As I’ve mentioned, posting will be light for a week or so as I have to deal with eye issues. Today I go to the retinologist and have little time to post, but as I was perusing my list of favorite music this morning, I came upon my subsection of “Worst lines in popular songs.” I did a post on it in 2023, which I now repost exactly in the form from 1 July, 2023. Perhaps there are enough folks who haven’t seen it that I can get away with posting it again.
So here it is, below the line. I’ve added a newer discovery of bad lyrics at the end.
I was looking at my very long list of “best and worst” music today, and found an old section called “The worst lines in popular songs”. I present them to you as an inspiration. There are many more, of course: I expect people may bring up “MacArthur Park” or “I’ve got a brand new pair of rollerskates,” but those are just overall bad songs. Bad songs needn’t contain bad lines, though. Here’s some of the lines that I’ll never be rid of as earworms:
This is a story about Billy Joe and Bobbie SueTwo young lovers with nothin’ better to doThan sit around the house, get high, and watch the tubeAnd here is what happened when they decided to cut looseThey headed down to, ooh, old El PasoThat’s where they ran into a great big hassleBilly Joe shot a man while robbing his castleBobbie Sue took the money and run
. . . . Hoo-hoo-hoo, Billy Mack is a detective down in TexasYou know he knows just exactly what the facts isHe ain’t gonna let those two escape justiceHe makes his livin’ off of the people’s taxes
—Steve Miller “Take the Money and Run”
Rhyming “El Paso” with “hassle” and “Texas” with “facts is” are just not rhymes. And someone should remind Mr. Miller that “facts” is plural. Steve Miller may in fact be the premier producer of the worst lines in rock music. Don’t forget “Abracadabra” and the immortal lines in “The Joker”:
Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice
‘Cause I speak of the pompatus of love
There is no such thing as “pompatus,” at least not in the Oxford English Dictionary
Here’s an example of a not-bad song with terrible lines. The first two just make me cringe, and the words “when we rode the horse we got some thrills” does likewise. Only one horse? Some thrills?
“Sittin’ in my car outside your house
Remember when I spilled Coke all over your blouse.. . .Miniature golf and Hondas in the hills(Miniature golf and Hondas in the hills)When we rode the horse, we got some thrills.”
–Beach Boys, “All Summer Long”
This is a good song but Loretta strains for rhymes several times. Here’s one example:
“The work we done was hard
At night we’d sleep ‘cause we were tard.” [“tired”]
–Loretta Lynn, “Coal Miner’s Daughter”
Here we have one of at least three uses of the word “chicken” in a rock song (can you name another?), but rhyming “chicken” with “bit me” doesn’t work. That said, I love this song; it’s bouncy and one of the best songs Stevie wrote:
“I was knee high to a chicken
When the love bug done bit me.” (a rhyme)
–Stevie Wonder, “I Was Made to Love Her”
This speaks for itself:
Wooly bully, wooly bully.
Wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully.–Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, “Wooly Bully”
This song was on the jukebox in the greasy diner where we ate every night in college (99 cents per meal, including rice pudding!). It is one of the worst songs of that era. And the verse just cuts off: we don’t know what they will find in 2525!
In the year 2525,
If man is still alive,
If woman can survive
They may find.–Zager and Evans, “2525”
I never understood this verse. These words may make some arcane sense to the band Chicago, but didn’t to me:
Should I try to do some more?
25 or 6 to 4.–Chicago, “25 or 6 to 4”
I’m a huge fan of Steve Stills, but when he got it wrong, he got it wrong big time. And here’s one of those times!
The deeper you go ’cause of the pressure of the air
The nitrogen comes and goes (gets you high)
It’s an alien atmosphere
They call it rapture of the deep
Be you not afraid
You’re too far down by now to be scared
Two hundred and eighty-seven feet
I saw Jesus and it made sense that he was there–Stephen Stills, “Black Coral”
This comes from my late friend Kenny, who found the lyric:
“Ooooh, poor Romeo
Sitting’ all on his own-e-o.
Ooooh, poor Romeo.–Phil Lynott, “Romeo and the Lonely Girl”, from “Jailbreak”, by Thin Lizzie
UPDATE (AT THE TIME): I’ll retract the last quote as “bad rhyming” based on one a comment in the thread by Brendan Teeling, who says that “own-eo” was normal Dublin parlance at the time. Also, this was the only quote that was given to me by someone else; all the rest I’m well familiar with.
