Ultimate Lists

32 worst lyrics of all time

By BILL JENSEN AND RYAN STEWART | June 8, 2006

THE SONG: 311, "Down"
THE LYRIC:"'Cuz we're dope and change like a chameleon / and my channel whenever that whack showReal Worldis on"
THE VERDICT: We put this on the list only to defend the honor of Judd Winick.

THE SONG: Bruce Springsteen, "Glory Days"
THE LYRIC: "He could throw that speed ball by you / make you look like a fool"
THE VERDICT: Bruce, we hate to bring this up, because we think you're great and everything, and it might sound a little nitpicky and all, but it's just that . . . um . . . well, a fastball is what Roger Clemens throws. A speedball is what John Belushi took to kill himself. Unless you were trying to make a prophetic comment about Doc Gooden's career, in which case you did a great job.

THE SONG: Cranberries, "Salvation"
THE LYRIC: "To all the kids with heroin eyes / don't do it"
THE VERDICT: Nancy Reagan, Irish-style. The kids always listen when you tell them not to do something.

THE SONG: Dashboard Confessional, "Screaming Infidelities"
THE LYRIC: "Your hair / it's everywhere"
THE VERDICT: We know Chris Carraba is the sentimental, romantic type and everything, and maybe our mind is in the “proverbial” gutter a little bit, but this just sounds gross.

THE SONG: Social Distortion, "Story of My Life"
THE LYRIC: "High school seemed like such a blur/I never had much interest in sports or school elections"
THE VERDICT: Mike, w hy didn’t you just smoke on the bleachers and play handball? High school had ended for you, like, ten years ago when you wrote this, didn't it? Might be time to move on. This one didn't get a lot of reader support (or editor support), but we’re keeping it here because Ryan doesn’t like it. Send your hate mail to Rstewart@phx.com.

THE SONG: Donna Summers, et al "MacArthur Park"
THE LYRIC: "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 VERDICT: Oft-cited on these lists, this song is classically inscrutable. But sometimes "inscrutable" is just a polite way of saying "not very good."

THE SONG: Genesis, "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight"
THE LYRIC: "Follow on/A Round Table-talking down we go/You're the show!/Off we go with/ You play the hobbyhorse/I'll play the fool/We'll tease the bull/Ringing round & loud, loud & round"
THE VERDICT: In retrospect, we really didn't explore the world of ridiculous, over-pretentious prog lyrics quite enough.

THE SONG: Rush, "Xanadu"
THE LYRIC: "To stand within the Pleasure Dome/Decreed by Kubla Khan/To taste anew the fruits of life/The last immortal man/To find the sacred river Alph/To walk the caves of ice/Oh, I will dine on honeydew/And drink the milk of Paradise"
THE VERDICT: We know a lot of Rush fans, and we'd like to hear them defend lyrics like this with a straight face. (A write-in vote by an anonymous Phoenix staffer whose name rhymes with "Mamille Modero")

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Comments

32 worst lyrics of all time

Great list: On Destiny's Child, Bills, Bills, Bills, I love the sarcastic comments :) No, I'm being serious. Really!

By Veector on 06/14/2006 at 10:46:03

32 worst lyrics of all time

"Porcupine Pie," by Neil Diamond Porcupine Pie, Porcupine Pie, Porcupine Pie Vanilla Soup, a double scoop please No, maybe I won't, maybe I won't, maybe I will The tutti fruit with fruity blue cheese Ah, but Porcupine Pie, Porcupine Pie, Porcupine Pie Don't let it get on your jeans And though it sounds a little strange Well, you gotta eat it with gloves Or your hands will turn green Ah, but porcupine pie, porcupine pie, porcupine pie, It weaves its way through my dreams, And I do believe I'm gonna have one and Leave enough room for dessert, chicken ripple ice cream.

By MM on 06/14/2006 at 1:50:30

32 worst lyrics of all time

I can't remember her name, but I will never get these bad lyrics out of my head -and it's not just the words, its the way she has to force the rhyme into the line: "..she's precocious, and she knows just what it takes to.. make a pro blush." (Bette Davis Eyes)

By FFMand on 06/16/2006 at 8:58:57

32 worst lyrics of all time

This one has to get honorable mention: THE SONG: Heaven knows I'm miserable now THE LYRIC: "I was looking for a job, and then I found a job" Ask those down at the Pine Street Inn if it's just that easy Mr. Morrissey.

