No challenge up yet I see. Here’s one from me then. Think of a song that you like but that includes a rhyming couplet that really grates. Something that makes you think: oh, come on you could have done better than that! I love the Stranglers but it’s no secret that some of their lyrics are terribly facile and some of the forced rhymes they have come up with over the years are just excruciating.
For some reason the following really grated:
If only he could write a sonnet
He’d place his life upon it
It’s from their last Hugh period album, 10.
Can you do worse?
Now there’s a challenge!
There are many artists whose songbooks are ripe for the picking – the first that sprung to mind was that of Difford & Tillbrook. So many bad rhymes to choose from (Up The Junction is full of them) but I’ll go for the following, from Labelled With Love:
This is just one of a dozen or so such rhymes – I could also have quoted:
bottle/hovel
reminders/china
pilot/excitement
lesson/texan
etc, etc…
Labelled With Love
Squeeze were bound to figure, I thought. Excellent choice!
Great choice! Such a lovely song; so many cringeable lines. The “sod all/bottle” one always makes me wince.
Train – Hey Soul Sister
I’m so obsessed
My heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest
So many icky attempts at outdoing Jason Mraz, it’s hard to know where to begin.
New to me but surely a contender
Beth Orton, Blood Red River
“Never did find my way home in time for my dinner”
Aggh!!
Oh dear. Even the best slip up from time to time…
Toffeegirl suggests the following from The Sound of Music soundtrack:
I know – shocking isn’t it?
Thought it was: a Jew, a Jew to you & you & you?
Ah, now if our erstwhile founder/administrator were still here, I can think of a lyrical couplet involving some landmarks in Tanzania that might get a mention!
Does Phil Lynott’s clumsiest moment really need to be dissected again?
Er…yes
A-a-a-a-n-n-d where do we think that might be then, eh Phil?
The supermarket? The hairdresser’s? Mmmm, I might just put a quid on it being from the JAIL!!!!
See what you mean – but why couldn’t it be in another town?
Or a town with more than one jail?
Ace song but with one truly excrutiating rap-rhyme FAIL:
(I won’t name the song to start with, ’cause I’d like to see how long it takes Shane to ID it – my money’s on under ten seconds from him reading this)
“……….Rock drippin’ from my every vowel
I’ve got the soul of the sixties like Ginsberg’s Howl”
morning DsD – Bug Powder Dust – Sir. Instant.
Brill Track – weirdly posted for me on facebook just last night.
Got it. One of the most cringeworthy and distasteful in my collection; this wasn’t even sexy or appealing to the raging-hormone teenage version of me.
Ian Gillan’s Roller was, musically at least, a powerful highlight from the Mr.Universe album that re-established his credentials, but the lines
didn’t do him any favours at all.
I reckon even AC/DC would have thought twice about using that one.
Dond! I think Spinal Tap may have even cringed at that.
Just me still up, is there? OK, time for bed then.
First thought, probably too easy.
Not even a fan of the song, but this one i like a lot better than the original.
just realized that i think i misunderstood the challenge – you’re looking for words that don’t quite rhyme.
They can rhyme, that’s not the challenge. They just have to hurt…
Oh, ok. Those are pretty painful. To me anyway.
Depeche Mode are persistant offenders.
Here comes love. It’s like honey
You can’t buy it with money
Erm….
99p from the local supermarket
A bit of a cheat, because “cakegate” was not so long ago …
I think Suzi and I upset JonD…
Ooh and
“I’ma get, get, get, get you drunk
Get you love drunk off my hump”
(my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump)
And there’s…
“And we sang shang-a-lang
And we ran with the gang”
(singing do wop do doobie doo aye or something .. Tin will know)
Wasn’t that a lovely Stranglers song!
These guys have to be some of the worst songwriters ever.
wtf?
The Nabakov one is too easy, but Sting has a motherlode of cringe to pick through.
Sting is probably the worst offender for me because there seems to be this self assurance that he is very clever that goes along with all the bad rhymes. I think people sometimes confuse intelligence with knowing a lot of long words!
Simon LeBon gives him a good run for the money though.
I’ve got a bootleg concert recording from the early 70s in which Neil says these lines from Sugar Mountain were the lamest he ever wrote.
Now you’re underneath the stairs
And you’re givin’ back some glares
To the people who you met
And it’s your first cigarette.
I’m laying heavy odds ole Neil deliberately forgot these from Last Trip To Tulsa
Well, I used to be a woman,
you know
I took you for a ride,
I let you fly my airplane
It looked good for your pride.
