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Dumb Lyrics in Hit Songs

post #1 of 106
4/20/09 at 10:31pm
Thread Starter 
I heard this lil' ditty on the radio today, and was reminded how much I loathe one particular lyric. In Elton John's "Rocket Man":

Mars Ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact, it's cold as hell. . .

OK, I'm with him so far, but then he goes and adds:

And there's no one there to raise them. . .
If you did. . .

Presumably, if you were raising your kids on Mars, YOU'D be there to raise them. And if not, why the hell do it in the first place, even if it were physically possible with today's technology? This always stuck in my craw, and it annoys me every time I hear it, in an otherwise good song.

Are there any hit songs out there with a lyric or two (or more) that just leave you scratching your head and asking: WTF was he/they thinking?
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post #2 of 106
4/20/09 at 10:37pm
While it's only a good song in a cheesy sense, it was a hit... Toto's Africa. I didn't realize just how terrible the lyrics were to until the recent usage on Chuck.

"I know that I must do whats right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti"

Bad in a waaa? sense, and bad in a holy hell do they have to shoehorn the words into the time allotted. It's like they just looked at a map of Africa and picked half a dozen words to paste in.
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post #3 of 106
4/20/09 at 10:46pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Green Day
I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone
Bad in a "saying the same thing, with the same words, many many times" sense. Worse when you factor in the rest of the song, of course.
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post #4 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:00pm
See: Steinman, Jim and Aday, Meat Loaf
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post #5 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:01pm
"Little Red Corvette"

Guess I must be dumb
cuz u had a pocket full of horses
Trojan and some of them used

Why doesn't this freaky chick just throw out the used contraceptives???

It was Saturday night, I guess that makes it allright...
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post #6 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu View Post
See: Steinman, Jim and Aday, Meat Loaf
You just watch your goddamn step, buster.

I love "Africa" so much, mostly because of the sheer balls of the lyrics. If I were a songwriter, which I'm not, I do damn near anything to keep words like "Kilimanjaro" and "Serengeti" the hell away from my rhyme scheme. But Toto? Boys just don't. Give. A. Fuck.
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post #7 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:21pm
Please bear in mind that I love the shit out of Jim Steinman and Mr. Loaf, but the two of them have some amazingly stupid lyrics between them.

For example, how exactly does one glow like metal on the edge of a knife? I know it has to do with the heat generated during sex, but wouldn't you only be able to compare it the edge of a knife if you were wearing goggles that picked up heat signatures?

And let's not forget this gem:

"And if life is like a highway
Then the soul is just a car
Then objects in the rear view mirror
May appear closer than they are."

I guess that's Steinman's way of saying "We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us." I could go on.

(Although my favorite dumb lyric from a recent hit song is from "When You Were Young:" "We're burning down the highway skyline on the back of a hurricane that started turning when you were young." What the fuck does that even mean?)
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post #8 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:25pm
I think a thread of GOOD lyrics in hit songs would be much easier to get a handle on.
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post #9 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:29pm
Let's not forget this gem from the late 90s:

"Hip hop marmalade, spic and span
Met you one summer and it all began
You're the best girl I ever did see
The great Larry Bird, jersey 33
When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet
Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets"
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post #10 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:30pm
Thread Starter 
Maybe so, but that's such a vast topic. Presumably, good lyrics is part of what made a hit song a hit. Gotta figure this topic's easier to get one's head around.
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post #11 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by IggytheBorg View Post
Maybe so, but that's such a vast topic. Presumably, good lyrics is part of what made a hit song a hit. Gotta figure this topic's easier to get one's head around.
What world are you living in? Think of the big, mega-hits - very few of them have "smart" and/or "good" lyrics; they have hooks that won't quit - that's the key.

By my reckoning, usually artists who do "smart" lyrics that are really insightful and affecting get rabid cult following but rarely have "hits." "Macarena" and "Who Let Tha Dawgs Out" go on to sell millions and millions of copies and become inescapable.
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post #12 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:39pm
Yeah, you could have a whole separate thread about it, but music/beat/melody tends to trump lyrics every time.
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post #13 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:54pm
"I lost my keys and you lost more than that in my back seat"

I'm not a huge Bon Jovi fan but that is really bad even for him. Just a plain what the fuck lyric if I've ever heard one.
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post #14 of 106
4/20/09 at 11:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryan S~ View Post
"I lost my keys and you lost more than that in my back seat"

I'm not a huge Bon Jovi fan but that is really bad even for him. Just a plain what the fuck lyric if I've ever heard one.
I remember my aunt bitching at me for listening to Megadeth (or something like that) and she said "the lyrics don't even MEAN anything"; I knew she liked Bon Jovi and said something about the immense depth in "Livin on a Prayer" - "well, we're all living on a prayer!"

