Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Radio & Music >

Bad Lyric Planet

Page: 1 2 3(4)5

14:08 / 12.03.04

Despite adoration of Suede:

She live in a house / She stupid as a mouse

Argh indeed. Could that really have been conjured from the same mind as the sublime Dog Man Star? And I'm sure there's no lack of examples on their last effort...

However, as another favourite/most despised band has managed to prove, amazing lyrics once doesn't always mean amazing lyrics forever:

You keep giving me your free air miles
What would I give just for one of your smiles
... Give me some more of your carrier bags

It's about Richey, y'know. 'S profound.

... Oh, well, at least one of the above has finally split up...

14:31 / 12.03.04

There's a band called Anal Cunt?!

According to a band-names website I used to frequent there are no less than five bands called Anal Cunt.

Myself and a friend wanted to get them all to play at an Anal Cunt festival..

I can't really be bothered to go into explaining the whole shtick around the most famous Anal Cunt - basically they're a joke band based around the idea of expressing the most grotesque and un-PC sentiments imaginable via 30 second blasts of unlistenable grindcore.

Utterly reprehensible of course, but it's hard not to love them for writing such songs as "Even Though Your Culture Oppresses Women, You're Still a Fucking Towelhead", "Sweatshops are Cool" and my personal favourite "Recycling is Gay".

lord nuneaton savage

17:42 / 12.03.04

In very much the same vein, Brighton squatcore legends Anal Beard present us with this charming couplet:

"Bird on the blob
She'll have to use her gob"

That's a fag butt in your special brew classic.

19:39 / 12.03.04

I once bought an Anal Beard 7" by accident.. I've rarely laughed so hard as when I got home and stuck it on expecting it to be another band entirely, and at the wrong speed to boot..

15:13 / 17.03.04

Ganesh! You and I are lyrical opposites! I quote this:

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?

to demonstrate why Neil Tennant is a genius; and I sing this:

'Cause I am your lay-deee and you are my ma-uh-ah-uh-ahhhn
Whenever you reeeeach for me, I'll do all that I ca-uh-ah-uh-ahhhhhn

to my girlfriend all the time. Except I will admit that I usually change the lyrics to accommodate nauseatingly cute pet names and/or latest slash pairing ("Cause you are my ALAN! And I am your DAN!!")

Ahem. Anyway, today while at the dentist I had a huge emotional revelation prompted by The Waterboys on the radio, which is just wrong on every possible level, and I had to trawl through this whole thread to make sure that this lyric had indeed been unaccountably missed out:

I saw the rain-dirty valley
You saw...

(oh yes, you know what's coming...)

Brigadoon.

(All together now: "I saw the crescent! You saw the whole of the moon!")

A lesson in the pitfalls of having a long song with a very simple structured (I saw x, you saw y-rhyming-with-oon).

16:03 / 17.03.04

I thought this Tom Petty line should be nominated for worst rhyme after overhearing it at work the other day:

The papers said Ed always played from the heart
He got an agent and a roadie named Bart

...and I assume all the Anal Cunts are all got their name from the GG Allin classic...

22:51 / 17.03.04

Is it supposed to say "Ill Slive Yer Fucking Throat?"

Does that actually work, as a threat? I'm not sure.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:40 / 23.05.06

Apparently, the new Flaming Lips album includes a song entitled 'Free Radicals', which goes:

"You think you're radical
But you're not so radical
In fact, you're fanatical!
Fanatical!"

I know the Lips have done some good work, but can there be any excuse for that?

10:50 / 23.05.06

Sounds like someone's been listening to Supertramp...

14:30 / 23.05.06

For angsty angst with extra angst sprinkles I vote for the Black Heart Procession (name says it all). Their music is good, and their lyrics arent soooo badly written but they are incredibly angsty; I don't know how they keep it up. I keep expecting them to burst into a cheerful polyphonic spree-esque song to grant the listener some escape; no such luck. Here is an example:

I have waited all these years beneath the snow
Now I finally know it was you who buried me
I have waited for a spring that never came
You won't be coming back and this is my home
This is my grave

To be honest I find I far prefer to listening to them during the winter months. It's as if the sunlight just exposes the over-baked nature of their despair.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:17 / 07.06.06

I thought I knew what bad lyrics were, but it turns out I had no idea. How could any of us have had any idea, any CONCEPTION, of what bad lyrics could be like, prior to the Ascent of the Beast, that is to say Sandi Thom, she who was number one in the charts on 6.6.06, and who is the Antichrist?

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late into a world that doesn’t care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

When the head of state didn’t play guitar,
Not everybody drove a car,
When music really mattered and radio was king,
When accountants didn’t have control
And the media couldn’t buy your soul
And computers were still scary and we didn’t know everything

Chorus

When popstars still remained a myth
And ignorance could still be bliss
And when God Saved the Queen she turned a whiter shade of pale
When my mom and dad were in their teen
and anarchy was still a dream
and the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail*

Chorus

When record shops were on top
and vinyl was all that they stocked
and the super info highway was still drifting out in space
kids were wearing hand me downs,
and playing games meant kick arounds
and footballers still had long hair and dirt across their face

Chorus

I was born too late into a world that doesn’t care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

We may as well lock this thread now (after people have had the chance to say "GUH!" and "ARGH!", of course). These are surely the worst lyrics, on every possible level, that there ever have been or will be.

