It’s been the coldest winter in almost fourteen years.
Why fourteen? Fifteen would have fitted and been a rounder number even forty or fifty would have been passable. And why ‘almost’ if its winter then surely its been a round year not almost a year?
I’d go for it’s been the coldest winter since nineteen fifty one (or any other cold year that fits).
The lyrics sounded familiar but I still had to use Google to discover that it was Rod the Mod and his Mandolin Wind from 1971 that was still irritating you after all these years.
These things are so personal. Back in the days, long, long ago, when i thought that Rod was the finest singer on the planet, meteorological accuracy never seemed very important.
Well said. I think that song is brilliant and all the better for little touches like that line.
I agree the dying is brilliant and fourteen is easier to sing with the plosive t.
Dying? Bloody autocorrect. Song!
I also like that line. Why not 14? And “almost” I understand as winters take place in 2 different years (in the northern hemisphere)
You are so stupid, Dai, imagining that Rod was writing that and thinking “The world has two different hemispheres “
No he was writing in the northern one presumably where winter starts in December in one year and ends in March the next.
That may well be the stupidest thing you have ever wroten
Definitely written in the Northern Hemisphere.
He wrote it in Muswell Hill, where he was living at the time.
Rod has form for lyrical lapsing.
“I laughed at all of your jokes
My love you didn’t need to coax.”
That is atrocious.
He’s wrong though isn’t he? He’s talking about the winter of 1957, but has forgotten the great freeze of 1963.
It’s that irregularity that makes it perfect. Possibly an awareness of this, but I doubt it:
https://www.konieczny-napierala.art/en/lyrics/
“If I was a sculptor, but then again, no”
Oh Bernie
I always took this as- if he WAS a sculpture then he would have to sculpt all of her bits (including her naughty bits). So he recanted on account of of embarrassment or summit.
He also penned We Built This City, in which a famous inventor attempts to get a tune out of a snake.
Im probably the only person in the world that quite likes that tune.
Well……yes…….
Nope, I also like it. Pop music, innit…?
My god!
I think it’s great, and have never understood the hate for it.
Do the lyrics make much sense? Can you actually be knee deep in a hoopla? It doesn’t matter – the tune is joyous, Grace Slick is giving it both barrels, and the whole thing bounds along at a fair old lick. What more do you want from a pop song?
Well this thread is about lyrics.
THEY FUCKING BUILT A CITY ON ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
That’s what’s wrong with it
Point taken, but I’m not sure even Bernie Taupin could do much with “We built this city on a firm foundation of bedrock with sufficient support and all the necessary planning permission.”
I will give you “Marconi plays the mamba” – that is a very silly line.
I’ve just read the lyrics as up to this point I’d only ever heard the words.
“We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll
We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll” etc and variations.
I didn’t know there were other words.
Could it be that the money brought in by rock and roll helped to build the city, much as Nashville with country music and Shrewbury and others on wool grew with the money provided from their sales?
All you need is this.
And in the scout hut debate still rages on
The most dangerous junction in Christendom
And Cathy Staniforth’s milk bank opens soon
Yonder the deacon in misguided trousers
Yonder the deacon in misguided trousers
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
Ma-ma-maroon was the colour of my true love’s hair
She’s got a cross-stitch exhibition over there
A spate of pan fires isn’t going to happen round here
It fills me with joy to see moshers out jogging
It fills me with joy to see moshers out jogging
Ain’t no local groups called Fuck Your Conglomerate
No narky young upstarts called Fuck Your Conglomerate
‘Cos we built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
With wattle and daub ‘neath a silvry moon
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
Rehearsals afoot for the Christmas Play
It’s called “Roll The Square Arthur” and mind what you say
It’s a cricketing farce with a thickening plot
Act One, Scene One – Brenda Blethyn gets shot
Graduated to solids disturbingly early
Graduated to solids disturbingly early
Oh the mummers, the poppers
The Best Of The Coppers
Anyone can join in so I discarded my jeans
And played wine-maddened Pentheus, the King of Thebes
And some Bloomsbury peripheral said I had the best line
Check your sheds, check your sheds, I think I’ve lost my mind!
Oh we built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
There’s a sword dance every twenty-seventh of June
We built this village on a Trad. Arr. tune
HMHB
We built this city on fol-de-rol
…and, on fol de rol: that reminds me…
“Fol de rol de ra diddy da day
A rum de pum de da de da da ya do
Fol de rol de ra diddy da day
A rum de pum de da de da da ya do
Fol de rol de ra diddy da day
A rum de pum de da de da da ya do”
Wise words, Fitter, wise words. They always raise a smile.
Have to say that pretty much everything Bernie Taupin has written is in this category for me. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters is a fine song because Elton’s melody is able to rise above lyrics like
‘I thought I knew
But now I know that rose trees never grow
In New York City’
and
‘For unless they see the sky
But they can’t and that is why
They know not if it’s dark outside or light’
Can you hear the drums Fernando?
