I don’t see whats wrong with the lifetime Navy Davy lines. The real estate novelist makes no sense to me at all. I imagine Paul writing fiction about the houses he sells. Which really doesn’t make any sense.
The thing is, there are lots of crappy rock songs. No, wait, there are way more than lots. Far too many to even attempt to describe the vast quantities of stupifyingly bad rock songs. And I’m just talking about popular ones on the radio. Finding bad rock lyrics is like shooting fish in a barrel, with a hand grenade. Easy to do, but probably will only cause you pain.
What, in my opinion, truly elevates bad lyrics to being worthy of notice is when they’re married to a good tune. The crowning achievement of bad lyrics is latching onto a groove so good that you want to listen to it, yet being so bad they’re impossible to ignore, like the most luscious dessert imaginable with a turd inside.
Truly bad lyrics hide inside music so good that you can’t help but listen to it, hoping that this time, you can ignore the words you know are coming. And yet every time you find yourself tasting poo.
For me, one of the greats has got to be Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. Whether you like the band’s image or not, it has one of the best hard rock guitar solos of all time – sliding from silky smooth to crazy power like Michael Jordon exploding to the basket. Even the little guitar fills are as tasteful and muscular as anything Clapton or Page or Miles Davis ever did.
And yet I carry physical scars from the lyrics slamming into my brain. I mean, a parody of a retarded third grader’s lyrics would have more subtlety. Even a retarded third grader’s parody would. We’re talking constant cliches or even random words would be a giant step up here.
Definitely giant sized poo pie in my book.
I think of Paul as a frustrated novelist who will never be published, thus never realizing his dream. He sells real estate to live but his heart is elsewhere. He’s probably deluding himself, like every New York waiter who’s “really an actor”. He’s just a very sad character to me.
And all of that is expressed in six words; not bad.
But it still doesn’t make up for the cheap rhyme following. Joel’s lyrics imply that there’s something wrong with being “still in the Navy”, but we don’t know why. I think he came up with the name “Davey”, and cast about for the first rhyme. It’s lazy songwriting.
A better lyric would have been
*And he’s talking to Chester,
Who’s still a . . . *
Well, never mind.
He was drafted, then after his stint in the navy was over stayed in because he had no direction in life, and, hey, it’s something.
And he isn’t likely to get any other prospects, so he’ll wait out his working years in the navy.
Well keep in mind that Duran Duran sound like shit… so by extension, he didn’t smell very pleasant. 
Sure it does. There’s plenty of fiction in your average real estate listing.
Mine, from The Eagles:
He was a hard-headed man he was brutally handsome
And she was terminally pretty…
and
Her mind is Tiffany twisted
She’s got the Mercedes bends
I think you are all forgetting the Broccoli scenter fart that is:
“Domo arigato Mr Roboto
For helping me escape when I needed to”
I did some looking and found this at songfacts:
I’ve actually managed to block both the band and the first line from my memory, but there is a song out there that was so desperate for a rhyme that they used
“I felt like I just ate my young”
Paul’s father wanted him to change it to “yes, yes, yes” so it would at least have some dignity to it.
In addition to being a trite collection of boiler-plate quasi-political cynical BS grandstanding, Spirits in the Material World also had the worst rhyme in history:
Our so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail ya
The subjugate the meek
But it’s the rhetoric of fail-ya
Somebody already stole my favorite (“Only time will tell if we stand the test of time”), so I’ll list some other stinker:
“We gotta start from the start”- Loverboy. Gee, no kidding.
Damn. Thats all I can think of right now. 
Good thing I signed up today.
“But I’ll always regret that Rwandan thing.” --Bill Clinton
“Tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak,
Somewhere in this town…”
Huh. Gee, I wonder where it could be?
Oh, yeah, that one always cracks me up. The “only time will tell” line is another absolute fave, maybe the best ever, although MacArthur Park does indeed give a good run for the money, even if it ain’t rock&roll.
The classics are rollin’ now!
Along the lines of “jail ya / failya”, let us not forget:
Come on , shake your body baby, do the conga
I know you can’t control yourself any longa
Feel the rhythm of the music getting stronga
**
Thudlow Boink: Don’t know how I missed this, but crap, Mountain Dew hurts when it comes out your nose! Thanks for the laugh buddy. I don’t think I will ever be able to listen to that song again without thinking about Fax Machines. Damn you… 
I nedded something to cheer me up after reading sombody attempting to compare Guns n Roses to real musicians like Clapton. Wonder if he ever heard of Randy Rhodes, Eddie Van Halen (back in the old days when he was hot) or Jimmy Page or Ritchie Blackmore?. Besides didn’t Vince Neal bitch slap the GNR singer?
“Ballad of Andrea Yates”?
Ooo-eee baby, Steve Miller could really crank out the bad lyrics.
“Some people call me Maurice
Cause I speak of the pompitous of love”
Some people wish they had a remote vaporization switch every time this comes on the radio.
“People talk about me, baby
Say I’m doin’ you wrong, doin’ you wrong
Well, don’t you worry baby
Don’t worry
Cause I’m right here, right here, right here, right here at home”
Well thanks for clearing that up.
Nowadays, of course, he could probably find the recipe on the Internet fairly quickly.
I like Dream Theater…Dont get me wrong. But, could somebody explain these lyrics
The took pictures of our dreams
Tried to hide behind the stairs
And said maybe when the time is right they’ll fall 
Ahhh, but Quercus you didn’t actually name the most offensive lyric GNR subjected us to! The very first thing that popped into my head for this thread, it’s just that jarring.
She’s got eyes
that it seems to me
remind me of childhood
memories
Why does he need to qualify that it’s just how it seems to him? How can you be reminded OF a memory?!