...done this before, but it always rewards!

Two great choices there, BonkersFurryNocturnalQuadrupedMeister. It'll be hard to beat that Adrian Gurvitz travesty. Though I suspect the ouevre of the Cranberries, Saxon and Sham 69 might be worth delving into for rivals...

Can't complain, musn't grumble
Help yourself to another piece of apple crumble

ABC - That Was Then But This Is Now

couplet must be Picture This by Blondie.

I will give you my finest hour
The one I spent watching you shower

All of Up The Junction

I've quoted this several times before, but, while New Order are far and away my favourite band, this from Slow Jam is just dreadful:

The sea was very rough, it made me feel sick
But I like that kind of stuff, it beats arithmetic

'Promises me I'm as safe as houses

As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers'

He's loves a couplet does Martin, and although that's a stinker, it crops up in one of the best songs from a stonking canon.

"Love is the cure for every evil, love is the air that supports the eagle"

Or how about

"To buy a drink there is so much more reasonable, I think I'll go there when it gets seasonable"

Or

"As I look at the morning sky Today the wind is blowing hard See that bird is floating high Pretty soon it will be tired"

and special mention to the appalling Cranberries:

" With a Smith & Wesson 38, John Lennon's life was no longer a debate."

...and, given the season, I think we should pillory whatever culprit was behind that 1940s/50s Christmas song that rhymes 'snow man' with a terrible shoe-horned reference to someone saying 'no, man'.

Is it 'Walking In A Winter Wonderland'? Dreadful...

... John Cooper Clarke

"That's it... sack time/ Everybody looks like Ernest Borgnine"
("36 Hours").

The worst (possibly) is something which cropped up on my daughter's iPod the other day and just made me think WTF: JLS' She Makes Me Wanna:

"London to Jamaica
LA to Africa"

Jeez ...

all things Sting related, but really he doesn't help himself with "Don't Stand So Close to Me". I could quote the entire song but will just leave you with these

'Inside her there's longing
This girl's an open page
Book marking - she's so close now
This girl is half his age'

and
'It's no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabakov'

While Elvis C provides one of my favourites:

'Even in a perfect world, where everyone was equal
I would still own the film rights and be working on the sequel'

(Leo to his fans) and the late Frank Farrell gave us

'She gave him french kisses,
He gave her french cigarettes.'

in Moonlighting. I've always had a bad feeling about that. Gerard's an Australian now.

There's so many great couplets from Dylan and EC but this one from Ray Davies is hard to beat

Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night
People so busy, makes me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright

Including;
Bermuda Triangle
Don't go too near
But look
At it from my angle

You must admit they had a rockin' band
man, they was blowin' like a hurricane.

"Your lips are laughable,
un-photographable"

'We'll take a hamper with some cashews and champers
Now and then we need a good pamper'
(from Let Me Take You There)

The plentiful rhymes, the alliteration, the daftness! I bet Little Bobby Dylan wish he could lyrics like that.

Another vote for John Cooper Clarke (A Family Affair)
'We break ornaments and get them repaired
We bring up past events that hang in the air'

That would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but Phil Oakey should know better, to wit:

"... before he leaves the camp he stops
He scans the world outside
And where there used to be some shops
Is where the snipers sometimes hide."

It always makes me wince, that one.

(sorry, but I had to steal that title) because, as I have posted before, the worst couplet in pop/rock history is :

"Time - He flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor"

The best is Aimee Mann:

"Just one question before I pack,
When you fuck it up baby, do I get my money back"

the Bay City Rollers:

"Gotta tell her that I can't linger
There's a wedding ring on my finger"

Marie Provost did not look her best
The day the cops bust into her lonely nest

Um, it's Prevost, Nick.

For hungry eyes that could not speak
Said even little doggies gotta eat

Yeeuch.

Yes, I still love you.
Sure you're not just being nice.
No, I'm not just being nice.

Now I may not be all that bright
But I know how to hold you tight

Not exactly a couplet but you you get the idea.