I remember long ago another starry night like this
In the firelight Fernando
You were humming to yourself and softly strumming your guitar
I could hear the distant drums
And sounds of bugle calls were coming from afar
They were closer now Fernando
Every hour every minute seemed to last eternally
I was so afraid Fernando
We were young and full of life and none of us prepared to die
And I’m not ashamed to say
The roar of guns and cannons almost made me cry
There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando
They were shining there for you and me
For liberty, Fernando
Though I never thought that we could lose
There’s no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando
Now we’re old and grey Fernando
And since many years I haven’t seen a rifle in your hand
Can you hear the drums Fernando?
Do you still recall the frightful night we crossed the Rio Grande?
I can see it in your eyes
How proud you were to fight for freedom in this land
There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando
They were shining there for you and me
For liberty, Fernando
Though I never thought that we could lose
There’s no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando
Yes, if I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando…
Shakespeare?
Pah!
Abba get a little bit of lyrical leeway because they’re writing in a language other than their own. A little clunkiness can be excused.
Correct. And the tunes and vocals are always wonderful
At this point they were the biggest band on the planet.
“Hey there, English guy – just run your eyes over these lyrics. What you mean “Do you still recall that frightful night we crossed the Rio Grande” may well be the most awful line in the history of Pop”? “
I guess they meant frightening, but how is your Swedish?
See also “Money money money must be funny …”
Anyway you and I are never going to agree that Abba are the greatest pure pop band of all time.
Ahem…it might have been, if that was the correct lyric – but it isn’t.
It’s ‘… fateful night’.
If you must know, my Swedish is pretty damn perfect, tack you very much
Lodey, du ar väldigt rolig.
At times of great emotional pressure. I often remember that while love isnt easy it sure is hard enough.
also, just ring, ring. Give me a phone.
“Our House, that was where we used to sleep”
It’s literally the last audible line of the song during the fadeout, and always mars it slightly for me.
“I was 37 you were 17. You were half my age.”
No, Glenn, you were 17/37ths of my age. Or 0.459 my age in the new money. Or “Two prime numbers, what are the odds?”
That’s a stinker I had managed to forget. Absolutely dreadful.
He could have gone with “I was in my thirties, you were 17”. I met Glenn Gregory once and managed not to mention it. Very nice man.
Am I the only one who doesn’t have a problem with ‘half my age’ not being arithmetically precise, more of an idiom?
Nope, that’s exactly what it is, and it’s fine by me.
Tell that to the judge
“Our House is a very, very, very fine house…”
Should be fire bombed.
Talking of housing, Madness apparently live ‘In the middle of our street’…? Inconvenient to say the least.
Madness also gave us “Try the house of Fun. It’s quicker if you run” which is another clunker.
Erm, but IT IS quicker if you run, no?
Great line
Depends which direction you run in.
“Get that real guitar boy shaking’” – Roy Wood in California Man. A genuine rock and roll stomper, but the words are a bit ‘English as a foreign language’. I still love it though.
Iron Maiden – Running Free
“Just 16, a pick up truck”
Pretty sure Canning Town is part of the UK, meaning minimum driving age is 17
Then again, he might’ve nicked the pick up truck. Were there many pick up trucks in East London in 1979? Maybe a Mark 3 Cortina would be more likely
“I’m Outlaw Pete!
I’m Outlaw Pete!
Can you hear me?”
Whatever was he thinking? See also Queen of the Supermarket.
…and people get excited about his outtakes!
Arf!
His worst album probably. There are many moments of lyrical genius throughout his career though.
I’m the one person in the world who really likes ‘Queen of the Supermarket’. So shoot me.
It’s a nice tune
“Did you ever see a woman
Coming out of New York City
With a frog in her hand
I did don’t you know”
Bolan produced many strange lyrics but this is the one that sticks in my mind
Fantastic song titles, though. Ballrooms of Mars, Planet Queen, Metal Guru, Cosmic Dancer, Chrome Sitar, Dandy in the Underworld. If you can come up with song titles like these, I think it’s a bonus if the lyrics actually make sense.
I never really got into Bolan beyond the big hits, and never listened carefully. But I think that’s a great lyric, in the realms of Robyn Hitchcock, who does daft very convincingly.
“Did you ever see a woman
Coming out of New York City
With a frog in her hand?”
Possibly the lady decided to leave New York City holding a frog before she has kissed it and thereby turning it into a handsome Prince, turning back to live happy ever after with her handsome Prince.
Apparently, it was true. Bolan claimed, “I was walking with David Bowie in New York City and we saw this 90-year-old lady who is part of Andy Warhol’s Factory and who claims to be a witch. She was walking down Park Avenue with this enormous toad in her hand.”
Did this 90-year-old have some kind of physical tic and did he subsequently discover her claim to be untrue?
That might explain another of his odd lyrics, “Well, she ain’t no witch
And I love the way she twitch, ah, ah, ah”
That’s an entirely different kind of witchcraft. As a much-missed Afterworder might have described it, the boho hippy chick variety.
In this ever changing world in which we live in……a lyric which makes me give in and cry.
But if this ever changing world
In which we’re living.
Of course!!!! You have transformed my life not only by pointing out, what should have been obvious, but also by inspiring me to book a hearing test. One that is apparently long overdue!
Not just you @Sound-hound, I’ve laboured under the same misapprehension for years. Must also wash the soap out of my ears.
Take on me.
Are we human or are we dancer?
Always makes me shout at the radio. I realise an indefinite article before ‘dancer’ probably doesn’t fit, but ‘dancing’ would, and I humbly submit it would actually make more sense.
