The Start of Bad Pop Lyrics
No, I Didn't Write Them
The Beatles exemplified a new style of songwriting. Instead of writing songs for other people, songwriters started writing for themselves. This allowed for new forms of emotional intensity and personal expression (with Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell being the best of this new breed) but made the gap between good lyrics and acceptable lyrics as wide as the Pacific Ocean. Standards went down. Paul McCartney, who wrote the pensive lyrics to “Eleanor Rigby,” later wrote “Rocky Raccoon,” a song so bad that someone should have called the RSPCA to investigate potential animal cruelty.
The Fab Four came from Liverpool, not from nowhere: they didn’t emerge fully formed, but were influenced by the popular skiffle and rock ‘n’ roll bands of their youth. Long after the Blues offered the cure to cliched and sentimental parlour ballads, record companies still produced songs of nauseating childishness. Despite their reputation for defiance, pop and rock ‘n’ roll united youth values and corporate values, a union still dominant in the English-speaking world today.
Maybe the best example of this union is “Stupid Cupid,” written by Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka. In 1958 the song became a hit for Connie Francis, an excellent singer who deserved better lyrics.
But she knew what sold. After Messrs Greenfield and Sedaka showed her some of their songs, she told them “your music is beautiful, but it's too educated. The kids don't dig this kinda stuff anymore. You guys are putting me to sleep. Don't you have something a little more lively?”
Mr Greenfield asked Mr Sedaka to play “Stupid Cupid,” but Mr Sedaka objected because he thought that Connie Francis, “a classy singer,” would be insulted to be offered such a silly song. After hearing a few bars, she loved it. She’d found her next hit.
Mr Sedaka might have been a bit too harsh on himself. Ovid, Petrarch, and Thomas Wyatt all wrote love poems rebuking Cupid, so how could a classy singer possibly object to the idea?
Stupid Cupid you're a real mean guy
I'd like to clip your wings so you can't fly
I'm in love and it's a crying shame
And I know that you're the one to blame
Hey hey, set me free
Stupid Cupid stop picking on me
After hearing this, Connie Francis certainly couldn’t criticise the lyrics for being “too educated.”
I can't do my homework and I can't think straight
I meet him every morning 'bout a half past eight
I'm acting like a lovesick fool
You've even got me carrying his books to school
Hey hey, set me free
Stupid Cupid stop picking on me
One can appreciate her difficulty: who hasn’t been distracted by love?
I would, however, be a little more sympathetic to the singer’s predicament if she weren’t yodelling, and if there weren’t that idiotic “boing!” sound at the end of the verse. I wonder if she’s taking her homework seriously.
The lyrics get worse at the bridge:
You mixed me up for good right from the very start
Hey now, go play Robin Hood with somebody else's heart
The verse lyrics are puerile, but at least they make sense. I confess, I don’t know what “play Robin Hood with somebody else’s heart” means. Didn’t Robin Hood steal from the rich and give to the poor? If Cupid is the “Robin Hood” stealing hearts, who is the rich and who is the poor? I suspect the legendary English outlaw is in this song because his surname happens to rhyme with “good.”
You got me jumping like a crazy clown
And I don't feature what you're putting down
Well since I kissed his loving lips of wine
The thing that bothers me is that I like it fine
Hey hey, set me free
Stupid Cupid stop picking on me
Why is the singer jumping? Wouldn’t that make it hard to kiss someone? Anyway, why continue listening? This verse starts about a minute into the song, at which point the listener is already begging for mercy.
The lyrics are terrible, but I can’t hate them; I’ve heard Nicki Minaj, whose song “Your Love” has the lines “When I was a geisha, he was a samurai / Somehow I understood him, even when he spoke Thai.”
We can thank The Beatles for convincing record companies that professional songwriters are superfluous, and that singers can write their own lyrics. Some singers can, but most of them can’t: a culture that puts visual flashiness before lyrical finesse is bound to produce writers so immature they don’t sound genuine even when describing their own feelings.
The tradition that produced the thoughtful, moving, and witty lyrics of Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart is gone, unable to be heard over the screams of thousands of teenage girls.
Which song has the worst lyrics? Why do you dislike them? Let me know!