By djkitt on 06/16/2006 at 7:21:00

32 worst lyrics of all time

Great list, but it's incomplete without a showing from Alanis Morrisette, the patron saint of awful lyrics. My vote would have been for the "I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner" line from "You Oughta Know," but surely there are many other choices.

By ThingyBlahBlah3 on 06/22/2006 at 11:37:16

32 worst lyrics of all time

What?! No "If there a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be a alarmed now. It's just a sprinkling for the may queen."?

By Rantipole on 06/24/2006 at 10:53:04

32 worst lyrics of all time

Lest we forget the poet L. Kravitz, "I want to get away.,,, I want to flyyy awayhhh, yeah, yeah. I think he stole this from Lennon/McCartney.

By McMaster on 06/25/2006 at 9:09:37

32 worst lyrics of all time

She bangs, she bangs Oh baby when she moves, she moves I go crazy 'cause she Looks like a flower But she stings like a bee Like every girl in history She bangs alright. These lyrics rattle like a tinny jalopy driven too many times. Don't know if it's the echo of Muhammed Ali or the tired 'every rose has it's thorn'/'femme fatale' theme...

By Muhammed_Ali on 06/27/2006 at 7:44:23

32 worst lyrics of all time

By Muhammed_Ali on 06/27/2006 at 7:44:43

32 worst lyrics of all time

I can not believe that no one entered that Get What You Give song by New Radicals. The song makes me embarrassed to own a radio. And does the band's name count as lyrics?

By bear76@gmail.com on 06/29/2006 at 11:54:14

32 worst lyrics of all time

Steve Miller's oeuvre is full of howlers, but this one rhyme has always bugged me: "Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas You know he knows just exactly what the facts is" I'm pretty sure Dave Barry has gotten multiple columns out of this one lyric.

By MC Slim JB on 06/29/2006 at 2:47:47

32 worst lyrics of all time

Shakira: Whenever, Wherever "Lucky that my breasts are small and humble So you don't confuse them with mountains" Yeah, good thing. I was always trying to rapel down my last girlfriend's chest.

By law school on 06/29/2006 at 10:37:49

32 worst lyrics of all time

Seconded on Shakira and "porcupine pie"...That one's just...."What the hell were you smoking?" quality. And the first...well. You can't put it better than lawschool did.

By [-Scorpio-] on 06/30/2006 at 6:05:24

32 worst lyrics of all time

Men Without Hats...Pop Goes the World with the lines "One, two, three and four is five/Everyone here is a friend of mine." So you can count? Anyone got a better line than that? Anyone, anyone?

By projconn on 06/30/2006 at 11:07:38

32 worst lyrics of all time

Since the article mentions some obscure songs by Genesis and Rush, I'll mention a couple of songs off of the last Donnas album that not many people have heard: From "It Takes One to Know One" (yeah, the titular cliché is sung in the song, but there's worse) "Tell me, am I speaking English / or is this just a deathwish?!" It sounds even worse than it reads because it leads into an angry guitar riff of the bridge which I imagine is supposed to punctuate the lyric, but the combination is about as explosive as a pop gun. The entire lyrics of "Don't Break Me Down" "Don't break me, don't break me down / Can't you see my hands on the ground? / I can't remember my name / And I promise it won't be the same // Did you steal it? Can you feel it? / 'Cause I'm starting to feel it now / So don't break me down // Don't break me, don't break me down / Don't bury my words in the ground / I can't sleep at night / And I know without me that you're not alright // Can you taste it? Can you face it? / 'Cause I'm ready to face it now / So don't break me down // [instrumental bridge] // Don't break me, don't break me down / Can't you see my hands on the ground / I know I'm holding on too tight / But just give me some time and I'll get it right // [etc.]"

By Greg the Gruesome on 07/02/2006 at 3:58:02

32 worst lyrics of all time

Ok, the Rush song is based on a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem called, Kubla Khan and the lyrics are based directly on the text of the poem.

