Entertainment For Lively Minds
Annoying lyrics
Posted by Retro Man on 3 November 2009 - 3:54pm.
They are playing that American Pie song on the radio, I don't like it and in particular the line that goes "drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was dry" - it always grates.
Do you have any other examples of poor lyrics that can ruin a song?
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Robbie Williams - Strong
"I look like Kiss without the make up and that's a good line to take it to the bridge"
*I now apologise in advance in the manner of Diego Maradona...*
NO IT'S FUCKING NOT!!!
It's lazy, self indulgent, nonsensical and BOLLOCKS.
Thank you.
....
and, as anyone who owns Lick It Up knows, Kiss actually looked really cool without their make up.
Have an up arrow
from me Mr Waite. I have nothing else to add as it really doesn't get any worse than that song.
scritti's 'i'm in love with
scritti's 'i'm in love with jacques derrida, read a page and i know i need ta' is both bathetic and pompous in equal measure (derrida/read a/need to? get to fuck green!)
Even Homer nods
My admiration of Bruce Springsteen is almost boundless, but back in the 80s he wrote a song called ‘Out of work’ for his mate Gary ‘US’ Bonds with the completely unironic lyric:
“Hey Mr President
I know you’ve got big plans
I know you’re doing your best
To help the working man”
And this was while Reagan was POTUS. What was he thinking?
Don't you...?
Don't you think that Springsteen might have been writing in character?
Well, yes
Clearly he was, as the song is about the experience of being out of work, and Bruce has never had a job in his life, let alone looked for one!
But the point is, it's a flimsy little song with no 'twist' or dramatic shift of viewpoint. It hasn't got any of the complexity of ‘Born In The USA’, say, where the interplay between what the character says and the way he says it conveys a far deeper meaning than the simple jingoism implied by the title.
So, whoever's voice it is, it's a lousy lyric in my book.
U2
Spoilt for choice here but heres my pick of the bunch, from 'Elevation'..
'A mole,
Digging in a hole,
Digging up my soul now
Going down, excavation'
Oh Lordy, U2
I raise you all of Pride In The Name Of Love but especially:
"One man caught on a barbed wire fence
One man he resist
One man washed on an empty beach.
One man betrayed with a kiss"
Total guff which makes me awfully unreasonable in company...
Crikey...
that really is bollocks of the first order, isn't it?
Bongo really does lose it sometimes......
I always thought/assumed ver Edge was his reality check....well, Mr Evans must have been out shopping when Bongo smuggled these over the line
"If someone’s into blowing up
We’re into growing up
Women are the future
All the big revelations
I’ve gotta submarine, you’ve got gasoline
I don’t wanna talk about wars between nations"
From Get On Your Boots
"Hello, Hello
Hola!
I'm at a place called Vertigo (¿Dónde está?) [Where is it?]
It's everything I wish I didn't know
But you give me something I can feel
Feel"
From Vertigo
It's the gift that keeps giving....
More Vertigo
One, two, three, fourteen.
The Killers
"Are we human....or are we dancer?"
What?
WHAT???!!
* head explodes *
This song is the main reason I can't listen to local radio stations any more, it seems to be on at least every half an hour even now.
It's a great song.
the lyrics were inspired by a disparaging comment made by Hunter S. Thompson, where he stated America was raising "a generation of dancers". *
* Wikipedia
I could live with it
if the line was "Are we humans, or are we dancers?", but it makes no sense as it is.
The Killers last album maybe deserves singling out
For crimes against lyricism. I give you these from Spaceman:
My global position systems are vocally addressed
They said the nile used to run from east to west
I did actually bail out from the Killers partly due to the sheer awfulness of their lyrics on Day and Age
I got soul
but I'm not a soldier...
I've pointed this out before, but this is the perfect thread for it.
As Bill Bailey said, makes no more sense than:
'I've got ham but I'm not a hamster'.
Sad to say, it's the sort of vacuous stuff that festival audiences consider deep and well meaningful, like.
Equally applicable to Run
or that other Snow Patrol knicker wetter "Chasing Cars" - drivel of the highest order and lapped up.