(oh, and I'm going for worst it that's not clear!)

from Des'ree's "Life":

"I don't want to see a ghost,
It's the sight that I fear most
I'd rather have a piece of toast
And watch the evening news."

I was trying to think of!

There would be many I could choose but tonight it's going to...

I could move away,
Probably will someday

Animals That Swim and Faded Glamour.

'It's got to beeeeeeeee perfect,
It's got to beeeeeeeee worth it.'

From Touch Too Much:

She wanted it hard
She wanted it fast
She liked it done medium rare

Trouble is, I'm not sure whether it's best or worst...

from So Hard:

I'm always hoping you'll be faithful
But you're not, I suppose
We've both given up smoking 'cause it's fatal
So whose matches are those?

Giant steps are what you take
Walking on the moon
I hope my legs don't break
Walking on the moon

is pretty awful

And Elvis Costello wins every time :

In a crooked house
Where things can be arranged
You think you're different from the rest
But you don't know how you've changed

Just one example among the many.

He hears the ticking of the clocks
And walks along with a parrot that talks

He may be rock's greatest poet (OOAA) but that line from Simple Twist Of Fate has always stunned me with its triteness. For a start it only rhymes if "talks" is pronounced "tocks" as per the American way. That's before we even get to the parrot!

Dylan must have realised it wasn't his greatest couplet, because in live versions of the song, he changed the line to the only-marginally-better

He hears the ticking of the clocks
And walks alone through the city blocks

"Don't get so distressed if the good life won't arrive,
you've been seeing S.O.S when it's just your clock saying 5:05"

Justin Currie is a genius, other opinions are available.

Nick Cave from There She Goes my Beautiful World:

"I look at you, look you at me
and deep down in our hearts, babe, we know it,
that you weren't much of a muse
but then I weren't much of a poet."

Worst one
The Clash, Lost in the Supermarket:

"I'm all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came here for a special offer
a guarranteed personality."

According to Joan Osbourne he'd be lonely.

"Nobody calling on the phone,
'cept for the Pope maybe in Rome"

The Pope has a hotline to God! Take that non-Catholics! I always liked that song but that line takes the gloss off.

John Foxx from his Metamatic album...A New Kind of Man...

An underwater kind of silence -
Humming of electric pylons -

Classic!

My favourite, though probably worse is one of many transgressions by Jonathan Richman...

I will wait for Cleopatra,
Though I know my time must come,
And I'm getting ready for wherever she'll be at-ra,
I'm getting stronger now and not so dumb.

"I crawl like a viper through these suburban streets
Make love to these women, languid and bittersweet."

"Show business kids making movies of themselves/You know they don't give a f**k about anybody else".

"When Black Friday comes I'll stand down by the door / And catch the grey men when they dive from the fourteenth floor".

"They’ve got a name for the winners in the world; I want a name when I lose".

"No marigolds in the promised land, there's a hole in the ground where they used to grow"

"Is there gas in the car/ Yes, there's gas in the car"

..... I could go on ....

It's got to be Morrissey

So I broke into the palace with a sponge and a rusty spanner/
She said "Eh, I know you and you cannot sing". I said "That's nothing you should hear me play piano."

or more succinctly

If you're looking for self-validation/
Then meet me in the alley by the railway station

Always believe in your soul"

Pardon?

It even starts badly before that:

"Thank you for coming home
I'm sorry that the chairs are all worn
I left them here I could have sworn
these are my salad days
slowly being eaten away
just another play for today."

and the finest:

"Van Gogh did some eyeball pleasers.
He must have been a pencil squeezer.
He didn't do the Mona Lisa,
That was an Italian geezer."

But this is pretty good too:

"When I was a child, running in the night, afraid of what might be.
Hiding in the dark, hiding in the street, and of what was following me"

"Yes Jack, I gave it back, the ring I could not own
Now come my friend I'll take your hand and lead you home"

You're gonna need an ocean

Of calamine lotion

A lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse
That send me dooowwwwn to the river.

OK, not strictly a couplet.
But I have spent more time thinking about those lines than most I have heard. Just works on so many different levels.