However, the lyrics to this inexplicably popular song are absolute twaddle anyway.
There is a worse line “I’m as serious as cancer, when I say rhythm is a dancer”
Agreed.
I always had a problem with that line too and could only rationalise it by assuming that in Vegas where the band originated, dancer is seen as somehow not human.
I have a vague memory of reading the line had been nicked from Hunter S Thompson
Bob’s Sara has some terrific lines. ‘Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp’ is not. One of them, however useful it is as a rhyme for ‘help’.
This morning at four-fifty
I took her rather nifty
Down to an incubator
Where thirty minutes later
She gave birth to a daughter
Within a year a walker
Clunkers aplenty here. Generally I don’t like what I think of as “rhyming dictionary lyrics” where it seems they have looked up a list of words, picked one then crowbarred in some rubbish to fit it.
Great song though
True. Speaking of which (and I like the Galster) this is a shocker. I read in a song writing book that when a song writer starts talking about song writing you know they’ve run out of ideas.
“I bought a ticket to the world
But now I’ve come back again
Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh, I want the truth to be said”
Why was she in an incubator half an hour before the sprog appeared? Unless it’s inspired by Times Arrow.
To be fair Difford has form with this type of thing;
“I’m at the car park, the airport, the baggage carousel”
No, that’s arrivals not departures!
I’ve spent so long (40+ years) being annoyed by the fact that he took her *this* morning but ‘within a year’ she was a walker (ie somewhere in the future) that I’ve never noticed the incubator issue.
All of ‘Under the Red Sky’. It’s even worse than ‘Wiggle Wiggle’. And not as good as anything by The Wiggles.
Pretty much all of Classic by Adrian Gurvitz but this in particular
Got to write a classic
Got to write it in an attic
Baby, I’m an addict now
An addict for your love
Gold (Gold)
Always believe in your soul
You’ve got the power to know
You’re indestructible
Always believe in, ‘cos you are
Gold (Gold)
Glad that you’re bound to return
There’s something I could have learned
You’re indestructible, always believing
What a load of bollocks!
Gold’s pretty malleable, as metals go…
Don’t Stand So Close To Me
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Sting is a very poor lyricist. His rhymes are often cringingly bad
Let’s have a moment to reflect on
“He starts to shiver, he starts to cough
Like that old man in the book by Nabokov”.
Though anyone who can pen “D’do do do, d’dah dah dah, it’s meaningless, I know it’s true” has at least a touch of self awareness.
I’ve always hated ” I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping”.
And the rest of the stupid song.
“Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti”. The pronunciation of Serengeti always feels like nails down a blackboard to me.
Mike Oldfield’s “4 a.m. in the morning”.
He could have used “dawning” which is still quite bad but at least not tautological.
Faron Young had already nailed that in his own “Four in the morning”
Instinctively, you give to me the love that I need
I cherish the moments with you
Respectfully, I say to thee
I’m aware that you’re cheating
But no one makes me feel like you do
It’s the “Respectfully, I say to thee” bit that gets me.
There are some words that should never be used in a song’s lyrics as they are just so mundane. Sandwich is one of them, as in Eric Clapton’s ‘Sign Language’: ‘You speak to me in sign language / As I’m eating a sandwich in a small café / At a quarter to three.’
Awful in a number of ways.
Who says “tonic and gin” except Billy Joel?
Did you know he supported 39 acts before he became a headliner himself?
Was one of them Taj Mahal?
Indeed, amongst another 38 artists…who knew?
‘We go to a party
And everyone turns to see
The beautiful lady
Walking around with me’
Wonderful Tonight by Clapton. It’s a tedious dirge anyway, but the stiffness of ‘we go to a party’ I’ve always hated. It’s such an awful line. No feeling to it at all. So unemotionally cack handed. We go to a party. FFS. We go to the toilet. We put the bins out. Anything is better than that.
Let’s try that:
“We go to the toilet
And everyone turns to see
The beautiful lady
Now covered in strangers’ pee”
We go to the toilet
And everyone turns to see
The beautiful lady
Holding her nose and pointing at me.
Love the song but …
“Tonight’s the night I go to all the parties down my street” (Joe Jackson)
His street has an allotted night when all the parties take place and he goes to all of them?
It could be that there are parties down his street every night which he may go to but there’s only one night when he goes to all of them.
Could be, presumably on a regular basis
I think there’s one night he regularly goes to all the parties on his street, then other nights he may go to some of them.
Yeah that must be it
Unless no one else is invited to their neighbours’ parties that’s very poor coordination.
“Close the curtains Love, that tall baldie bloke from Number 72’s on the front path again with a Party Seven and a bag of Twiglets”
I know it’s mandatory to hate on Clapton in every thread but I don’t think this is too bad in the scheme of things.
I don’t “hate” on Clapton in every thread, Twang – but if I had to pick his worst song, this would certainly be up there…
Ah I was answering Beezer in the queue at Lidl and got home to find I hadn’t posted it so our comments crossed.
FWIW it’s nowhere near my Clapton top 10 but equally I completely understand why it is so popular.
Couldn’t you have just spoken in answer to Beezer if you were both in the queue?! 🤔
No hate for Clapton’s abilities here @twang. Not after hearing Derek and the D’s live version of Go To Get Better In a Little While.