That song makes my children howl with pleasure
Which is why it still gets played. The little one is called Grace and used to sing along with
"I need your Grace to remind me to find my own"
Until she found it funnier to sing
"I need your Grace to remind me to find my ARSE"
Too many snow Patrol songs are 'got really pissed/drugged up, sorry, will try not to do it again (though not very hard)'. Therefore as per the post up teh page I have 'bailed out'.
FYI my daughter has also improved 'Never Let It Slip Away' by Andrew Gold to
"Talk to my baby on the telephone on business"
The difference being we would listen to that song anyway, what's not to like. Didn't Jake Riviera think Starwberry Fields was 'living is easy with nice clothes'?
I blame the Thompson Twins
They got there first with 'With Are Detective'.
Are you sure
about this one?
Aieee - that one is annoying
"We are Detective" has a lot wrong with it. A very annoying song, as was much of their stuff. I am sure that they were put together to annoy me - personally.
Tom Bailey appeared ruthless. I bet he ran a tight ship and told Joe Leeway to shave off his eyebrows - against his will. It wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Annoying?
'...drove my chevy to the levee but the levee was dry'? Nah...
Also Red Hot Chili Peppers
I used to quite like the silliness of RHCP lyrics, but at some point somebody bought Anthony Kiedis a rhyming dictionary and it was downhill from there. Case in point- The Zephyr Song:
Did you meet your fortune teller
Get it off with no propellor
Do it up it's always stellar
What a way to finally smell her
and:
Riddlin on liberator
Find a way to be a skater
Rev it up to levitator
Super mainly aviator
Good. Grief.
Google Suede lyrics...
You'll get a bunch of 'em.
I'm sure I once saw a Suede Lyric randomiser online. Like fruit machine wheels containing the words "chemical, beautiful, mouse, house, psycho, motorway, gasoline and diesel"
Worked a treat. It's how Brett Anderson wrote "Head Music" in its entirety - apparently
Still a great band!
Would that be
the Brett Anderson who sees himself as a homosexual who's never had a homosexual experience?
Much as I view myself as a master carpenter who's never wielded a T-square in anger...
Not the quote I read
which was "I see myself as a bisexual who's never had a homosexual experience" - this makes it a much more interesting statement, I think.
Africa by Toto
pleasant enough song until you come crashing in to the line "as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti"
You read my mind Mr Fence
They really wedge in the "Seeeeerengettteeeeeee" to make it fit. As for comparing a mountain to ....another mountain. I'll stop now.
My Personal Bete Noir:
Any song that rhymes 'fire' with 'desire', which is pretty much every pop song in the top 40 it seems. I'm surprised that phrase can even be copyrighted, and isn't grounds for having the whole song thrown out as an act of stunningly unoriginal plagiarism. It's a deal breaker for me, and I instantly shut down when I hear it. With exceptions, of course.
Say what you will about The Doors, but at least ol' Jimbo gave us "wallow in the mire" instead of another tired 'desire'. Success!
And don't even get me started on 'angel'.
or indeed
or indeed "brain" with "insane".
works here though ?
at least in Joni Mitchell version
...and here?
Love...
...that fits like a glove.
Lady in Red
'Chance' with 'romance' and possible even 'dance'. Except de Burgh sayd 'daunce', 'romaunce' and 'chaunce'.
Down on my knees
... begging you please
Waiting/anticipating
And loads more that escape me just now.
I hate
Three, six, nine
The goose drank wine
The monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line
The line broke, the monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little row boat
Horrible.
Gobbledygook
sure, but you have to be bereft of groove to not like it. This is what that Killer should have said when he asked " Are we human?" No we're the Clapping Song by Shirley Ellis.
I am
bereft of groove.
I have tons of these but just now I can think of:
Anyone who uses "Alone all by myself" or variations thereof.
Where you get an inappropriate mental picture and can't lose it (e.g "You kneaded me" or the current song by Alexandra Burke which has a chorus that has me imaging a group of mean lads playing-piggy-in-the-middle with a glass eye).
Also some people seem to deliberately sing the misheard versions of lyrics when performing a cover. Eva Cassidy really wrings out "Way a pie" in Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and Susan Boyle really seems to sing "I watch you suffer, a Dalek in pain." in Wild Horses.
Don't forget Aretha
My c**t, 'tis of thee...
