You know that John Mulaney bit about ? I feel like this object lesson in going too big too fast plays out every time Train’s “Drops Of Jupiter” reaches its bridge. And it’s not just the way frontman Pat Monahan drawwwwwwwwwws ouuuuuuuuuuuuut the words before reaching the end of a lyric, where he must cram multiple syllables into the space of a sneeze. It’s in the structure of the bridge itself, the order in which the song’s subject is asked about all the things they’ll miss when they leave this Earth. Beginning with love and pride? That tracks. But when the bridge reaches its conclusion, the profound intangibles have been exhausted, leaving only room for this curled-up noodle “Y” of an image: “The best soy latte that you’ve ever had.” I get it: Monahan wrote the song after the death of his mother, and in grief, there is no significant and insignificant—it all adds up to who a person was. But does any other gooey-hearted song that became as ubiquitous as “Drops Of Jupiter” contain a less lyrical combination of words? Unlike the Mulaney bit, the specificity is working against its writer—but it makes me chuckle just the same. [Erik Adams]
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One Direction has a little more than 27 tattoos. Hell, Harry Styles has over 50 tattoos himself.There’s also a Dr. Dre song where he goes, “I kick plenty of ass, so call me an astronaut.”
I’m pretty sure the line is “I GET plenty of ass, so call me an astronaut.” Still dumb, but also maybe the nerdiest way to say, “I get laid!”
Hey, you’re right. I just flubbed in writing it there, as I knew what the lyric was. I just brain farted and wrote kick for some strange reason.
The weirdest line from that song is “In a party, I’ll go for your neck, so call me Blackula.” The Blackula thing, makes sense, but why must he only go for your neck at a party?
I just always assumed Steve Miller has the worst with Texas, Facts is, Justice, taxesBilly Mack is a detective down in TexasYou know he knows just exactly what the facts isHe ain’t gonna let those two escape justice
He makes his livin’ off of the people’s taxes
I do like the way he abruptly ended the story in the middle: “They headed down south and they’re still running today.”
LOL I was literally going to post this exact same thing.
Steve Miller has a much greater offense to answer for, and that’s Abracadabra’, featuring the very worst lyrics ever written.
‘Abra, abracadabra…I wanna reach out and grab ya…Abra abra cadabra…ABRACADABRA’
That’s definitely in my list of Really Really Bad Lyrics. Fortunately it makes me laugh every time I hear it instead of driving me bonkers.
You’re lucky!
I don’t really know why. I think it’s one of those lyrics that’s so utterly unbelievably idiotic that I just can’t get annoyed by it. It’s like the best, most earnestest efforts of a 6th grader.
Discovered Run DMC’s version a while back.
What I’ve got you’ve got to give it to your mama
What I’ve got you’ve got to give it to your pappa
What I’ve got you’ve got to give it to your daughter
You do a little dance and then you drink a little waterWhat I’ve got you’ve got to get it put it in you
What I’ve got you’ve got to get it put it in you
What I’ve got you’ve got to get it put it in you
Reeling with the feeling don’t stop continue
I’ve always liked to think that for the line in Africa by Toto you mention, they just couldn’t for the life of them what word to go with to rhyme, so they just said screw it and made it what it is just for shits and giggles. It’s like that because they said “Fuck it!”…And it worked! (Scary tuba music)
I like to think the lyrics are “I can play the guitar like Steve motherfuckin’ Vai”
In any case, you can’t call the guitar solo from “What I Got” the saddest sound ever made by a guitar when this video exists:
I’ve heard better solos from one-handed epileptics.
You mean Neil Young?
Wow, I wish I had thought of that! Not that I could actually play a Steve Vai solo!
I always thought that it was ‘Vai’ rather than ‘riot’. I’m not making that up, am I? ‘R’ is pretty distinct from ‘V’.
EDIT: yes, apparently I am making that up. ‘Riot’ seems clear as day now that I listen to it again. I’m going to blame the quality of mp3s ripped by teenage-me.
That it was “riot” all along is news to me. I still haven’t listened to it again but now I’m afraid that the Vai spell will be broken :/
Kelis feat. Nas – Blindfold MeNas wants to fire off a quick rap about blindfolding Kelis for some sexcapades, but ends up dropping the line “Gonna surprise you, like Hugh Grant in 8½ Weeks / Kelis and Nasty.” He manages to confuse Mickey Rourke in 9½ Weeks with Hugh Grant in 9 Months and still get the number wrong:Multiple people listened to that track and let that line slip through, like “Oh yeah, that erotic romantic drama starring Hugh Grant? Dope reference.” Unfortunately, they corrected it for the music video:
My dad always got mad when “Fly Away” by Lenny Kravitz came on the radio because he rhymes “fly” with “butterfly.” Now I chafe anytime a song rhymes the same word together. Thanks, Dad.
That song has the second-worst lyrics of any song in history (see my post about the winner above)
I want a milky way! I wanna eat the suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!
Is it really rhyming a word with itself if they’re different words but one ends with the other? Another example of that would be the Rush song “Limelight” rhyming “act”, “tact”, and “intact.”
“Tact” and “intact” just happen to end with a syllable that sounds like the word “act.” They don’t end with “act” the way “butterfly” ends with the word “fly.” Like, “superstore” doesn’t end with the word “ore” the way “limelight” ends with “light.”
Your Dad is damn right.
But it makes it so much easier to rhyme words like “purple.”
Lenny can definitely play, but he’s not a brilliant lyricist. My pick for his biggest lyrical crime is off his debut album in the song “ I Build This Garden For Us”:“We’ll live each day in peace
In hope that we will one day reach
The rest of the world
When they are ready to be teached”Teached? TEACHED? TEACHED?!?!?
I’m surprised they didn’t get a lot of hip-hop/rap songs on here. Rappers do that all the time. Using the same word at the end of a verse.
Dragonfly, actually. “Fly Away” is still one of the absolute worst fucking songs ever released, and it particularly does not hold up to incessance, which is most unfortunate given how incessantly it was played on the radio.
“Horse With No Name” is a classic example that always comes to mind with amazing lines like “There were plants and birds and rocks and things” and “Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain” (I get what he was trying to do with that line, but it’s still a headache in word form).
