At PlayOnLyrics we like to play around with misheard lyrics. Occasionally, however, you wish you had misheard a lyric, or can’t believe what you just heard.
Back in the day, one time Tonight Show host and hack musician Steve Allen used to read out lyrics from popular songs just to make fun of young musicians. That used to bug us. Taking lyrics out of context can be a distasteful and irrelevant exercise by the smug and untalented. After all, “The Doo Ron Ron” is a great song about nothing.
But, sometimes lyrics are just so bad you just have to stop and ask the question “what were they on when they wrote that?”
So here is PlayOnLyric’s look at 20 particularly banal, pretentious or weird lyrics.
20. John Mayer, “Something’s Missing”
Friends. Check
Money. Check
Well-slept. Check
Opposite sex. Check
Guitar. Check
Microphone. Check
Messages waiting for me
When I get home. Check
How come everything I think I need
Always comes with batteries?
What do you think it means?
We don’t know John, what does it really mean? You use a vibrator?
19. Black Eyed Peas, “My Humps”
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.
Fergie: setting back feminism 50 years. And it isn’t even sexy in a trashy, slutty kinda way.
18. Bruce Springsteen, “Glory Days”
He could throw that speed ball by you
make you look like a fool
The Boss is a great lyric writer and we feel bad for even bringing this up. But this song was about remembering high school and a baseball player. Perhaps he could blow a ‘fast ball’ past you, but a ‘speedball’ is something that John Belushi or Chris Farley would blow past you.
17. The Killers, “All These Things I've Done”
I've got soul but I'm not a soldier.
I've got soul but I'm not a soldier
I've got soul but I'm not a soldier
We got it the first time. People are slowly starting to realize that they sound interesting in a retro way but their lyrics are utter dross.
16. Wang Chung, “Everybody Have Fun”
Everybody have fun tonight
Everybody have fun tonight
Everybody wang chung tonight
“Rats, what rhymes with fun? Er…wait a moment. Wang Chung! That rhymes. Hurrah! That was lucky.” Yes there was some good music in the 1980s. And then there was Wang Chung.
15. Poison, “Unskinny Bop”
Unskinny bop
Just blows me away
Unskinny bop, bop
All night and day
Unskinny bop, bop, bop, bop
She just loves to play
Unskinny bop, nothin' more to say.
Making fun of 80s hair bands is too easy; it is like shooting fish in a barrel. But this steaming pile of rubbish has to win some award. Unskinny means fat, right?
14. Destiny's Child, “Bills, Bills, Bills”
Can you pay my bills?
Can you pay my telephone bills?
Can you pay my automo' bills?
Then maybe we can chill
I don't think you do
so you and me are through
Before Beyonce et al were inventing words like Jelli and Bootilicous there were writing stuff like this. So, I can only be with you if I pay your bills? That would make you a…what exactly?
13. Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl”
This shit is bananas
B-A-N-A-N-A-S
It’s a spelling bee from the blonde leader of No Doubt. The whole song led to debates about what exactly a hollaback girl was. But this line was just plain weird.
12. Alanis Morissette, “Ironic”
A traffic jam when you're already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife
I am sure she is sick of hearing about this. They are not bad lyrics, but the only ironic thing about any of the lyrics in this song is that they have nothing to do with irony. I think Sarah Vowell said it best – “Irony isn't a black fly in your chardonnay. Irony is naming your national airport after the president who fired all the air traffic controllers.”
11. Avril Lavigne, “SK8tr Boi”
He was a boy, she was a girl
Can I make it any more obvious?
Not really. Wow that’s two young Canadian singers in a row. Can Celine be far behind?
10. The Police, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabakov
Sting just reminding you that he reads. Pretentious? Moi?
9. Billy Idol, “Flesh for Fantasy”
Face to face
And back to back
You see and feel
My sex attack
My sex attack? Where’s the romance?
8. Kanye West “Jesus Walks”
I'm just trying to say the way school need teachers,
The way Kathie Lee needed Regis that's the way y’all need Jesus.
Sometimes it works so well for Kanye. And then there’s this time.
7. Emerson, Lake and Palmer “Taste Of My Love”
You need love, I need love, here it comes , the taste of my love.
I'm gonna love you like nobody ever loved you
climb on my rocket and we'll fly.
Over the moon past the sun till we find
the gates of heaven open wide for lovers
I'm gonna love you like nobody ever loved you
climb on my rocket and we'll fly.
It is pretty easy to find a lot of pretentious twaddle put out by 1970s prog rockers. But this has to take the cake. Rumour has it that ELP put out a deliberately cheesy album after being made to fulfill a record contract. This would be very cheesy though.
6. Prism, “Starship Superstar”
I'm a spaceship superstar
I've got a solar-powered laser beam guitar
(he's a spaceship superstar)
I'm at the top of all the charts on Mars
Laser beam guitar?? If this is life on Mars I don’t want to go.
5. David Hasselhoff “Is Everybody Happy”
If you’re surrounded by clouds of thunder
Don’t let it get ya and pull-pull you under
You gotta fight it and learn your lesson
Or you will end up in deep deep depression
Whatever the hang up
We’re getting a gang up
And we are gonna have us some fun
Oh God. Where’s that bucket?
4. America, “A Horse With No Name”
On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
Things? What, after three lines of the song the lyrical well ran dry?
3. Billy Ray Cyrus, Achy Breaky Heart
And if you tell my heart,
My achy breaky heart,
He might blow up and kill this man.
Country music is often a well of heartfelt, clever and poignant lyrics. Then there is Billy Ray – king of the mullet and writer of this beauty.
2. Captain and Tennille, “Muskrat Love”
Muskrat Susie, Muskrat Sam
Do the jitterbug out in muskrat land
And they shimmy
And Sammy's so skinny
And they didn’t wing this. They actually wrote it down. With a straight face.
1. Richard Harris/Donna Summer, “MacArthur Park”
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think I could take it, `cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again, oh no!
The most famous of all bad lyrics. Whether it was Richard Harris belting it out in the original four hour version or Donna Summer doing the disco version the whole song is just priceless.