It’s just a shite lyric.
Whenever I hear this song I always feel like shouting ‘Oy lyricist you lazy fucker!’
Elenore, gee, I think you’re swell
And you really do me well
You’re my pride and joy, et cetera
But at least the use of et cetera means he doesn’t have to resort to the thesaurus and make a list of why she’s his pride and joy.
That lyric is brilliant! Cos it makes me laugh.
I’ve become much more tolerant since I’ve had to (well – I made that choice, no gun to my head) write hundreds of song lyrics for fictional songs in the strange book I’m writing.
You quickly understand why so many lyrics are clunky, make little sense and use stupid rhymes…but I’m now grateful for all of the bad lyrics out there; it means that I can intentionally write bad lyrics to make them seem authentic, and don’t have to spend hours or days to work on each one (if that had been the case, I’d never be able to finish the book). And when I do spend a little more time and write something that I actually like, I feel all the more proud of it.
Having said that; I still can’t stand certain (actual) lyrics out there. Fortunately my memory doesn’t store data of that kind, so I only remember the offensive lyrics when I actually hear them. So I can’t tell you what they are. But none of the lyrics mentioned so far really annoy me, they either make me smile or I don’t worry about them at all.
The “Elenore” lyrics above are a work of genius, that word alone make the entire song and it lifts my mood every time I hear it!
Having looked who wrote it, Howard Kaylan and credited to all the band members I came across this on the pedia of wiki
In which case I take it all back and bow deferentially to the writers.
I had no idea about this. I’d forgotten the song, and of course now I can hear it in my head and it’s already making me happy. I need to hear that album, I’m curious what other hijinks might be there…
This is really interesting @Locust – it might be the reason I’ve always been rubbish at writing lyrics; trying too hard to make everything follow the rules of normal language.
@Leffe-Gin, It’s poetry (of sorts), not a conversation or a description in a book. The metre is important, rhymes not so much, IMO. I prefer a general rhyme to a perfect one, and I also enjoy using allitterations.
I tend to spend around twenty or thirty minutes on each lyric I write for this book. Then five or ten more the next day if I find that some lines needs to be adjusted. But, as I said; these lyrics don’t all have to be good!
But I have a knack for writing verse in general, so to me it’s a fun brain exercise – especially since I never know the topic of the lyric in advance. I just decide when a part of the text needs another lyric, quickly decide on a songtitle and a style of music/era in music history and start writing without much thought (they don’t help).
I also have a few things I need to smuggle into each lyric, for the purpose of the book (it’s too weird of a structure to call it a novel) and I try to get a few puns in as well at times.
I’m very much entertaining myself, but I’m certain that The Afterword would find fault with most, if not all, of my fictional lyrics!
Since this project isn’t meant for publication, I don’t let that stop me. 😀
Thought-provoking stuff… maybe I need to set some parameters when I try to write…
Coincidentally, I just got a good laugh when proofreading and rewriting an older chapter. I got to one of the deliberately awful lyrics and in the paragraph following that, the narrator of the book (who is a parallel universe version of me, you could say) is talking about how ridiculed the songwriter had been for the many nonsensical statements in that lyric, going into great detail about why it’s so bad!
It’s a chapter I wrote some time ago, so I had forgotten all about writing that part, but it definitely reminded me of this thread! 😀
In your story, does the songwriter know/care about their possibly rubbish lyrics? Or are they of the Sammy Cahn mindset of it doesn’t matter if it’s singable…?
According to the narrator, the song wasn’t a hit on release, but has become a cult hit in later years. It’s also – thanks to its subject matter – popular around Easter time (but it’s not about Easter per se) and as a soundtrack for commercials, especially beauty and fashion brands.
So he got rich off the song in his old age, and his relatives are still getting rich off the royalties.
She doesn’t get into specifics about how he felt about the lyrics or the critique of them, but he had a steady job as the singer for a popular big band that was popular on the radio at that time (1948), so I doubt that he worried much about it (and as I’m his creator, I should know…but he’s only mentioned in this short paragraph in the book, so I felt no need to elaborate on the matter)! 😉
I’m surprised that English Rose by The Jam hasn’t been mentioned. David Hepworth sneered at the lyric ‘and no bonds will ever tempt me from she’ but I think it’s a great song. I also like most of the songs mentioned above. Why let a clunky lyric spoil your enjoyment of a tune.
To me, that line is exactly the sort of language I’d expect in a song called English Rose.
A go to for awful songs by great bands. Famously left off the track list and lyrics for the album.
More unsightly shoehorning from the Weller feller:
Until our unity is threatened by
Those who have and who have not
Those who are with and those who are without
AND DANGLE JOBS LIKE A DONKEY’S CARROT
Can’t complain, mustn’t grumble
Help yourself to another piece of apple crumble.
Martin Fry – take a bow, son.
But the sound is glorious.
‘‘And it ain’t no use in turning on your light, babe
That light I never knowed’.’
KNEW, Bob, KNEW ffs. I know it doesn’t rhyme but that’s why you should have changed the whole line.
“There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirming like a toad.”
I blame all that adolescent adoration of the equally appalling Rimbaud.
Pity Arthur Rimbaud is pronounced how it’s spelt, then you could have.