‘Live And Let Die’ does that for me ‘and in this ever-changing world in which we live in…’
ever changing world in which we’re living…
That makes more sense, but I still hear it the way Stop Mean To Me hears it
Lady Mondegreene approves.
All McCartney had to do was say that’s what he was saying and everyone would have believed him, no problem.
From the song’s Wikipedia entry (McCartney may be doing a bit of a retcon here) :more than 30 years later, McCartney told the interviewer, “I don’t think about the lyric when I sing it. I think it’s ‘in which we’re living’, or it could be ‘in which we live in’, and that’s kind of, sort of, wronger but cuter,” before deciding that it was “in which we’re living”
Nah, I still don’t believe he’s been alive since 1966.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you just blew my mind
I’d once thought that, too, but it’s actually “But in this ever-changing world in which we’re livin’…” which is correct.
If they changed ‘give’ to ‘cause’ it might improve it, if only slightly, but then there’s two ‘cause’s, if different meanings. Not easy, this lyrics game.
Change “for” to “there”:In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one there to give you no pain
That works!
So I’m not a great songwriter but I’ve written songs and the thing about that is, sometimes you write lyrics that are better grammatically but trying to sing them can be difficult or doesn’t give you the right tone, or rhythmic feeling. And some words are just…ugly? Sometimes it’s better to sacrifice clarity for aesthetic reasons but it’s not always obvious to a listener.
And that why I made the specific suggestion I did. It fits the meter, is easy to say at that point, and it sounds reasonable as well as making sense.
America’s lyrics are the number one reason I detest them. Especially that “Tropic of Sir Galahad” shit. America’s lyrics are the worst (or best?) examples of random-ass hippie bullshit that expresses nothing except “I smoke WAY the fuck too much pot!”
A friend of mine once asked me why I don’t like America since they had such great harmonies. I said “Great, so America is ‘Imagine Crosby, Stills & Nash except with really shitty songs’.”
They didn’t even clear the way for Jefferson Airplane or Grand Funk.
I honestly don’t think I’ve even heard another America song, haha. Horse With No Name was such middle-of-the-road (albeit catchy) generic 70s radio rock that I never felt any desire to look deeper.
Now I feel the need to qualify: I do not now nor have ever owned an America album. The Galahad thing is on the radio.
Haha, don’t worry, I’d never imply such a thing!
“The heat was hot.”
and sand and hills and rings, don’t forget
I’m a longtime lover of the Great American Songbook, and Rodgers and Hart are two of my favorites. I’ve got several different versions of the song ‘I Could Write a Book’. Frank, Harry Connick, Gene Kelly, a few others. ‘Then the world discovers, as my book ends/ How to make two lovers of friends’. How to make of friends? One of the great songwriting duos of the 20th century couldn’t figure their way around that?
The Connick is one of my favorite versions, probably because the entire …When Harry Met Sally soundtrack is great, but I cannot agree with you more on that lyric. The first time I really paid attention to the words, I was like, No. Way. Next time I was at the library (ya know, pre-internet days but barely) I hunted down a Rogers & Hart songbook. Let’s just say I did a Picard facepalm long before it was a meme.
Clumsy as it sounds now, “of” was an acceptable shorthand for “out of” when it was written. It’s no different to the phrase “I’ll make a meal [out] of you”.
I’m missing what’s at all off about that lyric.
Why did I never notice the KILLERSLUTS sign in that video?
Because you had better things to do, I hope!
I was like 10 when this song came out and saw the video 2x at a friend’s house so probably yes.
“There’s a weapon, that we must use, in our defense, si-oo-lence.”
I must confess that I fucking love the “si-oh-lence” part.
I swear until today I thought Toto was singing “Rises like a leopress” and I have spent decades wondering if there really is a word for a female leopard and, if so, why the hell they would use it in a song. So, thank you for clearing that up. No thank you for making me feel stupid.
One of the only features distinguishing the Weezer cover from Toto’s original is that Cuomo enunciates that line more clearly.
I always heard “rising like an empress.”
It sounded like “a lepress” for sure, but I assumed it must be poorly enunciated “an empress” because I didn’t think “lepress” was a word.
I always thought it was “lepers.” Lol
Any of those mondegreens make more sense than comparing Africa’s tallest mountain to another, much shorter mountain.
“Any of those mondegreens make more sense than comparing Africa’s tallest mountain to another, much shorter mountain.”I always assumed they were referring to the mythological Mount Olympus, which was never identified with a specific physical mountain. In fact, in all the lands that the Greeks conquered they took to calling the tallest mountain in that region “Olympus.”It’s still a terrible mixed metaphor though, as the only part of Africa that the Greeks conquered was Egypt. Which is like over a thousand miles away from the Serengeti.
That’s what I misheard, too. A cursory Google search confirms it’s ‘leopardress,’ I always figured he just mispronounced it or something.
It made sense in my head because cats are often given traits associated with sex or femininity.
A leperess is a female leper.
A Def Leppress?
“Leprosy for two-hundred, Alex.”
I had always thought it was “rises like an empress”.
‘I guess it rains down in africa’
Meanwhile, am I losing my mind or are both the Serengeti and Mt. Kilimanjaro not both in Africa??
I’m pretty sure they’ve been culturally appropriated many times, but they remain in Africa.
. . . And bfred is losing his mind. You guys think we should talk to him or what?
Olympus isn’t.
Yeah but “like Olympus” is referencing the home of the Greek gods. As nonsensical as the lyrics to Africa are, even Toto’s not going to say “Kilimanjaro rises like Pike’s Peak above the Serengeti.”
The mountain and the home of the gods are one in the same. The article was referring to Mt. Olympus as not being in Africa.
Right, but again the reason they go with Olympus there is because it’s the home of gods, not just a geological formation. Suggesting Kilimanjaro is some sort of spiritual African equivalent, “like” Olympus.Anyway, we have now collectively put more thought into this than Toto did when writing the damn song. Let’s just agree it’s a stone groove and leave it with this:
OK, no, your confusion pertained to which thing was not in Africa. It’s not about deep reflection or lyrical genius or whatever, it’s a simple answer. One of us certainly has wasted a lot of time and thought on it, and it’s not me.
