Question

Topic: Copywriting

Unfortunate Lyrics — How Would You Change Them?

Posted by Anonymous on 2/12/2011 at 8:27 PM ET 2500 Points
As a Valentine's Day challenge, I'd like to know what bad love song lyrics irritate you. For example, in The Turtles song Happy Together, they say, "the only one for me is you, and you for me," which is saying the same thing twice (both are "for me", neither is "for you"). When the Gershwin song says, "Although she may not be the girl someone thinks of as pretty," I want to say, "Just don't tell her I said that!"

What lyrics do you think of as weak, moronic or just too drippy sweet?

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by michael on 2/12/2011 at 9:18 PM Accepted
    HATE HATE HATE CSNY's "Love the one you're with"

    I understand it was all in the free love era, but....yeah, bad lyrics.

    Michael
  • Posted on 2/13/2011 at 6:10 AM Accepted
    "I may not always love you"

    Beach Boys: God Only Knows

    And that's the first line!

    I wouldn't dare say that to anyone in conversation.

    Peter
  • Posted on 2/13/2011 at 6:17 AM Member
    Oh - you ask "How would you change them?"

    How about:

    “You know I’ll always love you
    As long as there are stars above you
    You never need to doubt it
    I’ll make you so sure about it”

    Peter
  • Posted by CarolBlaha on 2/13/2011 at 10:57 AM Accepted
    Meatloaf wrote a lot of songs in this line. Bat out of helllllOh baby you're the only thing in this whole world,
    that's pure and good and right.
    And wherever you are and wherever you go,
    there's always gonna be some light.
    But I gotta get out,
    I gotta break it out now,
    Before the final crack of dawn.
    So we gotta make the most of our one night together.
    When it's over you know,
    We'll both be so alone.

    This isn't a song but the stupidist love quote was in the movie Love Story-- Love means never having to say you're sorry....
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 2/13/2011 at 2:46 PM Accepted
    TIMBALAND, APOLOGIZE

    The singer sings "I said it's too late to pologize"

    The "A" is dropped and it irritates the Dickens out of me.

    Arrrrggggh!
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 2/13/2011 at 3:32 PM Accepted
    From "A Horse With No Name":

    On the first part of the journey
    I was looking at all the life
    There were plants and birds and rocks and things
    There was sand and hills and rings

    -- Why didn't the lyricist spend a little more time to come up with a better rhyme for "rings" than "things" : swings or springs or wings?
  • Posted by Chris Blackman on 2/13/2011 at 4:04 PM Accepted
    Jay, those were the days!

    Today "...and things" would probably be lyricised as "...'n'sh!t"...

    Carol, talking of Meatloaf, what girl wouldn't have her heart set a'fluttering on a Valentines Day date at the drive in with "I can see paradise by the dashboard light..." Who could NOT take that as a compliment?

    (Excuse me Madam, I think you have a little touch of paradise showing).

    For me the worst love song I'd ever heard (as an awkward teenage boy) was by Paul Anka. Lines like "Whoa, the seed inside you baby, do you feel it growing?" Or “Having my baby - what a lovely way of saying what you’re thinking of me.”

    Yeargh! Pass me a book on celibacy, will ya?

  • Posted by Chris Blackman on 2/13/2011 at 4:11 PM Member
    Oh, and the height of kitsch: "Love and marriage, love and marriage, goes together like a horse and carriage" by Perry Como. I think of that every time I see one of those tourist horse-drawn carriages. Which part of the marriage metaphor is captured by the little bucket, hanging on a hook below the rear axle?

    Not that I have any complaints! Today, Valentine's Day, is my 30th wedding anniversary!
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 2/14/2011 at 3:45 AM Accepted
    Perry Como Chris, really Perry Como LOL.

    How about this piece of work from the men down under ...

    "Buying bread from a man in Brussels
    He was six foot four and full of muscles
    I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"
    He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
    And he said ... "

    Steve
  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 2/14/2011 at 3:48 AM Member
    Oh, and happy 30th, very nice :)
  • Posted by SRyan ;] on 2/14/2011 at 7:28 PM Accepted
    What? No one has mentioned MUSKRAT LOVE by Captain and Tenille yet?

    Muskrat Susie, Muskrat Sam
    Do the jitterbug out in muskrat land
    And they shimmy
    Sammy's so skinny...

    Let's try and imagine it hip-hopped up, y'all. RATRACE LOVE. Feel the beat. Boom chaka-laka boom!

    Yo, yo, it couldn't be truer
    Down here in da sewer
    That love STANKS.
    (Yeah. It stanks.)
    But when I'm wit-choo
    I gotta a wowza-new view
    When I see dat tail.
    (Baby you got TAIL.)

    All right... who wants to finish this?


  • Posted by SRyan ;] on 2/15/2011 at 8:57 AM Member
    <cringe>Aaaack!!</cringe>
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