Penned by a dyslexic donkey on drugs:
Saying I love you
Is not the words I want to hear from you
It's not that I want you
Not to say, but if you only knew
How easy it would be to show me how you feel
More than words is all you have to do to make it real
Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me
Cos I'd already know
'More Than Words' by Extreme.
'Barely F*cking Words' more like.
Get here by...we get the message
Oleta Adams - 'Get Here' by multifarious forms of transport:
railway, trailway, airplane, caravan,
cross the desert like an Arab man,
sail boat,
climb a tree and swing rope to rope,
take a sled and slide down the slope,
jump on a speedy colt,
cross the border in a blaze of hope
windsurf into my life,
take me up on a carpet ride
big balloon.
Great voice though ;-)
Prefer the Right Said Frank version....
....on Phoenix Nights...
complete with sound affects!
Let's point the finger at the right defendant
The song was written by Brenda Russell - and I think Oleta Adams does such a superb job of singing it that I completely buy it.
The man responsible for the
The man responsible for the worst lyric of all time is Greg Lake for this atrocious excerpt from "Still... You Turn Me On" from ELP's Brain Salad Surgery:
"Every day a little sadder, a little madder, someone get me a ladder".
Amen!
but the "ladder" bit is explained in Emerson's biog, it still sounds crap
I thought it was 'cos he
couldn't get a rhyme for carpet ;-)
Jailbreak
Possibly the second worst/most annoying lyric is from Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak:
"Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak
Somewhere in this town..."
Somewhere in this town? Erm... perhaps at the jail, Phil?
Unless he was trying
to make his iPhone compatible with Flash...
Could have been anywhere in the town then.
As has been pointed out
several times in the past when this has been bought up, Dublin has several jails and the police can't lock em all down on their own. It would be a logistical nightmare
That song by 'Charlene' - I've never been to me!
Blood-curdling from start to finish but especially the line
'I've been undressed by kings
and I've seen some things
that a woman ain't s'possed to see...'
What things exactly? Reveal all I say.
Pass the bucket.
Yep.
I've always hated that one.
I'd assumed she meant willies when I was a kid listening to it on Wogan.
He probably still plays it.
only one way
to do that song-"Just Jack" one man show in Will and Grace
Velvet Revolver
She Builds Quick Machines.
This awfulness gets paraded on Planet Rock from time to time. Those of you of a delicate disposition may wish to switch to another thread..
Roll over right
Keep it through the night
Right, Right
Keep it through the night
Right in my sight
Keep it through the night
I'll smash right through your spotlight
They forgot tight, shite and trite.
Call the police
It's no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov
Surely the all time winner from the moment it was penned?
Suprised it took so long to crop up!
...or, in the Heebeegeebees spoof of The Police
'Too Depressed To Commit Suicide', we had
"But then suicide's a crime
Don't want to waste the police's time
Just quietly do myself in
Like the guy in that book by Solzhenitsyn"
An excellent album....
...Has there been a better spoof than "Bird of Peace"?
I particularly liked the 'Levon Helm' line
"Oh, bird of peace, them Yankees shot you down" delivered in an Arkansas twang
Jimmy's Cliff
I cringe every time I hear him rhyming "over" with "Dover" in Many Rivers To Cross.
Many rivers to cross
But I can't seem to find my way over
Wandering, I'm lost
As I travel along the white cliffs of Dover
If
Much as I love the soft rock misty moistness of Bread, the words of the above make - quite literally - no sense whatsoever.
It raises the non-sequitur to an art form.
If
These lines have always bothered me:
"If a man could be two places at one time
I'd be with you
Tomorrow and today
Beside you all the way"
No, David, that's not being in two places at one time - that's being in two different times.
unless...
... he was thinking of two four-dimensional coordinates in spacetime when he sang "places" ... but it wouldn't have scanned very well
/coat
Monsters Ink
I am guilty of rhyming the following words:
engine/ending
fortunate/furniture
Caesar/seizure
cancer/answer
Kansas/canvas
hunter/punctured
Smiths/fists.
But, at least I think it adds a bit of variety to the moon/june school of rhyming.