Meanwhile, am I losing my mind or are both the Serengeti and Mt. Kilimanjaro not both in Africa?? If you’re asking why Toto is referencing Africa’s highest mountain and comparing it to Olympus (also a mountain) then, well, uh… art! It’s art! Look over there, more art! [Runs]
To go into bat for Toto… the line echoes the “dit-dit-dit-ditdit-ditdit-dit-daaaaah” of the main hook (ie a shitload of notes all at once) and the imagery works if you think of the MYTHICAL Olympus rather than the real one. You have to admit, that of all the real mountains, the two that look the most like they could possibly have gods living at the top of them are Fuji and Kilimanjaro. On account of them being volcanoes.
That “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” line HAD to be there so it could be Justin Timberlake’s big song-and-dance number in ‘Southland Tales’, which is an underrated masterpiece and I’ll hear no argument to the contrary.
Speaking in general terms, I always find it hilarious when a singer references the song they are singing, usually via some lyric like when Madonna says “That’s why I’m singing this song to you,” from “Beautiful Stranger.” It’s laughable because the intent is to be earnest and honest, which is often the farther thing from the truth when it’s a pop star singing a pop song.
Elton John’s “Your Song” being the exception that proves the rule.
Your honor, I submit to the jury, George Harrison’s “This Song” as another notable exception to that rule.
Ironic since Elton John doesn’t write his own lyrics.
Have you ever seen Elton John and Bernie Taupin in the same room?
Yes. Many, many times. But they looked alike back in the day, if that helps.
I agree that I usually don’t like when the singer references the song itself; but I’m guilty of it. I was stuck for a line and just wanted to finish the damn thing so I stuck in “I stayed home and wrote this song”
You probably thought that song was about you, didn’t you, didn’t you, didn’t you?
I know! I actually like that one.
OTOH, it is hateful when singer or band references himself.
What about when the singer references his own lyrics? Steven Tyler is constantly singing about toys which are located in the attic, drawing lines, feeling F I N E Fine, and how he has returned to his horse’s saddle.
So, KMFDM Sucks?
I generally agree regarding self-referential songs, though I also agree with StefanJammers that “Your Song” is great.The one that always annoyed me was “You’re so vain, You probably think this song is about you.”But … IT IS!!!!! The song is about the person you’re singing about!
I think the “oh, I’m still the same old me” kind of songs grate on me in that way more – like “Jenny from the Block” type stuff, or the ones where someone who’s clearly worked very hard to be a major music star sings about how much it sucks to be famous.
FOrmer blues musician here. What always annoyed me was when a performer and usually an aged and white one would sing songs about the blues and how it changed them, saved them, or overtook them or something. It’s really silly. Just play the blues. Show, don’t tell.
I always thought the top prize should go to Steely Dan’s classic “Kid Charlemagne” for:“Is there gas in the car?/Yes there’s gas in the car”Even Donald Fagen admits he cheesed on that one.
I’ve never considered that a particularly bad lyric, but that’s probably because it’s hard to pay attention to the lyrics in a song that features one of the best guitar solos of all time. Larry Carlton fucking tore that shit up!
Though an abrupt change in the flow of the song, it felt earned to me; the Kid’s life as an Owsley-surrogate was abruptly imploding with “patrons” suddenly not paying up, dead “low-rent friends” and even the people down the hall possibly reporting him to the cops.
Though abrupt, the shift in rhyme structure seemed earned to me; the Kid’s life was abruptly falling apart from “patrons” who weren’t paying up, dead “low-rent friends,” and even the risk of exposure from the people down the hall.
Yeah, I thought it was about showing the irrationality and fear setting in as his world collapses. Can’t believe that poor fucker Owsley died in Mareeba, of all places.
“I tell myself Hey only fools rush inOnly time will tellIf we stand the test of time”Van Haggar wrote that in “Why Can’t this be Love,” and cringe and laugh every single time-time I hear it.
“time will tell” is an intellectually offensive phrase in any situation.
I am pretty sure “that was more annoying than funny.” is the Black-Eyed peas official slogan.
In general, Dirty Paws by Of Monsters And Men sounds like a five-year old recapping a movie for you – there’s a bunch of irrelevant details, it sort of meanders, and then the story just ends. But the most glaring moment is, in this epic tale of animals versus – I dunno, other animals? Mankind paving over nature? Bugs? – they have the line “The son was an OK guy.” Saga of good versus evil, but we take time to bring up someone who was… Fine, and I don’t think ever comes up again. I mean, I like it, I like Of Monsters And Men, it’s just a goofy moment for them.
Very nice of you to let “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” be the Killers shame line, when “When You Were Young” has the little sad bridge part capped off with “But you can dip your feet… every once AND a little while” right fuckin’ there.
I feel the same way about Drops of Jupiter. I think the song is awesome, but no great song can have the word Tae-Bo in it
That line drives me flippin’ nuts, although many from The Killers songs come very close. Actually, the one that drives me the craziest is, “Are we human or are we dancer?” What the hell?!?! There is no denying Killers’ songs are catchy as all get out, but the lyrics are probably the most inane I’ve ever heard from such a popular band.
“Are we human or are we dancer” is exactly when I jumped off the Killers train.
They really have gotten better as lyricists over time. The “Battle Born” album actually has some goddamn heart wrenching melancholy lyrics even if there’s still a few clunkers. “There’s a picture of us on our wedding day, I recognize the girl but I can’t settle in these walls” gut punched me the first time I heard it.
Very nice of you to let “every once and a little while” be their shame line when “are we human…or are we dancer?” sure is a lyric that fucken exists.
Am I human? Or am I Davros? My chair is mobile. My heart is cold. Since I have no knees and I look cadavrous. / Am I human? Or am I Davros. I thank you.
We are Dancer. Together as part of a hive mind, we are one of Santa’s reindeer.
An entire list could be made featuring only Killers lyrics—my favorites being “we’re burning down the highway skyline on the back of a hurricane,” which is the greatest/worst Springsteen pastiche ever written.
Soul/Soldier is pretty bad, but for me nothing beats the time they epically, anthemically blasted us with a rousing chorus of “somebody told me that you had a boyfriend that looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year!” In what context would anyone ever say that to someone?
I’m surprised that the Ruff Ryder’s rapper Eve didn’t feature on this list as she was a serial offender of “rhyming” with the same words.