Scandal – Taiyou To Kimi Ga Egaku Story
I like pop rockers Scandal a lot actually and I really like this song, but this couplet irritates me – it just seems lazy to me like they wanted to finish the song quickly ! ! !
Taiyou to kimi ga egaku story sou
Koikogarete kasoku suru kodou
(The story being written by the sun and you
My heart’s beating faster, burning with love)
But I do like this song, maybe that is why I find the couplet so irritating ! ! !
Scandal – Taiyou To Kimi Ga Egaku Story
Link Here
So why didn’t anybody say: you know, TP, that’s really terrible?
Your daddy was a sergeant major
You didn’t want to but he made you
Wipe his brass from time to time
It left a picture in your mind
Yes, I expect it did…The rest of the lyrics are nearly as bad. (But the guitar is awesome.)
All Or Nothing by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Much as I love a bit of Nick Cave he can come out with some clinkers.
This one in particular leaves me spittin’ cotton.
“She Got Perfumed Breasts And Raven Hair
Sprinkled With Wedding Confettis
And A Gang Of Garrotters Were All Giving Me Stares
Armed, As They Were, With Machetes”
My particular bugbear when it comes to rhyming couplets isn’t so much the terrible rhymes as the mangling of syntax in order to get rhyming words at the end of each line. Can’t think of any examples at the moment as I’m completely occupied with getting an article written, but will come back to this.
I admire Bruce Springsteen a lot for his songwriting, not least because he seldom uses the poetic inversion…which makes it even worse when he does…
Tonight, tonight the strip’s just right
Out of our way, mister, you best keep
And even then it’s not a proper rhyme! Racing In The Street (But kudos for the internal rhyme, Bruce. I love me some internal rhyme.)
I used to like Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man2 until my late wife pointed out that it sounded like they were singing “I’m arse-hole man”.
Now I can’t take it seriously
Just spotted, I’m signed out. This is Mitch
“If I was a sculptor, but then again, no”
Then why did you bring it up, Elton? Not really a rhyming one, but it’s always annoyed me.
24 Hour Party people quote.
Well if that’s the case my arse paints Pollocks’.
for this challenge I present Shaun Ryder.
let’s just jump in anywhere – okay this do:
Happy Mondays – W. F. L. (Vince Clarke Remix)
wrote for luck – okay, a better title than wrote in crayon on a fag packet – but that’s as far as the genius goes. Love the band – but as clunky as Cortina over speed bumps and sleeping policemen.
“Gene” surely?
don’t call me Shirley on hear* – gene – yes I expect so – I was writing quickly …
multitasking isn’t a strong point.
It actually scans better typed than when he sings it – oddly enough.
*Here Here.
Like Shaun’s stuff (when he’s not too wasted), but agree about the hype. Same goes for those pushing Alex Turner as a new Dylan.
Neither are a Darnielle or Devoto.
But that the thing isn’t it – I DON’T want them to be the NEW anyone –
Happy Mondays were brill being ramshackle wasters – I mean, their stuff was just a ‘run of the mill’ indie band until a few listens to some DJ’s then they accidently ended up creating ‘Baggy’
I like ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ better than any Dylan I’ve ever heard – apart from ‘.. homesickblues’ but that’s just me – I’ve tried my best – but nothing seeps in. Alex wrote a perfect album of MY time and it gathered in ever pore of my body – not the new anyone – and not for any other era… just suited me better.
… and the Goats are not perfect – but perfect enough for me. etc. it’s all personal isn’t it – what connects and what doesn’t.
I googled some Clodplay lyrics last night. Fish in a barrel.
Codplay – Barrel
Look at the fish
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah they were all a barrel
I came along
I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called barrel
So then I took my turn
Oh what a thing to have done
And it was all a barrel
Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something edible
You know you know I love you so
You know I love you so
I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh what a thing to do
Cause you were a barrel
I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all a barrel
Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something edible
And you know
For you I’d bleed myself dry
For you I’d bleed myself dry
It’s true
Look how much brine’s for you
Look how much brine’s for you
Look there’s brine for
Look how much brine’s for you
Look how much brine’s for you
Look how they shine
Excellent, shane. Too many lines to be authentic Codpail, though.
Look at this new barrel I found.
The fish are swimming at the speed of sound.
I googled some Dead lyrics… and fell asleep.
