It's only words...

Lyrics in Western music are so unpredictable... Some people you think are good lyricists, but sometimes they write something downright stupid and mess up the whole thing. Case in point - Roger Waters from Pink Floyd. The entire Wall album is full of pain and agony, and so full of restless energy - you can almost feel the singer grinding his teeth as he spits those lyrics out. In One of my turns the story goes something like this - there's this singer, he's brought one of his groupees back to his hotel room, and they're obviously gonna get it going, and in the background you can hear his wife trying to get through to his phone, but he doesn't pick up for obvious reasons. And then the singer goes into this fit of rage, consumed in self loathing, and he takes it out on the groupee. The lyrics go -

Run to the bedroom
In the suitcase on the left
You'll find my favorite axe.
Don't look so frightened
This is just a passing phase,
One of my bad days.
Would you like to watch T.V.?
Or get between the sheets?
Or contemplate the silent freeway?

And then the next line is:

Would you like something to eat?

I mean, what is that? He could have written 'Do you feel the heat', or... or... or even 'I can feel the beat' Darude-style. Anything is better than 'Would you like something to eat?'.
At least that's just the one line - The Trial is a bit much from beginning to end - "Good morning the worm your honour," and so on... slightly not happening.

Sting's lyrics sometimes border on criminal, because here's a guy who's capable of some gorgeous poetry - I mean take these lines from Children's Crusade -

Corpulent generals safe behind lines,
History's lessons drowned in red wine,
Poppies for young men, death's bitter trade
All of those young lives betrayed
All for a children's crusade.

Poppies of course, being the flower from which opium is made, so he's referring to the opium wars of the mid 20th century in China. Really nice!

And when he was part of Police, there's Synchronicity II, which i listened to over and over again when i was in school... The lyrics are brilliant, you have three stanzas about the life of a man who lives out a miserably normal suburban life... The first describes his home, the second his workplace, and third, navigating through rush hour traffic to come back to his depressing house.... And at the end of each stanza, there are two seemingly unconnected lines, that start with "Many miles away, something crawls from the slime/ At the bottom of a dark, Scottish lake" after the first stanza, and end with "Many miles away, there's a shadow on the door, of a cottage on the shore, of a dark, Scottish lake".
The loch ness monster reference is, of course, a metaphor for the rage and frustration that's building up inside the man, and waiting to burst out in all its violence.

The same Sting also wrote the lyrics "I guess this is our last goodbye/ you don't care, so I won't cry/ You'll be sorry when I'm dead/ And all this guilt will be on your head".
You see what I mean? It's like, as my good friend Craig says, comparing shit with sugar.

There so many instances in Sting's music, sometimes within a song itself. Russians, which has a chilling chorus of "What might save us, me and you/ Is if the Russians love their children too" has the lines - "we share the same biology, regardless of ideology". It's ridiculous! 'We share the same biology' sounds awkward, and is anyway improper use of the language. You can't share biology, can you? In If I ever lose my faith in you I don't think he's even trying to produce a masterpiece or anything, and it's probably my favourite song of his but the fourth line of this stanza is a prize winner -

Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world
You could say I lost my faith in the people on t.v.
You could say I’d lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to me

Yes, game show hosts.... In what way? And you can't blame this on the rhyme, (that's taken care of by the 'me') couldn't it have been 'They all seem like a bunch of fools to me' or something?

And R&B doesn't escape the cosh either. I mean that's supposed to be a really big deal right, the lyrics in R&B, but all i see in the lyrics are ass shakings, mother f***ings and plenty plenty niggas. And if this sounds contemptuous.... it's meant to be. It's not that I don't like R&B, I really do, but if "Lil' mama show me how you move it/ go ahead put yo back into it/ Do ya thang like there aint nothin to it/ Shake.. sh..sh..shake that ass girl" is the best they can do....
I really think the Black Eyed Peas satire, if satire it is (if it isn't, its a pretty wierd song) is pretty cool - "my humps my humps my humps, my lovely lady lumps" I nearly died laughing when I heard that one.

And everyone's on about Eminem's lyrics - i think his videos are brilliantly funny - but his lyrics in places... I wonder if you, like me, picked out the monstrosity in this famous verse:

His palms are sweaty,
Knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already,
Mom's spaghetti

Mom's spaghetti ??????