Great bands/songs with terrible lyrics

[Vincent Vega]

What are some great bands, or some great songs, that have utterly terrible or cringeworthy lyrics??

[GivenToFly]

IRON MAIDEN!!!! Gigantic gap between the quality of the music and that of the lyrics. I love them anyway as ridiculous as their lyrics are

[bran]

iron maiden has great lyrics for the most part the x factor is the best for lyrics IMO

post AJFA metallica has some laughably bad lyrics

Edited August 19, 2012 by bran

[GivenToFly]

iron maiden has great lyrics for the most part the x factor is the best for lyrics IMO

They're amateurish as fuck! Steve Harris couldn't rhyme if his and his entire hometown's lives depended on it.

[bran]

iron maiden has great lyrics for the most part the x factor is the best for lyrics IMO

They're amateurish as fuck! Steve Harris couldn't rhyme if his and his entire hometown's lives depended on it.

i really dont see them (for the most part) as amateurish songs like fortunes of war, 2am, hallowed be thy name etc have great lyrics, who cares about rhyming lol

[Guest Len B'stard]

Led Zeppelin at times although not always.

[Graeme]

Owl City, that Adam Young knows how to create some absolutely stunning soundscapes and arrangements. He even manages to write some clever lyrics sometimes... But most of the time it's all a bit awful.

[dalsh327]

Most bands have one or two stinkers when it comes to the lyrics, or because the music was first, the words were just thrown together and made the song work. Songwriters who also write poetry bring up having to bastardize a line or two just because the rhythm of the words is better. If Maiden work on music first, it makes sense if they don't try to write eloquently. To me the best songs are simple and to the point, a lot of times they're dumbing down to write songs, and prob. have notebooks of poems stashed away. Esp. if they're writing the lyrics in the studio as they're recording. Down the road, you'll hear them talk about rushing to write down the words in minutes because they were burning money.

[Guest Len B'stard]

Apparently Iggy improvised them on the spot always, somehow i find that impossible to believe. They do at times

Come off that way but there's almost always too much substance to em, if it is true then he's a bigger genius than i first thought.

[Vincent Vega]

Apparently Iggy improvised them on the spot always, somehow i find that impossible to believe. They do at times

Come off that way but there's almost always too much substance to em, if it is true then he's a bigger genius than i first thought.

As someone who writes lyrics I find it's much freer to just come up with the shit on the spot and sing and rhyme and riff of that and create a melody that way. Writing it down and trying to make a rhyme is kinda tedious. It's fun as hell to just come up with a song or lyrics and sing it out as the song comes into your head, easier to rhyme or make it flow that way!

[chevelle]

As much as I like Nine Inch Nails, a lot of Trent's lyrics come off as angsty teenage poetry.

[Jakey Styley]

For a band that is rooted in rapped vocals, RHCP has pretty bad lyrics, especially past BSSM. I'm With You has some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard.

"Be my wife, I think you're right that we should mate" - Factory of Faith

"I'm comin for ya cuz, cuz I adore ya and, I'd like to get inside your mass production

...the day I blew on ya, you said I grew on ya" - Did I Let You Know

I love the melody in both of those songs but....come on.

I also hate Led Zeppelin's use of the word "baby".

Edited August 20, 2012 by Jakey Styley

[chevelle]

For a band that is rooted in rapped vocals, RHCP has pretty bad lyrics, especially past BSSM. I'm With You has some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard.

"Be my wife, I think you're right that we should mate" - Factory of Faith

"I'm comin for ya cuz, cuz I adore ya and, I'd like to get inside your mass production

...the day I blew on ya, you said I grew on ya" - Did I Let You Know

I love the melody in both of those songs but....come on.

Yeah, gotta agree with you. Kiedis' lyrics are the reason I cannot get into RHCP in any way.

[mrandyk]

When I think bad lyrics I think this

[bran]

When I think bad lyrics I think this

:rofl-lol:

that is very true

[Guest Len B'stard]

As someone who writes lyrics I find it's much freer to just come up with the shit on the spot and sing and rhyme and riff of that and create a melody that way. Writing it down and trying to make a rhyme is kinda tedious. It's fun as hell to just come up with a song or lyrics and sing it out as the song comes into your head, easier to rhyme or make it flow that way!

it just don't sit well with me that "i'm a street walkin' cheetah with a heartful of napalm, i'm the runaway son of a nuclear A Bomb, i am the worlds forgotten boy, the one who searches and destroys" is improvised, it's too perfect, songs like China Girl, Blah Blah Blah, Lust for Life, they just sound too good to be improvised. They have certain repetitious elements that perhaps lend themselves to the notion that it's something done by a singer listening to the music and trying to follow it lyrically but overall they're just of too high a quality.

For a band that is rooted in rapped vocals, RHCP has pretty bad lyrics, especially past BSSM. I'm With You has some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard.

"Be my wife, I think you're right that we should mate" - Factory of Faith

"I'm comin for ya cuz, cuz I adore ya and, I'd like to get inside your mass production

...the day I blew on ya, you said I grew on ya" - Did I Let You Know

I love the melody in both of those songs but....come on.