“There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirming like Rimbaud.”
Or possibly
“There’s a killer in the row
His brain is squirming like Rimbaud.”
Hurricane is even worse
We got you for the motel job and we’re talkin’ to your friend Bello
You don’t want to have to go back to jail, be a nice fellow
You’ll be doin’ society a favor
That son of a bitch is brave and gettin’ braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder on him
He ain’t no Gentleman Jim”
I love that song. Jacques Levy is co-writer, can we blame him for the clunky lyrics or is it all Zimmy’s work?
I think one of them should definitely be indicted for their tri-pul-murder of scansion
“To feel your touch across my mind /
Fills me only full of desire for my being”
Even the voice of Annie Haslam can’t rescue that stinker.
(Renaissance: Day of the Dreamer)
Say, can I have some of your purple berries?
Yes, I’ve been eating ’em
For six or seven weeks now, haven’t got sick once
“He’s got a brand new car
Looks like a Jaguar
It’s got leather seats
It’s got a cd player
But I don’t wanna talk about it anymore”
“Drink cider from a lemon”
I thought I had misheard “from eleven” which is perfectly acceptable. But no. Maybe it’s a novelty goblet (TMFTL), who knows?
Indeed, I could have picked almost any line out from this one.
Horse with no name
“There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings”
“Things”? I ask you! But it gets worse..
“The heat was hot” No shit, Sherlock!
And as many, many people have pointed out, you’d think that having all that time in the desert, he could have come up with a name for said horse…
… though it is hard to imagine topping the Billboard Top 100 with a song called ‘Dobbin’.
I love The Waterboys but the song She tried to hold me from Book of Lightning contains a line that has always grated with me:
She was Uranium
Like a demon in my cranium.
Truly awful.
‘I’m loving angels instead.’ Instead of WHAT? Coherence?
‘In ‘stead’
– it’s Robbie’s street code for Hampstead Heath, where he liked to do a bit of cottaging.
I’m a big fan of Ron Sexsmith’s lyrics, but the first couple of lines of “April After All” don’t meet his normally high standards:
“It’s really coming down
Raining cats and hounds”.
“I’ll do what I should have did”.
The rest of the song’s lyrics make little sense either.
“There she was just a-walkin’ down the street, singin’
‘Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do’
Snappin’ her fingers and shufflin’ her feet, singin’
‘Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
The missing next line should have been “Care in the Community was a complete failure for her.”
Manfred Mann has form here. Do Wah Diddy reminds me of his song Pretty Flamingo and the line: ‘When she walks she moves so fine, like a flamingo.’
Both utterly brilliant songs though.
Agreed, which somehow makes the lyrics even worse.
Played “Big Mistake” by Natalie Imbruglia the other day – reminded me of one of the first times I heard it while doing some project work with a friend at university. We both fell about laughing when she sang,
“Put some fruit on your plate.”
Unless she was encouraging healthy eating it’s quite meaningless. Scans ok though.
Unless of course it was a rhythm and blues song from the forties in which case it would get banned from the radio as indescribably filthy.
And yet, the throwaway…
“And other stuff”
from John Grant’s Glacier sounds great to me (and the missus).
Can’t believe we’ve got so far without any Jim Kerr or Bonio. He didn’t write this drivel but sure as hell sung it:
Love’s strange, surreal in the dark
Think of the tender things that we were working on
Slow change may pull us apart
When the light gets into your heart, baby
From Bono’s many lyrical crimes here’s an early contender:
A dinosaur wonders why it still walks the earth, yeah
A meteor promises it’s not gonna hurt, yeah
Earthquakes always happen when you’re in bed, Fred
The house shakes, maybe it was something I said, Ned
More Bonio:
I bought two new suits… Miami
Pink and blue… Miami
I took a picture of you… My mammy
Getting hot in a photo booth… Miami
@moseleymoles never seen or heard that -,it is absolute garbage.
I would say Jim Kerr had almost a Burroughs cut-up approach to garbage lyrics in the early 80s (DYFAM is by keith Forsey), and so Bono is worse because he’s constantly from Achtung Baby on trying to be witty, ironic, meaningful etc. and failing dismally.
Even more Bono!
A mole, digging in a hole
Digging up my soul
Now going down, excavation
I and I in the sky
You make me feel like I can fly
So high, elevation
That’s just drivel, frankly.
sometimes the snow comes down in June, sometimes the sun goes round the moon
I don’t mind this kind of lyric, it’s a sweet way of saying that sometimes, something absolutely wonderful happens, in a way that you never would have believed could happen to you.
It’s not supposed to be a Wikipedia page!
Thinking about this, it’s sort of clever how it uses the widely acknowledged most banal rhyming couplet (moon/June) to convey it. I think this is better than it first appears to be.
Oooh, I fancy a drop of gravy now…
“Early morning, April 4. A shot rings out in the Memphis sky”.
MLK was shot early evening. And it was in a hotel lobby, so rang around the hotel but probably not the sky.
That was the practice shot.
That’s that sorted then …
Well he got Memphis right
@Rigid-Digit
MLK was shot on his balcony – very famous pic that must have been taken seconds later
Article about it here
https://www.thirteen.org/blog-post/mlk-assassination-the-story-behind-the-photo/
Seems I know as much about the detail as Mr Bonio
150 comments and no mention of Jailbreak?