Really, shoey? Was that actually worth saying? Did someone (you, of all people!) need to jump to Chris Martin’s defence?
Some of John Barlow’s lyrics may not pass muster (e.g. ‘Ah, child of countless trees/Ah, child of boundless seas’*) but Robert Hunter is an excellent lyricist; good enough for Dylan to use as a co-writer, at any rate.
[*yet even that song, Cassidy, ends with this excellent couplet:
Fare thee well now
Let your life proceed by its own designs
Nothing to tell now
Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine]
Yep, it was funny.
You take plenty of shots – no problem with that. Not sure you, of all people, need to be quite so precious if a few come back.
Chris – I agree with Shoey, he every right to go tit for tat – everyone likes things for different reasons – Coldplay, I believe, were a gateway band for his daughters – if I remember an old thread correctly (sorry if I don’t – but he has defended them in the past)
The theme here is:
Think of a song that you like but that includes a rhyming couplet that really grates. Something that makes you think: oh, come on you could have done better than that!
It’s easy to dismiss thing we find tedious – but in doing so we can easily tread on others toes. As shoey does with the Dead, here.
Yellow re-writen suits the fish and barrel and is meant in jest. Sorry about that. We should remember it’s tough to judge quite what others hold dear (or at least don’t sneer at) – for whatever reason.
But we should be able to create posts with constructive and personal opinion – but flippant dismissal can go wrong.
Oh, OK. The view from this lower peg is still good. (And that’s a fair point about having to like the song, shane).
Well I ain’t often right but I’ve never been wrong
It seldom turns out the way it does in the song.
Once in a while you get shown the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right
Joking aside & in the interests of world peace, I will concede that The Dead’s lyrics aren’t too shabby.
Would of thought that there must be couplet or two in their prodigious output that would give even the most die-hard of fans a wtf? moment.
C’mon. ‘Spill it.
Oh & for the record:
Got Coldplay A listed during “colours” week. Their only A listing. My joint-first A-listing with Bill Nelson the same week.
My girls still like ‘em as do I, here & there. Doesn’t mean that Mr Martin couldn’t use a better thesaurus & cut-out a few woo-ooos & insipid tunes.
Thanks for sorting that one out guys. I was hoping the challenge would be provocative but feared a “spat” here. I should have known better. Spill etiquette and common sense to the rescue.
Cool, shoey. Well, this is another unimpressive bit of Barlow’s work:
Ah, life’s infinite diversity
Great, amazing, majesty
And it’s bigger than a drive-in movie, oo-wee
And it’s bigger than a drive-in movie, oo-wee
But I’d struggle to find a clunking Hunter lyric (amy?, maki?).
Yeah, that sucks. Nice one!
Final season of Breaking Bad has just started here, btw. Have a new TV suggestion for you, but it’ll have to wait for one of those earworms.
Can’t think of anything by Robert Hunter, but wasn’t this from Pigpen?
That sounds like a bit of Pigpen rapping to me, amy. He could get quite preposterous, bless ‘im.
Shoey: don’t tell me anything about BB season 4 or 5! I’m being a good boy and waiting for legit copies.
Been hoping that this subject would come up, and now it has I’ve got little time to indulge as I’ve a plane to catch later to take me back to the UK for a family wedding………………….
As much as I admire Roger Waters for the subject he tackles and the depth of feeling that he has for his music, there are time when he struggles to be too clever. And sometimes that just dosen’t scan.
From the album Radio K.A.O.S. we have a first verse in the track “Home” that tries to please people from all over the world.
“Could be Jerusalem, or it could be Ciaro
Could be Berlin, or it could be Prague.
Could be Moscow, could be New York,
Could be Llanelli and it could be Warrington.
Could be Warsaw and it could be Moose Jaw,
Could be Rome,
Everybody got somewhere they call home”.
Bet that’s the first time Llanelli has had a mention in a rock song !
So clunky it’s beautiful.
Where to start?
Summer The First Time – Bobby Goldsboro
. . . whoops, that was me. But I’ve been on lots of safeguarding courses, so should be doing more to protect vulnerable adults (from exploitative rhymes).
While I’m trying to think of a clunking couplet, I need to get this one off my chest:
The Shamen – Move Any Mountain
Great euphoric tune, and nothing wrong with the refrain “I can move, move, move any mountain”… till you get to Mr C’s rap:
- “Moving any mountain we’re capable of moving…”
- Wait a minute: so you can’t move any mountain, can you? Just the ones you’re capable of moving. So, which mountains can you move? Hm?