I don't think so, i think they're meant to be like that, it's kinda freewheeling and fun and...y'know, Keidis isn't claiming to be God MC here, it's just kinda fun funk with some silly rap to it, it's charming i reckon

[Guest Len B'stard]

"The Future"

Give me back my broken night

my mirrored room, my secret life

it's lonely here,

there's no one left to torture

Give me absolute control

over every living soul

And lie beside me, baby,

that's an order!

Give me crack and anal sex

Take the only tree that's left

and stuff it up the hole

in your culture

Give me back the Berlin wall

give me Stalin and St Paul

I've seen the future, brother:

it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions

Won't be nothing

Nothing you can measure anymore

The blizzard, the blizzard of the world

has crossed the threshold

and it has overturned

the order of the soul

When they said REPENT REPENT

I wonder what they meant

When they said REPENT REPENT

I wonder what they meant

When they said REPENT REPENT

I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind

you never will, you never did

I'm the little jew

who wrote the Bible

I've seen the nations rise and fall

I've heard their stories, heard them all

but love's the only engine of survival

Your servant here, he has been told

to say it clear, to say it cold:

It's over, it ain't going

any further

And now the wheels of heaven stop

you feel the devil's riding crop

Get ready for the future:

it is murder

Things are going to slide ...

There'll be the breaking of the ancient

western code

Your private life will suddenly explode

There'll be phantoms

There'll be fires on the road

and the white man dancing

You'll see a woman

hanging upside down

her features covered by her fallen gown

and all the lousy little poets

coming round

tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson

and the white man dancin'

Give me back the Berlin wall

Give me Stalin and St Paul

Give me Christ

or give me Hiroshima

Destroy another fetus now

We don't like children anyhow

I've seen the future, baby:

it is murder

Things are going to slide ...

When they said REPENT REPENT ...

For my money, the best lyrics ever put down in a song. Thats actually so good lyrically that it works just as a standalone piece of poetry, it really is the most wonderful lyrics i've ever come across, just flawless. "you don't know me from the wind, you never will, you never did, i'm the little jew who wrote the bible", delicious It's been so long since i listened to Leonard Cohen, pretty much since my mid-teens and i'm coming back to it now after a while and God it's all so fresh and familiar. I do think i didn't have the suss at that age to truly get what it was always about but the majesty and lyrical grace just drew me in again and again.

Forgot how much i loved this old bastard, what a fuckin' brilliant artist, ordinary mortals don't write lyrics like that. Found my first Cohen CD and got it onto my ipod, it's called The Songs of Leonard Cohen and it's the fuckin' bollocks.

Edited August 21, 2012 by sugaraylen

[Redhead74]

I agree Lenny, it's outstanding. Even outstanding for Cohen who is extraordinary on a normal day. Kind of haunting how relevant it is to today and how crazy the world has gotten in the last few years.

[Bumble's Bridge Pickup]

+1 to Maiden and NIN, rarely they're able to write serious lyrical content

[Jakey Styley]

For a band that is rooted in rapped vocals, RHCP has pretty bad lyrics, especially past BSSM. I'm With You has some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard.

"Be my wife, I think you're right that we should mate" - Factory of Faith

"I'm comin for ya cuz, cuz I adore ya and, I'd like to get inside your mass production

...the day I blew on ya, you said I grew on ya" - Did I Let You Know

I love the melody in both of those songs but....come on.

I don't think so, i think they're meant to be like that, it's kinda freewheeling and fun and...y'know, Keidis isn't claiming to be God MC here, it's just kinda fun funk with some silly rap to it, it's charming i reckon

That kind of thing fits for the fun, early RHCP stuff but post BSSM it often sounds out of place with the serious tone of the music.

[Guest Len B'stard]

For a band that is rooted in rapped vocals, RHCP has pretty bad lyrics, especially past BSSM. I'm With You has some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard.

"Be my wife, I think you're right that we should mate" - Factory of Faith

"I'm comin for ya cuz, cuz I adore ya and, I'd like to get inside your mass production

...the day I blew on ya, you said I grew on ya" - Did I Let You Know

I love the melody in both of those songs but....come on.

I don't think so, i think they're meant to be like that, it's kinda freewheeling and fun and...y'know, Keidis isn't claiming to be God MC here, it's just kinda fun funk with some silly rap to it, it's charming i reckon

That kind of thing fits for the fun, early RHCP stuff but post BSSM it often sounds out of place with the serious tone of the music.

Yeah i suppose i see what you mean though, it has the feel of like, some improvised anyway so perhaps it's not meant for that kind of scrutiny. I always thought it worked great though because...it has sort of the ridiculousness of certain funk to it, the comedic aspect and it's like, you're a white guy in a funk rock band, you're gonna rap, you're never gonna swim with the big boys on this one so whats a boy to do? Make it purposely amateurish and playful and goofy and unashamed in being so, it kinda gives it it's own charm, it reminds me of like rap in the very very early sense of like, y'know, the sorta stuff James Brown did, rapping as Dolemite would have you understand the concept

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARepQeZGyBo&feature=related

Watch that from about 28 mins...y'see what i mean, it's sort of in that tradition A lot of people listen to it and go, ugh, listen to that whiteboy fuck rapping up but he's actually not, it's just...more in that 70s jive-talk tradition of rapping. The association should be obvious bearing in mind the Chilli Peppers funk roots.

But i see what you mean, it tends to clang a bit when dealing with more serious type issues.