Stupidest Lyrics Ever

1. Yellow Submarine

"And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next door"

Listen, if your friends are all aboard, then you can't have any other friends who live next door. Period.

2. What's Goin' On

"Tell me what's goin' on, and I'll tell you what's goin' on"

A great Marvin recording, but if you tell me what's goin' on, why would I bother telling you what's goin' on? You'd already know, right? That's why you were able to tell me in the first place.

3. Piano Man

"Son can you play me a memory, I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"

OK, pal, that should be enough to go on. Seriously....HOW THE FUCK is the piano player supposed to know what song this drunken cocksucker is talking about? And what about the line "I knew it complete"? COMPLETE?

Other question: What was the "younger man" wearing when the creepy old drunk was wearing the younger man's clothes?

4. I Am, I Said

Yep, no-one heard at all, not even the chair. Wow---you're thinking, "How do you top that?" But I'm inclined to give Neil a pass on that bit of stupidity, and not just because he's already been nailed dozens of times for it, but also because, technically, he's right: the chair didn't hear him. Any argument?

But wait---Neil isn't finished just yet:

Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of being a king
And then became one
Well, except for the names and a few other changes
If you talk about me, the story's the same one

Except for the names and a few other changes? A few other changes? A few???? Like just a couple of smallish details, right, Neil? No big deal, some minor stuff. Like, uh, that the frog is a palm-sized amphibian and you're a jewish kid from Brooklyn. That's all, right?

Oh, and the frog has a fucking name????? Sure.


5. Everything I Own

This is hard for me to do, because David Gates intended this sweet song as a tribute to his Dad. But when you sing:

" I would give everything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again"

then I'm sorry, you're fair game. How, if you give up your life, could you have ANYTHING back again? And how big a sacrifice is your home once you give up your life?

6. Midnight Train To Georgia

Check the Amtrak schedules. I did. There isn't any such train; in fact, there is no way to get by rail from LA to Atlanta except by going through somewhere else.

7. California Dreaming

In the third chorus, we hear this line:

"If I didn't tell her, I could leave today."

Her? Who the fuck is "her"? What is the singer talking about? Go back and listen to the first two choruses, and see if you can find a reference to "her". And what did he tell "her" that made it impossible for him to leave today?

8. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World

"It's goodbye care
When my slippers are next to the ones that belong
To the one and only beautiful girl in the world."

Writers of standards from the Golden Age don't get a pass, and just because you wrote more than a few great ones doesn't mean you're not capable of throwing out a real clunker every now and then. And Dick Rodgers' little buddy Larry Hart threw out more than his share of clunkers, so don't get me started, but this one takes the cake. I mean, not to get too Wittgensteinian, but if she's the "one and only beautiful girl in the world" can she also be the "most beautiful girl in the world"? In fact, she couldn't even be "the more beautiful girl in the world". I wouldn't let a rock-era writer get away with that kind of laziness, and Hart shouldn't be able to get away with it either.

9. My Old Flame

Another Tin Pan Alley standard, I'm afraid, and a beautiful tune ruined by an insipid lyric. Co-written by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston in the thirties, the song begins:

"My old flame
I can't even think of his name
But it's funny now and then
How my thoughts go flashing back again
To my old flame"

OK, she can't even think of his name, and her thoughts go flashing back to him only "now and then". The kind of stuff we all think about after a drink or two, and then we move on. But not this broad, who mid-way through her melodic reverie has begun to remind us of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Talk about obsessive---by the end of the song, a mere three minutes from when she barely remembered him, finding this forgettable guy has become her life's work. Makes you want to hide your rabbit while there's still time. Anyhow, too bad for her they didn't have Google in 1934.

"My old flame
I can't even think of his name
But I’ll never be the same
Until I discover what became
Of my old flame"

Sorry, I don't buy it.

10. THE STUPIDEST LYRIC EVER WRITTEN: In The Year 2525

Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman: Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the".

Well, every word of In The Year 2525 is monumentally stupid. This isn't just another drunken Billy Joel scribble or a scrap pulled from the wastebasket after John and Paul dropped some bad acid. No....this one's too good to quote from; the lyric must be seen, read, sung, listened to in its entirety. And then seen, read, sung, and listened to again.