- Um…
- Everest? Kilimanjaro? Mont Blanc?
- Well, no. Just, you know, any of the ones we’re capable of moving.
- Ben Nevis? Scafell Pike? What about hills? Would you be capable of moving a hill?
Ruins the song for me.
Clock DVA – Beautiful Losers
The line “I ran & smashed my favourite portraiture”. Is there even such a word? Implies he has a whole collection of portraitures. Arty tosser.
Yes, there is such a word. I was going to say that it isn’t a thing that can be smashed, as such, because it’s a skill – or an art, if you prefer (the one of making portaits, naturally) – but then I foolishly went and looked it up, and it turns out that it’s also a formal word for an actual portrait.
Depends what they’re done on, I supose, but I imagine that smashing yer average portrait might be difficult. Paper? Hmm. Dip it in liquid nitrogen first and maybe it’d be smashable. Canvas (stretched)? I suppose you could smash the wooden stretcher without recourse to liquid nitrogen, but it’d take some doing…
Yeah, “ripped” would’ve been slightly better – if only for the assonance.
Don’t have a problem with that one, assuming it’s a metaphorical mountain. Shaman lyrics are often quite sharp compared to your typical dance tune fare.
Yeah, but even so,he’s saying they’re only able to move the ones they’re capable of moving, which is a much less impressive claim than any.
True d’at.
I can move, move, move any mountain (except the ones I can’t). It’s a bit like Elton the sculptor all over again.
I am contractually obliged to add poor Tom McRae and his ’2nd Law’ -
I will leave the video in – because he needs to explain it himself:
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying an Echo and the Bunnymen ‘Best of’. Love the toons, the arrangements, McCullough’s voice, Sergeant’s guitar, but, oh dear, the lyrics. I struggle to find a couplet that has any meaning whatsoever. Most never rise above the following blather and twaddle:
Stab a sorry heart
With your favorite finger
Paint the whole world blue
And stop your tears from stinging
Hear the cavemen singing
Good news they’re bringing
Seven seas
Swimming them so well
Glad to see
My face among them
Kissing the tortoise shell
I’ll dond that one. When Mac’s good, he’s very, very good, but when he’s bad….
Not quite sure why he’s “pining for the pork of the porcupine” either, but wasn’t a shark-jump for me, like some of the Ocean Rain stuff.
“Most never rise above the following blather and twaddle”. You are being too kind. Most of the Crocodiles album makes sense but the lyrics in songs like My White Devil and Yo-Yo Man. Well, Mac should’ve done what Sergeant does and kept his mouth shut.
Anyway, I have listened to the Macc Lads so that you never ever have to and the one line that has stayed with me is:
Get weavin’ in Macclesfield
Get weavin’ an’ get yer knackers feeled
A fairly accurate portrayal of lads on the piss at a touring fair in the mid-80s. Must be sung with a Macc accent.
And because I listen to a lot of Finnish bands singing in English I have a whole library of bad rhymes. Most of it you can pass off as Finglish and say “well at least it’s not The Jesus and Mary Chain singing In a Hole with it’s ‘How can something crawl within my rubber holy baked bean tin’ line,” but there is always Danny and Armi with I Wanna Love You Tender.
Damn! This was meant to be a song I liked. Well I like the Danny and Armi song for all the wrong reasons.
So Julian Cope take a bow here’s Elegant Chaos:
People I see
Just remind me of mooing
Like a cow on the grass
And that’s not to say
That there’s anything wrong
With being a cow anyway
But people are people
With the added advantage
Of the spoken word
We’re getting on fine
But I feel more of a man
When I get with the herd.
I’m drunk at the moment, so the herd and the word makes sense.
Oh Depeche Mode that “why you and I should get along so awfully” line.
No clue what those Happy Death Men are up to.
I very nearly went for Elegant Chaos yesterday when I saw maki’s challenge! And then I realised that I actually think those lyrics are rather brilliant. In a bonkers way.
Happy Death Men! Who cares what they’re doing? The point is to take ‘em to your heart. And er… Bugger that’s another theory shot to shit. It made sense when I was 14. HDM has brass on it to make it sound more meaningful, but really it’s camo for Mac’s lyrics.
It’s all about religion, innit? That was my understanding of “Seven Seas”.
And specifically Catholicism. Isn’t “kissing the tortoise shell” about kissing the Pope’s ring (arf) or some such? I have no idea where I got this notion from, but I’ve believed it for decades.