Well if it was a large capital city there may be more than one jail.
Ah but it specifically mentions town, not a capital city.
HMP Hatfield is Split over two sites .
‘Is that HMP Hatfield. Tonight there’s going to be a jailbreak’
‘Which site?’
‘Somewhere in this town’
Ha ha! I was going to mention this. It always comes up – and I’m amazed (and slightly heartened) that it hasn’t.
In Dancing In The Moonlight when Phil sings about always getting chocolate stains on his pants, I assume he’s referring to melted Maltesers on his trousers as opposed to something involving chuddies
I always titter like a schoolboy at this, it’s what he would have wanted.
Speaking of sex, the least inviting proposal to getting jiggly must be Kelis/Nas’. “We jump in the truck and stain everything up”. Thanks for sharing that.
You’d have thought she could have come up with a better pithier rhyme for ‘truck’….
Which always makes me think of the Richard Shindell song, Next Best Western, that Show of Hands often played. The chorus is as below but always has me singing a word that rhymes:
“Whoever watches over all these truckers
Show a little mercy for a weary sinner
And deliver me ‘ Lord, deliver me
Deliver me to the next best western”
I think there’s a difference between ‘clunky’ lyrics “squirming like a toad” etc and where the lyrics gets the facts incorrect. Thompson’s Vincent song has the line “slipped her the keys, I’ve no further use for these” as any fool knows a Vincent is a kick-start and doesn’t need keys. Do I care? No! I wouldn’t have known until someone pointed it out, (though I never need to hear that song again). Fingers crossed for next week that I don’t.
There was a song I heard about early photography mentioning a sodium flash, when it should have been magnesium (probably magnesium wouldn’t have fitted the metre).
Mention of Thompson a good friend of mine hates the name Romany Brown in Beeswing which makes him wince whenever he hears it, and now that’s made me annoyed with it. Hopefully I’ll not hear that next week too.
Also the bike on the cover isn’t a black lightning. It’s a black shadow with lightning exhausts.
That’s proper AW pedantry. Well done!
A swift Google reveals Romany Brown is a racing greyhound, a race horse and a female personal trainer. Possibly all inspired by the song character. I have also learnt that a range of Denby pottery goes by that name. It came first though, as I had a set of it dating back to 1980. So, when the protagonist in the song ends up on “the Derby beat”, it is maybe a typographical link.
Seeing as only 35 lightnings were ever made I guess it was a bit tricky
I’m in awe.
Bismillah!
Which was the title of the NME’s (or possibly Sounds’) crap lyrics column.
Yes, I think it was that Bismillah column which first pointed out the following lyrics from “Killer Queen”:
“She’s a Killer Queen
Gunpowder, gelatine
Dynamite with a laser beam”
Gelatine? GELATINE? What are you going to be doing , mate – making a blancmange?
I think you mean gelignite (although admittedly that wouldn’t have rhymed) …
Easily solved, unless you insist on the rhyme with Queen.
‘Gunpowder, gelignite
A laser beam on dynamite’
Two from the mid 90s USA that have always got on my nerves.
First from Novocaine for the Soul where our singer, having seen a young girl pushing a pushchair with a baby in it, is moved to comment “… that’s gotta be her sister..right?” Why? Because you’re uncomfortable with the idea of young mothers. I don’t know a lot about him but what I do know is that he was born into some level of privilege and still had a miserable childhood. Who the hell is he to judge?
Second is that song Drinking in LA by Bran Van 3000. Apart from the really irritating spoken word Dudey intro, the idea that “what the hell am I doing drinking in LA at 26”, is somehow a problem and not aspirational or exactly what your 20s are for always annoyed me. First world problem Mate!
Probably just me.
Think the first one is Susan’s House, rather than Novocaine.
Correct. Some day I’ll post something on here without an error. Thanks @Bingo-Little
No worries dude 👍🏼
Susan’s House is on Beautiful Freak
I was convinced it was on Daisies (my fist and fave Eels album) but keennot to make another pope Francis-style cock up checked before hitting post
This thread is absolutely quintessential Afterword
Not lyrically, but the way Carly Simon pronounces “apricot” jars me a bit
(then again there are many mangled pronunciations in search of a rhyme”
On a slight tangent why does every news person state the following:
Tributes ‘come flooding in” when someone famous dies
or
When a major event happens people are performing their jobs ‘in earnest’
Pisses me off
…or when some twat ” leads the tributes”
Elton or Gambo.
Almost any Z-list sleb with a social media presence
Always, the family of a murder victim are ‘devastated’ – I mean, of course they are? It would be news if they thought otherwise.
He was a fine songwriter, indeed. But I’d like to think that upon reflection, Jackie Leven might have done something a bit different with
“The salt in the ocean is there
Because the fishes cry too
They cry for their loved ones
They see taken into the blue”
John Lennon was at times a brilliant lyricist, but The Luck of the Irish is not his finest moment (helped by Yoko Ono)
If you had the luck of the Irish
You’d be sorry and wish you were dead
You should have the luck of the Irish
And you’d wish you was English instead
A thousand years of torture and hunger
Drove the people away from their land
A land full of beauty and wonder
Was raped by the British brigands
Goddamn, goddamn
If you could keep voices like flowers
There’d be shamrock all over the world
If you could drink dreams like Irish streams
Then the world would be high as the mountain of morn
In the ‘Pool they told us the story
How the English divided the land
Of the pain and the death and the glory
And the poets of old Ireland
If we could make chains with the morning dew
The world would be like Galway Bay
Let’s walk over rainbows like leprechauns
The world would be one big Blarney stone
Why the hell are the English there anyway?