Wow, what a revelation.
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post #15 of 106
4/21/09 at 12:01am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louris View Post
"I know that I must do whats right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti"
Until I read this tonight, I thought the lyric was "rises like an empress", which makes a hell of a lot more sense to me. My whole worldview is shattered.

And that lyric from "Rocket Man" makes sense because it's implying that, even if they lived on Mars, he'd be off on another mission and wouldn't be there to raise his kids anyway.

Besides, Taupin has a history of contradicting himself -- "If I was a sculptor, but then again, no", anyone?
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post #16 of 106
4/21/09 at 12:16am
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu View Post
See: Steinman, Jim and Aday, Meat Loaf
While I'm not going to defend the quality of Mr. Steinman's lyrics, I'm not sure you can really count those guys, as over the top is kind of the point. Yeah, they're somewhat serious, but the whole thing is also somewhat tongue-in-cheek and self-aware, too.

Plus Steinman's Bad for Good is a guilty pleasure of mine that I hate admitting to, like Rocky Roccocco's pizza and tranny porn.
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post #17 of 106
4/21/09 at 10:59am
There's a big difference between overblown/silly and wtf?/bad.

That Prince lyric is actually pretty great, because it gets the point across - crass as it may be - in an original, poetic way. The Steinman stuff is outrageously overblown, but his stuff is consistently outrageously overblown. Plus, it still means something. Even the Bon Jovi lyric is kind of clever for what it is (still not fond of the song, overall).

The truly crappy ones are the go-nowhere, redundant lines like the Green Day example, and the Toto example, which tries to sound impressive through allusion, but comes off clumsy and meaningless. Or Sammy Hagar's immortal "Only time will tell if we stand the test of time."
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post #18 of 106
4/21/09 at 11:12am
I thought we were talking about dumb rather than bad. Steinman's meathead Springsteen by way of a proto-Dungeons and Dragons player lyrics are overblown, but they're also dumb. So is the lyric from Summertime Girls, which I posted earlier, which is dumb enough that it seems smart, but really, it's just dumb. I don't know. It's still early.
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post #19 of 106
4/21/09 at 11:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Elvis View Post
"Little Red Corvette"

Guess I must be dumb
cuz u had a pocket full of horses
Trojan and some of them used

Why doesn't this freaky chick just throw out the used contraceptives???

It was Saturday night, I guess that makes it allright...
Being a pretty big Prince fan, I must have listened to this song a hundred times and I had no idea that the lyric was "and some of them used." Huh, it really makes you think.

How 'bout some Journey? My particular favorite is:

"Anyway you want it,
That's the way you need it,
Anyway you want it."

and

"She loves to laugh,
She love to sing,
She does everthing,
She loves to move,
She loves to groove,
She loves the lovin' things."
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post #20 of 106
4/21/09 at 11:32am
Live and Let Die:

"...ever changing world in which we're livin' "

I like that song, but what a dumb qualifier for world. As if we'd confuse "world" for some other world, like Gilese 581c. Or Clancy Brown's Earth 2. Or Elton John's Mars.
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post #21 of 106
4/21/09 at 11:43am
Ladies & Gentlemen, R. Kelly:

Quote:
Cristal poppin in the stretch Navigator/we got food everywhere, as if the party was catered.
Note that the party is not catered. It's just so good that it leaves the impression of a professionally catered event. Leaving us with the inescapable conclusion that R. Kelly whipped all this food up himself. He's a regular Giada.

