Some lyrics are just awful, terrible ….and there’s no getting away from it…crap. Sometimes they are by otherwise great musicians, rightly famous and praised.
One of these is by one of my heroes, Paul McCartney. I’ll defend him to the death ( The Frog Song was written to accompany a cartoon, and everyone can hum the catchy, um, um um, so get over it) but what was he thinking with these lines…. “I know I was a crazy fool, For treating you the way I did, But something took hold of me, And I acted like a dustbin lid” from “The Other Me” on Pipes of Peace. This from a man who has written beautiful lyrics such as “Whisper words of wisdom” from “Let It Be”, and “And in her eyes you see nothing, No sign of love behind the tears, cried for no one, a love that should have lasted years” from “For No One” off the Beatles’ best album, “Revolver”.
How does this happen ? What can possibly be going through their minds. Why didn’t someone stop them ? We can only conjecture,( no one dare tell the Emperor he’s got no clothes on) but perhaps time pressures, writer’s block, drugs and alcohol and just plain laziness ( “yeah, that’ll do, it rhymes”) can play a part. Probably the worst example is Des’ree’s “Life”, where desperate for a rhyme she came up with “I don’t want to see a ghost, it’s the sight I fear the most” which is fine, but wait, how did she finish it…. “I’d rather have a piece of toast”. What ?!
Sometimes terrible lyrics can be contained within songs you love, songs you love so much you turn a blind eye to the awful lyrics. Such as “Badge” by Cream. Written by two guys you may have heard of – Eric Clapton and George Harrison. One of them must have come up with the good idea of ending each verse with the same rhyme – pretty neat hey ? Except, except….
“And I’m thinking about the love you laid on my table”, at the end of verse one, but wait, the line at the end of verse two is ” Then I told you ’bout our kid now he’s married to Mabel”. What ?! Guys who wrote “Something” and “Wonderful Tonight” thought this was OK ? Really ?
One of the best rock songs of all time “All Right Now” by Free contains a line by a bloke chatting up a girl “Now don’t you wait, or hesitate, let’s move before they raise the parking rate”, which is wrong on so many levels. What the hell is the parking rate ? Are they planning to raise it from £2.50 to £3 per hour, and if so, so what ? What cheap skate uses this as a chat up line anyway ? Of course, “rate” rhymes with “hesitate”, but come on fellas, there are lots of rhymes with “hesitate” ……..”celebrate, resonate, demonstrate, escalate, anticipate, participate, educate…..there are rhyming dictionaries you know.
Everyone is capable of writing terrible lyrics, it just takes an ability to overlook quality control. Noel Gallagher came up with “Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball” in “Champagne Supernova” and Kings of Leon excelled themselves in “Charmer” with “She stole my karma, oh no, Sold it to the farmer, oh no”. Oh no indeed guys.
Researching this blog (yes I do), I came across a song so terrible, so goddam awful I just couldn’t believe it, I thought it was a joke. “Lesbian Seagull” by Engelbert Humperdinck, written by Tom Wilson (Weinberg). Now some of you may have come across this song already as it was on the soundtrack to “Beavis and Butt- head Do America” and Scott Mills has played it in on his show, so forgive me, I have lived in ignorance. But – joy, I have found the worst song ever written. Now I can rest easy knowing my own worst efforts cannot possibly be any worse than this …..could they ? Apart from the title, we have these lyrics: “She skims the water, At the new time to seek, her fish and she emerges, With one squirming in her beak”.
Tom Wilson (Weinberg) will have the last laugh however. He will have made good cash, out of this awful trash. See Tom, it’s quite easy, to make someone queasy, you don’t have to spend much time, to come up with a terrible line.