Anybody who rhymes car with jaguar needs to be run over. (c.f. "Buck Rogers" by Feeder and "Going Nowhere" by Oasis for two examples)
I'm intrigued
How do you rhyme fortunate with furniture?
Sir
rhyme doesn't have to be perfect. I think, though I'm not sure, that fortunate/furniture is an example of consonance (the consonants are the same- F, R, T). Wilfred Owen was fond of imperfect rhymes; have a look at "Strange Meeting" and you'll see what I mean.
Sexuality - Billy Bragg has an off day.
A nuclear submarine sinks off the coast of Sweden
Headlines give me headaches when I read them
followed by.....
I look like Robert De Niro, I drive a Mitsubishi Zero
Improved on by
Porky The Poet aka Phil Jupitus in Beastiality
'I look like Johnny Morris, I love a penguin and his name is Boris'
I know it doesn't have to rhyme,
but why, in "When I'm sixty-four" by the Beatles, is the line,
"If I stay out till a quarter to three
would you lock the door"
when a quarter to four would work so much better (it's not directly rhyming with the four in sixty-four)? It maddens me every time I hear it.
I'm expecting to be shouted down by the way :)
I'm not shouting, but...
I don't think four would be better. The structure of that part of the song is to have every other line rhyming, so you'd lose the rhyme of three and me.
Thinking about this has meant I've spent the past five minutes singing it to myself, so thanks anyway.
Hmm, I think you're right
It's just one of those that has always bugged me, I guess
*listens again*
Oasis
'Slowly walkin down the hall, faster than a cannonball'
And special mention to the Editors, with the recent 'kicks like a sleep twitch' line, yikes.
Not sure that's the best example
I think that's one of their better lines, in fact. Meant to portray, I presume, the reality-shifting brought about by ingesting certain substances.
You could have gone for the 'sister, blister' clanger, or how about 'stand up beside the fireplace, take that look from off your face...'
I'm with Mint
I think you're crediting Noel with more depth than he deserves. For me, 'cannonball' is the exact point at which Oasis stopped being any good.
absolutely right
Isn't it
Sleep Switch?
Not sure it makes it any better, mind. Something to do with electrical circuits perhaps?
It's definitely 'sleep twitch'
and it's definitely irritating.
Credit though, for being
Credit though, for being inspired by top song - Nathan Jones?
You packed your bags
As I recall
And you walked slowly
Down the hall
Jay-Z
I've got a penis in my pants so I'm gonna have a daughter
...that's just horrible isn't it? I heard it on 6Music this morning and nearly dropped my bacon sandwich.
The 'Soul Cake' hitmaker in his Police days...
Hey, mighty brontosaurus,
Don't you have a lesson for us
Thought your rule would always last,
There were no lessons in your past
You were built three stories high
They say you would not hurt a fly
If we explode the atom bomb
Would they say that we were dumb
Jesus wept...
I have limited knowledge
of palaeon-, palein-, paelon-, ...dinosaurs, but I'm fairly sure that brontosauruses never actually existed either.
They've had a rebrand since I was a kid...
Brontosaurus in 1978 is Brachiosaurus in today's money.
According to my son's "Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs" books.
Well, if it was good enough for David Bellamy...
albeit with dubious commercial motives...
..I think you'll find...
...it's called an Apatosaurus these days. As per Harry's bucketful. I have the junior paleontologist/massive pedant thing in our house too.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Sting
In Europe and America, there's a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Krushchev said we will bury you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too
...two superpowers stop fighting and find common cause in their hatred of a smug Geordie. World saved.
In the nuclear-doomed late 80s...
... I actually took some comfort from those lyrics. Can't listen to the song now, though.
Michelle
The Beatles - I hate the song, but it's the lyrics make me cringe.
All these things that I've Done
"I got soul but I'm not a soldier" = nails down blackboard.
Why oh why did they use it for the Warchild song?
To expand upon
Bill Bailey's 'I've got ham but I'm not a hamster' pisstake:
'I've got beef but I'm not a beefeater'
'I've got a butt but I'm not a butler'
'I've got an elbow but I'm not in Elbow'...
not to be forgetting
I've got a badge but I'm not a badger.
First year they played the big stage at Glastonbury, everywhere you wandered there'd likely be some wags singing a new variation.