As they kill with God on their side
Blame it all on the kids and the IRA
As the bastards commit genocide
Aye, genocide
If you had the luck of the Irish
You’d be sorry and wish you were dead
You should have the luck of the Irish
Wish, you’d wish you was English instead
Yes, you’d wish you was English instead
It’s a close call between him and Macca (with Linda’s help) for worst early ’70s song about the Troubles
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today
Great Britain you are tremendous
And nobody knows like me
But really, what are you doing
In the land across the sea?
Tell me, how would you like it
If on your way to work
You were stopped by Irish soldiers?
Would you lie down, do nothing?
Would you give in, or go berserk?
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today
Great Britain and all the people
Say that people must be free
And meanwhile, back in Ireland
There’s a man who looks like me
And he dreams of God and country
And he’s feeling really bad
And he’s sitting in a prison
Say, should he lie down, do nothing?
Should he give in or go mad?
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don’t make them have to take it away
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Make Ireland Irish today
Yes, just as bad. Not blaming Linda though, that was a trick for the Macca family to get more writing royalties when his were held up in the middle of Beatle dissolution legal battles
I realised that I have never heard this song, not once. Looking at the lyrics (and knowing that it was banned at the time), that explains why it’s not heard much. I might leave it another few years…
I have the single, B side is an instrumental version which improves it, even if it isn’t one of Macca’s best tunes. Made no. 16 in the charts but never appeared on any hits compilations as far as I am aware
Duran Duran in, I think, The Reflex:
“Don’t say you’re easy honey, ‘cos you’re about as easy as a nuclear war”.
It sets my teeth on edge.
Sorry – it’s actually in “Is There Something I Should Know?”.
Cat Stevens – Father and Son.
“You’re still young, that’s your fault”
NO! It’s YOUR fault fukka, etc.
That line always bugged me too. But I’ve come to believe he’s saying “fault” in the sense of “defect” rather than blaming.
I am annoyed that the House of Love’s “Mr Jo” spoils Terry Bickers’s finest guitar playing on record with Guy Chadwick’s risible and slightly creepy lyric:
“It’s gonna be a hot old summer / Gonna sting, gonna be a bummer / Maybe we should do a runner, oh love.”
“Hey little girl, why do you look that way? / He’s a walrus and his head is grey / You’ve got to be positive today / Hey little girl, forget what your teachers say”
Possibly Chadwick’s worst lyric. ‘You’re not a bangle’ to rhyme with ‘angle’ is piss-poor, but then he tops it all with the final line: ‘You shit on them’
And yep, TB’s guitar is as limpidly beautiful as ever, amidst Chadwick’s guff.
“All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey/ California dreaming on such a winters day” No, If the leaves are brown that’s an autumn day.
Petty I know but it always annoys me
Oh yes. Top work!
Should be “All the leaves are down ….*
Have an up..
However Beech (especially young plants and hedges) retain its dead leaves over winter which stay brown in a process called ‘marcescence’. New growth starts in spring.
I don’t think that would scan.
A bang up to date entry of lyrical genius. This from The Viagra Boys, from their latest single with a bullet. “I am a man that’s made of meat, you’re on the Internet looking at feet”. At first I thought they must have stolen this from Bashō or possibly they were misquoting Rumi but no it’s all their own work. Needless to say I for one am not spending my time on the Internet looking at feet but this perceptive piece of lyricism is making me question my online choices. Perhaps there is a more seductive site on the net than The Dafterword and maybe I or even we should seek it out?
I hear that Wikifeet is a popular site (I can’t stand feet myself, so I haven’t tried it).
But I’m pleasantly surprised that you’re listening to Viagra Boys, @pencilsqueezer!
The new album arrived on Friday and I spent a good chunk of Saturday listening. Early favourite: Store Policy.
But their ultimate lyrical genius moment is of course still “Sports” from a few years ago. I still find myself saying”Wienerdog!” for no good reason when I list things…
I will admit Lo that The Viagra Boys are not on my usual beat, they popped up on a recommended playlist from Qobuz whose algorithms are in that getting to know you phase. This line from the chorus of “Man Made of Meat” lodged itself in my brainpan and I needed to write it down somewhere to fully exorcise it.
But you are still on the internet looking for feet.
Of course I am. It’s opened up a whole new world for me. A world of feet, although I’m thinking of specialing in toes.
Painted or non-painted?
Severed and crammed into jars.
That’s the way I like them, too. I’ve spent many a long hour surrounded by shelves heaving with pickle bits.
My brother ✊️
The no-hits… ‘Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust’.
1. It wasn’t phoney – millions of people around the World (that’s ‘World’, not ‘Camden’ and/or ‘NME readers’… some were even female!) bought Beatles’ records. They had bigger hits in the dire itself than the no-hits.
