Cold chills. This little piece of hell is brought to you by Dan Hill, “Sometimes When We Touch”.
I’m with BigStar303 ---- it’s the lyrics that don’t make sense that drive me nuts.
For example, Faith Hill’s “The Way You Love Me”:
If I could grant
You one wish
I wish you could see
the way you kiss…
Excuse me, you selfish bitch, but doesn’t that fall more into the category of granting YOURSELF your own wish?
And don’t get me started on those evil mindgames you play with your father on those Alltel commercials…
If you want to send a message, call Western Union."
–Samuel Goldwyn
Face it. Most lyrics are written to scan and fit the mood of the song. In fact, a lot of great songs have lyrics that are pure treacle:
Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday
Pure crap right? But it’s the most-recorded song of all time.
If a lyric triggers the proper emotional response in you, then the lyricist has done right by the song. If not, it’s best to fall back on “it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.”
Sorry to unsuppress the details, but that would be “I’ve Never Been to Me” by Charlene (singers with only one name are nearly always bad news…and yes, that includes Sting!).
First released in 1977, it only made it to #97 on the charts. Regrettably, someone had the bright idea to rerelease it in 1982, by which time America had got five additional years of bad taste under its belt.
It promptly shot all the way to #3. And the kicker is, it’s on Motown – surely the worst song in that fabled label’s history.
No argument that it’s a ghastly song, music- and lyrics-wise. And your passage could easily be cited for its stunning TRIPLE negative.
But to pick a nit, yes, there are two “for”'s, but this is not really a good example of redundancy.
The first “for” is used in the sense of “because.” And “for to…” is an old folkie idiom, used by no less than Bob Dylan in “Mr. Tambourine Man”:
I’m ready to go anywhere
I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade…
There are other examples of this usage, but I can’t call them to mind. Sounds corny and foreign to our ears now, but there is some precedent for it.
Yes! I love this song, but have always felt the same thing: “I always will what?” A friend and I, when we hear this on the radio, sing along: “I was born a rambler and a gambler [I actually thought it was “a roamer and a rambler,” but I’m probably wrong and haven’t heard it in a while] and I guess I always will…be…one.” It sounds pretty funny when you use the tune and pause just right.
Aww, man! As soon as I saw the title of this thread, this is what popped into my head (and is, regrettably, still floating around). “You are the flower, and I am the seed. We walked in the garden. We planted a tree.” Beg pardon?
Re - “Horse with No Name” Beside the incredibly bad lyrics, there’s the whole premise of the song. Why not just name the damn horse?
As a lover of Pink Floyd’s music, may I humbly suggest that David Gilmore, whose guitar ability and whose music-writing ability are not to be questioned, just can’t write lyrics? I submit the lyrics to the song “One Slip”: “…then drowned in desire, our souls on fire/ I led the way to the funeral pyre/ and without a thought of the consequence/ I gave in to my decadence.” Come on, Dave. He and Waters just need to patch up their differences.
And, finally, there’s the wonderfully bizarre “Good Morning Starshine” by… well, I forget who it’s by originally, but I have it on a Sarah Brightman CD. It’s really weird hearing Sarah Brightman singing “Glibby glup gloopy, nibby nobby nooby…”
YWalker:
You don’t like the Faith Hill lyrics:
For example, Faith Hill’s “The Way You Love Me”:
If I could grant
You one wish
I wish you could see
the way you kiss…
because you think she’s selfish? I don’t like them because they’re stupid. I imagine her lover actually being granted this wish, then saying:
“You wished for WHAT? You could have wished for a million dollars. A BILLION dollars. We could have been the rulers of the world. We could have been immortal. And you wish for a VIDEO CAMERA?!”
“But if this ever-changing world in which we live in…”
That ALWAYS bugs me! I’m a big Beatles fan and by extension a McCartney fan, and this is my favorite Bond theme by a wide margin, but this just grates on my nerves. Why couldn’t Sir Paul have just dropped that last “in” and held “live” for an extra beat? I’ve sung along with the song while doing just that and it sounds fine!
It’s from the stage musical, “Hair.” Oliver MacDermott did a pop cover that got a lot of airplay back in '69.
Yeah, hearing Sarah Brightman do the song would sound pretty ridiculous.
About Heart’s “All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You”, am I the only one who questions the morality of this song?
