To me, nothing destroys a good song more than an absolute clunker of a line/couplet/whatever. If the lyrics sort of intermingle indistinguishably with the music, then fine, that's good enough, musicians shouldn't expect to be poets anyway. But when the lines are so terrible that you have to notice them, then things can and will go awry.

Anyway, there are some "lyricists" who never fail to amaze me with attempted profoundness, reach for meaning, or just clumsy word juggling.

I think the worst lyricist I have ever heard (so far) has to be Billy Corgan. That's probably not fair to pick on him because he never was known to be a good lyricist, but the lines he drops so consistently leave me hanging my head in shame. He'll ruin a good melody with his whiny voice tossing off some catastrophic couplet.

For example, in "Blank Page", a rather nice song off their Adore album, he throws in really anti-eloquent phrases such as "all the rage" and something to extent of "half-dead". I won't even mention the junk thrown all over his double album....

Sonic Youth is another band whose lyrics are just simply terrible. And the fact that no one in the band is a particularly accomplished singer makes it all that much more excruciating to listen to. I don't care for quasi-free-associative lyrics that could or could not mean anything. If they want to appear unhinged and play with nonsequitirs, etc, etc, than I would rather them just go the whole way and write lyrics that are completely out there....

Bad Religion! A punk band whose lyric sheets look like term papers...when I listen to punk music I don't want to hear the singer bellowing about endoplasmic reticulums and whatnot...gimme the goods and leave your doctoral dissertation at home!

The Futureheads...I love the band and their energy...they've got some great songs. But, please. "You eat shit cuz' you're stupid and shallow"??? That's good for a laugh the first time or two when you hear it, but then you realize that is really all they're trying to tell you... Maybe they aren't bad lyricists as a whole, but they do drop some bad lines here and there. Also, it doesn't help that in one of my favorite songs, "Meantime", they pull a trick from that ridiculously terrible Finger 11 song and use the same word at the end of like 3 or 4 lines (they say "comment" over and over and over again...but I guess, what rhymes with 'comment'? In that Finger 11 song, the guy repeats "know" over and over and listening to it is like running a cheese grater over my brain) GAHHH!!!!

Guided by Voices!!! GAHHH!!! Robert Pollard sure knows how to write some great songs, but his lyrics, throughout his career, only progressed from atrocious to bad! It seemed like only in his very best songs (and, for a band like GBH, those songs were very obvious to everyone) were when the lyrics contributed to the music at all. Much too much of their albums had songs that consisted of plucking a few strings on guitar and rambling off a bunch of nonsense that he probably scrawled on a napkin when he was drunk as a skunk. Still a great band though...

Enough with the negativity I guess. Sometimes bad lyrics make music more fun.

The lyrics on the new Nine Inch Nails, With Teeth, are borderline atrocious. Reznor's never been what I'd call a poet, but The Downward Spiral had its moments.

Brendan Benson.

On Alternative To Love, he tries to play the 'dependent on relationships, yet selfish about them' 90s guy. Occasionally I come across a lyric, in a good song, like "I always wind up screwed, without a kiss", and I just...wince.

And as for really, really bad music with even worse lyrics....Fred Durst.

Most of his songs basically read as 'I care about fucking and nothing else', and they're obnoxious. But back when I still occasionally watched music video channels other than MTV, there was this one song where they basically made themselves the victims and basically acted like everybody in the world wanted to crucify them. I forget the exact lyrics, but the video have them getting the death penalty for being different and it ended up that they got drowned by being in this cell that filled up with milk. It was the most whiny, annoying, pathetic, obnoxious crap I'd ever heard.

And...well, Aaron Lewis of Staind. One of those bands I am embarassed to used to have really liked. Every song on Break the Cycle is basically 'Poor me, poor me, poor meeeeeee! My parents never hugged me, so now I'm a wreck...' Tell it to your shrink.

I would agree about NIN, Reznor did find some success in playing up his nihilism...but I haven't had the pleasure of hearing his new stuff yet, but I would imagine he's trying for the same effect yet he is only ten years older and not quite at the top of his game...

Fred Durst....Fred Durst....Fred Durst. Even his name has no lyrical ring to it. Back in the day when his first album came out, I would worry for my friends who would play that thing incessantly when I went over to their house. I honestly don't understand what record company exec would look at this preassembled group and feel right about pushing them on the public. But if people buy it, then who's to blame??? God damn, I don't even think it's worth mentioning the guy...


OH YEAH!!! I forgot one of the very worst culprits. INTERPOL!!! Talk about bad lyrics! I mean, at least they're bad in an honest way, not just terrible in a grotesque Limp Bizkit way. But still, I could sit here for three weeks and reference every ridiculous line and metaphor they have written. The obvious ones like "Time is like a broken watch/Make money like Fred Astaire" or even "a pitbull in time", which, is what I *think* he says. And the opening lines of Antics are pretty bad too: "We're not going to the town/we're going to the city/we're going to track(trek??) this shit around....blah blah". Track what around? Talking like there's dog crap on his shoe.

Another group who wayyyy overdoes is it the Blood Brothers. I like their music in general, but their lyrics try so hard to make you squirm that it comes off absurd. Yet, they do tend do write stuff that could be both good and bad, depending on who you are talking to....

