Crap lyrics have permeated pop music for decades now. Yet, there are certain egregiously awful lyrics that are so bad they haunt you. These can be broken down into five different categories, each with their own unique form of aural torture.
Here’re the common sins that lead to the Worst Lyrics of All-Time.
Grammatical Mistakes
Misuse of the subjunctive clause will generally ruin songs for lit nerds like myself. But the worst faux pas comes from SIR Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die.” “But if this ever-changing world in which we live in.” The hanging preposition of the “in” at the end is totally superfluous. So … wtf? I thought British knights knew English.
Rhyming a Word with Itself
This one, though easily avoided, constantly occurs. Like Jessica Simpson’s “I Think I’m in Love With You,” where the refrain rhymes “you” with “you” FOUR times. Or “The Humpty Dance,” where it’s explained, “My name is Humpty, pronounced with an Umpty.” Woof. It’s one thing if the song is improvised, but … don’t they sit down, write these, and then record them?
Heightened Inoperative Words
It’s super annoying when a sentence filled with nice nouns and verbs has a big blaring THE getting the stress of the music, like Lou Reed’s “New York City’s THE place where they said / Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side”, or Stevie Wonder’s “Music knows it is and always will / Be one of THE things that life just won’t quit” from “Sir Duke.” Use your scansion, fellas!
Stupid or Senseless for the Rhyme
Rhymes can inspire creativity and ingenuity in a good writer. In a bad writer, it inspires “Things That Make You Go Hmmm,” a song filled with brilliant couplets like, “There was a friend of mine named Jay / Would come over late at night and say hey,” and “Mysterious calls and the phone goes click / You say to yourself ‘I’m gonna hit him with a brick.'” This would be pretty good … in 4th grade.
There’s also the senseless rhyme, as in The Fray’s “Over My Head,” where a forced third rhyme sends the lyric careening into nonsense-land: “I never knew / I never knew that everything was falling through / That everyone I knew was waiting on a queue / To turn and run / when all I needed was the truth.” So, everyone you knew “was” waiting in a line (that’s what we call it here in the United States, a “line,” and as you, The Fray, are from Denver, I don’t really know where you came up with this “queue” shit) to turn and run? Because generally when people turn and run, they’re not really lined up and waiting for you to need the truth. Dumbasses.
Anything Written by the Black Eyed Peas
1.) Imma be? Not a word.
2.) 2000-and-late? THE WORST.
3.) Calling breasts “lumps” makes everyone think of cancer.
4.) Clearly, that “mazel tov” was so your song would get played at Bar Mitzvahs. Whores.
Clearly, I have issues. What are your pet peeve lyrics?
