For contradictory music/lyrics, you can’t go past ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ by Foster The People.
Very happy, upbeat song, used in a lot of commercials but when you listen to the lyrics…
‘All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You’d better run, better run, outrun my gun
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks
You’d better run, better run, faster than my bullet’
The biggest music/lyrics mismatch to me will always be “Excitable Boy” by Warren Zevon, a bouncy little number in which a young man rapes and murders his prom date, later digging up her grave and building a cage with her bones.
Very true. 
“Here in my car,
I feel safest of all,
I can lock all my doors,
it’s the onlywaytolive
in cars.”
You say that as if there were something wrong with it.
He’s just an excitable boy.
For the sort of mismatch the OP describes, it’s probably hard to beat Falkenbach–there are too many examples to bother with listing. I give him a pass 'cause he’s Icelandic and English is presumably not his first language.
For the other type, Bad Religion’s Better Off Dead comes to mind. The cover by Anathema matches lyric to melody much better.
You sure that’s “Olympus”? Heard that song yesterday, and I’m sure there’s an “r” sound in the spot in question. I tend to hear “an empress” or “a lepress” (yes, I’m aware the latter is a bit nonsensical ) where you’re saying “Olympus”.
“The New York Times affect on man”
I also once thought it was lepress, but then I was taught otherwise.
For me, REM jumped the shark when they stopped caring how well their lyrics fitted.
“What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” sounds crammed in 5 beats, and “Call me when you try to wake her up.” just sounds like a mess in 6
As I recall, that was the term they used in the spoken dialog as well. I suspect it was the term actually used.
Ozzy gives us, “And they don’t even know even what they’re talkin’ about”, which is actually not too bad considering the brain damage he must suffer.
I have no idea what the definitive lyrics are but I also originally heard “lepress” and then settled on “empress”.
Olympus makes no sense in my mind because it’s already a real geographic location. It’d be like describing the Mojave desert as “stretching on like the Sahara”. Even if Olympus is the correct word, I shall continue to sing it my way since I obviously know better than Toto.
In classical times, the Greeks had nine Muses – goddesses of literature, science and the arts: Euterpe, the Muse of song; Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry; Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy; and so on.
It seems there was also a little-regarded tenth member of that group: Elemenope, the Muse of tortured prosody.
Never very popular, these days she is only remembered because of her appearance in the “Alphabet Song”.
I always hear, “Rises like Mount Ev’rest…”
I thought it was “Don’t even try to wake her up”, which at least is one fewer syllable.
I just googled it…makes more sense put together with the preceding line
“We can try to understand
The New York Times effect on man”
:smack:
Most sources say “Call me when you try to wake her up”, but I’ve never thought it was an ill-fitting lyric.
Bob Dylan’s songs usually have some syllabic leeway although I wouldn’t characterize them as ill-fitting.