R Kelly’s Trapped in the closet, anyone?
He walks up to the closet
He comes up to the closet
Now he’s at the closet
Now he’s opening the closet.
It doesn’t? Huh. I thought they all had the same “ooh” vowel sound. Which of those words have I been mispronouncing all these years? 
That is not a rhyme, that is assonance.
The cake in the rain wasn’t even the worst part of “MacArthur Park”. The beginning is:
Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed
In love’s hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants.
Aside: We saw Liz Callaway as the featured performer at the Boston Pops a couple of days ago. She stuck the middle section of the song into a Jimmy Webb medley, and then told us how she’d met him and told him she’d done a few of his songs on her CD. He took her hand, kissed it, and thanked for recording on the middle section of his “MacArthur Park”. And it’s true, without the cake and the overinstrumentation in the Richard Harris version, it doesn’t suck all that much.
But then there’s Wham!, with
Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh, I want the world to end …
kelly5078 -
That’s not even the worst part of Horse With No Name,
*After nine days I let the horse run free
'Cause the desert had turned to sea
There were plants and birds and rocks and things *
and things, and THINGS! The laziest damned example of lyric writing ever.
I don’t know what Wham! song this comes from, but it sounds a lot like “Why do I find it hard to write the next line, when I want the truth to be said”, from Spandau Ballet’s “True”. Which is a pretty decent lyric, from a sort of pretty song.
Are you sure you’re not misquoting Spandau Ballet, and the song True?
Why do I find it hard to write the next line
Oh I want the truth to be said…"
What’s even worse is when it comes up again, instead of repeating that he finds it hard, he comes up with this clanger:
Take your seaside arms and write the next line…
WTF???
I love that song, but the lyrics suck.
Yeah, it’s ironic, in an Alanis Morrissette kinda way. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said that.)
I checked the dictionary for “assonance” before posting, and “vowel rhyme” was one of the definitions. Whether you call it a rhyme or an assonance is irrelevant to the point I was making.
The Fray’s How to Save a Life:
Rhyming ‘best’ with ‘best’? Genius!
It’s not that they are bad lyrics, as such, but it amazes me that this dude can basically make a hit song out of a song that is virtually nothing but a chorus.
That would be cheating, surely.
Longhair75: Bonus karma for the Dylan Moran reference.
Responses first, then my nomination:
Exapno - I don’t mind keeping it local, but I think it’s really unfair to include genres that were never meant to have meaningful lyrics. That’d include the various dance/electronica types (#2 & #9 on the list), metal (#10), and pop potboiler fluff even the artist acknowledged isn’t any good (#6). And frankly, considering what an incredible talent Des’ree is, putting her at #1 is something of a low blow.
Re. Tin Man…yeah. Weird. I don’t remember reading anything about anyone attempting to interpret it, and I can only assume that everyone tried for about 3 minutes and just plain gave up.
kelly5078 - Yeah. America is pretty incomprehensible under the best of circumstances, but A Horse With No Name, that was an utter mess. (My personal pet peeve: If he’s in a desert, why is there so much freaking RAIN?) I have a feeling that was the point, though…every band’s gotta have that one stupid song they threw together just for fun, and every so often that unfortunately becomes the one they’re eternally famous for (see also: Tubthumping, Turning Japanese, I’ll Be There For You, Steal My Sunshine).
longhair75 - Welcome to the fabulous world of big beat! Okay, here’s the thing…the vocal samples are not important. They’re just one of the tools the DJ uses to put the song together. That’s how techno works, big beat being a loose offshoot of it (there’s more to it, of course, but I’m not touching that swamp). Not all of it uses vocal samples, either; if pure instrumentation is more your thing, you might want to give The Crystal Method a listen.
