Worst rock&roll lyrics?

I second that emotion! I wish I didn’t, but I do. Not a single lyric mentioned so far is bad, IMHO. I think, there are too many pedantic English majors, who do not understand the concept of poetic license! (The liberty taken by an artist or a writer in deviating from conventional form or fact to achieve a desired effect.)

I bet most posters here would criticize Horse Latitudes by Morrison.

It baffles me that people can presume to take a phrase OUT OF CONTEXT and criticize it. Voice is just another aspect of music, words may not make literal sense but they fit in the overall scheme. You may not like a song, and I dislike many. But the words are secondary; music should be judged holistically, not according to some arbitrary lexicon of proper grammar.

I am particularly offended by the post critical of “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC. [not really offended J, it is just one of my favorite songs]

She was a fast machine
She kept her motor clean
She was the best damn woman I had ever seen
She had the sightless eyes
Telling me no lies
Knockin’ me out with those American thighs
Taking more than her share
Had me fighting for air
She told me to come but I was already there…

Classic.

AndrewT: Try the whole verse ,
Rocket engines burning fuel so fast,
Up into the night sky they blast,
Through the universe the engines whine,
Could it be the end of man and time?
Back on earth the flame of life burns low,
Ev’rywhere is misery and woe,
Pollution kills the air, the land and sea,
Man prepares to meet his destiny. Yeah "

As to your other comment RE: ABBA:

Are you actually suggesting that ABBA is a Rock Band?

I better stop before I get into trouble, if I have not already…

Can’t resist, Buns3000, how well do you sing in Japanese?

Much as I love Robert Johnson, it’s still an extremely stupid lyric.

The lyrics to The Gambler are also pretty stupid. I’m amazed that people think of a song that says “The best you can do is die in your sleep” and think it’s inspiring. :confused:

I’ll also defend America’s “for to give you no pain” and poetic license to fill out a rhyme. It actually works in context.

Yeah, it’s the ‘plants and birds and rocks and things’ line that irritates me. C’mon, at least TRY a little, will you?

Me? It’s always been that ‘Venus/Seen Us’ rhyme from ‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe. That should have earned them jail time.

Wow. Much more variety of opinion than I expected.

I do like much of what other people have cited. But I can’t agree with askeptic – some of it’s really dumb.

I mean, I’m all for poetic license. I even like nonsense lyrics. “Stuck inside of Mobile…” is a great song, and if you can figure out what “China Cat Sunflower” is about, I’d like to talk to the people you talk to, if you know what I mean. :wink:

And what about “Ba b’ba ba ba , ba b’ba ba ba, I wanna be sedated”. I love it, Ramones kick ass. “I came back as a bag of groceries…” Classic.

But there ain’t no license that’ll make Huey Lewis a great lyricist. “Don’t take money, don’t take fame, don’t need no credit card to ride this train”. Ugh! It’s like he sat down and thought, let’s see, how many cliches can I get into a couplet with a weak rhyme?

PS: If I wrote lyrics in Japanese, they’d be bad. Bad, bad, bad.

For all of their musical genius, you have to admit that

“She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah”

is not the most insightful lyric.

You do realize he’s talking about a handjob, right?

After seeing post #6 and post #7 I believe in synchronicity man.

You’re so vain, you probably think this song (that is about you) *is about you

Well I hear you went up to Saratoga and your horse naturally won
Then you flew your lear jet up to Nova Scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun?*

Aaaaargh!

Don’t you? Don’t You? Don’t you?

repeatedly jams knitting needles in ears

Mommy, make her stfu.

And I’ll probably get killed because I don’t like this song (or any song by Duran Duran for that matter)

Hungry Like The Wolf when he says “I smell like I sound.” Huh?

AndrewT, you are right about Napoleon not surrendering.
But what I hear from the ABBA song is

The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself

I usually wince at any shelf/self couplet, but that’s a cute variation of it.

My vote for worst lyric is a single line from Van Halen:

Only time will tell if we stand the test of time

(from “Why Can’t This Be Love”)

[slight nitpic, and yes, I am smiling as I type. It may not matter to you but if I know someone is smiling as opposed to sneering or worse, foaming at the mouth in anger or disgust, it makes a difference to me]

Sample_The_Dog:

Ugh! That is not a couplet. Nor are there any cliches involved. Unless you count all THREE assertions as one cliche. If that is the case, please cite sufficient prior usage to qualify the phrase as a cliche.

Blasphemer! All Bobby D. songs make sense to somebody. :wink:

In the immortal words of the greatest band ever, Spinal Tap, “Listen, to what the flower people say” :smiley:

The dumb line that has always made me cringe comes from Bon Jovi’s “I’ll be there for you” (which is actually full of dumb lyrics, imo, but this is the worst):

I guess this time you’re really leaving
I heard your suitcase say goodbye

Ugh :stuck_out_tongue:

I do? Actually, if you listen to the whole song, it’s not a bad bit of songwriting. And not all that cliched, either: it’s not every love song that’s written in the third person.
And askeptic, even though I know better, I can never hear that AC/DC song without thinking he’s singing “She was a fax machine.”

Steve Miller has done worse. For example:

Abra Abra Cadabra -
I want to reach out and grab ya.

shudder

  • Tamerlane

I gotta go with the all time “classic”, MacArthur Park

  • 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*

Bletch.

“One, two, three lock box…threeeeeee lockkkkkkkk boxxxxxxxx”

I think it’s by Sammy Hagar. Whatever, maybe I wouldn’t think it was stupid if I had a clue as to what it means. :smiley:

:smiley: :smiley: Yea, it is Sammy. Oh nostalgia. I saw the Three Lock Box tour in 1983 at the Cow Palace in 1983. (stupid trivia-Night Ranger opened for Sammy, now more than twenty years later my next door neighbor turns out to be the original lead guitarist for Night Ranger, go figure…) I gotta admit I liked the song back in the day, but after googling the lyrics they do seem pretty stupid and nonsensical. I guess I have to chalk it up to the fact that sometimes the words are unimportant and the vocals are simply meant to serve as another instrument. I still start to “Bang my head” when I hear the song (though my hair is not nearly as long as it was in 1983) it just does not seem to matter that the words don’t actually make sense. :cool:

Thanks for the memories, I haven’t heard that song in years…

I don’t know who actually writes the lyrics, but I’m pleased to be the first to nominate any Def Leppard song as an excellent example of some of the worst rock & roll lyrics I’ve ever encountered.

“Television lover, baby, go all night
Sometime, anytime, sugar me sweet
Little miss ah innocent sugar me, yeah…
[snip]
Pour some sugar on me
In the name of love…”

I kind of get the message here, which is something like, “have a lot of sex with me.” The same message is expressed in a slightly more feeble manner in this one:

"Ya better come inside when you’re ready to
But no chance if ya don’t wanna dance
You like four letter words when you’re ready to
But then you won’t 'cos you know that you can

You got it, but are you gettin’ it?

You say that love is won when you get some
But then your finger won’t trigger the gun…

…Yeah, but are you gettin’ it? - Armageddon it!
Ooh, really gettin’ it? - Yes, Armaggedon it! "

WTF does that mean?

::Jams forks into my ears::

When they give out the award, they oughta call it the “Billy”, in honor of the Lifetime Achievement Grand-Champion of the Crappy Rhyme Scheme, Billy Joel.

To whit:

He’s talking to Davey,
Who’s still in the Navey,
and probably will be for life

(Although the line preceding, “Paul is a real-estate novelist” has a certain poetic spareness to it).

And yet that line is entirely capable of bringing me to tears.