| Bohardy 20.05.2013 16:43 |
I never start topics. I also don't give a toss about lyrics really, but I'm bored, so here we go. I think it fair to say that Queen are/were not renowned for writing deep and meaningful lyrics. And the corollary of that is that they wrote some damn awful ones. What's the worst lyric in the Queen (or related/solo) canon? A couple that really grind my gears (for mainly linguistic reasons) are: "Stole my heart, threw away the key" - what key? You never mentioned any key up until now Roger. "Why don't you twist it, and turn it, and cut it like a knife" - to me that sounds like you're cutting something that's like a knife. Usually people don't cut knives. They cut with knives. (Let Me Live has mostly dreadful lyrics throughout, although this is the pick of the bunch for me). Thoughts? |
| waunakonor 20.05.2013 16:56 |
This has bothered me a bit. Sometimes I wish I had picked a band with more poetic lyrics to be my favorite, though I still love Queen all the same. I don't really understand your gripe with "...and cut it like a knife" from LML - it makes perfect sense to me; "you" cut "it" like a knife would cut something - although I do agree that the song is pretty bad lyrically. My least favorite bit from that song comes soon afterward: "Why can't we just be friends, stop living a lie." Both of those phrases are super cliche to the point of barely meaning anything at all. Come on, you can write something more meaningful than that. Body Language is a pretty obvious choice for dreadful lyrics. A lot of lines in Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon don't make much sense (you don't "go painting in the Louvre," and why are you proposing four days after your honeymoon?) although I kind of have the feeling that it's supposed to be that way. I tend to find that The Show Must Go On has pretty lazy lyrics for the most part, which is kind of unfortunate. Jesus is even lazier, although I love both songs musically so they can be forgiven. On the opposite end, I think We Will Rock You's lyrics are kind of underrated, or at least under-appreciated. They're really good. |
| brENsKi 20.05.2013 17:02 |
"cut it like a knife" is a bad example to use it's actually a very good lyric - it means "cut it like a knife would cut it" worst by miles must be "call me sweet, like i'm some kind of cheese" |
| GratefulFan 20.05.2013 17:17 |
"Cars don't talk back, they're just four wheeled friends now" brought to you by Sesame Street and the letter 'C'. And the part in Too Much Love Will Kill You where anybody's lips are moving. |
| Bohardy 20.05.2013 17:38 |
I totally get that the "cut it like a knife" lyric could mean that the person is like a knife, i.e., the one doing the cutting, but the way it's written strongly suggests, to me at least, that the life, i.e. the thing being cut, is like a knife. It's really clunky. Grammatically and lyrically. I knew the Sweet Lady 'cheese' line would come up, as it so obviously stands out within that song. But that has to be intentional. Same with 'people with guns' in POTF. They may not be pretty lyrics, but I'm pretty sure Bri and Fred knew what they were doing with those lines. They were deliberately hammed-up, in ironic, sarcastic kind of way. |
| cobohall 20.05.2013 22:18 |
Friends will be friends, When you're in need of love they give you care and attention, Friends will be friends, When you're through with life and all hope is lost, Hold out your hand cos friends will be friends right till the end After hearing this I would kill myself if Freddie hadn't pleaded that I: Don't try suicide Just gonna hate it(I like the music though) And any part of "Pain Is So Close To Pleasure" - shameful, embarrassing, nauseating... I agree that the verses of WWRY are great, even more so thanks to Freddie's delivery. |
| mooghead 21.05.2013 01:56 |
In only seven days is awful |
| Wijnand 21.05.2013 03:03 |
Sorry Mooghead... I kinda like the feeling I got while listening to 'In only seven days'... I can see the whole story happening... Musically and lyrically it isn't that great, I admit.... But awful.... no, not for me :-) |
| tcc 21.05.2013 03:25 |
One Year Of Love has repetitive verses, which is against the band's tradition to keep the various sections of the song different either lyrically or musically. |
| Bohardy 21.05.2013 03:31 |
How could I not mention Don't Lose Your Head? Awful doesn't even come close. Aside from the absolute dearth of content, and saying Don't Lose Your Head about 18,000 times, what the fuck was Roger thinking of when he added "Don't drink and drive my car, don't get breathalised"? Ugh. |
| tomchristie22 21.05.2013 04:06 |