The narrator's husband can't get her pregnant (low sperm count?) so she picks up a hitchhiker and takes him to a motel, has a night of adultery and tells him they can never meet again.
Then years later, the poor sap sees her with a son-**that looks like him**!
So her husband is raising a child that's not his and this hitchhiker has to go through life knowing he has a child he can't see or find out anything about.
This woman is not a caring, thoughtful person. As long as she gets a baby....I always thought it was “But if this ever-changing world in which we’re livin’.” Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what it sounds like to me. Makes a bit more sense.
For your reading pleasure, in order:
http://www.armory.com/~peterr/humor/Dave_Barry/921107-bad-song-survey
http://www.armory.com/~peterr/humor/Dave_Barry/920124-bad-song-survey
I still have to vote for “Muskrat Love”:
“And they whirl and they twirl and they tango
Singing and jinging a jango
Floating like the heavens above
Looks like Muskrat Love”
Aside from the whole muskrat thing, WTF is a jango??? And what is “jinging?”
Point well taken, ** BigStar303 ** and, as an old Kingston Trio, Limeliters, Brothers Four, etc. fan, I should have remembered
** goin’ away for to leave ** with the "honey on the far distant shore.
And as for ** OrcaChow ** I must confess that as a DJ at a very small station in Oregon back in 1969 I held a contest in which the entrants had to write the lyrics of “Good Morning Starshine”. I just had the vision of all those subteens listening over and over to their 45s, trying to transcribe the “glibby glob glooby” nonsensel. IIRC, the grand prize for the winner was a half-dozen 45s from the local record shop. (street value about five bucks) Ah, the memories…
While sacrine, insipid lyrics make me cringe (e.g. “love is a beautiful thing, too bad it makes Micheal Bolton sing”), I must admit that I do like nonsensical lyrics. One of my favorites is Robyn Hitchcock. For example one song called Balloon Man:
I was walking up Sixth avenue when Balloon Man came right up to me
he was round and fat and spherical with the biggest grin I ever seen
he bounced on up toward me but before we could be introduced
he blew up very suddenly I guess his name was probably Bruce
and I laughed like I always do
and I cried like I cry for you
and balloon man blew up in my hand
he spattered me with tomatoes, hummos, chickpeas and some strips of skin
so I made a right on 44th and I washed my hands when I got in
and it rained like a slow divorce
and I wished I could buy a horse
and balloon man blew up in my hand
He has another song called unsettled, which just features a whole bunch of unconnected phrases that gives some strange disturbing imagery, but no real sense. Sort of like early morning meetings, but enjoyable.
“You Take My Breath Away” by Rex Smith, a sample of the lyrics follow:
You, I don’t know what to say
You take my breath away
You’re every sone I sing
You’re the music that I play
And you take my breathj away
You, you smile and it’s okay
You take my breath away
Like water from a spring
On a sizzlin’ summer day
Oh, you take my breath away
Now I must beat my head against a wall to remove this song from it… :shudder:
Keith
Mac Davis’ “Baby, Don’t Get Hooked On Me”:
“Girl, you’re a hot-blodded woman-child
and it’s warm where you’re touching me.”
I guess it takes someone with a LOT of self-esteem to sing this line with a straight face. Of course, he DID sing that song to Miss Piggy on the Muppet Show, so he can be partially forgiven.
I hate everyone who mentioned “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You.” I downloaded it from Napster and ended up purging my stomach contents as a symbolic gesture against Heart.
If we’re talking about confusing lyrics, I’ve never understood “Landslide” by Stevie Nicks. Especially when I hear her dedicate it to her father. It’s a beautiful song, but the beginning and the end confound me. How is she taking her love down if she’s climbing a mountain? Okay, good stuff about changing seasons and building my life around you and getting older - then the weird shit again. If you see my reflection in the hills, the landslide brought me down? But I thought I saw my reflection before I was brought down before? Now you can see it too? Help.
I’ve been laughing my head off over the evil translations of standard quotes given by The Burn Maker, as discussed in this pit thread.
Check out the examples in the pit thread, and then try out your least favorite lyrics in the Burn Maker. (You couldn’t possibly make them worse, right?)
Just being anal again, but the artist credit on the label of “Good Morning Starshine” was simply Oliver. The guy’s full name was William Oliver Swofford. Just died within the past year or so.
McDermott, IIRC, was one of the three creators/writers of “Hair,” and thus this song.