Awful Song Lyrics

To me, the worst song ever written is “Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano. I know…it’s a Christmas classic and some people love it, but I despise it like I despise high taxes and lying politicians. I despise it like I despise stepping on gum or getting a group text. Have you looked at the lyrics? The song is three minutes and three seconds long. There are 232 words. All of them are “Feliz Navidad…Prospero ano y Felicidad…I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas…From the bottom of my heart.” That’s 19 words. My second sentence of this paragraph is 22 words long. I timed myself, and it took me 27 seconds to type the second sentence. I want a song that takes longer than 27 seconds to write.

But I didn’t start this blog post because of “Feliz Navidad.” I started it because I listened to an Adele song. Wow, she sings great, and it was a pretty song, sung by a woman who can charge $1400 for a concert ticket in the fourth deck of a stadium that seats 40,000 people. It got to the chorus, and she sang these words. “But I set fire to the rain. Watched it pour as I touched your face. Well, it burned while I cried ’cause I heard it screaming out your name.” What? She watched the pouring, burning-on-fire rain while she touched your face, and she cried because the pouring, burning-on-fire rain screamed out your name? It would make more sense to set rain to the fire, but that makes almost no sense either. I mean, you could flood a fire, but surely you can’t set fire to a flood, can you?

And this motivated me. What are some other ridiculous lyrics?

Pharrell Williams has a catchy song called “Happy” that has a fun music video which might even motivate a person with a sour disposition to get up and dance and be “happy.” But what about the first line of the chorus? “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.” I’m just going to be transparent here. I’ve never felt like a room of any kind in my entire life, and I don’t know why I would. But if I felt like a room and the roof was missing, wow, I can only imagine how happy that would make me. Aussie comedian, Kate Langbroek, asked Pharrell why a room without a roof was happy. His response was it was “metaphorical for one’s space without limit.” Oh. Except a room has four walls, limiting anyone in it. And if I needed a space without limit, and metaphorically speaking I was in a room without a roof, wouldn’t I need to be able to fly to get to the space without limits? It’s a dumb lyric.

There’s a song called “Summer Girls” by LFO. None of the lyrics make sense but I cherry picked two verses for the sake of time and space. These are the ridiculous lines:

You’re the best girl that 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

 

Stayed all summer then went back home

Macaulay Culkin wasn’t Home Alone

Fell deep in love, but now we ain’t speaking

Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton

 

I was so impressed by these lyrics, I took three minutes to write my own to mirror them:

You’re the best girl, and I love you

Magic Johnson, jersey 32.

When you take a bite, you belch like a toad

George Martin wrote Game of Thrones

 

Stayed all summer then went back to school

Ryan Gosling wasn’t Deadpool

We played cards inside your trailer

Ron Howard was Opie Taylor

 

I may have written a hit song.

 

The group, Sade, sang the classic song, “Smooth Operator,” co-written by Sade Adu and Ray St. John, with the classic line, “Coast to coast, LA to Chicago.” Together, they only managed to get about 70% across the United States, but I’m giving them both 50% credit for the stupid lyric.

Oasis has a song called “Champagne Supernova." In it are these classic lines:

“Slowly walkin’ down the hall

Faster than a cannonball

Where were you while we were getting high?”

 

Now, here is an actual metaphor, Pharrell Williams. A metaphor is a comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated. With a metaphor, the qualities of one thing are figuratively carried over to another. You know, like how a person is like a cannonball because a person walks slow but faster than a fast thing that shoots out of a cannon. I looked it up. A cannonball travels about 820 feet per second, which is considerably slower than a person ambling down a hallway.

 

In “Vertigo” by U2, Bono masters Spanish counting. “Uno, dos, tres, catorce!” One, two, three, fourteen. When asked about the lyric, Bono admitted alcohol might have been involved.

 

“Sk8er Boi” by Avril Lavigne begins with these three lines:

“He was a boy

She was a girl

Can I make it any more obvious?”

 

You mean any more vague? Ambiguous? Nebulous? Unclear? Imprecise? I used a thesaurus. She should have used a dictionary.

 

The Killers have a song called “Human” where they posed a serious question. “I’m down on my knees, searching for the answer…Are we human or are we dancer?” Since the lyricist is searching close to the floor, I assume “dancer” is a tiny species I’m unaware of.

Rihanna sings the song “What’s My Name?” where she attempts a math calculation in the midst of her song. “The square root of 69 is 8 something, right?/ ’cause I’ve been tryna work it out.” I don’t know if 69 is a sexual connotation with a nonsensical “root,” but with a calculator she could’ve rounded this to approximately 8.31, and she could put her pencil and eraser away.

 

Red Hot Chili Peppers has a song called “Suck My Kiss.” They sing, “K-I-S-S-I-N-G, Chicka chicka dee/ Do me like a banshee/ Low brow is how/ Swimming in the sound of bow wow wow.” Wow, wow, the title should be “My Kissing Song Sucks.”

Hillary Duff is the queen of logic in the song “So Yesterday.” She reminds us “If the light is off, then it isn’t on.” Whoever said a left-brained artist doesn’t have right-brained thinking skills hasn’t met Hillary Duff.

Prince wrote “Superfunkycalifragisexy.” I hand-picked two lines from this sexy song. “Keep the blood flowing down to your feet. Brother Lois will be around in a minute with a bucket filled with squirreled meat.” The sexiness of this song is as obvious as the fact Lois is a male, it’s normally difficult to keep the blood flowing down to our feet, and everyone knows how to squirrel meat.

 

My final selection is “Sexy and I Know It” by LMFAO. Here are the lyrics that probably took 27 seconds to write. “Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah/ Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah, yeah.” I like the two “yeah’s” at the end for variety. Certainly, the penning of those words rivals Jose Feliciano’s talent for creatively stringing together wonderful lyrics that ring in your head unmercifully for the rest of the day.

I wasn’t completely honest about why I wrote this blog. Yes, I saw strange Adele lyrics, but mostly I have been dealing with a mini-writer’s block. I’m writing a novel, but it’s been like the funny part of my brain stopped working. My sense of humor needed a kickstart, so I needed to do something about it. People have been visiting my blog lately in record numbers, so I decided to start there and find a topic where I could be sarcastic and light-hearted and make myself laugh a little. This is my writing tip of the day—mini- or maxi-writer’s block. Change gears and write about something else at least temporarily to see if it can get you jumpstarted again. And if you’re interested in one of my books where humor flowed out of me freely, check out the following link.