I think I've said this before - In Only Seven Days, with its absurdly simplistic lyrics, actually tells a pretty vivid story to me, probably because of it. But yeah, the lyrics are bad. I think 'cut it like a knife' is still pretty bad. For me, it always brought to mind trying to cut a knife, and I'm clearly not the only one. Ideally I wouldn't want to be going over a lyric in my head just so it can make any sense. Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon is wonderful in my opinion. The lyrics are ridiculous and eccentric, but so is the music. It's clearly not them taking themselves seriously, and it comes across fantastically because of it. This is in stark contrast with something like Let Me Live - trying their hardest to be poignant, and being horribly undercut by what's probably their most cringe-worthy set of lyrics ever. WWRY has excellent lyrics in my opinion. We Are The Champions also manages to almost avoid sounding cliche'd, too (apart from the choruses, but even then, it's tongue in cheek so it doesn't bother me much). |
| Toon_86 21.05.2013 07:51 |
Sorry, but Headlong for me is terrible, love the musicality of it, but the lyrics drive me nuts, but not as much as the mess that was Still Burnin:- Still burnin Still turnin Still yearnin Still jivin Still drivin Sky divin WTF???? |
| MartynTS 21.05.2013 13:21 |
Bohardy wrote: I think it fair to say that Queen are/were not renowned for writing deep and meaningful lyrics. And the corollary of that is that they wrote some damn awful ones.I've never really thought about this a whole lot. A lot of their songs have a lot of meaning to me personally and I've enoyed thinking about their meanings and reading other people's takes on the songs. Songs like Liar, White Queen, In The Lap Of The God's... Revisited, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Teo Torriate, just to name a song off of a few albums. I guess their lyrics aren't aesthetically pleasing like a lot of pop music's lryics are, but they hold a lot of value. They definitely do have some bad lyrics, though... |
| john bodega 21.05.2013 13:27 |
I think Brian wrote the best lyrics. And the worst ones. I guess it's a mood thing. |
| John S Stuart 21.05.2013 14:16 |
Not lazy lyrics - but a nice example of a transferred epithet: "Thunder bolts and lightning..." There is no such thing as a thunderbolt, a lightening bolt however is a natural electrical phenomenon! You can get lightening, and bolts of lightening, and even lightening bolts. You can even get lightening without the thunder. Likewise the thunder is the rain which sometimes accompanies the lightening. You can even get thunder on it's own without the lightening. But thunderbolts - no! |
| Bohardy 21.05.2013 15:01 |
John S Stuart wrote: Not lazy lyrics - but a nice example of a transferred epithet: "Thunder bolts and lightning..." There is no such thing as a thunderbolt, a lightening bolt however is a natural electrical phenomenon! You can get lightening, and bolts of lightening, and even lightening bolts. You can even get lightening without the thunder. Likewise the thunder is the rain which sometimes accompanies the lightening. You can even get thunder on it's own without the lightening. But thunderbolts - no!What are you on about John? Of course there's such a thing as a thunderbolt; it's the bolt of light that accompanies thunder. Otherwise known as lightning. And, you can't get thunder without lightning, nor lightning without thunder, unless I'm sadly mistaken. The two are inextricably linked, being the visual and audible parts of the same thing: electrostatic discharge. Thunder is the sound of the lightning. It's certainly not 'the rain that sometime accompanies' it. Have you gone a wee bit mad? |
| John S Stuart 21.05.2013 15:22 |
^^ No; both lightning and thunder can exist independently and without each other. (Google it!). Therefore - you cannot get a Thunderbolt! Honest! Lightening without thunder link Heat lightning is the name used for the faint flashes of lightning on the horizon or other clouds from distant thunderstorms that do not have accompanying sounds of thunder. This happens because the lightning occurs very far away and the sound dissipates before it reaches the observer.[1] Heat lightning was named because it often occurs on hot summer nights and to distinguish it from lightning accompanied by audible thunder and cooling rainfall at the point of observation.[citation needed] Lightning results from the discharge of negative ions created from the friction of ice and water particles bumping into each other at the bottom of a cloud. Heat lightning can be an early warning sign that thunderstorms are approaching. In Florida, heat lightning is often seen out over the water at night, the remnants of storms that formed during the day along a sea breeze front coming in from the opposite coast. To witness Lightening without thunder http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKTMi-rYIc (This is lightening without the rain) Thunder without lightning http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7375/full/480008a.html Long radiation bursts generated by thunderstorms don't always culminate in lightning, although the reasons why are not fully understood. Tatsuo Torii at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency in Tokyo and his group tracked one such burst under a thunder cloud at the tip of Japan's Tsuruga Peninsula. |
