The world's worst songs

The ghastliest song lyrics ever will have you reaching for a ladder
By Nury Vittachi
*
Schools all over Asia have started teaching English poetry using pop song lyrics. This plan is excellent in every way, except for one small drawback: the average pop lyricist has as much poetry in his soul as a bag of ready-mixed concrete with accountancy qualifications.

                Here’s proof. Your humble narrator was hanging out in a radio station with a deejay friend recently playing Rebel Rebel by David Bowie. We noticed the lyrics were just random phrases: “You got your mother in a whirl, she’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl, hey babe, your hair’s all right.”

                So we faded that out and put on Champagne Supernova by Oasis, one of the top bands of recent years. It went: “Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball.” Hey, Liam, can I give you a bit of info? Fast things are fast, whereas slow things are slow.

We went to the cabinet for music from the 1960s, a time when they knew how to write lyrics. One of the biggest hits was Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park: “Someone left the cake out in the rain/ I don’t think I can take it/ It took so long to bake it/ And I’ll never have that recipe again/ oh no, oh no, no, no, oh nooo.”

                We switched to Asian rock groups. From India, we found a song from a group called Top Hero with a chorus which goes, “Smoking is injurious to health, smoking is fashion today.”

East Asians we found to be oddly sentimental. Cantopop star Leslie Cheung sang: “You have left/ Now everything is falling apart/ From that day on/ I fall in love with my left hand.” A hit by Japanese band Strawberry Path goes: “Every little thing you used to do makes my heart to cry.”

                Native English speakers were no better. Still You Turn Me On by Emerson Lake and Palmer has these lines: “Every day a little sadder/ A little madder/ Someone fetch me a ladder.” To which we can only, reply, yes, someone give him a ladder and somewhere high to jump from.

                The winner of a bad lyrics contest held by the BBC was Des’ree, with a song called Life:  “I don’t want to see a ghost/ It’s the sight I fear the most/ I’d rather have a piece of toast.”

Logic problems are common in lyrics. Consider Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy.  “Tonight there’s going to be a jail break somewhere in this town,” sings Phil Lynott. Okay, Phil, let’s talk about this. Where in the town do you think the jailbreak might take place? How about—just to pick a location at random—the jail?

Sometimes rock singers get ambitious and try to write lines that rhyme. So in Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, we have the couplet: “Generals gathered in their masses/ Just like witches at black masses.” Hey, guys, “masses” doesn’t rhyme with “masses”. Look closely. Yes. They are the same word! Incredible.

                But I think Asia can be proud of being the birthplace of the worst pop song in history. I refer, of course, to Haseena Maan Jayegi’s What is Mobile Number? Which goes like this: “What is mobile number? What is your smile number?”

                To which we reply, what is point of this song? Why it make us feel like jumping off ladder?

Comments

[Gurudutt]

dumbest lyrics of an oldie super duper hit from indian cinema:

my husband went to rangoon
called me on teleefoon
i luv u very much

[Lesley]

I used Alanis Moresette's 'Isn't it Ironic' to teach - irony - to my Form 4 class. It turned out to be confusing and frustrating not for the students but for me as I realized that "A black fly in your chardonnay' isn't really ironic, just a bit of bad luck unless there was a big build up of a story to explain why that black fly was actually ironic. Then her other examples didn't really explain it clearly. I shelved the idea of using that song ever again. A can of worms...

[Nury]

Bang on target. I once saw a comedian do an entire section of a routine on the fact that Ms Morrisette has written a song called irony without actually understanding what irony means!

The sad truth is that pop music is about the music, and -- much of the time -- the lyrics are irrelevant.

[Vince A]

In fairness to whoever Liam is (and I confess to not even knowing who Oasis are), I think I 'get' the poetry conveyed by walking slowly down the hall yet feeling as if you're moving faster than a cannonball.

Imagine having to head to a dreaded destination and trying to make your way as slowly as you can, trying to postpone as much as you can the arrival of the undesired inevitable.

To Lesley, wikipedia has an interesting discussion of the irony in the song's title.

[Lesley]

Come on Vince, Oasis were the biggest band of the 90's. You can look them up on wikipedia.

And I have to agree with your comments, it is a good line.

[Jayesh]

A few more Bollywood smash hits contending for the worst song title:
Bheedi Jalaile Jigar Se Piya
"Light up a cigarette from your liver oh lover"
(The translation of the whole song for your enjoyment --> http://mariajju.com/dance/bollywood4.html)

dekha jo tujhe yaar, dil mein baji guitar
"upon seeing you friend, a guitar started playing in my heart"

Both of them are kinda catchy, but make very little sense.

Then there's LFO's 90's hit "Summergirls", which still doesn't entirely make sense
(Lyrics --> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/lfo/summergirls.html)

Guessing there's a load more....

[Nury]

Jayesh is bang on target. Here is a portion of the lyrics of the LFO song he mentions:

Think about that summer and I bug,
Cause I miss it
Like the color purple,
Macaroni and cheese,
Ruby red slippers and a bunch of trees
Call you up, but what's the use?
I like Kevin Bacon.

[Soto]

Liam Gallagher may well have been trying to describe a particular paradoxical feeling, and I think Nury has taken his words out of context to make them look silly.
In the record itself, the next line is all about "getting high", so seen as a song about being in a drug-addled condition, the paradox of those two contrasting images may well have been deliberate.

[the prof]

Soto could be right but let's have the other possibility as well. Vince A and Lesley may be displaying classic signs of the tendency referred to in theories of "deconstructionism". This is a literary theory in which the reader is recognized as having placed meaning onto a piece of text by inferring one or more layers of meaning which it may or may not contain. Typically, in pop songs, the words are put together with minimal thought to meaning (let alone layers of meaning).
Yet once a song becomes famous, the lyrics are given weight which they may or may not deserve.
The master of this technique, of course, was John Lennon. Many of his songs are lists of random phrases, but have gone down in history as filled with meanings. He appears not to have been a particularly kind individual and there are several interviews on record where he sneers at his fans for finding meaning in his songs.
Here's an example of a Lennon song from the Beatles' White Album:

Come on is such a joy
Come on is take it easy
Take it easy
Take it easy
Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey.

[Lesley]

I think I was guilty of deconstructionism, now that I come to think of it Liam and Noel Gallagher were a couple of Manchester Scallies and not poets cos afterall your my wonderwall...

David Bowie often used cut up strips of paper with random lines on them and just shuffled them round until he was happy.

Do these people deserve all that cash?

Its easy to write a pop song!

[Rohit]

Here is the WORST lyrics ever from a Bollywood movie. English translation given in brackets

Telephone dhun me hasne waali
(her laughter rhymes with telephone ring)
Melbourne machli machalne waali
(she wiggles like a Melbourne fish)
digital mein sur hai taraasha
(her melody is tuned in digital)
madonna hai ya natasha
(Are you madonna or Natasha)
zaakir hussain tabala tu hai
kya
(Are you the tabla of Zaakir Hussain)