I don’t need your assistance, social persistence
Any problem I got I just put my fist in Ice T “Colors”
“I got soul but I’m not a soldier” is either one of the funniest catch-phrase lyrics ever written or it’s the work of a pompous dunderhead trying to sound profound. While I don’t have a lot of evidence Brandon Flowers has the kind of sense of humor that would make it the former I’ve always given him the benefit of the doubt.It’s always been a Justin Timberlake jam for me anyway, even if lipsynced:
Yeah I think I can stand that song mainly bc it reminds me of that sequence which in the context of Southland Tales. The lyrics are much vaguer than the Killers better stuff but combining it with the more explicit way Southland Tales discussed the Iraq War it gives it a feeling of half-trying for an anti-war message. The 2000s were incredibly weak on anti-war songs considering we were at war for the majority of the decade. And Southland Tales’s depiction of maimed and traumatized soldiers clearly from our current troops was different than the typical heroic, inspiring figures most media were comfortable showing. Now “Are We Human or Are We Dancer” I don’t think I’ll ever be able to not feel nauseous hearing
Lil Wayne Cash money.Pocketful of money.
I sometime believe that The Scorpions, despite being German dudes trying to write lyrics in English, must have still been a Spinal Tap put-on. First, because they chose to name a song “Rock You Like a Hurricane”. Not an earthquake, or even a thunderstorm, but a hurricane. Second, they have a chorus of a different song where they rhyme “you” with “you”, “do”, and “you”.
They also tried really, really hard to shoehorn in the title of the album into that song. Like, it’s blatantly obvious they thought “Love at First Sting, great album title! But we don’t have a song called that, let’s try to fit it into this song. On the hunt tonight for/LOVE AT FIRST STING!” We did it!
So you’re a little bit older
And a lot less bolderNo, Bob Seger, that’s not how the fucking English language works. Also, your song sucks.
So you learned how to solder.
And you adopted an otter.
What really bugs me about “Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus” is it’s a terrible simile. “As sure as a mountain is like another mountain but in a different location”?
The Juicy J verse of Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse.”She’s a beast
I call her Karma
She eat your heart out
Like Jeffrey Dahmer
“I don’t eat pork like Mr. Roarke”Solemn Swears, Shabazz Palaces“The turning point of a career in Korea being insincere”Grabbing Hands, Depeche Mode
Mest was so very bad, but also, I really enjoyed them. (For a little while. They were one of those groups where damn near every single song really does sound pretty much exactly the same and you can’t listen to them more more than 30-45 minutes without going insane)
I wouldn’t say it’s unintentionally funny, but “New Orleans Ladies” by LeRoux drives me up the fucking wall with the lyric “All the way/From Bourbon Street to Esplanade/They saché by”Bourbon St. and Esplanade Ave. intersect. There is no “all the way from.” It’s a fucking corner. What really cheeses me off is the songwriter could have easily made it “All the way/DOWN Bourbon Street to Esplanade.” You preserve the meter and make a little more goddamn sense. There’s also a Toby Keith where he’s singing about a prescher’s daughter who’s all wild and rednecky and shit, and he sings “Me and God love her.”I know Keith’s an idiot, but “Me…love her?” Who write this dreck, Tarzan, Tonto, or Frankenstein? And like “New Orleans Ladies,” a perfectly serviceable (and grammatically fucking correct) replacement is right there: “God and I love her.” Preserves the meter and doesn’t make me want to ram knitting needles in my ears.
(I agree with you, but it’s spelt ‘sashay’.)
The lyric makes me so angry I that I misspelled it, going so far as to put the accent mark on the “e.” ;-)And writing about the Toby Keith song angered me even more, preventing me from catching the typo on “preacher.”
Maybe she’s talking about the mall in Metairie.I’ll get my coat.
Nobody’s talked about that mall since the ’80s
I figured as such!
That mall’s in Kenner, brah.
Listen, I lived there for a year when I was in high school in 1987-88 and haven’t been back since. They all blend together!
Re: The Killers ‘All These Things That I Have Done’ I much prefer comedian Bill Bailey’s version with its far superior refrain “I’ve got ham but I’m not a hamster”
I’ll have to check that out, being both a fan of The Killers (despite their often stupid lyrics), and Bill Bailey. I’m surprised; usually his musical tastes go a bit less recent than currently active bands.
Maroon 5 saying “animals, mals.”
The catalog of sexual adventures in “Drops of Jupiter” makes it an odd homage to Mom.
I’d like to submit pretty much all of “Hey Soul Sister”, but mostly “My heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest”.
Maybe the point of the song was that moment when you realize that your mother was not only sexually active, but she was a little freak!
Finally realized what the lead guy from Train reminds me of: when some bland mainstream-handsome actor plays a musician in a bad movie or TV show, like when a soap (day or evening) has a character who’s meant to be a “rock star” he looks just like that guy.
Trains is close to The Killers on crappy lyrics. “Hey Soul Sister” has several of the stupidest lyrics I’ve ever heard – the chorus is flat-out horrible and “My heart is bound to beat out of my untrimmed chest.” Seriously, take 30 seconds and you can make a good lyric out of that, can’t you professional musician guy? How did everyone let that slide by?
At least the Killers are mostly trying to be fun. Train is just embarrassingly over-earnest.
Blame Canada.
Oh, is Train Canadian? Jesus.
They’re not. The lead singer is from Erie, Pa.; I was living near there when “Hey, Soul Sister” came out, and I the stations got it early, since I moved to Florida a little while after that, and it was just hitting. The rest of the band seems to be from San Francisco.
I’m not sure about Train, but Killers are.
Canadian? They absolutely are not.
…all that hockey hullabaloo, and that bitch Anne Murray, too…
EVERYTHING about ‘Hey Soul Sister’ is awful. The lyrics are totally naff, but also the backtrack sounds like a ukulele and a cajóne, which basically screams “I don’t give a shit about this. You idiots will buy anything.”
I feel the same way about that ‘Royal’ song. She said she wrote it in 10 minutes. I said “Yes, it sounds like it.”
Yeah, “Hey Soul Sister” has much worse lyrics that “Drops of Jupiter.”
Ukelele and cojones is my favourite music genre.
You & enough people felt that way to make it a hit.
