I’m listening to Mel Torme singing “P.S. I Love You” on my Echo. There’s a disturbing line in the bridge:
Write to the Browns as soon as you’re able/They came around to call/I burned a hole in the dining room table/And let me see, I guess that’s all.
If I got a letter saying that, I might hurry home without bothering to write to the Browns. My desire to know the extent of the damage to the table would NOT be quenched by an afterthought “I love you.”
What other songs make YOU say “WTF?”
I think the assumption is that it’s a cigarette burn.
I love Billie Holiday’s version.
I have never been a fan of the Steve Miller band. One line, in particular, that piques my disdain, is how he claims himself to speak of"a pompatous of love.". It’s such a dumb line, even Cecil did a column on it.
Tripler
Steve Miller? No thank you.
A little sadder
A little madder
Somebody get me a ladder
Hey kids!
Shake it loose together.
The spotlights hitting something that’s been known to change the weather.
Well kill the fatted calf tonight
so stick around.
—Benny & the Jets
MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
-Donna Summer
WTF!?
I still can’t get past, “Don’t bring me down…GROOS.” 
“I would swallow my pride
I would choke on the rind
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside”
The lack thereof? That’s some angsty rock and roll lyrics right there.
Robert Plant blurting “below!”(?) near the end of “Rock n’Roll”.
The Turtles were known for their irreverent lyics, like in “Happy Together”:
So happy together
How is the weather
So happy together
We’re happy together
So happy together
Happy together
So happy together
So happy together (ba-ba-ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba)
And in the even better (IMO) “Elenore”:
Elenore, gee, I think you’re swell
And you really do me well
You’re my pride and joy, et cetera
Elenore, can I take the time
To ask you to speak your mind?
Tell me that you love me better
At the very end of Queen’s “One Vision”:
“Gimme fried chicken!”
You and I are generally of a like mind Trips, but we have to disagree on this one. Assuming I can understand the lyrics at all (another plus for Steve Miller), then I’d rather they just make up a word instead of forcing in some pointless word just to make a rhyme. Even singing ‘Da da da’ would be better than some of the other real words jammed into the songs you see in the other posts here.
MacArthur Park was written by the great songwriter Jimmy Webb. It is about the breakup with his girlfriend and the park in L.A. was where they spent a lot of time together. He says everything in the park was a visual reference to real things that he saw.
Everything in the song was visible. There’s nothing in it that’s fabricated. The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw. And so it’s a kind of musical collage of this whole love affair that kind of went down in MacArthur Park. … Back then, I was kind of like an emotional machine, like whatever was going on inside me would bubble out of the piano and onto paper.[4]
So that is WTF.
Rick Springfield. “Jessie’s Girl:”
“You know, I feel so dirty when they start talking cute
I wanna tell her that I love her
But the point is probably moot.”
Really. Really ?
You didn’t have a white board to just spitball for a while ? Were you so pressed for time that you left it at that, or did you somehow convince yourselves that you totally nailed it ?
Blecch.
A friend just named her daughter Eleanor, so we’ve been singing this to her a lot. The other day I asked the baby if she knew how special she was: “You’re named after the only song I know of with spelled-out punctuation in it!”
It’s been explained and supported by the opening lyrics that the singer is too shy to approach or even call the girl. The line How is the weather is all he’s be able to say directly to her. Everything is just in his hopeful imagination.
Here is it directly from the writer:
“Despite what the title implies, this is not a song about a couple in love. According to Gary Bonner, who wrote the song with Alan Gordon, the song is about unrequited love. Our desperate singer wants the girl to “imagine how the world could be so very fine,” proposing what would happen “if I should call you up.” The line in the fadeout, “How is the weather?” is when he realizes they will never be more than passing acquaintances, as he resorts to small talk to keep from bursting into tears. >>”
Imagine me and you, I do
I think about you day and night, it’s only right
To think about the girl you love and hold her tight
So happy together
If I should call you up, invest a dime
And you say you belong to me and ease my mind
Imagine how the world could be, so very fine
So happy together
This is what i like about david bowie.
“i walk into an empty room
and suddenly my heart goes boom.”
Maybe not a “throwaway” line, but why would James Taylor’s friends hit him from behind?
Is a whole song that’s just a throwaway going to count?
The music isn’t my jam at all, but it occupied a bit of cultural space amongst friends and sucked the air out of any conversation when it came up.
I don’t want to see a ghost
It’s the sight that I fear most
I’d rather have a piece of toast
Watch the evening news
I think the rest of the song, minutes of it, is her going, “Life, oh life, oh life, oh life.”
But seriously, I know that ghosts are scary and all and since they’re her greatest phobia, at least one more line analyzing it (and then celebrating “life” since that’s the song’s title) would not have gone amiss.
“Raindrops are falling on my head
And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed
Nothing seems to fit”
It’s a weird image to suddenly pop up, isn’t it?