Weightlifting:

"Don't become a burden,
Say the word an'
Be free."

Trouble Sleeping:

"Bring on the blood and the bandages,
I'll bring the tea and the sandwiches."

Worst is one of these boy bands, I think it's The Wanted, who my girlfriend's daughter has on in the car:

"I know that it's a little bit frightening,
We might as well be playing with lightning."

I'm all for kids getting into music in any way possible but that's up there with my seven year old effort "Blue is the colour of the pencil crayon packet/Blue is the colour of my tennis racquet" in terms of primary school poetry.

The classic Half Man Half Biscuit couplet...

"Bin Men, Thin Men, Lexicographers,
Squid Yes, Not So Octopus."

Now there's a rhyme.

For both categories:

‘Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses’

Take a bow Ozzy (or was it Geezer who wrote the lyrics?)

"if I was a sculptor, but then again no"

18 Carat Love Affair

I told you not to meet me here
I can't be seen with you whispering in my ear

and

Please don't leave any clues around
The last time we met she found some lipstick on the ground
I said an Avon girl had called, free samples on display
She'd left her card but I threw it away

(or something like that...)

In a dog's life
A year is really more like seven
And all too soon a canine
Will be chasing cars in doggie heaven

... and some say Rush take themselves too seriously

She fits around me like a flesh tuxedo
I like to sink her with my pink torpedo

From "Hurricane":

We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder
On him
He ain't no Gentleman Jim

Christ, the scansion, the non-rhyming, the crowbarring....yet it's the bit of the song I always wait for.

However, I DO like:

Your mother who neglected you
Owes a billion dollars tax
And your father's still collecting ways
Of making sealing wax

In fact, the whole of "19th Nervous Breakdown" helps me not have my first.

"A tinkling piano in the next apartment,
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant"

Genius. From stonker to stinker(s), my two nominations for the latter are

Gary Kemp's incisive social commentary in "Highly Strung (She's Undone)":

"She used to be a diplomat, now she's down the laundromat";

and Jimmy Pursey's opening lines to "Human Zoo" from their profound concept album "The Game":

"Cut my strings and let me go, I am not Pinnochio!"

Just like poison in a vial
She was often very vile

Good

American Music Club

When she first saw him
In her blood she knew her role
He'd be king of the castle
And she'd be the riches he stole

Bad

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

Ugly

Goldie Lookin' Chain

It's a shock to me and it's a shock to you
Your mother's got a beard, sandals and a penis too
It don't look right, see, when she's walking down the street
To see her ballbag jiggin' to the beat of her feet

I said I'm so happy I could die
She said "Drop dead" then left with another guy

Drips with malice and self-pity (could only be Elvis...)

Deep Purple - Perfect Strangers

"Sweet Lucy was a dancer
But none of us would chance her
Because she was a samurai"

Continue in same vein for several verses (could have picked any of them, frankly...)

...to think of, because so many great lyricists write narratively, so their rhymes often play out over more than two lines:

She said I won't be much for all this Humbert Humbert stuff.
I've never done so much of this.
I have to try so hard not to fall in love,
I have to concentrate when we kiss.

The Hold Steady - "Hornets! Hornets!"

My favourite Aimee Mann lyric is also too long:

Everyone I know is acting weird or way too cool
They hang out by the pool
So I just read a lot and ride my bike around the school.

So I'm a bit stuck. But I wanted to post those, because they're amazing. As Nick Hornby once said of "Ghost World", some novelists' entire body of work says less, and less well, than those three lines.

If I was a man I'd make my move
If I was a blade I'd shave you smooth
If I was a judge I'd break the law
And if I was from Paris
If I was from Paris
I would say
ooh la la la la lala

Although - its not about the words.....

Can't believe I forgot:

I'm expressin' with my full capabilities,
And now I'm livin' in correctional facilities.

They did what it said on the tin.