WRT Interpol...I have always liked their music, but yeah the lyrics really make no sense. I think it was in Entertainment Weekly they had a game where on one side of the page they had randomly assembled words that were simply thrown together, and on the other side they had Interpol lyrics, and for the life of me I couldn't tell which side was which.

Stupidest lyrics ever? (well, okay, aside from the entirety of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Stairway to Heaven"):

The Staple Singers' classic "Respect Yourself":

"Keep talkin' 'bout the President
Won't stop air pollution
Put your hand on your mouth when you cough
That'll help the solution."

Curses to all that COUGHING destroying the ozone layer!!!

Great song -- ridiculous lyric.

You guys are young and have lived a sheltered life.

"MacArthur Park" lyrics by Jimmy Webb
"Seasons in the Sun" lyrics by Rod McKuen
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" lyrics by Bonnie Tyler

That's enough for the moment. I don't wanna cause a total barfarama a la Stand By Me

Oh, and I have two words for Puff Daddy and his 'Mo money mo problems' crap.

Bull. Shit.

quote:

Originally posted by Bobthespirit:
Brendan Benson.

On Alternative To Love, he tries to play the 'dependent on relationships, yet selfish about them' 90s guy. Occasionally I come across a lyric, in a good song, like "I always wind up screwed, without a kiss", and I just...wince.

Brendan's got some much better lyrical turns on Lapalco and One Mississippi. "Sitting Pretty" from One Mississippi is such a great (but twisted) love song written from a kidnapper to his captor. "If I point my gun at you/Are you gonna see it my way?" I'm not sure why his lyrics have gone a little soft and gooey on the latest record...I chalk it up to having less time to write ATL after having several years for each of the prior records.

Really bad lyrics:

Anything by Heart, particularly "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You." I'm not sure if they were using outside writers at that point, but it's a terrible song.

quote:

Originally posted by mark f:
You guys are young and have lived a sheltered life.

Ah, to be so young and fortunate as to have missed out on the "Fly Like an Eagle"-era Steve Miller.

As I recall, Peter Frampton had some lyrical doozies, too.

.

This is a song that was made into really bad lyrics after the fact:

Merle Haggard - Okie From Myskokie

This is an anti-hippie song that was originally supposed to be ironic and toungue in cheeky. Then Nixon thought it was a 100% straightforward serious song and latched onto it, and the lyrics were ruined forever and turned into arrogant god awful trash.

It's kind of like how Raegan latched onto 'Born In The USA' (Which was an anti-war song).

bobby, don't you mean RAYgun? Plus I ENJOY "Okie From Muskogee", but it's so damned IRONIC, I'm not sure what everybody else REALLY thinks!

Actually think a lot of Green Days' lyrics are pretty poor. Totally agree about Interpol as well. I like both these bands, but thank god they write good tunes!!

Worst lyrics ever?

Def Leppard, "Love Bites"

"When you make love/do you look in the mirror?
Who do you think of?/Does he look like me?"

Ouch.

I like some Interpol lyrics. Yes, they are often absurd, but they can be fun.

"Oh look it stopped snowing!"

"Her stories are boring and stuff/she's always calling my bluff"

I've always loved Guided By Voices' lyrics, I mean "I am a scientist" Whats not to like?

But for me, the worst lyrics of any song I've heard are from "I'd Like That" by XTC

Example: I'd smile so much my face would crack in two, then you could fix it with your kissing glue.

Thats just way too sweet for me.

Okay...so I'm talking to one of those 'Long time internet acquaintance I've never met in person' people...he starts talking about various mainstream rap acts he likes. I say how I don't like them because they tend to be just image-oriented jargon about capping whitey and such over repeatetive drum loops, and he starts telling me I 'Don't know how to have fun' and we get into an argument about the importance of lyrics to the quality of the song (Him saying they're more important, me saying they're less).

And he sends me this song by some obscure band I've never heard of, swearing it's amazingly fun with great lyrics.

And...here's a lyric.

Look at my girlfriend
She's the only one I got
Not much of a girlfriend
I never seem to get a lot

Now, this thread is about lyrics, so I won't mention how it sounds like it was written by a bunch of 13 year old 5th graders trying to poorly graft together various strands of teen mainstream, and how it's like what the Backstreet Boys would sound like if they didn't have high production value.

But...Jesus Christ, those are the most stupid, moronic, brainless lyrics I've ever heard in my life. I think the band has 'Gym Shorts' in it's name and the song title is something about 'Cupid Has Me In A Chokehold'.

This has got to be Fingerbang's second single in some South Park alternate universe.

I actually hated that Interpol lyric (which comes from my favorite song from the second album) to PIECES for a while before I realised what he's saying. I thought it was "Time is like a broken watch/I make money like Fred Astaire," but it isn't, thank goodness. It's actually "I'm timeless like a broken watch/I make money like Fred Astaire." Which isn't half bad.

quote:

Originally posted by Bobthespirit:

Look at my girlfriend
She's the only one I got
Not much of a girlfriend
I never seem to get a lot

That's Supertramp's from the Breakfast in America lp...I have to admit I like the Crime of a Century and Even in the quietest moments albums a lot.

quote:

Originally posted by Chriscreevy:
But for me, the worst lyrics of any song I've heard are from "I'd Like That" by XTC

XTC may have some stupid lyrics, but I think much of thewir lyrics are very smart and clever. I could understand how osme peopole would think the lyrics are too cute or something though.