This is not the only example of Kelly not understanding the meaning of the phrase "as if," though. See also: this line in Part 10 of "Trapped in the Closet."
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post #22 of 106
4/21/09 at 11:49am
That song's great, though. I'm a fan of "After the party/it's the after party/after the party/it's the hotel lobby."
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post #23 of 106
4/21/09 at 11:52am
Oh, I don't mean to impugn the song. Either song, for that matter--I absolutely love "Trapped in the Closet" on multiple levels, including unironic ones. I just find R. Kelly's failure to understand the meaning of the phrase "as if" funny.
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post #24 of 106
4/21/09 at 12:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu View Post
I thought we were talking about dumb rather than bad. Steinman's meathead Springsteen by way of a proto-Dungeons and Dragons player lyrics are overblown, but they're also dumb. So is the lyric from Summertime Girls, which I posted earlier, which is dumb enough that it seems smart, but really, it's just dumb. I don't know. It's still early.
Yeah, but a lot of the Steinman stuff is kind of eloquent in its way - it's just that the metaphysical conceits are overblown. Judging it on conceptual grounds alone is like saying that Donne's "The Flea" is dumb because it's using a blood-sucking insect to talk about love. By taking that outrageous and cliche'ed "life is a highway" metaphor to its logical conclusion, he's basically saying, "fuck you; I'm going to drive this crazy concept into the ground and make you get it the way I get it." And judging how Tom Cochrane screwed up the same conceit years later, even a non-Meatloaf fan like me has to admit that Steinman did pretty well with it. Like the poems of Donne and the other metaphysical poets, the metaphor transcends dumb, because it starts silly and gets (marginally, in this case) better through explanation.

The "Summertime Girls" lyric is just dumb, though. It's total word soup, but unlike Dylan or Malkmus when they cook up word soup, the imagery is lousy and they don't manage to fool you into finding cohesiveness.
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post #25 of 106
4/21/09 at 12:20pm
It helps to picture every Steinman song as being sung by a horny 17-year old boy trying to say whatever it takes to get into a girl's pants.
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post #26 of 106
4/21/09 at 12:20pm
A wop bop a loo bop; a lop bomp bomp:

Tutti Frutti. Oh, Rudy.

Tutti Frutti. Oh, Rudy.

Tutti Frutti. Oh, Rudy.

Tutti Frutti. Oh, Rudy.

Tutti Frutti. Oh, Rudy.

A wop bop a loo bop; a lop bomp bomp.
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post #27 of 106
4/21/09 at 12:20pm
Well at that right you might as well mention every doo-wop song ever recorded.
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post #28 of 106
4/21/09 at 12:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
Well at that right you might as well mention every doo-wop song ever recorded.
Or any of the Sigur Ros songs sung in "Hopelandic."
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post #29 of 106
4/21/09 at 12:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
Well at that right you might as well mention every doo-wop song ever recorded.
Why? I've already perfectly illustrated the folly of this thread. FOLLY!
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post #30 of 106
4/21/09 at 12:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Distinguished Gentlemen, Chamillionaire
Police think they can see me lean
I'm tint so it ain't easy to be seen
When you see me ride by they can see the glean
And my shine on the deck and the TV screen
Ride with a new chick, she like hold up
Next to the playstation controller is a full clip and my pistola
Turn a jacker into a coma
Girl you ain't know, I'm crazy like Krayzie Bone
Just tryin to bone ain't tryin to have no babies
Rock clean itself so I pull in ladies
Laws of patrolling you know they hate me
Music turned all the way up until the maximum
I can speak for some niggas tryin to jack for some
But we packin somethin that we have and um will have a nigga locked up in the maximum
Security cell, I'm grippin oak
Music loud and tippin slow
Twist and twistin like hit this dough
Pull up from behind and is in his throat
Windows down gotta stop pollution
CDs change niggas like who is that producing?
This the Play-N-Skillz when we out and cruisin
Got warrants in every city except Houston but I'm still ain't losin
Oh wait, I'm sorry.... That shit is brilliant.
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post #31 of 106
4/21/09 at 1:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Renn Brown View Post
Oh wait, I'm sorry.... That shit is brilliant.
I think the biggest crime is that he manages to rhyme "maximum' with "jack for some," which is kind of clever, but then rhymes it with another "maximum." It's as if he has to draw our attention to how clever it is.
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post #32 of 106
4/21/09 at 1:22pm
If Joe LeFors is around he's going to whallop me for this, but I noted it on my facebook page a few days ago:

"I can't make myself be good
I wish I could
Somewhere my conscience turned to petrified wood."