“Untrimmed chest”? What does that even mean? I have to assume that it’s something like “what’s more rough-hewn, out-there and rock n’ roll than not having your personal groomer trim your chest on a regular basis like we all do?” Fits with his whole douchey vibe.
Daryl’s House when Daryl Hall sings those lyrics with Pat Monahan “A game show love connection” “I’m so obsessed, my heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest” he gets this smile on his face, all those odd juxtaposed lyrics in that song, plus he sings every part full out loud. I didn’t think about it one way or another as good or bad—there are way more goofy-ass lyrics in other songs—but watching Darryl enjoy himself singing with Pat was fun; I understand they do gigs together now.
He’s for real Chris Gaines.
Is the “3005″ line unintentionally funny? I always thought that was on purpose.
Let them leave you up in the airLet them brush your rock and roll hair…
Even as a kid, I remember being disappointed in that line.
Any song with the word ‘Skyfall’ in the title.
Hell yes to So Yesterday, my favourite drunk karaoke song. That bridge hits so hard every time!
You mean you get drunk and scream “Why she had to go, I don’t know she wouldn’t say” at karaoke and think you’re ‘hitting it so hard’?
we’re talking about lyrical genius Hilary Duff here, please get your teeny bopper Beatles out of my face
Hilary Duff grew up SO lovelyly.
Agreed. She’s so great in Younger.
“The sheriff and his buddies with their samurai swords.” China Grove, The Doobie Brothers. The entire song is a disaster.
That may be; but there is NO waking moment of my day where I would not ‘like to hear some funky dixieland and take a pretty mama by the hand’.
The Doobie Brothers say actual WORDS?! I maintain that no one on this Earth can actually understand what they are saying, we all just make the noises with our mouths when we “sing” along with them. Same with Sting (though you can usually understand the last three words of any line Sting sings, as pointed out by Family Guy). I say this as a massive fan of both The Doobie Brothers and Sting.
That Mest song is trash, but repetition in songwriting is valid and not necessarily meant to sound like it’s supposed to rhyme.
She loves you yeah yeah yeah,
She loves you yeah yeah yeah,
She loves you yeah yeah YEEEAAAHHH . . .
Hooverphonic’s supposed-to-be romantic song ‘Amalfi’:My eyes do shine
Radiate like a nuclear dense cloud
You’re like a real strong cup of tea
“Blinded By the Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band is chock-full of jaw-droppers. Hands down some of the fucking stupidest, just-because-they-rhyme-doesn’t-mean-you-should-put-them-all-in lyrics ever written. They’re all terrible, but if I had to pick, the couplet“And little Early Pearly
Came by in his curly-wurly”
Makes me the angriest.
Written by Bruce Springsteen, actually
Yeah. It’s SUPPOSED to be nonsense, though. I don’t have a problem with something like that. If that’s what we’re talking about, throw away literally 300 hundred Dylan songs.
Well “doo-wah-diddiy-diddy-dum-diddy-doo” to you too!
No, see, it’s poetry. The Drunken Boat. You just don’t get it man.(sarcasm filter, off… I, personally don’t have a lot of patience for Dylan’s Rimbaud-esque blatherings nor Springsteen’s crappy imitations of those blatherings. Well except for Visions of Johanna which DOES work. Rimbaud, I have no idea.)
Springsteen was done with it after one record. Dylan runs hot and cold, even at his peak, although he’s also a genius. (For some reason, people always say “except for ‘Visions of Johanna’.” My friend just said that the other day. But if you listen to it, it’s just a vague as all his other stuff. I think the vibe it generates is agreeable, and Dylan’s lyrics are all about the vibe. As much as I love him, a great many of the songs are ridiculous, even when judging them that way!)
Because I think he did achieve what he was trying to do with Johanna which is a coherent “vibe.” Or anyway this was one of his best successes in trying to do so. It’s not really there with Subterranean Homesick Blues or Stuck Inside of Mobile or something, in my opinion. Then again “in my opinion” counts for a lot or doesn’t count for a lot since the listener response is an essential element. Maybe Johanna just pulls more triggers in more listeners.
I get what you’re saying. I’ve always said his songs are like Rorschach tests. Rarely do two people get the same things out of them. I think there’s a great deal to be said for that kind of song, though, because it requires the listener to be more of an active participant. You get very little out of it if it plays in the background, you know what I mean? And lest we forget, he introduced that type of thing in popular music. Nobody had ever done it before. It’s like Beat poetry with a band behind it, but I imagine you realize that.
“My God this song is dumb. Maybe Manfred Mann wants it.”-Possibly Bruce Springsteen
Whigh goes to show there aren’t that many degrees of separation between Bruce Springsteen and Meatloaf.
While Manfred Mann’s version is definitive, I think you can pin the lyrical head-scratchers to the original songwriter, Bruce Springsteen.
Those are originally Bruce Springsteen lyrics, and they are all esoteric metaphors that I could explain to you if you have two free hours and a dime bag.
A dime bag?
I always hear, “Blinded by the light. Revved up like a douche another runner in the night”
Come on baby light my fire
Come on baby light my fire
Try to set the night on fire
So says the “poet”.
Unprecedented opportunity to kick knowledge:
Robby Krieger wrote that one. I think Jim’s contribution was the funeral pyre line.
I am humbled! And I must admit the funeral pyre line is the best. I
could never figure out how someone who came up with that line could
rhyme fire with fire. Huh.
I laugh at that scene in The Doors when Kilmer as Morrison suggests they sing “Baby you can bite my wire” as a replacement line for “Girl we couldn’t get much higher” when performing on Ed Sullivan.
Oh, don’t get me started on Morrison, although he didn’t write “Light My Fire.” “Sidewalk crouches at her feet like a dog that begs for something sweet”….because we all know what a sweet tooth dogs have. “He’s squirmin’ like a toad”…because who hasn’t seen toads “squirmin?” “Like a dog without a bone, an actor out on loan”…um, I guess because “bone” and “loan” rhyme. Can’t think of any other reason.
My favorite Jim Morrison poem is Lament for the Death of my Cock. They should have recorded it.
Unless you’re a native speaker of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), you should not rhyme “go” with “more”Let it go, let it go,I can’t hold it back any mo.
Smooth Operator by Sade:“Coast to coast, LA to Chicago…”I… don’t think that Chicago is on the coast.