HelloKitty/Rucksinator - Y’know what…I have the unsettingly sneaking suspicion that she just borrowed a page from Ford Prefect (human beings’ habit of repeating the incredibly obvious over and over) and deliberately made that goddam song laughably easy to debunk. Thus ensuring that it’d get ripped to shreds roughly 875 billion times in the first month alone, thus ensuring immortality. Which of course is exactly what happened.
My opinion…eh. Corny, and not a whole lot different from anything else she’s done. Much like Aqua w/Barbie Girl, except they’re at least fun to listen to.
DrDeth - The entire song, all seven-and-a-freakin’-half minutes of it, manages to be both incredibly corny and nauseatingly sappy. For the life of me, I don’t see why everyone’s so hung up on that cake.
InvisibleWombat - That’d be I Love a Rainy Night by Eddie Rabbit. It’s kinda repetitive, but nowhere near as bad as you seem to imply. (Yes, he does make it clear why he loves rainy nights, thank you very much.) Trust me, there’s a lot worse. Some of it in this thread alone. (“I want to get away, I want to flyyy awaaayyy…” And I like that one!)
And my nomination, both because no one else seems to have any problem with this and because this always struck me as a grossly unfair division of labor.
It goes something like this…
male vocalist: Who’s the private dick who scores with all the chicks, busts the perp, and saves the day without even getting his hair mussed up, because he’s cool and all that, and I wish I could be even half as cool and all that as him, but no one can, because that’s just how he is, one of a kind, and he also puts on great parties and can throw a wicked spiral and never grumbles about his back or hips or prostate or anything, cool cat, big daddy, dig it, yo, are you feeling it, are you feeling me, yo?
at least three female vocalists: Shaft!
Geeez…don’t quit your day jobs, ladies. 
I like Dead Can Dance in a “there are worse things that could be constantly played at art BFA art exhibition openings” sort of way, but one line always makes me halt to a dead stop regardless of what I’m doing in order to glare at the speakers. Something called American Dreaming, with mostly plain lyrics along the lines of “I’m in love with an American girl and she’s my best friend.” Fine. That’s fine. But then suddenly and with many too many syllables to fit the song’s cadence,
“Forlorn somnambulistic maniacal. . . in the dark”
Argh! So someone’s been studying for the GRE, eh? Stuff it up your ass, Brendan Perry.
Glad I finally got that off my chest. Don’t get me started on Space Cowboys.
I’ve never been able to figure what Buddy Holly was getting at with these lyrics from “I’m Looking For Someone To Love”:
Drunk man, street car
Foot slipped, there you are
Well I’m lookin’ for someone to love
I’m a-lookin’ for someone to love
Well if you’re not here
But baby I don’t care
Because I’m a-lookin’ for someone to love
His lost love was a drunk who fell under a streetcar? I don’t remember that from the movie.
Anyone who doesn’t realize that the lyrics to “Surfin’ Bird” are among the all-time greatest and sheer poetry needs a reminder:
*Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-oom-oom-oom
Oom-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
(repeat ad infinitum)
Well, don’t you know about the bird
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word
A-well-a, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word*
Genius.
Now he’s taking the hinges off the closet
Now the doors are coming off the closet
Now he’s emptying out the closet
Now he’s dusting the closet
Now he’s painting the closet
Now he’s drying out the closet
Now he’s putting the doors back on the closet
Okay, I made up all that crap. But it’s no worse than the rest of the lyrics.
You’re right. Besides bad lyrics there’s also sappy music and bad singing. Win, win, win.
And what about the line “The heat was hot”? Thanks for pointing that out, America.
And of course, the immortal “Hanky Panky” by Tommy James and the Shondells. The song in which an entire verse (or is it the chorus) consists of
“My baby does the Hanky Panky”
repeated five times. It is still a great song song though - right up there with “Surfin’ Bird”
On the other hand, Foreigner in “Hot Blooded” saying -
“You don’t have to read my mind
To know what I have in mind”
is just plain awful.
But special props to Alice Cooper for the sublime “School’s Out” featuring
“Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can’t even think of a word that rhymes”