-the otherwise quite excellent Jason Isbell (emphasis added)
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post #33 of 106
4/21/09 at 1:23pm
Total nonsense:

Quote:
I get up, and nothing gets me down.
You got it tough. I've seen the toughest around.
And I know, baby, just how you feel.
You've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real
Oh can't you see me standing here,
I've got my back against the record machine
I ain't the worst that you've seen.
Oh can't you see what I mean ?
Might as well jump. Jump !
Might as well jump.
Go ahead, jump. Jump !
Go ahead, jump.
Aaa-ohh Hey you ! How said that ?
Baby how you been ?
You say you don't know, you won't know
until we begin.
Well can't you see me standing here,
I've got my back against the record machine
I ain't the worst that you've seen.
Oh can't you see what I mean ?
Might as well jump. Jump !
Go ahead, jump.
Might as well jump. Jump !
Go ahead, jump.
(guitar solo)
(keyboard solo)
Might as well jump. Jump !
Go ahead, jump.
Get it and jump. Jump !
Go ahead, jump
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post #34 of 106
4/21/09 at 1:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianM View Post
If Joe LeFors is around he's going to whallop me for this, but I noted it on my facebook page a few days ago:

"I can't make myself be good
I wish I could
Somewhere my conscience turned to petrified wood."

-the otherwise quite excellent Jason Isbell (emphasis added)
Yeah, I'm always surprised to see Isbell let a clunker like that sneak through after the attention to detail in his DBT songs. But he's fallen back on cliches and gotten lazy with the rhyming a number of times on his solo albums.
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post #35 of 106
4/21/09 at 1:58pm
Quote:
Fergalicious definition make them boys go loco
They want my treasure so they get their pleasures from my photo.
You could see me, you can't squeeze me.
I ain't easy, I ain't sleazy.
I got reasons why I tease 'em.
Boys just come and go like seasons.


Fergalicious (so delicious)
But I ain't promiscuous.
And if you was suspicious,
All that shit is fictitious.
I blow kisses (mmmwwahhh)
That puts them boys on rock, rock.
And they be lining down the block just to watch what I got (four, tres, two, uno)

Quote:
How come everytime you come around,
My London, London bridge, wanna go down like,
London, London, London, wanna go down like,
London, London, London, we going down like...
Fannnntastic.
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post #36 of 106
4/21/09 at 3:04pm
I like it, but I wish I could have been in the room when Stipe ran this past Mills and Buck:

It's easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my proud
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post #37 of 106
4/21/09 at 4:05pm
Ladies and gentlemen, the worst lyrics ever:

Quote:
Originally Posted by The lyrics that plague my nightmares

I would swallow my pride
I would choke on the rhines
But the lack thereof would leave me empty inside
I would swallow my doubt turn it inside out find nothing but faith in nothing
Want to put my tender heart in a blender
Watch it spin around to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous then I'm through with you

I burn burn like a wicker cabinet chalk white and oh so frail
I see our time had gotten stale
The tick tock of the clock is painful
All sane and logical
I want to tear it off the wall
I hear words and clips and phrases
I think sick like ginger ale
My stomach turns and I exhale

---

So cal is where my mind states but its not my state of mind
I'm not as ugly sad as you
Or am I origami
Folded up and just pretend demented as the motives in your head
Fuck you, Eve 6.
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post #38 of 106
4/21/09 at 4:09pm
How about this line from Interpol's college radio hit Obstacle 1:
"Her stories are boring and stuff / She’s always calling my bluff"
I like Interpol for the most part but that just makes me cringe.

Oh and just about an instance of rhyming "money" with "honey". By the time Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl came out my patience with that scheme was worn to nub.

EDIT:Yes, Greg. Agreed
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post #39 of 106
4/21/09 at 4:16pm
More nonsense:

Quote:
In the white room with black curtains near the station.
Blackroof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings.
Silver horses ran down moonbeams in your dark eyes.
Dawnlight smiles on you leaving, my contentment.


I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines;
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves.


You said no strings could secure you at the station.
Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows.
I walked into such a sad time at the station.
As I walked out, felt my own need just beginning.


I'll wait in the queue when the trains come back;
Lie with you where the shadows run from themselves.


At the party she was kindness in the hard crowd.
Consolation for the old wound now forgotten.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.


I'll sleep in this place with the lonely crowd;
Lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves.
Agreed with Greg's selection; that is a miserable song.
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post #40 of 106
4/21/09 at 4:26pm
I was working in books and music store when that Eve 6 album came out. It's a song to trigger the serial killer in a man. But people ate up these high school-ass creative writing lyrics like it was a sonnet.