I’ve been a Springsteen fanatic for 40 years now, but this lyric from “The Wrestler” is so stupid it ruins the entire song for me:“Have you ever seen a one-legged dog making its way down the street / If you’ve seen a one-legged dog, then you’ve seen me”Well then, I guess I’ve never seen him because I’ve never seen a dog WITH ONE FUCKING LEG hopping down the street! I’ve never seen a dog with one leg in a jar at a carnival. Hell, I’ve never seen a TWO-legged dog! What the hell was Bruce thinking?? It just points out the fact that a lot of these guys eventually have zero people around them to say, “Um…that’s a really terrible lyric.”
I’ve seen two-legged dogs. It’s amazing to watch them get around like their four-legged brethren are lazy millennials (I joke, I joke). One-legged dogs, though? Nope. Never seen ‘em.
The leg would have to be in the middle of its stomach in order for it to even stand a chance of hopping!
A one-legged dog? That’s going out on a limb.Yep.
Is it possible he meant a three-legged dog – i.e. a dog that’s MISSING one leg – and crossed the wires somehow?
Maybe, but there would have only been about fifty opportunities for somebody – anybody – to say, “Hey, Bruce. You made a mistake there.”
The opening to Pitbull’s “Give Me Everything” is so badly written. He really couldn’t come up with a better line than taking a picture with a Kodak TWICE? The second use doesn’t even make sense in the context.Me not working hard?
Yeah, right, picture that with a Kodak
Or, better yet, go to Times Square
Take a picture of me with a Kodak
Took my life from negative to positive
I just want y’all know that
And tonight, let’s enjoy life
Pitbull, Nayer, Ne-Yo, tell us right
The fact that it comes right after a brag about how hard he works is the icing on the cake.
No one seems to mind when Eminem rhymes a word with itself.Now this looks like a job for meSo everybody, just follow me‘Cause we need a little controversy‘Cause it feels so empty without me
How does a lyric not get any more unintentionally funny than the first 4 words of Michael Jackson’s “Bad”?
“Your butt is mine.”
I kinda like the solo from ‘What I Got’, though I agree it’s more “laid back ‘n cool” than a “motherfuckin’ riot”.
Barely related: I was in a cover band that did this song a lot; I forget why I was selected to sing it, but if we were playing for “polite company” I had to take that line out. I usually just sang “I can play the guitar like a…” and then started with a screaming note or feedback squeal. I played it on an electric.
Like or comment for more stories about cool stuff I used to do before the plague.
Finally a forum to unburden myself! I’ve tried everything to make the following lyrics from “Nobody Wants to Be Lonely” (2001) by Ricky Martin & Christina Aguilera stop hurting my brain: “Your heart is cold and lost the will to love, LIKE A BROKEN ARROW, here I stand in the shadows…” Nope. Doesn’t work. Ever. (I would, however, be remiss if I didn’t admit to only a shallow knowledge of broken arrows and their relation to hearts and/or ways in which they find comfort in shadows or total sunlight for that matter…)
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First lines of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”, the first song on Paranoid:Generals gathered in their massesJust like witches at black masses
I think that’s better than “War, what is it good for?”
Yeah, it’s a slightly clumsy lyric, but not even close to all-time bad.
What’s clumsy about it? Have you listened to the song?
Obviously, clumsiness is a subjective judgement. But if you want to know why: (1) they’ve rhymed ‘masses’ with itself (a pretty minor quibble imho) and (2) in an army, generals are one of the few ranks that don’t have masses to gather in.Like I said, it’s not terrible, just a little clumsy.
You replied to the comment about the song War, and I wrongly thought you
meant the line, War, what is it good for? is clumsy. Sorry about that. Thanks for the
reply though.
All good.
“It’s awful to say, but it often turns around a poor economy!” doesn’t fit the meter. So I guess “absolutely nothing” has to suffice.
Things we have thanks to war:
RADAR
Microwave ovens
Jet engines
Don’t forget more realistic prosthetic limbs.
Tolstoy wrote that one.
That one always jumped out at me – especially because the first like doesn’t make a ton of sense, so why couldn’t they have done something else as nonsensical, but with “passes” or anything else?
The original lyric on the demo version was “Witches gathered at black masses/bodies burning in red ashes.” At least the “masses” they rhyme are two different definitions of the word.
I have a question for you all. What piece of pop culture media have you consumed with a completely incorrect idea of what it will be? Not finding that something you thought would be awful was, in actual fact, awesome, or vice versa. I want to know what wrong impressions you had about the thing you were going to see or listen to or read, only to be wildly disabused when actually plunked down in front of it? For me, the most obvious culprit is the late-‘90s Nicolas Cage vehicle, 8mm. I was a student at a military boarding school, where I wasn’t allowed a television, but could hit the town every weekend provided I hadn’t messed up in some way the previous week and racked up punishment tours (marching up and down the square), most of which was spent by my compatriots and I at the local mall movie theater. I would see posters for 8mm, and with little to go on except Cage, the thin strip of celluloid his character was holding up in the poster, and the ending of The Rock, I naturally assumed it was going to be a fun-filled caper about Stanley Goodspeed exposing conspiracies and blowing shit up real good. Instead, what I got was a grim drama about snuff films. Not exactly the breezy entertainment a lonely military school kid was looking for.
I was told that Event Horizon was a sci-fi adventure movie “like Star Trek.”
Ha!
It’s odd that I’m cracking on bad Springsteen lyrics because, like I already said here, I’m a huge fan and he’s so often an absolutely brilliant lyricist, but I’ve always rolled my eyes over the line, “When you’re alone, you’re really alone.” Boy, there’s some insight for you! I always thought when you’re alone, you’re only theoretically alone. It sounds like he used it as filler when he was writing the song, then forgot to replace it. Another bizarre Bruce lyric: “We’re living in the future / None of this has happened yet.” That’s so cryptic I can’t even begin to decipher it! Is there some kind of wormhole in time out on the Jersey Turnpike? Every time I hear it, I think I’ll be able figure it out, but give up after rolling it around in my head a few times.
Oh, a slideshow. Yay.
