Stupid lyrics

[Clownbaby]

You could fill this thread with all the fucking stupid shite Paul Banks has written for Interpol over the years.

"I'm timeless like a broken watch
I make money like Fred Astaire
I see that you've come to resist me
I'm a pitbull in time
The pretense is not what restricts me
It's the circles inside"

Mate, shut up.

Also I hate to point out the obvious but

EVEN A BROKEN WATCH TELLS THE RIGHT TIME TWICE A DAY, PAUL

I have a weird thing with Interpol. I feel like a lot of their songs start of intriguing but sort of lose their melody halfway through and turn into a bleak atonal muddy mess. (In most cases) and I'm really not a fan of the way Paul Banks writes lyrics. But then I'll hear a crisper song by them and forget all the disappointing ones. Repeat cycle.

There's another band I half like and half don't called The Blood Brothers, and mainly what I don't like about them is the stupidly contrived names they give to some of their songs. Also the lyrics are very word-salad and clunky, which when combined with the singer's mad voice and the general battyness of the songs as a whole, is sometimes unlistenable.

Live at the Apocalypse Cabaret

Cecilia at the Silhouette Saloon

God Bless You, Blood Thirsty Zeppelins

Six Nightmares at the Pinball Parade

You're the Dream Unicorn!

[popcorn]

Travis: "Look at the moon / a big balloon".

One of those lyrics that just makes me go: "Uh, great."

[popcorn]

Abracadabra by Steve Miller Band.

Abra, abra, abracadabra
I wanna reach out and grab ya
Abra, abra, abracadabra
Abracadabra.

These are hardly deep and rich lyrics but it's the delivery that makes them laugh-out-loud stupid to me. The delivery of the final "abracadabra", following the long pause, has an almost audible full stop after it. Like he was just asked a question and didn't know what to say.

[Clownbaby]

Abracadabra by Steve Miller Band.

These are hardly deep and rich lyrics but it's the delivery that makes them laugh-out-loud stupid to me. The delivery of the final "abracadabra", following the long pause, has an almost audible full stop after it. Like he was just asked a question and didn't know what to say.

Haha I love the delivery as well. It's so daft it does a u turn and becomes kinda good in a way

[non capisco]

'Abracadabra' also includes the line "black panties with an angel's face". Steve Miller's ultimate magic fantasy, underwear with facial features.

[wosl]

But some of the words are about nothing. One is about Bracket The Butler who used to be on Camberwick Green, or Chipley or Trumpton or something. He used to take about 20 minutes to go down the hall. And then I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with 'hall' apart from 'cannonball'. so I wrote 'Slowly walking down the hall/ Faster than a cannonball' and people were like, 'Wow, man'.

Just fucking reference Chigley in some way, then.  It'll resonate with those who remember or know, and intrigue those who don't.  A playful, evocative, specific memory (something like: Slowly down a corridor/A half-speed Brackett of Winkstead Hall).  A Rigby/Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields type open-goal staring you in the face there, Gallagher, you windily generalising, hall/ball shine/mind chump.

[LORD BAD VIBE]

"He starts to shake, he starts to cough/Just like the old man in that book by Nabakov."

Go stick your lute up your arse, Gordon.

[Clownbaby]

"Swinging in the back yard, pull up in your fast car / Whistlin' ma name"

"Elvis is my daddy / Marilyn's my mother"

"My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola"

"Daddy you the bestest"

"All I wanna do is get high by the beach / get high by the beach / get high / all I wanna do is get high by the beach / get high baby baby bye bye"

"All that face / makes me wanna party"

"Kiss while we do it"

"Talk till we turn blue"

Damn it I should have put Lana Del Rey in my first post. Sometimes her songs sound very nice but she insists on doing her own lyrics which she clearly isn't good at. You can't whistle someone's name, lass. What is sexy about having a vaj that tastes of Pepsi? Pepsi and all. Not even Coca Cola.

[gilbertharding]

All the kids came from town
On the rec they gathered round
No-one knew, cause they were too late
Tell no one they can skate
Layback session going on
you kids can't do anything rad
It's a session in the back yard
if you fail you're going to slam hard

Something like that anyway.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjWfCI-e4gM

That's right: lyrics by the band The Stupids.

[manticore]

"Who needs the parliament, sitting making laws all day?" Incisive political commentary from Mick Jones of The Clash there. Bloody parliament, sitting making laws all day. I say, chaps, shall we make it illegal to be called Mick and look a bit like Humphrey Bogart? Top hole, old bean, write that one down!

The Clash were REBELS, sometimes a bit like anarchists even. No laws for them, no men in suits gonna tie them down. There was definitely no posing or posturing in their attitude at all, I won't countenance of such a notion.

Heroes to a man.

[Icehaven]

"My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola"
...What is sexy about having a vaj that tastes of Pepsi? Pepsi and all. Not even Coca Cola.

I don't know the song so I'm not sure of the context but is it a reference to the old and very daft urban myth that pouring Pepsi/Coca cola onto or into your private parts after sex acts as a contraceptive? 

[pupshaw]

This ain't Rock And Roll,
This is Genocide!!!!

[Clownbaby]

I don't know the song so I'm not sure of the context but is it a reference to the old and very daft urban myth that pouring Pepsi/Coca cola onto or into your private parts after sex acts as a contraceptive?