Somebody in the US wrote a thesis about religious imagery in Mac’s lyrics. Crazy. Anyway, Cope’s lyrics have always seemed absolutely barking stars to me but when I’ve been playing his songs to someone more normal than me, I have suffered. Reynard the Fox cost me dearly, I knew I should’ve played her some Cocteau Twins.
Reynard is pretty chilling. You’ve probably got a better chance of getting laid with something from the Pairubu catalogue.
You could well be correct. He should have called it “Seven Seals” & made it more scarey & less Beatlesque
That’s next week’s challenge sorted: “Songs that will get you laid”.
Much though I love him, lines like “what’s it like to be a loon? I liken it to a balloon” did oblige me to work a lot harder to keep a little Marc in my heart.
Slightly off-topic, The Beatles “Hey Jude” contains a perfectly good couplet rhyming “carry the world upon your shoulder” with “making your life a little colder”.
Unfortunately, later on in the song, Paul couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with “you’re looking for someone to perform with”.
This should have made him re-write the (rather naff) line itself but no – he had to come up with “the movement you need is on your shoulder” as a sort of stop-gap. Even though it didn’t even rhyme.
“I’ll think of something better later”.
“No” said John. “That’s the best line in the song. Leave it in”.
John could be a bastard sometimes.
This one is probably a bit too obvious (except that possibly I’m the only person on here to like Snap!):
“I’m serious as cancer
When I say rhythm is a dancer.”
Deeply, deeply crass.
Crass is one of my favourite words recently.
“They said that we were trash,
Well the name is Crass, not Clash”
Sheddi likes Snap!
agreed – love the song (no really, I do !), but the couplet never sat comfortably with me either
Brett Anderson has always been given to writing rather iffy lyrics (with a limited range of preoccupations: cement, gasoline, etc), but the lyrics to the last (to my ears) vaguely listenable Suede single, She’s In Fashion, may well take the biscuit:
Yeah… “shape of a cigarette”. That one always annoyed me, too. Where does he get them from?
Can’t really have a thread about dubious lyrics without Jim Kerr, Richard Jobson or Gary Numan. Here’s Gaz’s “I’m An Agent” which may or may not be about his record company. You decide:
Send in eyes
Thought’s of crashing, all those pictures
Send in thoughts of john the god
Send in dreams
Lovers on corners, clean my sheets
Your only chance is break the state
We are clean
Don’t ask, I’m an agent
Send in change
Secretaries, nothing more
You can be replaced you know
Send in chance
Bad conditions, talk of leaving
Talk of walking out on me
Send in you
Send in pain, send in lies
Send in words that I believe
Send in you
Just watch the face, your sure to see
Something, give this game away
Send in you
Get her out, get her out
Call me, just don’t say the name
Ah Jim Kerr is the master of WTF lyrics: In Trance as Mission
Airmobility
Dressability
Tranquil
You’ll never meet again
Eyes small
Take another fine walk
Expose
Society can gain
Great face
White soul
Great place
Then say goodbye
Time for me to sleep the Big Sleep:
We were on the top and the world was spinning
We were only young in the whirlpool of warning
Communication lost in the thundering rain style
A shelter from the storm in the early beginning
Going out in the Big Sleep, out in the Big Sleep
Could have been years, you know it could have been years
Or only seconds ago
Goodnight
Think he got away with it because of his straight faced, authorative delivery, as if he was imparting deeply meaningful information.
Jobson got away with it as his accent disguised the words.
I’ve been in bed for two days with a nasty virus, but I’m pleased to say that I’m now recovering and on the way to my usual pedantic self – those are the lyrics to Sweat In Bullet, not In Trance As Mission.
Fits the great track/terrible lyrics remit though. Donds!
The rhymes in this one really wind me up.
To her credit, the author of those lines has more or less disowned the song. (It does have a nice bit where the singer admonishes Jane to wake up and smell the coffee although not in those words. Better words.)
All About Eve, “Blind Lemon Sam”
Not on Youtube.
The Undead – Sanctuary
A prime slice of mid-tempo early 80s punk, almost ruined by a pointless and painful rhyme at the end
“Sanctuary
Thank you very…”
Ok. I absolutely love this song. And the lyrics totally suck.
THAT’S what he’s singing?! Sheesh…
I always thought he was a such total hottie. But if his idea of erotic images in his head is b&e, rape at knifepoint followed up by a post-coital throat slitting, well, that’s kind of a turnoff.