2026 UPDATE: And a new one. The song “Drops of Jupiter,” by Train is FULL of awful lines and I didn’t put it in the previous post. In fact, though the melody is okay, the entire song’s lyrics qualify as dreadful. Here are a couple of stinkers. (Note: this is one of only two rock/pop songs I know of that contains the word “chicken.” The other is mentioned above.)
Now, that she’s back from that soul vacation
Tracin’ her way through the constellation, hey-hey (Mmm)
She checks out Mozart while she does Tae-Bo
Reminds me that there’s room to grow, hey-hey, yeah
Now, that she’s back in the atmosphere
I’m afraid that she might think of me as
Plain ol’ Jane told a story about a man
Who was too afraid to fly, so he never did land
“Checks our Mozart while she does Tai-Bo“, indeed. Checks him out!
But wait! There’s more! Another verse from the bridge:
Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken
Your best friend always sticking up for you
Even when I know you’re wrong?
Can you imagine no first dance, freeze-dried romance
Five-hour phone conversation
The best soy latte that you ever had, and me?
My technician at the time loved soy lattes and made me drink one. It was dreadful and I’ll never have another. The “best soy latte that you ever had” is worse than emulsified cow pies.
2026: You know the drill: NOW IT’S YOUR TURN! Put your worst lyrics below.
Hard to top those!
Even the Beatles were not immune. Admittedly this was pretty early for them.
From She’s a Woman:
“My love don’t give me presents,
I know she ain’t no peasant”
Toto, “Africa”:
The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless, longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what’s right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
That last line is a terrible rhyme for “company,” has the stress on the wrong syllable, and the whole line has about 12,000 more syllables than the line can reasonably accommodate.
Agree. And great, now I have this in my head…
Not to mention the fact that Kilimanjaro is a very long way from the Serengeti!
I still love the song though, despite the lyrical atrocities.
I had to look it up, but apparently Kilimanjaro is South of the Serengeti, so you can’t even use the North sense of “above”. I love the song too, though.
As a transplant to Texas (not Kentucky, I know), I can attest that in at least some dialects, “hard” and “tired” do indeed rhyme (along with a few other vowel mergers).
Yes, I know that. But “hard” and “tired” don’t rhyme for most Americans, which is why it’s on the list. BTW, here’s another bad pair of lines from that song:
Why, I’ve seen her fingers bleed
To complain, there was no need
And THAT you can’t fob off on dialects!
This isn’t a bad line, but folks from Texas know El Paso rhymes with asshole, as in Kinky Friedman’s song “Asshole from El Paso.”
LOL
yes, they’re all here in this never-before released collection! (like a K-Tel advertisement)
One near-rhyme that I get a kick out of is ingrained in my mind – but maybe not 100% accurate (trying to keep it in the lyrics in their measures):
… to be
beaten on, and thrown in jail, we can
go toe-to-toe in the middle of the cell
It shows that, for music, sometimes pronunciation > spelling/phonetics … or, explains it, anyway…
I’ll let readers look up the song / group [grin]
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
Not so much bad rhymes as lazy ones. At least Don McLean’s doorstep is one word, so not as weak as the Lou Reed example.
I’ve always felt the Don McLean pairing was deliberate, that he knew he was repeating “step” and it generated a kind of stuttering, disbelieving impression. I may be reading too much into it, though, I’ve never been a fan of Lou Reed, on the other hand.
Try the song ‘Chicken Outlaw’ by Wide Boy Awake. I don’t know how to embed it as I’m a Ned Ludd manqué.
Any discussion of bad lyrics invokes:
“In the desert, you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain
La, la, la-la-la-la, la-la-la, la, la
La, la, la-la-la-la, la-la-la, la, la”
America (1971) – A Horse with No Name
Now THAT is a stinker!
Jinx
Isn’t it “can’t” remember your name? Agreed it’s a terrible song.
That is the song that came immediately to my mind. Just full of bad lyrics!
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound.
I remember a Steve Martin bit about this song where he said something like, “and things?! Did they run out of names?!”
That group, and specifically that song, was the first thing that came to my mind.
