Song lyrics — the good, the bad, and the ugly

Cafe Society
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Most song lyrics are, let’s face it, not the greatest writing ever. Understandably so: there are a lot more constraints on writers of lyrics than on prose authors, and many of them can work at cross purposes. That clever turn of phrase that doesn’t fit the meter of the song? No sale.

So, that being said, when a truly exceptional lyric shows up in a song — good or bad — it tends to stand out. (Note: This is about particular individual lyrics within a song, not the overall lyrics. A song may be great, terrible, or completely forgettable… except for these particular lines.) What are your picks for exceptional (or exceptionally terrible) song lyrics? I’ll start.

GOOD: “And So It Goes” by Billy Joel

This melancholy breakup ballad, the last track on Joel’s Storm Front album, doesn’t really have a “chorus” per se, but the title is a refrain repeated several times throughout the song. The first time it shows up, it’s paired with this clever turn of phrase:

And so it goes, and so it goes,
And so will you, soon, I suppose

BAD: “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats

Ignoring the complete non sequitur of the statements, the bigger crime here is this: No matter how hard you try to mispronounce it as “hance”, these two lines Do. Not. Rhyme!:

We can dance, we can dance,
Everybody look at your hands

GOOD: “I Have My Moments” by Blues Traveler

One of the band’s more pop-oriented songs, the verses are written as a childlike series of simple rhymes detailing imaginary events. “Started in a dream / Wound him up on a baseball team”, etc. etc. One of these stands out, though, for playing with that structure. Technically this does rhyme… but only in English:

Gonna meet the King of France
Tell him, “Je ñ’ai pas de pantalons”

BAD: “My Love is Your Love” by Whitney Houston

The lyrics for this song are mostly fairly vapid, as fits the milieu. But there’s a line in the chorus that’s all but unintelligible — Whitney herself completely swallows it, as if she’s ashamed to even sing it. That may have been the case, because it’s just awful. I sought out knowledge of this line way back in the late 1990s when such information was harder to come by, and ever since I’ve wished I could un-learn it. So, fair warning. The chorus to her poppy love song ends on this absolute clunker:

Your love is my love,
And my love is your love
It would take an eternity to break us,
And the chains of Amistad couldn’t hold us

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You can’t get too far into this without:

Every day a little sadder, a little madder
Someone get me a ladder

Still…it’s a good song.

Good:

I’ve always smiled at:

Somebody needs to know the time glad that I’m here

I love how “the time” and “that I’m” echo each other.

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It can happen in one artist’s career, my example is Bob Dylan:

Mr. Tambourine Man:

And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

This is Nobel Prize for literature stuff.

“Wiggle Wiggle”, not so much:

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle, you can raise the dead

To be clear: I adore Dylan, but it shows that every genius has their dry spells, as Dylan had his legendary writer’s blocks when he either wrote nothing or shit like this.

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I remembered my “ugly”

April Wine’s immortal, irredeemable

“If you see Kay”

I think this song singlehandedly ended the band’s career.

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I’mma need Dylan to explain how a ton of lead “wiggles”, kthx.

I remembered another terrible chorus.

BAD: “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin

Also one of the more famously misheard lyrics of all time because… well, mostly because whatever people think they hear is usually as good or better than the actual chorus, which nearly collapses under the weight of its own pretension:

On we sweep, with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore

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I find this chorus exceptionally good, just because it’s not standard easy fare and quite complex. I can see the Vikings frantically rowing westwards when I hear this.

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Yeah, he just didn’t care at this time.

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Yeah, the song is about Vikings attacking the shores of Europe. The chorus paints a concise but vivid picture of Vikings rowing toward their battle target. Zep has tons of lyrics way more pretentious than this.

My vote for good- I’ve always liked this stanza of Solsbury Hill:

When illusion spin her net
I’m never where I wanna be
And liberty, she pirouette
When I think that I am free

The next one isn’t bad either:

Watched by empty silhouettes
Who close their eyes but still can see
No one taught them etiquette
I will show another me

Bu then, rhyming ‘replacement’ with ‘face meant’? I’m not sure if that’s good, bad or ugly, but I still like it…

Today I don’t need a replacement
I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant

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I know some people call something like this constrained, but I really love this kind of rhymes. Very creative.

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I honestly can’t decide if it’s really good or really bad, but somehow I deeply love this by the Steve Miller Band:

Ab-ra, Abracadabra
I wanna reach out and grab ya

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So now you’ve got me, that it one of the worst rhymes in musical history. :laughing: (the whole song is dumb, also musically, and I generally like Steve Miller)

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Good:

Warren Zevon, Desperadoes Under the Eaves:

And if California slides into the ocean,
Like the mystics and statistics say it will,
I predict this motel will be standing,
Until I pay my bill.

Bad: America, Horse With No Name

In the desert, you can’t remember your name
'Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.

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As much as I love Leonard Cohen, I think folks sometimes give him a pass for some reason.

Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old-fashioned book

Oh, like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn

mmm

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We were standing on a mountain top,
where the cactus flowers grow.
I was wishing that the world would stop,
when you said, ‘we’d better go.’
Robert Earl Keen

Ever since the watermelon.
I mean, WTF, Paul?

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But they make up for it with golden metaphors like:

There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings

And

The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound

For good, I’ll give you:

You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive

Where the sun comes up about ten in the mornin’
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you’re drinkin’
And you spend your life diggin’ coal from the bottom of your grave

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The song “The Myth of Fingerprints” is about racism. The title itself likely refers to the American contradiction that we say we are are all unique individuals, yet we stereotype entire groups of people. “Fingerprints” is a metaphor, meaning, though no two are exactly alike, they are all very similar: “I’ve seen them all and man, they’re all the same”.

Simon often uses oblique, metaphorical lyrics, but he’s usually going for a certain meaning. It’s not just random word salad. The lyrics:

Well, the sun gets weary
And the sun goes down
Ever since the watermelon

To me means that the sun has been rising and setting on racism or racist attitudes for a long time. But instead of just saying “ever since racial injustice” or something, he uses a metaphorically subtle but racially-charged word, that also happens to fit into the rhythm and meter of the song nicely.

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Umm, sir? You with the metal hat? We’re rowing towards the EASTERN shore. Sure, we just left the western shore of Norway, and we’re traveling westward, but that land ahead of us? That’s the eastern shore of Angle-land.

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Maybe they were going for Wales or Cumbria.

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“The very first place they raided was the great monastery of Lindisfarne in northeast England. The two main Viking groups carried on sailing westwards across the North Sea to raid Ireland, Scotland and northern England.”

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I hate Immigrant Song because it glorifies Viking hordes. And they aren’t even “immigrants”, they’re invaders. Rape and pillage.

To be honest, I don’t think Plant is a closet Nazi, or gave the lyrics even a bit of analysis. Just pick and choose the “cool” parts of Viking lore and run with it.