The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

I have no doubt that Lou Reed might contribute a few choice rhymes to your new website. For example, from "Egg Cream" on his Set the Twilight Reeling LP:

"For fifty cents you got a shot,
chocolate bubbles up your nose,
that made it easier to deal with knife fights,
and kids pissing in the street"

What the...

OK, that doesn't rhyme, but the chorus, "you scream, I steam, we all want egg cream", does rhyme and is cringeworthy enough, I put forth to your readership.

Of course, there's nothing like hearing "Walk on the Wild Side" in the ubermarket, with yer average families shopping to Candy's or Lil Joe's NYC pursuits. Not sure it's poetry but it's reached a whole 'nother level entirely at this point.

One of the toughest things we have to grapple with in adjudicating lyrical awfulness is the fact that sometimes it's the garbled sense, and sometimes its the inanity, sometimes the pretentiousness, and sometimes all three.

I figure it's important to set some boundaries as one starts out, hence my choice of couplets. I'd go further and suggest that what we seek are those rhymes which do not consciously elicit groans or winks (no Zappa, no Beasties), but which seem the true attempts to capture a feeling or a moment in the couplet, and crashingly, memorably fail.

I feel obliged to add that we should probably include "triplets" -- those occasions where the couplet rhyme is extended for another line. This, for example, allows us t consider Lou's "Vicious" -- a catchy song with terrible lyrics.

I have a guilty pleasure listening occasionally to Alphaville, an 80s German band. The music is very peppy Yaz/Depechey and the lyrics sound like they came from a German to English Babelfish translation.

Case in point, from the song Forever Young from the album of the same name:

Its so hard to get old without a cause
I don't want to perish like a fading horse

and from "Big in Japan":

Neon on my naked skin
Passing silhouettes of strange illuminated mannequins
Shall I stay here at the zoo
Or shall I go and change my point of view for other ugly scenes

I rest my case.

If I could remember lyrics from a band called "Winter Hours" they'd be up there. Fortunately, I've expurgated all but "this rich tapestry of humanity" from my brain - less than a couplet.

"You don't need money, you don't need fame...
Don' need no credit card to ride this train."

"I will listen hard to your tuition.
You will see it come to its fruition."

But those are easy. Huey Lewis and Sting should be disqualified too.

Oh, must we disqualify Sting? That song alone has another good one with the alabaster/master rhyme.

And the "You consider me a young apprentice/ caught between the Scylla and Charybdis" couplet too.

That song should get a special award for working the hardest to include one twenty-five cent word per line. The whole rest of each line is built around getting to that last, awkward, not-quite-best-word-but-it-rhymes word.

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

Jessie's Girl, Rick Springfield

Thanks a lot Tipper. I am about to lose my lunch over all the bad songs of the 70s that made me never want to grow up if it meant Muskrat Love was Havin' My Baby. Ugh, Barry Manilow:

I write the songs that make the whole world sing. I write the songs of love and special things

oooh waahh

I feel like I'm digging up the 'too easy' ones, but:

"To worry, worry, super-scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry"

(99 Red Balloons)

"But I can't be late
'Cause then I guess I just won't get paid
These are the days
When you wish your bed was already made" (no attribution necessary)

These songs make me want to rip off my ears and feed them to Meatloaf.

Then there's Patti Smith's Poppies where she used the words "inhaler," 'cranium,' 'dorsal spine' and 'anal cavity' in one verse. She didn't try to rhyme them though.

I don't have a couplet at hand, but....

I saw Yo La Tengo the other night and they announced that they couldn't visit Australia without coming armed with a great Australian song to play. And they played:

"Love is in the Air" (John Paul Young)

"Love is in the air
In the whisper of the trees
Love is in the air
In the thunder of the sea"

OK, I did have a couplet but it doesn't rank up there in excruciating awfulness (does it?)

And where's my time zone advantage gone to this week, may I ask?

Greatest Lyricist Of All Time B. Dylan often has some howlers, straining for the rhyme:

"Depart from me this moment,"
I told her with my voice.

and

He hears the ticking of the clocks
And walks along with a parrot that talks.

(both songs from "good" albums, by the by)

For sheer clunkiness, I've always had a fondness for the Motley Crue lyric that rhymed "kicked some ass" with "still kicking ass."

Oh, yeah, there's some Black Sabbath that rhymes "masses" with "masses."

War Pigs, I think.

There are so many bad couplets in Dylan, it's hard to settle for just one. But, just from one song:

"What's the charge of how this came to be?/Manslaughter in the highest desgree"

"The judge he spoke out of the side of his mouth/Saying the witness who saw, he left little doubt"

and, possibly worst,

"At that the judge jumped forward and his face it did freeze/Saying could you kindly leave my office now please"

Of course, it's hard to beat David Gates. I'll submit "Lost without your love/Life without you isn't worth the trouble of" as the worst pop song couplet of all time, especially since it doesn't actually go on to complete the thought.

I was plumbing the depths for a suitable "Doors" lyric, but it seems that they're generally not that bad -- it's the bombastic vocals and music that really make the Doors insufferable.

Not that liar/mire/pyre/fire is so brilliant.

Scraps -- my Dylanology is so lousy I didn't even know "Percy's Song" was his. I only know it in the Fairport Convention version. For some reason, I just assumed it was older...

"Itchycoo Park" came up on the iPod this weekend. The bad rhymes aren't in the standard couplet form -- nevertheless, "I feel inclined to blow my mind" and "I got high" rhymed with "I touched the sky" work together to remind us that even the coolest of mods can prove dangerous with a pen.

But I'm still searching for a topper to "Wrapped Around Your Finger." After all, we didn't even mention "I have only come here seeking knowledge/Things they did not teach me of in college."