(Comments in parentheses.)

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive they may find

(In the second line, "man" denotes "humankind", which obviously includes men and women. So why that third line? Just for a rhyme, I guess. Which makes it one of the few true rhymes in the whole song, by the way. Read on. And since when is "woman" a generic? Since this song, I suppose.)

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today

(Well, not everything. The pill couldn't make me take the pill before I took it. I had to think about taking the pill, right? And then I had to do it, right? And if I say anything at all, unless it's just nonsense, it's either the truth or a lie. Rhyme Watch: "3535" doesn't even come close to rhyming with "lies".)

In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew
Nobody's gonna look at you

(So now, 1,010 years later, they've made that pill from 3535 non-chewable. And of course you won't find a thing to chew because you have no eyes. And nobody's gonna look at you because they won't have their eyes either. And by the way, why would you be looking for a thing to chew in the first place if you don't have teeth? Rhyme Watch: "4545" and "eyes".)

In the year 5555
Your arms hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine's doing that for you

(So now you've presumably stopped taking that pill from 3535, because the machine's doing it for you. You probably should've stopped taking it earlier now that you know what it's done to your arms and legs, but no sense looking backward. And that machine: what else could that machine be doing for you besides what your legs used to do? Not looking; you haven't done that in centuries. Not chewing, ditto. Not telling the truth. Not telling lies. It's just a leg machine.
Rhyme Watch: "5555" and "sides".)

In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube, whoa-oh

(So now you don't need a husband or wife, but you needed one in 5555 or 4545 when the machine was doing everything for you? Huh? And your wife didn't care that you had no teeth? Of course not, because she wasn't looking at you. And you weren't looking at her, either, or anywhere else for that matter. You're still not. So how do you pick your son and daughter?
Rhyme Watch: "6565" and "wife"; "too" and "tube")

In the year 7510
If God's a-comin' He oughta make it by then
Maybe He'll look around Himself and say
Guess it's time for the judgment day

(Judgment Day? OK, Lord, tell me---how bad is it gonna be? 'Cause I think I can handle whatever you've got. Here's why: before you even show up, I can't see. I can't chew. I'm married to a woman whose arms are hanging limp by her sides and whose legs have nothing to do. So bring on your judgment, Big Guy.
Rhyme Watch: Nice job here, guys.)

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again, whoa-oh

(Damn right, God is gonna shake his mighty head. And he won't be the least bit pleased. Why? Here's why---some one-hit-wonder from the 60s tried to rhyme "10" with "head". If I were God, that would give Me all the excuse I'd need to rain down eternal hell-fire.)

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin' if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old Earth can give
And he ain't put back nothin', whoa-oh

(OK, back to generic "man". If you are woman, I guess I no longer hear you roar. And I can't see you chew, either, even if you could chew---which you can't---because I don't look. I haven't looked in, oh, eight thousand years or so. Nothing personal. Rhyme Watch: "give" and "nothin'")

Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through

(Idiotic. Of course "man" knew why he cried, assuming he could cry, which he couldn't. He (and/or "she")cried because he couldn't chew, couldn't look, and was married to Stephen Hawking with the brains removed.)

But through eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday

(Whatever.....)

11. Can't leave the Boss out of this.....but picking the stupidest Springsteen lyric is quite a challenge. Howzis:

"Like a river that don't know where it's flowin'
I took a wrong turn and I just kept goin'"

So....are there rivers that DO know where they're goin'?

"Hey, Hudson, what's new?" "Not much, Connecticut. Still headed south from the Adirondacks to Upper New York Bay, same as always."

Oh, you say: Bruce wasn't suggesting that maybe there's some river that's different from all the other rivers because it doesn't know where it's goin' and the rest of them do; what he meant is that "rivers" as a group don't know where they're goin'.

Sorry, no dice. I've heard that plenty, but there's a problem: as completely un-self-aware entities, rivers not only can't know where they're going; they also can't make wrong turns.