And I see George hand in hand with the dragon
Loading contraband upon the same band wagon
Pinball machines have a sign say tilt
But in life it's difficult establishing guilt

Now there are 5 billion people plus upon this planet
The place cannot be totally without love can it?
The very first time in my life I stood still for a second
I found more pain than I previously reckoned
And it hurt and it hurt and it hurt like pain does
And I discovered that's OK because
There was a very good reason for the pain to be there
Pain is a way of reminding us we care!
The first time my soul came into focus
And my soul said "let the pain provoke us"
And I felt safe, and I felt warm inside
And I felt the waves of pain subside

"It's as serious as cancer,
When I say rhythm is a dancer."

Great country song about a bloke spending Christmas with his mum. Contains the following couplet:

"Let's play cards and watch the News channel.
I love you too. Thanks for the flannel."

when you can have triplets?

http://www.timminchin.com/2005/10/11/inflatable-you-lyrics/

(NSFW)

edit: what the heck, it's Christmas.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

When Marc was bad, he was very bad; such as :-

I drive a rolls royce
'cos it's good for my voice

Neil Diamond - decent pop song writer in his day but responsible for the *worst* ever couplet. You'll have to go far to beat this.

Song she sang to me
Song she brang to me
Words that rang in me
Rhyme that sprang from me

BRANG?

'She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied sculpture at St Martins College'

I found it hard to narrow it down to my favourite lyrics and once I'd decided on the song "Surf", I couldn't pick any of the following couplets(ish)over the others...

"Amazing, grace-filled guiding light
See her safely home tonight
The east-side squares've grown cold and loud
Since I lived there with the twilight crowd"

"Sweet, slight arresting bright light smile
Peels back the layered big city style
And reveals me in the mystery of what her world could mean to me"

"Take her face out of the start of the day for me
I'm half crazed, wondering if I should follow
Or let it go"

"Tuning out the darkness
Turning on the dawn
If life was like the songs, I'd surf into the waves
and in a splash of silver she'd be gone"

Lorenz Hart:

In a mountain greenery
where God paints the scenery
just two crazy people together.

While you love your lover, let
blues skies be your coverlet.
When it rains we laugh at the weather.

And if you're good
I'll search for wood
so you can cook
while I stand looking.

Beans could get no keener re-
ception in a beanery.
Bless our Mountain Greenery home

I seem to remember Des O'Connor getting 20 minutes of stand-up analysing the lyrics to this song back in the sixties or seventies.

Have we had this one?

"They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum,
and charged all the people a dollar-and-a-half just to see 'em"

You speak to me in sign language
As I'm eating a sandwich

From "Sign Language" which later on rhymes bakery with fakery.

And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time

All the love and longing in two lines.

People are people, so why should it be
You and I should get along so awfully

Thank you Depeche Mode.

And that's not to say
There's anything wrong with being a cow anyway

In the morning I go walking
It makes the hurting soften
I've seen a lot of places
Cos I miss her very often

You could pick almost any couplet from the worst single Madness ever released, this one stands out even amongst the various car/tyre/Jaguar rhymes:

"I dented somebody's fender/
He learned not to park on a bender"

(Good video and Top Of The Pops performance, though.)

Is the master of the meaningless wooden rhyme and Cracklin' Rosie lurches from one ungainly cliche to another. Here's my favourite:

Cracklin' Rosie you're a store-bought woman
You make me sing like a guitar hummin'

Marc Riley & The Creepers - Snipe

I like Bilko
I like Loaded too
I like Thunders
And so should you

...

I like some TV
I like Bo Diddley
I don't like to fight
But still I gripe

Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again

Bruno Mars Runaway Baby has this priceless gem

So many eager young bunny's
That I'd like to pursue
Now even now they eating out the palm of my hand
There's only one carrot and they all gotta share it

It doesn't scan, it doesn't rhyme, It doesn't do anything!!

Bruno Mars Runaway Baby has this priceless gem

So many eager young bunny's
That I'd like to pursue
Now even now they eating out the palm of my hand
There's only one carrot and they all gotta share it

It doesn't scan, it doesn't rhyme, It doesn't do anything!!