Jason Aldean’s Big Green Tractor may be the worst lyrics I’ve ever had to listen to more than two dozen times, thanks to working in a small town hardware store from 2007-2010. It’s hard to pick just one part (that the whole thing is essentially a metaphor for his dick at the top of the list) but “the dogs were all barking and wagging around/and I just laughed and said y’all get in” is so, so bad. It’s like he had to get dogs in to hit the cliche bingo card that lets you get played on modern country radio. (Or did back then, I don’t have to listen to it now so I wouldn’t know.)
Does “Trapped In The Closet” count as a song? ‘Cause I nominate the entirety of that. Or at least the classic line “Bitch, move! / She move!”
A midget…A midget…A midget…
Two songs:1. Who’s That Girl by Madonna- ‘Light up my life / So blind I can’t see’Really, Mads? That’s how blind you are? So blind that you, like, can’t see? Wow. Pretty blind.2. Why Can’t This Be Love by Van Hagar- ‘Only time will tell if we stand the test of time’Repeat that. Aloud. With a straight face.
PAPA DONT PREACH: “I MAY BE YOUNG AT HEART” NO DUMBASS YOURE JUST YOUNG
“Only time will tell if we stand the test of time.” – Samuel Hagar, Esq.
I’ve always heard the Toto line as “sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a *lepus* above the Serengeti” . I always liked the image of a giant hare rising over the plains of Africa.
Not only is “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” perfect for the song (and for Justin Timberlake synching to it in “Southland Tales”), Beck just did “Like a soldier with no soul” on Hyperspace so think if you would have criticized it as a Beck lyric.Pretty sure Ye or Jay did a “lyin king” gag also, but early Gambino was pretty terrible sometimes, I was really surprised you didn’t do one of the examples of Ye rhyming a word with itself.The Toto Africa one is great “like a mountain that looks like another mountain” what poetry. “And Gandalf raised his staff like Saruman raises his staff sometimes…”
Yeah a lot of these were bad, but “Kilamanjero rises like Olympus above the Serengeti” is a beautiful line. It’s not saying Kilamanjero looks like another mountain it’s saying it’s majestic and conveys feelings of divinity. And of course it’s geographic- the song is literally called “Africa”. It’s describing specific things about Africa that are wondrous
Good on you for sticking up for your beliefs, but I think you’re on a losing wicket here.
I’m not even arguing with the people who agreed with the writer’s opinion- I’m agreeing with someone with a similar viewpoint to mine. People can have different opinions, especially about something subjective like music
How can you spell Kilimanjaro wrong when we all have spellcheck and it’s spelled correctly in the article you’re commenting on? Sincerely, how is that possible?
I knew I just couldn’t with Taylor Swift after a good friend played “Love Story” over and over. She either never read or understood the books she references and as a lit major I was done.
In “Helpless” by CSNY, the line “Big birds flying across the sky” is easily misinterpreted as “Big Bird’s flying across the sky” – so I tend to picture a tall, normally flightless muppet flying across the sky. Sesame Street *was* already on the air at that point, but I doubt that’s what Neil Young meant.
I think that line from Africa is even more unintentionally hilarious because Kilimanjaro can’t be seen from the Serengeti.
the sublime entry made me think of a line in a song that makes me laugh everytime i hear it, and that’s the part towards the end of the early 90s g-funk classic “regulate” in which warren g attempts to sound hard while delivering the lines “chords, strings, we brings… melody!”
I have three, in increasing order:
3) Here In My Room, Incubus: Already a song explicitly about Brandon Boyd boning, still comes to a grinding halt with the line, “Pink tractor beam into your incision”. It seemed like it was the exact moment where he was like, fuck it, I can and will sing anything.
2) My Way, Limp Bizkit: Idiot fire of a song from start to finish. Not only is it just Fred Durst pretending to complain about music executives stifling his creativity or whatever, it reaches peak dumbass with the line, “Just one more fight about a lot of things”. The line that follows is, “And I will give up everything”, which I figure he wrote first and then needed something to rhyme it with, and then chose “a lot of things”. I have to hear this at work, which is why it’s fresh.
1) Party in the USA, Miley Cyrus: Not a bad song, otherwise, and I respect that Miley Cyrus seems to have essentially grown up, and does good work for others, given the fame she has. But the line, “And the Jay-Z song goes Oo0o76xhgzn0Onn” is the fucking bastard child of nightmares. It’s a mindless, 4-second, auto-tune-but-still-somehow-amelodic portal of hell that she chooses to repeat, and repeat, and repeat. It’s the audio version of those Steve Buscemi face-meshes where you’re like, ‘This is horrifying. Why would someone do this?’ When I first started at my current job, and this would come on, I would ask .. “That line is, like .. awful, right? I’m not crazy?” and almost always got a response of, “Oh, no. It’s bad.”
I gotta say the “pink tractor beam” lyric would be my #1 on that list.
It’s in rank of irritation, really. I like Fred Durst as a person. The Education of Charlie Banks was a good movie with mid-fame Jesse Eisenberg that he directed. People grow. It’s just such a stupid song.
For what it’s worth, the line is actually “and the Jay-Z song WAS on”.
Strangely enough, that makes it one syllable better.
“Party in the USA” came on at work the other day, and it occurred to me that the line is a lot less pronounced in the original version than I thought it was. I was helping out in the nightclub part of a restaurant I was working at when this song was at its peak, and the DJ seemed to play this hook incessantly. It strips away the momentum of the song, and amplifies the unnatural sound of it, and just repeats. It wasn’t even as much that I hated it, so much I was confused why no one else heard the same thing. I now understand why the people I was working with at the time are the only people who seem to cringe when it plays.
“Here In My Room” is a fucking GORGEOUS song, though, from an absolutely stunning record that somehow didn’t really set the world on fire.
Oh, I completely agree that it’s a good song. To me, it’s the Incubus version of something like “No Quarter” by Led Zeppelin, or “Pyramid Song” by Radiohead. All of that helps make the line so much more comically jarring to me, I guess. I didn’t personally enjoy Crow Left of the Murder as much as the two before it, but I think it’s one of those albums where I’ll randomly hear a song from it and be happy I did.
My all-time favorite is Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive”: I walk these streets
A loaded six-string on my back
I play for keeps‘
cause I might not make it backCome on guys! You’re not even trying!