I haaaate “Do They Know It’s Christmastime”? Worthy cause, awful song. This is the worst stanza:
“There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing
Is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
Well, tonight, thank God it’s them
Instead of you”
Condescending, much?
The second line of the song is “At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade.” Until very recently, I had thought they were singing “banish aid”, which puzzled me greatly given that it was a song to raise money for charity.
This is a bit obscure, although some of you may have heard it courtesy of South Park. I present “The Hukilau Song”:
Then “A Horse With No Name” (I object to “for to give”, not the triple negative):
You know I feel so dirty
When they start talking cute
I wanna tell her that I love her
But the point is probably moot
“Jesse’s Girl”, Rick Springfield
Besides the fact that ‘moot’ doesn’t rhyme all that well with ‘cute,’ inserting a dry, pedantic phrase like “the point is probably moot” in a pop song about romancing your girl is jarring to say, the least!
Technically, someone else’s girl.
Regarding “25 or 6 to 4”, I have heard it said that the song is about trying all night to write the song and the mysterious phrase is a reference to the time, twenty-five or (twenty-)six to four(a.m.).
And while not the worst lyric in “Horse With No Name”, surely one must mention “There were plants and birds and rocks and things.” Y’know. Things one finds in the desert. Things.
I always heard it as a telephone number.
I always thought it was a sexual position!
Robert Lamm, who wrote the song 25 or 6 to 4, says it’s a time, when he was trying to write a song in the middle of the night.
And if I may be forgiven a second post, Elenore by the Turtles contains:
Elenore, gee, I think you’re swell
And you really do me well
You’re my pride and joy, et cetera
Elenore, can I take the time
To ask you to speak your mind?
Tell me that you love me better
I think this was at a time when they were just trying to fulfill some contractual obligation for a certain number of songs and were not really trying to write good lyrics. Certainly “et cetera” indicates not really trying for whatever reason.
I’ve read that the lyrics to “Elenore” were meant as a bit of a spoof.
If you’re going to mention the Turtles we can’t forget this particular non sequitur:
The only one for me is you, and you for me
So happy together
So happy together
And how is the weather?
Sorry, I had to go in the other direction. I absolutely love that The Police could beautifully, perfectly and appropriately work the word ‘alabaster’ into ‘Wrapped around your finger’.
Well, that’s Sting for you. He WAS an English teacher. A young teacher. The subject of schoolgirl fantasy…
I’ve heard “MacArthur Park” on the bad list many times, but I disagree. If you mean weird (“someone left the cake out in the rain”), OK. That’s weird (or maybe ridiculous).
But the music is great, and it has lines like “I recall a yellow cotton dress foaming like a wave on the ground beneath your knees.” Great image.
I agree with you. The music is great even if the words don’t make sense. It’s a great song to sing along with in the car.
Regarding the words, Jimmy Webb who wrote the song said this, “Everything in the song was visible. There’s nothing in it that’s fabricated. The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw. And so it’s a kind of musical collage of this whole love affair that kind of went down in MacArthur Park. … Back then, I was kind of like an emotional machine, like whatever was going on inside me would bubble out of the piano and onto paper.”
“Down in texas” and “Just what the facts is” always make me laugh when I hear it.
From Rocket Man
Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact, it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did
And all the science, I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week
I always enjoyed that part.
There is the fantastic Little Feat song, “Dixie Chicken,” which of course has the word “chicken” in it many times.
And “chicken” occurs in “Back Door Man” by Willie Dixon, a song best known as having been performed by The Doors. From memory:
“You may eat your (something), eat your pork and beans,
I eat more chicken any man ever seen.”
Laugh-out-loud awful but funny because it’s in a knowing, tongue-in-cheek way, from Cole Porter’s “You do something to me”:
“Do do that voodoo that you do so well”
But it was so wonderful when Hedley Lamar used it has his final melodramatic order to his band of bad guys in Blazing Saddles. So, it was worth it.
From Neil Diamond’s “I am..I said,” a song with otherwise great lyrics. But I cannot get over the chair. Chair’s can’t hear. Annoying in an otherwise fine song.
“I am”… I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
There are so many that I’d have a different answer each day.
How about these two lines from a song I otherwise love—Riders on the Storm by the Doors.
“There’s a killer on the road,
His brain is squirming like a toad.”