" Just like a fish needs the Ocean,
like Rough hands need a little lotion"
and this gem in the next line
"like the windows need Pane,
like a highway needs two lanes"
also, there's a cracking Vampire one and the one about a boxer is bonkers too.

Can't believe this Beautiful South one hasn't been mentioned, from their Number One single 'A Little Time':

You need a little room for your big head
You need a little room for a thousand beds

What? And from a band who usually display some lyrical prowess too.

But a great couplet, which always makes me smile, is The Chills - Heavenly Pop Hit:

Each evening the sun sets in five million places
Seen by ten billion eyes set in five billion faces

... but one way or another they both take a bit of beating

When she finished her laundry
she was all in a quandary.

and also from the same stanza

Her escape was so urgent
she forgot her detergent.

I know it's out of fashion and a trifle uncool
But I can't help it, I'm a romantic fool

Evocative, intriguing start.

But then, did she get bored?

It's a habit of mine to watch the sun go down
On Echo Beach, I watch the sun go down

Still a great pop song, though.

And I'm telling it to your face
So you don't have to hear it in another place
(Break it to me gently now
Don't forget I'm just a child)
Oh Annie, I'm not your daddy
(Mama's baby's papa's baby)
Oh Annie, I'm not your daddy
(Mama's baby's papa's baby)

See if I was in your blood
Then you wouldn't be so ugly

And from Mr Neil Hannon:

On the National Express there's a jolly hostess
Selling crisps and tea
She'll provide you with drinks and theatrical winks
For a sky-high fee
Mini-Skirts were in style when she danced down the aisle
Back in '63 (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
But it's hard to get by when your arse is the size
Of a small country

Blisters? Slow/fast cannonballs?

Never have so many sung along with such drivel with such gusto.

Nice tunes, mind.

We sat and decided as the seaons collided
That our love was fairly utopian
If it wasn't for my pills, my psychiatric bills
And your unreliable fallopian

He's a hairy handed gent
Who ran amok in Kent

is rather a good one.

Merton Parkas (and the single is in the attic with the badge still unsewn onto any parka).

You need wheels
If you gonna make deals
You need a car
If you gonna go far
Cos a man ain't a man with a ticket in his hand
If you wanna get a girl.....
You Need Wheels !

many a car journey spent annoying young people with that one

She keeps her Moët et Chandon
In a pretty cabinet
"let them eat cake" she says
Just like Marie Antionette

Pretty well perfect, in fact.

one great couplet:

"How I don't know what I should do with my hands when I talk to you
And you don't know where to look, so you look at my hands",
from Pamphleteer by Canada's finest, The Weakerthans.

and one terrible one - Neil Diamond is the gift that just keeps giving, isn't he?

""I am," I said to no one there
And no one heard at all, not even the chair"

I think I've read the whole thread and yet don't remember seeing the couplet I thought would be the first one mentioned:

And in the end.....

See, I don't even have to finish it. EVERYONE knows it.

Was it TOO obvious?

The Massive's favourite Biggest Rock Star In The World overreaches on a regular basis to lurch from car-crash lyricism to natty lines

the bad:
In the shade of a willow tree, creeps are crawling over me
over me and over you, stuck together with God's glue
(Staring At The Sun)

the good:
every artist is a cannibal, every poet is thief
all kill their inspiration and sing about their grief
(The Fly)

"Love grows like a flower, it grows like a tumour
Love shows that God has a sense of humour"

and he almost tops it with:
"Love her so much I don't even know what planet I'm on
Love her so much I wish she'd just go away"

one of the best:

every day is like sunday
every day is silent and grey

the smiths, but it could just as easily be from philip larkin. I cant be the first person to point out that im sure morrissey is his love child

one of the worst, mined from the rich seam that is stingk:

we share the same biolog-ee
regardless of ideolo-gee

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
and Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am."

"His mum bought him a synthesizer / Got the Human League in to advise her."
Can't be bettered. No further questions. Case closed. Game over.

Wiggle wiggle
Like a bowl of soup
CLANG!