sense of poise and rationality
So two more Pretentious Points: one for being about an obscure topic for a rock song, and one for a combination of weird vocal cadence and weird word choice (given the topic).
“Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas has many gems of pretentiousness (though I still rock out to the song):
Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man
Well, it surely means that I don’t know
On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about, I’m like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune
And misinterpreted!