Oh, and in the interest of generating hate mail, there’s always this hum dinger:
“She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah.”
You all know the source. And, for good measure, in the very same song, we have:
“She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Finally, another great song that I love is Ooby Doobie by the late, great Roy Orbison:
“Ooby Dooby, Ooby Dooby, Ooby Dooby”
How can such a goofy line be part of such a great song? I don’t know, but it can.
Like a dog without a bone, an actor out on loan…
“she loves you yeah, yeah, yeah”
McCartney’s dad said after the two very young Beatles sang their new song to him…
“that was good but couldn’t you sing, yes, yes, yes” that would be better”.
Yeah, Nah.
🙂
I don’t understand what’s wrong with the Beach Boys line:
“When we rode the horse, we got some thrills.”
I have ridden doubles on a horse many times and we got many different thrills; especially when riding that one S.O.B. that liked to try and bite me all the time.
Well, for one thing the line seems out of place, as though it was just thrown in to make a rhyme. Besides, I bet they were not riding double.
I thought “When we rode the horse…” referred to using heroin.
“White Horse” means heroin or cocaine.
How about no lyrics at all, just screaming and yodeling. This should’ve been in the Spinal Tap movie:
In the same category:
Clare Torrie!
I’m pouncing on Elton John’s 1972 singalong number, Rocket Man. It is a song about an astronaut going off to his job up in space, and it contrives to make that job sound both completely banal and totally unrealistic at the same time.
Consider: “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids/ In fact it’s cold as hell/ And there’s no one there to raise them if you did”. This simply does not make sense. If you were raising your kids on Mars then by definition there would be someone there to raise them, ie you.
Further on we get: “And all the science stuff, I don’t understand/ It’s just my job five days a week”. In the first place it seems very unlikely that you’d get a job as an astronaut if you understood nothing about science. And “five days a week”? What sort of astronaut is he? One who comes home every weekend? Then how did he ever get as far as Mars?
Moreover, he keeps insisting in the refrain that he thinks “it’s gonna be a long long time” before he comes home again. But I don’t see how that can be true, if he’s only ever away for five days at a stretch.
Perhaps I am giving the impression that I don’t like this song. I actually do. I think it has a lovely, plaintive melody, suggesting loneliness and melancholy. But the words just don’t match up. Understandable, perhaps, had the song been dashed off by a talented musician who wasn’t much of a wordsmith. Yet the lyrics were written, not by EJ himself, but by Bernie Taupin, whose job is writing the words. That’s all he does. He’s a professional lyricist, who wrote the words for all of Elton John’s songs in the 70s, and made a fortune from so doing. Sorry, Bernie, but I think you had a bad day at the office with this one. (Just seen that Rob Kraft has already pounced!)
I’ll see your pedantry and raise you two! I think “facts is” is reducing to “faxes” and rhyming with “taxes” in line 4, giving us the common A B C B ballad stanza. (We see the same type of consonant cluster reduction when “next week” becomes “nex week.”)
As to the subject/verb agreement, “facts is” is common dialect usage in much of the South and in AAVE, even if it is marked as nonstandard. But it helps set the register of the verse, just like “ain’t,” “gonna,” and “livin'” do. Miller would have heard all of the above as a young boy in working-class Milwaukee and as an older one living in Dallas. Thems jus what the facts is!
I’m gonna grab a cuppa coffee now.
KNOCK (sigh) THREE (argh)… (g-d M-Fing) TIMES!!! on the ceiling, if you love me.
“Twice in the pipe—bang, bang—if the answer is no.”
Terrible song.
“Creatures crawl in search of blood
to terrorize y’all’s neighborhood”
from Thriller (Michael Jackson didn’t write these “lyrics” though).
I beg to differ; I think “pompatus of love” and “abracadabra, I wanna reach out and grab ya” are sheer genius. The one that sets my teeth on edge:
“Then the first snow came
And she ran out to brush the snow away
So it wouldn’t die
Came runnin’ in all excited
Slipped and almost hurt herself
And I laughed ’til I cried
She was always young at heart
Kinda dumb and kinda smart
And I loved her so
And I surprised her with a puppy
Kept me up all Christmas Eve
Two years ago…
And honey, I miss you…”
Yeah, that, and anything by Cardi B or Megan Thee Stallion.