Possibly. Lana doesn't strike me as someone who puts more than one meaning into each lyric though.

[Phil_A]

This ain't Rock And Roll,
This is Genocide!!!!

Fuck off, that's great.

This one from Franz Ferdinand always bugged me:

"I'm on BBC 2 now, telling Terry Wogan how I made it..."

Wogan was never a presenter on BBC2, you mean Radio 2, ya dingus.

[jobotic]

Just fucking reference Chigley in some way, then.  It'll resonate with those who remember or know, and intrigue those who don't.  A playful, evocative, specific memory (something like: Slowly down a corridor/A half-speed Brackett of Winkstead Hall).  A Rigby/Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields type open-goal staring you in the face there, Gallagher, you windily generalising, hall/ball shine/mind chump.

I think you'll find it's Chipley

[garbed_attic]

I love REM like life itself, but it's a bold opening gambit to start your second album with a major record label with lyrics as stupid as:

When I got to the show
Yo, ho, ho
I could tell that you had been crying, crying
It's that same sing-song and the DJ sucks
It makes me sad
I tried to turn it off (turn it off)
To say goodbye, my love
That radio song
Hey, hey, hey

[Fisher Goes Berserk]

'I know that I must do what's right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti'

FUCK OFF

[Chriddof]

Mr Bland McCartney has an all time classic in his 'Live and Let Die' with the immortal 'In this ever changing world in which we live in'! Fer fexache!

The actual lyric:

"But if this ever changin' world in which we live in..."

And according to some sources "live in" might be "living".

I love REM like life itself, but it's a bold opening gambit to start your second album with a major record label with lyrics as stupid as:

The sad thing about REM's "Radio Song" is that the opening bit with the gently jangling guitars and that "The world is collapsing... around our ears..." line is really lovely. But then it dives off a cliff.

'I know that I must do what's right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti'

FUCK OFF

I'm not sure how it was that song, out of all the possible ones, that has apparently become the defining 80s track in the minds of the general public.

[Dr Rock]

The actual lyric:

"But if this ever changin' world in which we live in..."

And according to some sources "live in" might be "living".

I'm surprised this one still causes debate, of course he's saying 'if' then it doesn't matter about the rest. He's not singing 'in this ever-changing world in which we're living makes you give in and cry.' My issue would be that 'ever-changing' seems like a bit of a place-holder lyric so it scans. If the world is making you give in and cry, what about a more apt descriptive couplet like 'cruel and callous world' something like that bit not that.

[Dr Rock]

Wait I'm stupid if he's singing 'if this ever-changing world in which we live in' then that's what people think is stupid. But he says he's singing 'in which we're living' and I reckon so.

[popcorn]

Yes, the old debate with Live and Let Die is whether he's singing "live in" or "living". If he's singing "live in" then he's said "in" twice, which is bad English.

Here is what Wikipedia sez:

The sheet music used the line "in this ever-changing world in which we live in" as part of the opening verse of the song. In the Washington Post interview more than 30 years later, McCartney told the interviewer, "I don't think about the lyric when I sing it. I think it's 'in which we're living', or it could be 'in which we live in', and that's kind of, sort of, wronger but cuter," before deciding that it was "in which we're living."[10]

[popcorn]

On Present Tense, off Radiohead's last album:

Stop from falling
Down the mine
It's no one's business but mine

What he's done there is rhyme "mine" with "mine". It's a weird one because the delivery makes it feel like a satisfying rhyme, until you realise he's just said the same word twice and the crushing disappointment sets in.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

I am the Walrus.

[gilbertharding]

Before he leaves the camp he stops
He scans the world outside
And where there used to be some shops
Is where the snipers sometimes hide
He left his home the week before
He thought he'd be like the police
But now he finds he is at war
Weren't we supposed to keep the peace?



Anyway, I literally posted lyric by The Stupids upthread, and what do I get for my trouble? Nothing.
*kicks over bin*

[Fisher Goes Berserk]

I'm not sure how it was that song, out of all the possible ones, that has apparently become the defining 80s track in the minds of the general public.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who finds it bewildering.

[Captain Z]

It may have some meaning that is over my head, but I don't really have much time to think about The Fruitellas' lyrics:

And I'll dance for little Steven and Joanna round the back of my hotel, oh yeah.

Just conjures up a weird/creepy image of the singer dancing in an alleyway as two disinterested kids look on.

[chveik]

He hit me
And it felt like a kiss
He hit me
But it didn't hurt me
He couldn't stand to hear me say
That I'd been with someone new,
And when I told him I had been untrue
He hit me
And it felt like a kiss
He hit me
And I knew he loved me
If he didn't care for me
I could have never made him mad
But he hit me,
And I was glad

[Camp Tramp]

There was a little old lady who was walking down the road,
She was struggling with bags from Tesco,
There were people from the city having lunch in the park,
I believe that its called alfresco

Ah Lily Allen, I remember that particular sequence being mocked somewhere else as well.

[Captain Z]

Is it stupid though? I believe the song is just describing a typical mundane day in London, and I challenge anyone to find another that uses 'Tesco' in a rhyme.

[Pauline Walnuts]

Is it stupid though? I believe the song is just describing a typical mundane day in London, and I challenge anyone to find another that uses 'Tesco' in a rhyme.

Used in a title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La6s228vk34