Bad Lyrics

[Al]

Did you ever hear a lyric that aggravates you to no end? Not a whole song or the entire body of work from a particular songwriter, but just a single lyric where you *know* they could have thought a little harder and come up with something infinitely more statisfying. For example:

In "Maggie May", Rod Stewart sings:

I laughed at all of your jokes,
My love you didn't need to coax.

What kind of sentence is that? Is he channeling Yoda suddenly? Did he make a bet that he could use 'coax' in an endrhyme? It's just a crummy lyric and Rod should be ashamed of himself. For a great many things, really.

A second example is Billy Joel in "Captain Jack."

So you got everything, aw, but nothing's cool
They just found your father in the swimming pool;

Now, I've just always sorta assumed he was found dead in the swimming pool, but Billy is being a little unneccesarily vague here. I also recognize that '-ool' isn't the most rhymeable syllable in the English language, but you know there was a better turn of phrase and he was too lazy to search for it.

Anyone else got one that drives them up a wall?

[pfrsue]

Actually yes. Nick Lachey's song "What's Left Of Me". I keep thinking that the guy has leprosy or something and he's singing to his symptoms. My kids and I can't hear it on the radio anymore without snickering. Here are some of the lines that offend:

...And I feel you,
Driving underneath my skin
Like a hunger,
Like a burning,
To find a place I've never been
Now I'm broken,
And I'm faded,
I'm half the man I thought I would be:
But you can have what's left of me

I've been dying inside,
Little by little,
No where to go,
But going out of my mind
In endless circles,
Running from myself until,
You give me a reason for standing still

It's falling faster,
Barely breathing...

[PoolMan]

gunslingeral said:

I also recognize that '-ool' isn't the most rhymeable syllable in the English language

Try growing up with "Poole" as a last name. Trust me, kids are amazing poets when they need to be.

[StarOpal]

I Wanna Sex You Up, by Color Me Badd

I bring exhibits A:
"we can do it till we both wake up"

Wah?

And B:
"making love until we drown"

Ick!

It's also one of the worst songs ever made. Period.

[Spiderdancer]

That one song by Death Cab For Cutie:

"If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks,
I will follow you into the dark.."

Because someone who loves you would TOTALLY want you to kill yourself when they're dead. Un huh.

Also, maybe I've mentioned this before, but in -Mr. Brightsides- by the Killers:

"She's touching his chest now, he takes off her dress now..."

Why exactly was he wearing her dress? Is he some sort of transvestite? I mean, you might expect that from a Franz Ferdinand song, but the Killers?

(Now watch how many Sarcasm Impaired posts I get explaining that that's not REALLY what the song means. )

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

From ***hole by Gene Simmons:

"You have a personality, yeah, just like a bucket full of pee."

Ok, I'll admit it's a creative rhyme for "personality", but still...I'm not sure if this is supposed to be in earnest or not. It's quite something hearing Gene try to sound intimidating while singing that line.

EDIT: Also, basically all of Animals by Nickelback. Not that the band has ever been good, but in this song they avoid the "less is more" ideology like the plague as they stuff the song with as many wordy euphemisms for "having sex" as they can. One of the many reasons why it disturbs me that my preteen cousins love Nickelback.

[drew]

Here's one from one of my favorite bands, "Stone Cold Crazy" the almighty Queen:

"Rainy afternoon, I gotta blow a typhoon
And I'm playing on my slide trombone."

What? Also, given that Freddie Mercury was gay, he's walking right into some great (though not particularly PG-13) one-liners.

***

It's notable that Phish built a career off of the following lyrics:

"Boy
Man
God
Sh**

Boy, man
Wash uffitze drive me to Firenze."

Seriously, that's all of them from the tune "You Enjoy Myself".

***

Also, basically any lyric from "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" by John Lee Hooker (and more famously as butchered by George Thorogood and the Destroyers) are pretty terrible.

[StarOpal]

Another one that bothers me to no end is Key Largo, by Bertie Higgins. The song is about "Bogie and Bacall" who were indeed both in the movie Key Largo. But there's the following lyric:

"Here's lookin' at you kid"

That's from Casablanca! With Ingrid Bergman for crying out loud!

[PoolMan]

Hey, even though I actually quite like the music, I'll nominate pretty much everything Beck ever wrote. Not ONE of his songs makes any sense at all. But they're still cool.

[drew]

gunslingeral said:

A second example is Billy Joel in "Captain Jack."

So you got everything, aw, but nothing's cool
They just found your father in the swimming pool;

Now, I've just always sorta assumed he was found dead in the swimming pool, but Billy is being a little unneccesarily vague here. I also recognize that '-ool' isn't the most rhymeable syllable in the English language, but you know there was a better turn of phrase and he was too lazy to search for it.

Another one from Billy Joel (also from "Captain Jack", now that I think about it) that bugs me: What in the name of Orson Welles are "tie-dyed jeans"? I'm a man who has own a considerable amount of tie-dye apparel, including a bandanas, boxer shorts, and socks, and I have never seen or heard of "tie-dyed jeans".

[TheLuckyOne]

The king of them all, I think, is Paul McCartney's "But if this ever-changing world in which we live in..."

In which we live in? Come on, Paul.

And while I actually quite like the song, please tell me which of the following lines could possibly be seen to rhyme with each other:

"Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is
He ain't gonna let those two escape justice
He makes his livin' off of the people's taxes"

-D

[sarahbot]

Avril Lavigne, "Sk8er Boi".

"But all of her friends stuck up their nose
And they had a problem with his baggy clothes."

Nose? Singular? What, they're sharing one between them all?

[Magill]

theluckyone said:

"Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is
He ain't gonna let those two escape justice
He makes his livin' off of the people's taxes"

Soft rhymes have long been a characteristic of poetry and songs, so I'm not going to get all worked up about it. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's done as a gimick in that song. And "facts is," while not being gramatically correct, rhymes pretty well with "taxes."

I'd rather here those lines sung tongue-in-cheek than dreck like "I'm down on my knees/I'm begging you please" or any other lame rhyming pairs (fun/sun is another big offender).

One lyric that I always laugh at is out of America's "A Horse with No Name":

"There were plants and birds and rocks and things"

Things? Could you be a bit more nonspecific there? Of course there were things in the desert, there are things everywhere. The real reason it's there is because the next line ends with "rings".

Also from that song--"The heat was hot". Thanks for clearing that up for us, boys.

[PoolMan]

magill said:

One lyric that I always laugh at is out of America's "1A Horse with No Name"

Eh, what do you expect from a Canadian songwriter?

[sarahbot]

Now, I know it's a traditional song and they didn't write it from scratch. But this line from "I'm A Rover," an otherwise fantastic song by Great Big Sea, always makes me laugh:

"She opened the door with the greatest pleasure, opened the door and she let me in
We both shook hands and embraced each other. 'Til the morning we lay as one."

You shook hands, eh? That's what the kids are calling it these days, I guess.