*Yes, she really doesn't realise when the telephone was invented. Because she is a simpleton.

13:17 / 07.06.06

Heh... I was listening to "Weird Romance" --this sci-fi musical from the late 80s/early 90s-- this weekend and had to laugh at this particular gem:

"You're beyond your rivals by light years,
so come on, Dan's buying the light beers"

lonely as a cloud...

08:08 / 08.06.06

Saw a singer-songwriter called Lisa O'Brien last night - some of her lyrics were just atrocious. One that stood out in particular was "I think that he's dumb/And I don't like his bum". Good grief...

All Acting Regiment

08:39 / 08.06.06

Sigh. Sandi, Sandi- do you want to live in a world that cares or a world where ignorance is bliss? Do make up your mind. It confuses people. HihHihHihHihHih!

Urgh.

14:04 / 11.06.06

I came in here to froth about Sandi Thom too. How dare she take punks and hippies and not only link them together - though that's ridiculous enough - but set them up as poster children for this lazy, rose-coloured, ill-informed, golden-age-of-Middle-England, Daily-Mail-skimming conservatism she's spouting? I doubt she actually knows what punks and hippies were, besides people who lived in Ye Olden Tymes before she was born.

Ahem. And breathe.

All Acting Regiment

15:58 / 11.06.06

I'm more than happy for modern stuff ot reference old archetypes, especially if they can take the piss and make something good- but yeah, Thom and the RHCP video for Dani California are quite killy.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:51 / 11.06.06

How dare she take punks and hippies and not only link them together

I don't know- the resulting fight would be preferable to having to hear that song EVERY FUCKING AD BREAK. I swear, when Big Brother finishes I'm off TV again.

Thanks to my only exposure to the song having been the advert, I was unaware that the lyrics actually got worse. I think the girl deserves some sort of prize for discovering new depths of rubbishness. And I'm not sure whether to thank Flyboy or curse him in perpetuity for enlightening me to the fact that she's done so.

18:24 / 11.06.06

What? Are you people crazy? I love the lyrics to that song. They're so good, so simple, so effective.

Just kidding. They're crap.

20:43 / 13.06.06

Stoat: true, but considering it would be stompy punks vs floaty hippies, the resulting fight would also be very short. And then we'd have to fall back on Big Brother and ad breaks again.

22:19 / 13.06.06

I confess to having acquired a copy of the Sandi Thom album and the worst lyrics are found outside of that song.

Prepare yourself for this, folks:

From a song called "When horsepower meant what it said."

But I can't put my foot down and jump the fences in the field/Patiently waiting to get their old jobs back/carrying the human race proudly on their backs.

That is like something from Father Ted.

My lovely, lovely, lovely horse running through the..field/Where are you goin' with your fetlocks blowin' in the..wind.

All Acting Regiment

05:59 / 14.06.06

Horses everywhere are of course wishing for their backs to be burdened once more by the arses of tubby humpbacked Dowagers. In fact some have been seen to craft substitute arses from polystyrene and wear them around, but, says Dobbin, 4, "It's just not the same."

Kiltartan Cross

09:00 / 14.06.06

I'd like to nominate Song of the Temptation by the Champion String Band; it's a superb song, really, it is, but the chorus is the terribly embarassing:

"With me doo-ree-um-a-dah, doodle-idle-ah, with me-whack-folla-doodle-um-a-dih-doh."

I suppose it's possible that this is a Bowdlerised version of something properly rude, given the subject matter; in which case I'd kill to know the original.

(edit)

I should hasten to point out that a Google search will only return you other songs of the same name, unless you're exceptionally lucky, alas.

11:24 / 14.06.06

How dare she take punks and hippies and not only link them together

well, there is a kind of word that has the important elements of both - it's called 'raver', and is completely unmentioned by sandi, perhaps because she was alive at the time that it happened?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:42 / 14.06.06

I was thinking "crusty" meself, but I can't really imagine Ms Thom at a Tofu Love Frogs gig...

13:16 / 14.06.06

Gumbitch: what elements of punk do you think ravers share? It's not a comparison I've heard made before.

(Crusties are bang on, but still too recent to let ST off the hook.)

I'm trying to think of another lyric that's annoyed me recently, in an effort not to commit threadrot, but apart from Sandi Thom my life has been full of songs with brilliant lyrics lately. Damn!

15:24 / 14.06.06

ah, crusty is probably closer, tru stoat. it's the great ages of youth culture theory innit? I don't think i'm straying far from the truth by saying that ' - raver' comes next in the series that begins 'hippy - punk - '

'69 - revolution in the air'. counter revolution in the air by 69, surely?

All Acting Regiment

16:35 / 14.06.06

Songs like this one just occupy negative space. It's not a good song about good things, it's a song about how someone thinks there aren't good things.

20:09 / 14.06.06

Flyboy:
"You think you're radical
But you're not so radical
In fact, you're fanatical!
Fanatical!"

