A fairly recent example, in my opinion, is Paralyzer by Finger Eleven. I love the melody and rhythm, but the lyrics are very stupid. Not only that, they often don’t fit into the melody. Does anyone have any other examples?
I can’t really think of any songs with good lyrics but bad music, because I generally don’t listen too closely to songs I don’t like.
I was a big fan of Girls Against Boys during my college years – musically, they kick ass. Two bass guitarists and a fantastic drummer, pounding beats and surging rhythms, wall-of-sound noise…awesome, awesome music.
And then they have lyrics like this:
and
So embarrassing.
I couldn’t agree more; I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this song for months now. The video, on the other hand, I like, since it makes me homesick for Los Angeles (and the street-level scenes look like the backlot at Warner Bros. studios).
I probably shouldn’t admit this, but Avril Lavigne has a couple of songs that I take a bit of guilty pleasure in hearing over the P.A. system at the supermarket. It would be great if there were some depth to her words, but, after allowing my ears to squint long enough to discern her lyrics, I’ve come to realize that she’s the giant, puffing, crap-spewing smokestack of a colossal inanity factory.
Edit: Of course, I mean this in the nicest possible way.
Steve Howe has a couple of songs with “words” on his solo albums. He should just stick to the guitar.
The Charlene song Never Been to Me- it has a beautiful melody, but the lyrics are just ugh- a monologue by a self-pitying abortaholic whore who’s evidently pestering the hell out of some lady in a bar or on the street, and the maudlin gooey spoken part “truth is that little baby you’re holding mooka wooka chooka”, plus one of my major lyrical inaccuracies of all time (GREECE IS NOT AN isle, it’s MANY MANY islands and a mainland!). (Though I’ll admit that “I took the hand of a preacher man as we made love in the sun”'s a pretty and evocative line.)
The song (you-tube link) from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins is a beautiful melody and its lyrics are great for the play but unfortunately strand it there as it’s a duet between John Hinckley (singing to his imagined dreamgirl Jodie Foster prior to shooting Ronald Reagan) and Squeaky Fromme (who’s singing to Charles Manson prior to shooting Gerald Ford). What’s strange is that it’s been re-adapted as a non-book number with references to Jodie/Charlie removed [sung here here by the gorgeous John Barrowman and some woman who’s not the gorgeous John Barrowman) and removing the references and trying to make it more universal makes it creepier (i.e. I don’t want a lover so obsessed with me that I’m their wind and devil and god they’d drink poison for unless it’s the gorgeous John Barrowman).
Rihanna - Unfaithful.
No matter how big a whore you are, or how much it “kills him”; that doesn’t make you a murderer. Ugh.