EDIT: you want to lose any hope for the future of man, read the years-spanning comments here
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post #41 of 106
4/21/09 at 4:26pm
Quote:
In the desert, you can't remember your name,
Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
And, as much as I love the shit out of "Boogie Shoes,"

Quote:
I want to do it til I can't get enough
fucking kills me, every time.
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post #42 of 106
4/21/09 at 5:14pm
Greg may have a winner with Eve 6 - I seem to remember Bush having similarly terrible lyrics but I don't hate myself enough to confirm that.
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post #43 of 106
4/21/09 at 5:17pm
I'm not sure this quite counts as lyrics, but from the spoken poem at the end of "Knights in White Satin":

Quote:
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one
Lonely man cries for love and has none
New mother picks up and suckles her son
Senior citizens wish they were young
That's about as hamfisted as a quatrain can get.
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post #44 of 106
4/21/09 at 5:26pm
And again, total nonsense (although it's one of my favorite songs)

Quote:
Oh the heads that turn
Make my back burn
And the heads that turn...
Make my back, make my back burn

The sparkle in your eyes
Keeps me alive
And the sparkle in your eyes
Keeps me alive, keeps me alive

The world
And the world turns around
The world and the world, yeah
The world drags me down

Oh, the heads that turn
Make my back burn
And the heads that turn
Make my back, make my back burn, yeah

Yeah-hey...

The fire in your eyes
Keeps me alive
And the fire in your eyes
Keeps me alive
I'm sure in her you'll find
The sanctuary
I'm sure in her you'll find
The sanctuary

And the world
The world turns around
And the world and the world
The world drags me down
And the world and the world and the world
The world turns around
And the world and the world and the world and the world
The world drags me down

Ah...

Hey-yeah...

And the world
And the world turns around
And the world and the world
Yeah, the world drags me down
And the world
Yeah, the world turns around
And the world and the world
The world drags me down

Sanctuary
Sanctuary
Sanctuary
Sanctuary
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post #45 of 106
4/21/09 at 7:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrdrow View Post

Oh and just about an instance of rhyming "money" with "honey".
Listen to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's Raising Sand. Existence justified.
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post #46 of 106
4/21/09 at 8:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chavez View Post
Listen to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's Raising Sand. Existence justified.
Ok. That doesn't beat you over the head with it. But still, and I know it's impossible to retire a rhyme, but its jersey needs to be raised to the rafters.
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post #47 of 106
4/21/09 at 8:09pm
Thread Starter 
Greg: I think it's "choke on the rinds".

I know it all makes sense now and you've changed your whole outlook, right?

And Judas, I never thought before of just how dumb the lyrics to "Jump" actually are. I still love the song, but ya made me think.
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post #48 of 106
4/21/09 at 8:44pm
Just for you, Brian:

Quote:
It must be your skin I'm sinking in
Must be for real 'cause now I can feel
And I didn't mind, it's not my kind
It's not my time to wonder why

Every thing's gone white and every thing's gray
Now you're here, now you're away
I don't want this, remember that
I'll never forget where you're at

Don't let the days go by, Glycerine, Glycerine

I'm never alone, I'm alone all the time
Are you at one or do you lie
We live in a wheel where everyone steals
But when we rise, it's like strawberry fields

If I treated you bad, you bruise my face
Couldn't love you more, you got a beautiful taste
Don't let the days go by
Could have been easier on you

I couldn't change though I wanted to
Should have been easier by three
Our old friend 'Fear' and you and me
Glycerine, Glycerine

Don't let the days go by, Glycerine
Don't let the days go by, Glycerine, Glycerine
Glycerine, Glycerine

Bad mood whine again
Bad mood whine again
As she falls around me

I needed you more when we wanted us less
I could not kiss, just regress
It might just be clear, simple and plain
Well, that's just fine, that's just one of my names

Don't let the days go by
Could have been easier on you, you, you
Glycerine, Glycerine, Glycerine, Glycerine
Oh Gavin Rosdale, you mad genius
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post #49 of 106
4/21/09 at 8:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg Clark View Post
Ladies and gentlemen, the worst lyrics ever:



Fuck you, Eve 6.
That video featured a lot of rain or something.
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post #50 of 106
4/21/09 at 9:57pm
I still get annoyed when I listen to U2's "Vertigo" and hear, "Uno, dos, tres, catorce!" I don't even care if it's supposed to skip to 14, it bugs me.
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