I guess it’s gonna be alright
Yes the worst is over now
The morning sun is shining
Like a red rubber ball
Whatever country western male singer used the nursery rhyme 1 2 buckle my shoe. Dumb ass! Let me kick you with my shoe.
The geniuses Zager and Evans deserve a mention for their followup to In The Year 2525, the heartbreaking Mr Turnkey, a thoughtful ode to a convicted rapist:
Mr Turnkey, it’s 10 pm in Wichita Falls
August 16, 1969 and I’m in some bar
Mr Turnkey, I need a woman and I ain’t getting far
I never was the kind of man a woman looked for.
But Mr Turnkey, she looked at me with flirting eyes
Mr Turnkey, she was lovelier than oil lights
Mr Turnkey, she led me on, she led me on,
She knew she wasn’t going to let me love her.
Mr Turnkey, there’s been a rape in Wichita Falls
Mr Turnkey, I’m sitting here crying in my coveralls
Sort of makes you glad they were one hit wonders, eh?
Written by Paul Simon in a moment when he was trying to prove he really could so too write a normal pop song.
America gets lots of mentions in these threads but nobody ever brings up one of their weirdest couplets.
From “Tin Man.” The first two lines are solid:
But the next two are the ultimate WTF lyrics:
In 35 years, nobody’s ever explained them. Even as a drug reference. If they’d just admit that “tropic” was a typo for “topic” it may make a smidgen of sense. But they won’t.
Full disclosure: I like the surrealism of most of America’s lyrics.
Wham:
Guilty feet have got no rhythm
Neil Diamond:
I am I cried
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
I kept meaning to start a thread about songs with good music that were ruined by stupid lyrics. Since I never did, I’ll use this one…
Rihanna - Unfaithful
This is just setup for the dramatic finish…
this makes me scream “Then stop, you whore!” at my radio every time.
Now, for the dramatic finish:
Now I want to punch my dashboard out because this stupid cunt doesn’t understand that “dying inside” is meant figuratively. Ugh.
BTW. “Slowly walking down the hall - Faster than a cannonball” is pure genius.
I hate to be redundant, but anybody that doesn’t get this:
…has never gotten high.
I remember countless nights of walking through my residence hall back to my room after smoking weed in the alley outside with my friends. My room was all the way at the end of the hallway, and walking from one end of the hall to the other felt like it took about 15 minutes!
Very funny book. From the chapter Songs Women Hate, I nominate the line ( and title ) He hits me and it feels like a kiss.
“I’m not aware of too many things
I know what I know if you know what I mean”
EDIE BRICKELL
“She’s like so whatever
You can do so much better”
Avril Lavigne
"Well can’t you see me standing here,
I’ve got my back against the record machine
I ain’t the worst that you’ve seen.
Oh can’t you see what I mean ? "
(Words by Van Halen)
Pfft. You don’ know bad lyrics:
I was actually going to start a bad-lyrics thread based on hearing this song a couple days ago.
The one I’ll add to the list would be “Cowboy” by Kid Rock.
To me it always sounded like something a 15-year-old burn-out would write while wasting time in algebra, trying to think up all the cool things he would do out in California-- bitchin’ bad-ass that he is-- and then make it all rhyme.
Sample lyric:
Inspired by ArchiveGuy’s joke in this thread, we have Paul McCartney’s Jet:
And the bridge of the song:
Jesus Christ, how does someone write such horrible lyrics? I mean, if someone did a darker and more musically-interesting cover version of this song, the lyrics might be able to sound good on some surreal level, but they don’t fit at all with the instrumentals of the song as it is.
No love for cakes getting left out in the rain?
Huh.
Anyway, somebody above mentioned Neil Diamond, and we can’t end a discussion of terrible lyrics without a nod to Play me:
And Messrs Fagan and Beckwith favored us with
“Love Hurts” has some really bad lyrics. Here’s the first verse:
Love hurts, Love scars, Love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough or strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud, it holds a lot of rain
Love hurts, Ooo-oo Love hurts
About Deacon Blue, Wikipedia says:
I always submit Ace of Base’s The Sign for these threads.
While generally a good pop song, the following string of words makes me sad:
Under the pale moon
Where I see a lot of stars
This was the gold standard for horrible lyrics until I actually heard My Humps in its entirety.
In the bad lyrics stakes, I’ve long had a fondness for Culture Club’s “The War Song”
War war is stupid and people are stupid
And love means nothing in some strange Quarters
War war is stupid and people are stupid
And I heard them banging on hearts and fingers
War!
Um -yeah. Deep and profound, that.
Niel Diamond, “I am I said”
“I am, I said.
To no one there.
And no one heard at all,
Not even the CHAIR???”
Also, Bob Seager and the Silver Bullet Band, “Shame on the Moon”
“Until you’ve been beside a man,
You don’t know who he knows.”
I think my favorite bad lyric is to the Beach Boys’ “Solar System,” in which we get Brian Wilson at his goofiest.