By Suburban Dad on 07/07/2006 at 9:00:13

32 worst lyrics of all time

Bette Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes How about The Smith's - Cemetry Gates -"They were born, then they lived and then they died" Uh, yeah Just reprint the lyric sheet to My Humps - reeeeeeaaally bad! Talk about filler!

By Suburban Dad on 07/07/2006 at 9:11:00

32 worst lyrics of all time

Four words: Please pardon the grammar. As a matter of fact that whole freakin song should be on this list one line at a time. Just f-ing bad. How the hell has Rod Stewart gotten away with being terrible all these years?

By BRay747474 on 07/11/2006 at 6:27:42

32 worst lyrics of all time

what about Hall & Oates "She's Gone" "Let the carbon and monoxide choke my thoughts away", Hello? isn't it Carbon monoxide, there is no "and", its a chemical. and what about America's "Ventura Highway"? "alligator lizards in the air"...isn't the lizard part redundant? i know there is an alligator lizard, which isn't an alligator, but this line is still stupid...

By jetaspirin on 07/19/2006 at 11:45:07

32 worst lyrics of all time

The lyric is 'its just a spring clean for the may queen'. Not 'sprinkling'. Must be my brummy accent.

By Robert Plant on 07/21/2006 at 7:31:29

32 worst lyrics of all time

'Got To Write a Classic' by Adrian Gurvitz should have pride of place on this list. I won't quote snippets of it because the whole song manages to be consistently awful.

By Lung the Younger on 07/21/2006 at 8:28:59

32 worst lyrics of all time

For me, the worst lyrics will always be from Stone Temple Pilots "Plush": And I feel when the dogs begin to smell here/ Will she smell alone? First of all, the dogs are only beginning to smell her so there's the promise of more smelling in the future. I'm pretty sure it comes later in the song. Either way, the question remains: will she smell alone? The answer, of course, lies in the universal question, do dogs count as company? Unless these are bloodhounds or something, beginning to smell her from, like, somewhere far away, in which case, she could be smelling alone somewhere in the woods nearby, as long as she hasn't waded across a river to get rid of her scent.

By hello utah on 07/21/2006 at 10:00:22

32 worst lyrics of all time

The Starship lyric is especially funny considering the "Starship corporation" had changed names twice by that point.

By Hubajube on 07/21/2006 at 12:14:55

32 worst lyrics of all time

"I don't want no scrubs-- a scrub being hermetically defined as a guy that can't get no love from me." I win.

By joshsmoses on 07/21/2006 at 2:30:03

32 worst lyrics of all time

toto -- africa I know that I must do what's right As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Ser-an-getti 'nuff said.

By pinkygonzales on 07/21/2006 at 5:51:07

32 worst lyrics of all time

You know, I would hope that before making fun of the lyrics of a song with such an odd, yet familiar-sounding name as "Xanadu," that you would bother Googling it first. http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Kubla_Khan.html From Samuel Taylor Coleridge's rather famous poem, "Kubla Khan," which begins as follows: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran, Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea." Nearly every bizarre image of the song appears in the poem. Rather than being patent nonsense, as you imply, the song is an allusion to one of the great works of English literature. You morons.

By pat kelly on 07/22/2006 at 12:36:49

32 worst lyrics of all time

How about: "Girl I've been knowin' you since you were ten/you cannot hide from your friends." From "Girl" by Destiny's Child. I think that is even worse than "Bills." Ugh.

By Danielle on 07/22/2006 at 11:09:31

32 worst lyrics of all time

Makes me laugh every time: Rick Springfield. Jesse's Girl. "...but she starts talkin cute/I wanna tell her that I love her/But the point is probably mute." Let's see ... what rhymes with cute ... loot ... boot ... shoot .... oh, I got it! MUTE.

By chillitiger on 07/22/2006 at 11:46:24

32 worst lyrics of all time

You guys know that the "Xanadu" lyrics are a direct reworking of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan", right?

By Roz McClure on 07/23/2006 at 6:50:34

32 worst lyrics of all time

In Jesse's girl, it's actually MOOT, which means debatable...still not a gem. Snow, "Informer"...the entire song is filled with crap.

By nat620 on 07/24/2006 at 11:24:46

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