Great songs with lame lyrics

If you come on to me will I come on to you. Well....I saw her standing there and that....
Kill me now, I have abandoned all my past amazing songwriting feats and am now just a shell of what I was and don't know how to sit down and stf up.... What's worse is someone hasn't told me that I'm only a sex symbol to a small group of neurotics and this song ....is for them
I approached this topic on the thread about his new album...eek

 

"She's a Lady" by Tom Jones...great melody, great performance, lyrics that make it painfully obvious they're from the same pen that gave us "You're Having My Baby".

 

From the classic The Beatles an Illustrated Record by Roy Carr & Tony Tyler: "[o]pinions still differ as to the merits of 'Paperback Writer' - the first Beatles single to receive less-than-universal acclaim.... Objections were based upon the triviality of the lyric and a slight nagging suspicion that the Beatles were playing at 'being song writers' at a time when the world was waiting for The Word."

All that said, a great tune, a great riff, just silly lyrics. And ... as stated above, opinions differ. Rock on.

 

So noted, but the vehemence against that song both amazes and annoys me. I actually started a thread about it a few months ago, which can be easily found via a search, and the impression I got from it was that people thought it was beneath REM to do a song like that, that REM should be doing more profound and meaningful things, and Stipe acts like he's ashamed that he wrote it. (I think Buck is OK with it now.)

Because on the merits, it has one of Buck's best jangly guitar riffs, Kate sings the hell out of it on backup vocals and to my ears it's a great, fun record. I will concede the lyrics aren't Shakespeare and it's not in the ether for it to be mentioned here. But it continually gets a very raw deal because it's not dumb, it's fun, and I maintain that REM as an entity and many of its fans (especially the ones who don't listen to anything without IRS on the label and think they sold out for filthy lucre) ... are an uptight bunch. Buck seems to have changed, he seems like he'd be a fun guy to hang out with and will play and jam with just about anybody who'll let him plug in. Mike Mills is singing about baseball now. When Bill comes off the hay farm, he's in bars doing Beatle covers. So by process of elimination plus his MO, Stipe is the stick in the mud.

And their refusal to play SHP live was sad, because they rocked it.

 

Have America been mentioned yet? Lots of great tunes, lots of lame lyrics, especially Dewey's songs.

 

I would consider "Paperback Writer" to be one of the first truly good and inspired Beatles lyrics. Most of what they did previously was juvenile, amateurish, and cliched.

 

The problem with this assignment is that insipidness is going to be in the eye of the beholder.

 

practically anything from Phish.

 

Love the Rolling Stones song Dancing With Mr. D, but I Don't like the lyrics.

 

Nah, his note probably would have said, “..Life’s a piece of ****, when you look at it.”

 

Nearly every song on Peter Frampton's Wind of Change album:



Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the album. Listen to it all the time.

Musically, it's absolutely fantastic. Lyrically, he definitely could have used some help.

 

plus, it was not really about insipidness, just about lyrics that are really poor, for whatever reason.

 

I think "Paperback Writer" has more interesting lyrics than, say, "She Loves You", or "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." And who recorded "Monkey Man"?

 

All this thread is doing is proving pop's power to alchemize lame into glorious.

 

But that song is a massive pisstake. You think any song with the lyric "you're my pride and joy etc" was anything other than a joke?

 

"Monkey Man" is by the Rolling Stones, from Let It Bleed. It's a fabulous song and a favorite deep cut of Stones fans. The lyrics are kind of stream-of-consciousness and bizarre, but I think there are some killer lines in there.

"All my friends are junkies...that's not really true"
"I'm a sack of broken eggs and I always have an unmade bed"

"Well I hope we're not too messianic
Or a trifle too satanic
But we love to play the blues"

It seems to me to be a lot of strange metaphors for being a messy, druggy rock star. There's a good part in Stanley Booth's great book The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones in which Mick Jagger talks about how much he likes the word "messianic" and that he's worked it into one of their new songs.

 

Dave Marsh said in one of his books that Bob Dylan could've written the lyrics to "She Loves You," take that as you will about the quality. (Zimmy doesn't have a perfect lyrical batting average IMO and LOL!)

 

I agree. Very melodic and well-written song, if you ask me.

 

The lyrics of I'm On Fire make me feel as if someone took a knife baby, edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley through the middle of my skull.

 

What about "wrapped up like a douche"?

(Yes I know it's not really that.)

 

Believe it or not, "cut loose like a deuce" is actually the least stupid line in that entire song! The rest of it is Dylan...after suffering major brain trauma.

 

First thing I thought of. That song is literally gibberish. Elton's got some other unfathomable lyrics as well:

Hey kids, shake it loose together
The spotlight's hitting something
That's been known to change the weather
We'll kill the fatted calf tonight
So stick around (Bennie and the Jets)

and...

Lady love rides a big red Cadillac
Buys the hoedown show salt and beans
Goes to church to pray for Lucifer
She milked the male population clean (No Shoestrings On Louise)

I don't know what any of that means, but damn if those songs aren't still great.

 

Those lyrics were of course all written by Bernie Taupin, as was "Take me to the Pilot", a song that no one seems to understand, which is not surprising since Bernie himself has stated that he has no idea what it means either.

Even more cryptic is "The Scaffold":

but those lyrics are cryptic and maybe nonsensical, rather than simply lame.

 

You're right. Elton just wrote the wonderful music.

 

In the excellent South Bank Show documentary about the making of his album Security, Peter Gabriel was talking about lyrics and pointed out that "There are many great songs with really appalling lyrics, but none with appalling music.