I know the Lips have done some good work, but can there be any excuse for that?

There cannot. It hurts me in my heart every time I hear it. Probably pales in comparison to Sandi Thom, but I've only seen the TV ad for her album and have consciously shut out the lyrics whenever it's on...

Tom Paine's Bones

01:12 / 17.06.06

I'd like to put this magnificant example from Blue Oyster Cult in, from when they decided to go 'political' in Make Rock Not War.

Moments of pleasure, in a world of pain.
Working together, only to fight again.
If we wait for the world leaders to decide, who will die first?
So don't wait no more!
Tell me, make rock not war! What are we dying for?
Rock not war! Nobody wins!
Rock not war! What are we trying for?
And the fools rush in, don't they,
For the grand beginning of the end!

Pulses are racing. You know the blade may fall.
Destinies tracing. I sing to a great star-fall.
And you know there's a real answer, but they won't let it be told.
We've heard the lies before!

Tell me, make rock not war! What are we dying for?
Rock not war! Nobody wins!
Rock not war! What are we trying for?
And the fools rush in, don't they,
For the grand beginning of the end!

The hourglass turns over, and time is running low.
Will the sandman's pollen bring sleep before we know?

Yeah, you know there's a real answer, and we've died more than been told.
So don't wait no more!
Tell me, make rock not war! What are we dying for?
Rock not war! Nobody wins!
Rock not war! What are we trying for?
And the fools rush in, don't we,
For the grand beginning of the end!

Make rock not war!
Make rock not war!
Make rock not war!
Make rock not war!
Make rock not war!

If Spinal Tap wrote a protest song, I suspect it would sound like this.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

09:24 / 17.06.06

I've never heard this much-reviled Sandi Thom song -- I live in Quebec, in an area with no major-market English radio stations, and have very little interest in Top 40 pop -- but I can't help but think that there's a gap between bad lyrics and I don't agree with her sentiments lyrics.

The fact that so many people are so very, very upset about what she really means actually seems to indicate that they're decent lyrics, in that you have to really listen to the song and give it a think and there's room for interpretation in there. Just reading them, I don't find 'em "cringe-inducing", just "okay."

I mean, just typing "Rod Stewart Lyrics" into Google and grabbing a song at random, I wind up with:

I'll bring the red wine you bring the ludes
Your mother's doctor must be quite a dude
We'll hang the 'Don't Disturb' outside our door
I'm gonna rock you till your pussy's sore

...which physically makes my stomach flop around like a dying fish in my gut.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:01 / 17.06.06

The fact that so many people are so very, very upset about what she really means actually seems to indicate that they're decent lyrics

No.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:15 / 17.06.06

I'll bring the red wine you bring the ludes
Your mother's doctor must be quite a dude

Rod, all is forgiven. That's quite simply one of the best couplets I've read ever.

The next couple of lines suck, though. But good try!

20:06 / 17.06.06

The fact that so many people are so very, very upset about what she really means actually seems to indicate that they're decent lyrics

By the same logic, the fact that 91.6% of the public voted shit-haired misogynist midget Sezer out of the Big Brother House must mean he's a decent person.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

20:53 / 17.06.06

Yeah, that was very badly phrased, and I apologize for that. But I was trying to say (poorly) was that there is some level of competence in the lyrics, even if the sentiment being expressed is, without argument, real freakin' dumb.

In the interim, I've found and listened to the song and not much has changed in my opinion vis a vis both the lyrics and the musicianship. A sort of workmanlike competence, not jaw-droppingly amazing, but not "cringe-inducing," either.

This is getting rather head-shoppish, but my take on "embarrassing, cringe-inducing" was "written incredibly poorly," whereas the Thom song is more "incredibly dumb ideas expressed with some level of adequacy."

I'll maintain that if you wrote those lyrics down on a piece of paper and handed them to me side-by-side with Spice Girls songs, I'd hand Thom the writing award without question.

Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
really really wanna zigazig ha.

But I think my criteria for "embarrassing, cringe-inducing" song lyrics are more focused on the "sheer abhorrent lack of talent" than the "I don't like what this person is saying, and she enjoys unwarranted fame and success" axis.

Kiltartan Cross

23:21 / 17.06.06

Not quite original lyrics, but I'd like to nominate the English translations of Shakira's Suerte and Te Aviso, Te Anuncio, which I believe were perpetrated by Gloria Estefan. The originals don't exactly shine (my Spanish, admittedly, is atrocious, but at least they seem to be internally consistent) but the translations are inane;

"Thereover, hereunder, you'll never have to wonder,
We can always play by ear, and that's the deal my dear."

Replacing the chorus:

"Contigo, mi vida, quiero vivir la vida,
Y lo que me queda de (la?) vida,
Quiero vivir contigo."

I mean, I don't hardly speak the friggin' language but it's still clearly better. Kill me, kill me now.

Or the atrocious:

"(So) Objection, I don't want to be the exception,
To get a bit of your attention."

Replacing "(Ay) te aviso y te anuncio que hoy renuncio,
A tus negocios sucios."

I'm not sure any of her songs are better with English lyrics. Ojos Asi is damn good in Spanish.

Page: 1 2 3(4)5