| mooghead 21.05.2013 16:34 |
'And if one time you told me that you loved me heaven knows, I would feel that I could ski right off the bridge of your pretty nose' <------ we have a winner!!!!! |
| Stelios 21.05.2013 17:11 |
I think for a band that had at least three very articulate members( Fred, Bri,Roger) , the equation lyricwise dosen't exactly sum up. I think they where going for 1) how words/phrases sounded when in the music context. Let's name it audiobility of lyrics 2) directness and clarity that would match up with the very extrovert/suggestive body language of Freddie's 3) A "middle of the road" originality that would consist of combining universal/cliched themes but with a twist in language n' style. I am going slightly Mad, has some very imaginative lyrics. My Life Has Been Saved, on the other hand is pretty damn lazy... |
| IanR 21.05.2013 20:17 |
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a thunderbolt as: 'noun: a flash of lightning with a simultaneous crash of thunder'. So, if nothing else, Fred's lyrics are a tautology. |
| Mr.QueenFan 21.05.2013 20:30 |
Bohardy wrote: what the fuck was Roger thinking of when he added "Don't drink and drive my car, don't get breathalised"? Ugh.Some people believe this to be a private joke to John Deacon who aparently had some problems with the breathalizer around that time. I don't know if this is true. |
| Bohardy 22.05.2013 02:09 |
John S Stuart wrote: ^^ No; both lightning and thunder can exist independently and without each other. (Google it!). Therefore - you cannot get a Thunderbolt! Honest! Lightening without thunder link Heat lightning is the name used for the faint flashes of lightning on the horizon or other clouds from distant thunderstorms that do not have accompanying sounds of thunder. This happens because the lightning occurs very far away and the sound dissipates before it reaches the observer.[1] Heat lightning was named because it often occurs on hot summer nights and to distinguish it from lightning accompanied by audible thunder and cooling rainfall at the point of observation.[citation needed] Lightning results from the discharge of negative ions created from the friction of ice and water particles bumping into each other at the bottom of a cloud. Heat lightning can be an early warning sign that thunderstorms are approaching. In Florida, heat lightning is often seen out over the water at night, the remnants of storms that formed during the day along a sea breeze front coming in from the opposite coast. To witness Lightening without thunder http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKTMi-rYIc (This is lightening without the rain) Thunder without lightning http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7375/full/480008a.html Long radiation bursts generated by thunderstorms don't always culminate in lightning, although the reasons why are not fully understood. Tatsuo Torii at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency in Tokyo and his group tracked one such burst under a thunder cloud at the tip of Japan's Tsuruga Peninsula. ??? Neither of those links refute or even address the main point: thunder is the sound of lightning. And a thunderbolt is just another word for lightning. The first example just describes a type of lightning where the observer cannot hear its sound (the thunder). Just because the observer is too far away to hear the sound, it doesn't mean there is no sound. The second example relates to thunder/storm clouds that do not create lightning. Storm clouds are not the same thing as thunder, which is the sound of lightning. So in this example there is not 'thunder without lightning', there are storm clouds without lightning. As thunderbolt is so obviously a common synonym for lightning (check any dictionary) Fred's orignal lyric, as IanR rightly says, is a tautology. |
| Bohardy 22.05.2013 02:27 |
mooghead wrote: 'And if one time you told me that you loved me heaven knows, I would feel that I could ski right off the bridge of your pretty nose' <------ we have a winner!!!!! You may well be right! |
| FlorianS 22.05.2013 09:12 |
Roger Taylor, Touch the Sky The way you fix your hair Even - when you boil your eggs You got a certain something honey Goes straight to my legs -> THE WAY YOU BOIL YOUR EGGS??? |
| Wiley 22.05.2013 09:21 |