2. Anyone choosing in the dire to lump significant wedge on the no-hits rather than 0.1% of The Beatles’ back catalogue will now be living in a much smaller pad, probably in Nigel Fromage’s constituency, rather than a rather bigger pad in Mayfair.
Groovy. Still, at least they have a sea view!
You misunderstood the line. It was about the stage show around at that time.
Bloody hell, @Dai, speaks fluent @deramdaze.
Respect!
@jaygee there’s a duo lingo course, felt I needed to do it
I doubt it. Surely it refers to the demise of punk and of the Sex Pistols in particular (the Beatles of punk). Given the self-mythologising that The Clash went in for, it sounds to me like a rejection of their “last gang in town” status. And as for “no-hits” (if I understand the above), The Clash had at least six UK top 20 singles.
Deram makes a more nuanced point. There’s more than one kind of hit. A song that enters the charts due to reasonable sales, vs. a song that takes over the world. In that respect The Clash had no hits, and the Beatles had loads of them. I didn’t hear The Clash much on the radio at the time to be honest.
However, making the same point over and over does get a bit wearing – we get it.
Deram likes some decent stuff and it would be nice to discuss any of that.
Nuanced point? 🙂
I hear London Calling and Should I Stay or Should I Go a lot even these days, also Rock the Casbah.
Tongue firmly in cheek for at least some of the above..,
aha
I think there are many records that endure and have become more widely heard and name checked long after, by other acts for example, which spreads the word but also how they pop up in other ways, in soundtracks and streaming. I think The Clash have those kind of records. The reputation grows.
Definitely true!
Think Mick Jones said this about it:
“The line about phony Beatlemania biting the dust was aimed at all the touristy sound-alike rock bands in London in the late ’70s. We were fans of The Beatles, The Who and The Kinks—but we wanted to remake all of that… Our message was more urgent—that things were going to pieces.”
Makes a bit more sense in the context of the overall lyric.
Either way, it’s a great line – fits the song beautifully, and still well-remembered and upsetting people half a century on.
That’s a great shout for this thread – I always thought it was a weird (as in completely wrong) use of the word ‘phoney’.
As stated above, it was about the Beatlemania show on Broadway, not hysterical girls in the 60s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatlemania_(musical)#:~:text=Beatlemania%20was%20a%20Broadway%20musical,a%20total%20of%201%2C006%20performances.
I like that you are so cross about the Clash.
I feel that for New Order, in many cases the lyrics are functional – they serve their purpose to enrich the song without getting in the way or being an especial distraction. But to completely dismiss Bernard’s writing would be to miss out on gems like this that would have Cole Porter rolling in his grave.
“Your country is a wonderful place
It pales my England into disgrace
To buy a drink that is so much more reasonable
I think I’ll go there when it gets seasonable”
“When I was a very small boy, very small boys talked to me”
That’s pretty terrible, but I love it nevertheless
Used to change it sometimes when singing live
“When I was a very small boy, Michael Jackson played with me”
Ooh, controversial …
The Stereophonics sang, ‘San Francisco Bay, past pier thirty-nine/Early p.m., can’t remember what time’…
Yes, you can: it was early p.m.
Is “early pm” a time?
The ‘early p.m.’ isn’t remotely necessary in the context of the song; if he can remember this much, however, surely he can have a reasonable stab as to whether it was, say, 1 or 2 o’clock?! How many time slots constitute ‘early p.m’? If it’s around midday, that’s too early…the lyric would be ‘around noon/midday.’ 3 pm is getting on for mid-afternoon territory. If the police asked you what time you witnessed the armed robbery, and you replied, ‘early p.m., can’t remember what time.’, I’m sure they’d implore you to have a go.
Yes, lyrics irritate me. But scat-singing! Give me strength.
Is that what Liz Fraser does in those Cocteau Twins songs?
Whatever she does, it’s irritating. Speak up, love!
E-NUN-ci-ate!
Not Liz Fraser from the Carry On films
(I always feel that caveat is necessary)
Cor blimey!!!
Photo?
Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops, eh fellas?
I’m just waiting for her to pull out a can of Boddingtons…
My first love. She opened a local village fete sports day type thing when I was about 12. She hung about and signed autographs.
She was lovely to me. My God, those eyes.
Which one’s which?
Neo-pagan Wiccan occultist, please!
Jeff Buckley was very taken with her
Even Minnie the Moocher? Have you no joy in your heart, Tigger?
When scat singers include the likes of formidable vocal giants like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, I think we can classify scat as more than just Cab Callaway, fun though that song is.
I am sure, but Minnie only has a dribbling of scat, which I thought might be below Tigger’s tolerance limit.
Cab Callaway is more of a rapper than a singer.
Ella and Sarah are stellar vocalists far better singing actual words. In fact, their phrasing is part of the attraction.
Love, nay adore, Ella but when she does that scat nonsense -“Begone, foul wench!!”
Some mink scat recently.
I always thought Cleo Laine the nadir of scat, but Sir Ivan even eclipses her at around 2.53.
The Nadir of Scat
The Nabob of Sob
The Grand Vizier of Grunge
The Chamberlain of Choo-Choo-Ch’Boogie
Van the Man likes to indulge in a bit of the old scat…
I rest my case.
Has it got a harmonica inside it?