Going along with the Train choice: Madonna’s soy latte/pilates rap in “American Life”. I think it was intended to be atypical of rap lyrics, but still. The baby-simple rhymes together with the 2000s Mom Things — it makes me laugh every time.
How is it possible to have this list with no mention of Fergie-era Black Eyed Peas?Have you guys heard the song “I Gotta Feeling”? I feel like you have because you reviewed those Trolls movies and it’s gotta be in there somewhere.
Seriously, Google that shit, the entire thing is one unintentionally hilarious run-on. And we’re not even going to talk about “My Humps”.
“I’d give my lifeFor just one kiss.Live for your smileAND DIE FOR YOUR KIIIIIIIISS!”Skid RowI’ll Remember You
The real issue is that second line, which as rendered in full, goes “Sure as Kilimanjaro rising like Olympus above the Serengeti.”
. . .No, it doesn’t.
My favorite is Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell: Well if it seems to be real, it’s illusion
For every moment of truth, there’s confusion in life
Love can be seen as the answer but nobody bleeds for the dancer
Dio LOVED marijuana, and loved writing lyrics that sound really cool but don’t make ANY literal sense whatsoever. “Ride the tiger, you can see his stripes but you know he’s clean/oh don’t you see what I mean?” Is another favorite. Or Rainbow’s “Stargazer,” maybe his best performance as a vocalist, opens with:
“High noon, oh I’d sell my soul for water/Nine years worth of breaking my back; there’s no sun in the shadow of the wizard/see how he glides, why he’s lighter than air.” And it RULES.
That Sublime lyric followed by a sad solo reminds me of U2’s live version of “Silver and Gold” from Rattle and Hum. Bono gives a typical Bono speech then ends with “Okay Edge, play the Blues” and The Edge busts out a pretty solid Edge Guitar Solo which in no way sounds like the Blues.
I’ve had exactly one karaoke experience, it was with Toto’s “Africa” and, well Mr. Hughes, nothing I’ve read in 40 plus years has been more personally precise.
Did I miss someone bringing up Loverboy’s “Everybody’s Working For The Weekend” absolutely atrocious opening lyrics?
Everyone’s watching to see what you will do
Everyone’s looking at you
Everyone’s wondering, will you come out tonight
Everyone’s trying to get it right
Good lord, kill me.
Let’s not forget Robyn S. and “You’ve Got to Show me Love”, when she says “…words are so easy to say” which is then immediately followed by an unintelligible transitory filler. Technically I think it’s actually ‘Oh, I” but in practice it ends up sounding like Oooooaiiiiii. Plain gibberish.
Never forget the time in 2007 when Poet Laureate Kid Rock rhymed “things” with “things.”https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/kid-rock/all-summer-long
I always thought Taylor Swift’s line from “Our Song”, “he talks real slow/’cause it’s late and his mama don’t know” was kind of dumb. I think she meant to say “he talks real low” (if you’re trying to be secretive, you want to keep your voice down and definitely NOT take your time) and no one had the guts to correct her.Also, how did you guys narrow down WHICH Train song’s awful rhymes to include?
I was fully expecting to see my favorite unintentionally funny, ridiculous, cringeworthy, and laughably pretentious lyric, the inimitable: “have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head?” from U2’s “One”
I’m gonna give Bradley Nowell posthumous benefit of the doubt here, because either he intentionally juxtaposed mediocre playing against faux-bragadoccio, or he meant “riot” like “I play the guitar like a bunch of people making chaos and noise.”
On the rare occasions when REO Speedwagon comes on the radio, I can’t help but crack up at the lyrics in the chorus of “I Can’t Fight This Feeling”:And I can’t fight this feeling anymoreI’ve forgotten what I started fighting forIt’s time to bring this ship into the shoreAnd throw away the oars, foreverThis guy can’t seem to remember what the hell he’s doing, but then he crashes his boat into the shore, then he tosses the oars overboard, with a solemn “Fuck you, oars!” no doubt, all in the course of four lines. Just beautifully awful.It’s also in the same song Kevin Cronin offers, “You’re a candle in the wind…ow / on a cold dark winter’s night”, which gets a giggle from me everytime. And yes, this song was written a good decade after Elton John’s.
The metaphor of a candle in a window lighting someone’s way home is nothing to do with the metaphor of a short, bright life snuffed out tragically. And the metaphor of throwing away the oars of a boat and settling down for a domestic life on land is also perfectly reasonable. Yes, it’s a cheesy song. But your analyses are hollow.
Normally one brings a ship into a port, rather than the shore. Bring a ship into shore would typically be called “crashing”. Or “beaching” I suppose.
It seems to me you’re living your life like a candle in the wind(ow). But I’m happy that you enjoy the song. Please carry on.
Could do a whole list on times rappers misspelled words. Like Warren G’s “What’s next, what’s N-X-E-T” to the X-Clan literally misspelling their own name “X-C-A-L then the N means you can understand,” I’m sure it would be a motherfuckin RIOT!
I’m usually not in the habit of defending Sublime, but I always interpreted that line as a joke.
Honestly you could do an entire articles with ABBA lyrics heard post-Me Too. There are some truly godawful, misogynistic lines in there.
Come on, the stupidest lyric in “Africa” has got to be the one you passed over: “solitary company.” If you have company, you’re no longer solitary!!!! My most loathed stupid lyric of all time is in “Love Hurts,” about how a flame “burns you when it’s hot.” Aren’t flames – by their very definition – always hot? Lyric should be “burns you ‘cause it’s hot” or some such. Ugh, drives me nuts.
Every song in which the lyric is “you and I” where it should be “you and me”. There are some egregious examples (“Untitled Finale” by Atreyu) where “you and me” would be correct and would rhyme better.I have a theory about this: it’s become an in-joke among songwriters. They do it wrong on purpose. Or they’re just dumb.
I don’t know why I possibly remember this, but in 1965 Time Magazine described the Oscar-winning song “The Shadow of Your Smile” as “beautiful when played and nauseating when sung,” and gave this example as Proof Positive: “A teardrop kissed your lips / And so did I.”
i am surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned the one that bugs me the most by Van Morrison: “Men with insight / men in granite” from Tupelo Honey. if Van can get by with pronouncing granite like that, then anyone else can get a pass.
I don’t get what is so bad about What I Got, it is a very solid song, never found that line funny.