For some reason I'm a bit fond on the "ski right off the bridge of your pretty nose" bit in Final Destination. Lovely track. Oddly, I prefer The Cross' version to Roger's re-take with Yoshiki. Also, I like "Still Burnin'", similar in music and (sparse) lyrical content to "Tear it up". The ones that get on my nerves... "Your smile speaks books to me" - Breakthru (Roger) "You call me sweet like I'm some kind of cheese" - Sweet Lady (Brian) "Don't drink and drive my car, don't get breathalised" - Don't lose your head (Roger) "We were bad, we was pissed, just having a total eclipse" & "Wanted to arrest me, I said huh huh babe" - Khashoggi's Ship (Freddie) ALL OF Don't Try Suicide (Freddie) - ironic because listening to this song make me want to kill myself (good one, Fred!) |
| tcc 22.05.2013 09:26 |
The lyrics of One Vision were heavily borrowed from the demo track of A Kind Of Magic (called A Kind Of Vision). Whenever I hear A Kind Of Vision in the bonus CD, my mind will promptly go blank when I think of One Vision. I have to listen to the One Vision track again to remember it. |
| brENsKi 22.05.2013 12:10 |
that ^^^ kinda makes sense - aren't they both Roger's songs? and both conceived around the same time - one for a film the other ended up in a film |
| Stelios 23.05.2013 05:46 |
brENsKi wrote: that ^^^ kinda makes sense - aren't they both Roger's songs? and both conceived around the same time - one for a film the other ended up in a filmFrom what i gathered they were not even two separate songs, initially. It was one concept that was formed into two differnet tracks due to "too many" creative ideas that worked better separately . |
| madprofessorus 23.05.2013 21:31 |
I am not British so I don't get 100% the lyrics, but I do know some English and I can say that except some Rogers songs and quite few from queen, they never meant to write any deep sense lyrics, which is not bad of course,99% of rock bands write very lightly and some time foolish lyrics. Even pink Floyd before 1973 were totally psychedelic on their lyrics. But to stick with the subject,i can't live with you has some crap lyrics like rat race? No meaning at all |
| madprofessorus 23.05.2013 21:31 |
I am not British so I don't get 100% the lyrics, but I do know some English and I can say that except some Rogers songs and quite few from queen, they never meant to write any deep sense lyrics, which is not bad of course,99% of rock bands write very lightly and some time foolish lyrics. Even pink Floyd before 1973 were totally psychedelic on their lyrics. But to stick with the subject,i can't live with you has some crap lyrics like rat race? No meaning at all |
| Bohardy 24.05.2013 02:15 |
madprofessorus wrote: I am not British so I don't get 100% the lyrics, but I do know some English and I can say that except some Rogers songs and quite few from queen, they never meant to write any deep sense lyrics, which is not bad of course,99% of rock bands write very lightly and some time foolish lyrics. Even pink Floyd before 1973 were totally psychedelic on their lyrics. But to stick with the subject,i can't live with you has some crap lyrics like rat race? No meaning at all It is actually a common English phrase: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_race Now, what about "now you've got soup in the laundry bag"? What's that all about? How/why the hell did Bri conjure that one up? |
| Stelios 24.05.2013 06:51 |
"Now, what about "now you've got soup in the laundry bag"? What's that all about? How/why the hell did Bri conjure that one up? " ...hmmm. Very strange indeed. Could it mean that you have got everything messed up very badly? So he created a very akward image of something supposed to be kept very clean "soup" in something that is typically dirty "laundry bag". Still , its ruther ...off-putting. |
| Day dop 18.08.2014 21:15 |
Stelios wrote: "Now, what about "now you've got soup in the laundry bag"? What's that all about? How/why the hell did Bri conjure that one up? " ...hmmm. Very strange indeed. Could it mean that you have got everything messed up very badly? So he created a very akward image of something supposed to be kept very clean "soup" in something that is typically dirty "laundry bag". Still , its ruther ...off-putting.I always thought of that as a sexual innuendo. |
| The King Of Rhye 19.08.2014 02:50 |
LOL.............well...........Headlong makes NO sense lyrically anyway,,,,,,,,,,,,at the very least, soup in a laundry bag is thoroughly messy................and "now you got strings youre gonna lose your rag"? Uh, what???? Seems like Brian threw a bunch of random words together.................anyway, it still rocks, though! I actually kinda like the line about "get me out of this cheap b movie" tho........... Yeah............I never did think Queen was the best lyrically anyway..................personally I think the band that had the best lyrics (in that I generally agree with everything they said!) is my 2nd favorite band................Rush |
| Stelios 19.08.2014 07:14 |
Since this topic surfaced today i have to say The Show Must Go On is not lazy at all to me.(its been mentioned that it is, in this thread) Its a very sparkling portration of the "sad clown" concept together with some existential themes. I think is one brave effort from Brian. |