I've got a todge
but... ?
Don't want to carp
but I'm not a carpenter...
By his logic..
Brandon Flowers wouldn't be a country.
We are not
worthy Lenny.
Classic...!
Post of the week Lenny...beer over keyboard moment!
See You
Next Tuesday ;-)
Classic annoying bollocks
From my hands you know you'll never be
More than twist in my sobriety
Actually I can deal with that bit
... its the verse that goes
"Big and handsome soft and porky, pig out till you've seen the light" that makes it unpleasant to listen to. Might not be exact but close enough and I have no intention of listening again to confirm
Duran Duran - Is There Something I should Know ?
"Don't say your'e easy on me
Your'e about as easy as a nuclear war "
God bless em , I love it.
Lily Allen - Him
I don't imagine
he's ever been suicidal
His favourite band
is Creedence Clearwater Revival
Him being God, natch. Who knew?
Alanis Morissette
Just about everything she's ever done I should think.
'I've got one hand in my pocket
And the other one is giving a high five'
'Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
'Well isn't this nice...'
And isn't it ironic ... don't you think'
etc.
You know what ?
It's like 10000 spoons when all you need is a knife
The success of 'Jagged Little Pill'....
has led to an incredible amount of absolutely dreadful music in the same vein.
I'm not sure if I should admit this, but...
I was holidaying in 'The States' in Summer 1995 - just after JLP came out. I'm not sure if it was out in the UK or not - I certainly hadn't heard it. We were visiting friends & spent a great deal of time driving - the record was all over the radio & I was quite impressed with it. At the time it sounded quite fresh & the lyrics were dealing with things which didn't often appear in pop songs. It just sounded perfect in a big American car, riding the Interstate...
So, on a visit to a 'mall' (imagine that - every town has one of these places with all the shops under one roof... wow! You could get coffee there too... amazing!) I purchased said CD with American dollars - boy did I feel cutting edge! Imagine my surprise to return to the UK with Alanis all over the TV and radio - man, was I sick of hearing anything from JLP that summer... I agree that it spawned a legion of poor imitators, but I still think it's a pretty good record. I'd never play it now, though - I think it went to a charity shop at the end of '95.
I doubt any of that is ironic.
Poor Old Alanis...
... imagine calling an album "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie"
And imagine that after being slagged to the heavens for writing a song on a previous album called "Ironic" which contained no irony, you feature a song on the next album called "Thank You" which features you hollering the line "THANK YOU SILENCE" at the top of your lungs...
Oh the irony...
but album titles like...
The Spaghetti Incident or Chinese Democracy are actually worse
The Spaghetti Incident
was named after an incident involving some spaghetti, I believe. Can't see much wrong with that.
Cheryl Cole uses annoying,
Cheryl Cole uses annoying, sticks-out-like-a-sore-thumb double negative to reveal her unhealthy diet of scotch eggs, cucumber sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer in her new single Fight For This Love:
"Now every day ain't gon' be no picnic"
"Too much of anything can make you sick"
What a lovely image. Who thought that would be a great opening line?
I'm as serious as cancer
When I say that rhythm is a dancer.
Badly Drawn Lyrics
'Tickets to what you need'.
That title / phrase has always annoyed me. Nothing against Mr. Gough in general, it's just those words!
Macca
"But if this ever changing world in which we live in".
Aargh! He could at least change the last three words to "we're living". It still wouldn't be great but it wouldn't make me cringe.
I know what you mean
it slightly spoils what is otherwise an almost indecently great song, which if anything is enhanced in this setting:
I have to admit that I always heard it as;
"but in this ever-changing world in which we're living" but having just listened to it again you might well be right.
S.Y.M.M
by Manic Street Preachers
The subtext of this song
I've thought about it for so long
But it's really not the sort of thing
That people want to hear us sing
S.Y.M.M
by Manic Street Preachers
The subtext of this song
I've thought about it for so long
But it's really not the sort of thing
That people want to hear us sing
I know we've probably done bad grammar before
But I always come to a crashing halt at
"She says her love for me will never die,
But that'd change if she ever found out about you and I"
That's "you and me" Adams!
Excused by a legitimate rhyme?
And a pretty good guitar riff, I'd say.