Hello friends, I’d like to talk today about annoying lyrics. You know, those lyrical flubs that stick in your craw and you wish you had a magic marker that you could just write on the CD and change. As the frontman and lyricist in a failed New Jersey bar band, I, Jim Teacher, am overqualified to speak on this egregious subject.
For example, Iggy must have thought he hit a home run with “Search & Destroy,” right? Wrong. “I’m a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb.” Not bad, I guess–if you’re a three-year-old raised without language. Iggy could’ve reached a little and made it “I’m a runaway son from the nuclear playground.” Whoa, I just blew my own mind.
See? One wrong lyrical turn can ruin Jim Teacher’s entire high school experience. So why do they (the guys who write lyrics) do it again, and again…and again?
I’m not going to even attempt to answer that philosophical quandary. Instead, I’ll focus my efforts on bitching about specific cases of lyrical neglect.
First up: The Killers in that song where they sing about the guy’s uncle who does cocaine. To start off with, this guy, Brandon Flowers or whatever his name is, isn’t half-bad in terms of lyrics. Now I was predisposed to hate this band because…well, look, they look like a bunch of pussies, but even Jim Teacher isn’t impervious to the impeccable pop hooks. These fucks wore me down, especially since my wife wouldn’t remove the CD from the car and, as we all know, that’s not the man’s job. So I listened and listened. Continue reading