Courtesy of Digg, I present to you the top 10 worst lyrics ever, as rated by BBC 6 Music.
U2, Toto, Duran Duran, and Oasis all made the list.
But are there worse examples? I can’t think of any offhand that are truly awful, but one springs to mind because of how much it missed the mark. In Dwight Yoakam’s “Ain’t That Lonely Yet” he sings:
Once there was this spider in my bed
Got caught up in her web
Of love and lies
Spun her chains around my heart and soul…
Aah! It bugs me every damn time I hear it. Spun her chains? Since when do spiders spin chains? I mean, he could have gone for the extra internal rhyme with “bed/web” and done “Spun her threads around…” or even gone suggestive and used “Wrapped her legs around…” or probably dozens of other possibilities, but “chains”? Bad. So bad.
What lyrics bug you?
Okay, those are so not the worst lyrics ever. Almost all of the ones from my insipid lyrics post from a while back are worse, but I still think the Nena ones win. *grin*
-J
I was shocked that the Oasis song selected wasn’t “Wonderwall.” What the hell is a wonderwall? That has ALWAYS bothered me.
i KNOW, right? “champagne supernova” you can picture, okay, sparkly explosion thingy. but wonderwall? wtf? oasis has always driven me crazy because i like their melodies but despise the trying-too-hard whimsicality of their surrealist wannabe lyrics.
OK, how the heck did I miss that? A post from you about lyrics?! I can’t believe it slipped past me. The Nena example is hilarious, it’s true. But those Partridge family lyrics very nearly made my eyeballs bleed. Yowch.
Todd Rundgren – We gotta get you a woman
Talkin’ ’bout things about that special one
They may be stupid but they sure are fun
I’ll give it to you while we’re on the run
Because we ain’t got time to get this thing together, ’cause we
Got to get together with a woman who has been around,
One who knows better than to let you down,
Let’s hope there’s still one left in this whole town,
And that she’ll take some time to get this thing together.
“They may be stupid but they sure are fun,” how nice.
Cher had a song that went something like, “There’s one thing there’s not enough of, and that is love and understanding.”. One thing? Two? Or are they the same thing???
From The Complexity of Songs (reformatted for text-only):
S(0) = e (nothing), S(k) = V S(k-1) for k >= 1,
V = ‘That’s the way,’ U ‘I like it,’ U
U = ‘uh huh, uh huh’
Poop on them for pooping on Duran Duran. I always thought “Don’t say you’re easy on me, you’re about as easy as a nuclear war” was funny and kinda clever. Pfft.
Obviously country was excluded entirely, or the entire list would have been country songs. Some of these lyrics aren’t that bad if you ask me. U2 and Oasis especially, but I agree with Duran Duran as well. There are far worse lyrics out there than these.
a. Seasons in the Sun
b. Afternoon Delight
c. Swingin by John Conlee
d. Most hymns but especially Onward Christian Soldiers
Yup.
http://www.songlyrics.com/song-lyrics/Brad_Paisley/Miscellaneous/Ticks/256863.html
everytime you take a sip
in this smoky atmosphere
you press that bottle to your lips
and i wish i was your beer
and in the small there of your back
your jeans are playing peek a boo
id like to see the other half
of your butterfly tattoo
hey that gives me an idea
lets get out of this bar
and drive out into the country
cause id like to see you out in the moonlight
id like to kiss you way back in the sticks
id like to walk you through a field of wildflowers
and id like to check you for ticks
i don’t think he means women, there–i think he actually means that the little things about a person are stupid but fun.
i wound up putting it on the tape–go figure.