“Pompatus” is not even a word. If making up such words is genius, well, I disagree. And that forced rhyme is cringe-making, as the Brits say.
“Honey” is one of those songs that is terrible overall.
If “pompatus” is not a word, it should be, based on its poetic flair and evocation and that certain je ne sais quoi alone. But I read that it’s a neologism, which I looked up, i.e.,”any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has gained popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism
But wait, there’s more! Not only “pompatus,” but also ” epismetology.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompatus
So I learned something.
As for “Abra abracadabra, I wanna reach out and grab ya,” the couplet adds to the relentlessly driving tempo, fey theme and erotic sensibility of Miller’s masterpiece. The song was number one on the charts for two consecutive weeks, displacing Chicago’s “Hard to Say I’m Sorry'” and Miller cried all the way to the bank.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/music/articles/steve-miller-bands-abracadabra-dethroned-022300758.html
Yes, “Honey” is overall awful and maudlin.
Hope this is not too long for your roolz.
“ How ’bout them transparent dangling carrots?”
I’ve always been in awe over the way Alanais Morisette worked that one into a song.
I don’t worry too much about strained rhymes — a lot of great poetry has some (and, of course, sometimes it’s deliberate, or otherwise adds to the gestalt. But I do object to lyrics that are obvious fillers, or that are just…well, dumb.
Speaking of “Horse With No Name,” a catchy tune with silly (dumb) lyrics —
https://www.tiktok.com/@angieny42/video/7158633514383183150
“When we rode the horse, we got some thrills” .
‘Horse’ is a slang term for heroin, but I doubt the Beach Boys would be singing about that?
NO WAY!!!!!
😂. In that case maybe some other band could steal the line and use it in a song that was about heroin, as it would be a pretty good line for that.
I don’t know. A lot of songs have goofy lyrics that don’t make sense. But they’re songs. I think that is just inherent in the writing.
The unfinished “They may find” in “2525” bothers me more than the rhyme. It sounds as though a prediction is coming, but the verse stops before giving one.
Bingo!
Maybe the rest of the song is what mankind will find?
Nobody’s mentioned Goose Snow Cone, that used to drive me nuts when it was popular and I’d hear it often.
Supposedly, I learned much later, those were filler words that were intended to be changed before the song was released, but they recorded it before that happened.
Then there are the classic Phil Spektor lyrics:
“And when he walked me home
Da doo run run run da doo run run.”
Supposedly, Sonny Bono said to Spector “what does that even mean? That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
And Spector replied “sonny, that’s the sound of money in the bank”. And he was right.
I’m late to the party, but feel compelled to add:
“Generals gathered in their masses,
Just like witches at black masses.”
The fact that this is in a true, nailed on, rock/metal classic really makes me smile.
Unable to think of a rhyme, Ozzy simply uses the same word again. And this is before the decades of self inflicted brain damage.
Oh and by the way, mein host. Repeat ANY post you like. There’s so much content on this website, I get a kick from cycling back through and considering the material again.
I use obvious rhyme
When there isn’t much time
– Half Man Half Biscuit
Melanie’s song Brand New Key was wonderfully parodied by Adge Cutler and the Wurzels:
https://youtu.be/A0zxE0SUG1c?si=iVZy6YaZS5zuvRwv&t=10
I appear to have been barred from commenting, so commenting into the void I will say that Dave Barry had this topic covered years ago as regards worst songs. As regards worst lines, as far as the worst lines go this is one of the worst from Gordon Lightfoot:
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
You have not been barred from commenting, at least according to my settings. This is a first-time comment, and those are always held up.
Please do not make accusations like this without checking.
I am shocked, SHOCKED that anyone would criticize Wooly Bully!!! Well, OK, maybe the lyrics, but what it lacks in poetry it makes up for in groove.
Here are Los Lobos (for my money, the greatest American rock band) improving on the original, if that’s possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juVNHZ-Cf98&list=RDjuVNHZ-Cf98&start_radio=1
Samudio said that Wooly Bully was his cat.
Did you see that, Jerry, a cat–A CAT!?! Think of how poetic the repetition of it’s name must sound to the venerated feline; “Wooly Bully, Wooly Bully, Wooly Bully”. It’s a worshipful mantra that must be heaven to the cat’s ears. Surely this will elevate the lyrics in your esteem!