Love has long been a popular theme in rock music: finding it, wishing you could find it, losing it, never having it, wanting more of it.
Lost love has inspired poets, novelists and songwriters through the ages. The theme has also inspired some of the worst rock song lyrics you can imagine.
Hey, I don’t make this stuff up. These, believe it or not, are for real!
1. "Love Stinks" - J. Geils Band
This song is little more than an exercise in thinking of words that rhyme with “stinks,” with no requirement that they make any sense.“I’ve had the blues, the reds and the pinks.Perhaps, but no more so than, say, a dead fish, or this song.
One thing for sure, love stinks.”
2. "Still ... You Turn Me On" - Emerson, Lake & Palmer
This is one of my favorite groups, and some of my least favorite lyrics."When you're buried in disguiseA ladder? Could this get any badder? Isn't crystallised flesh bad enough? Sheesh!
By the dark glass on your eyes
Though your flesh has crystallised;
Still...you turn me on.”"Every day a little sadder,
A little madder,
Someone get me a ladder."
3. "Keep On Loving You" - REO Speedwagon
Hey, it's not my fault that we didn't make it. Don't get sad ... get mad!“You should've known by the tone of my voice, maybeOuch! Can you say bitter?
But you didn't listen
You played dead, but you never bled,
Instead you lay still in the grass, all coiled up and hissing"
4. "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" - Meat Loaf
There’s lyrical imagery and there’s allegory and there’s … whatever the heck this is:”I’m tired of words and I’m too hoarse to shout,Crying icicles? Well, brr-hoo. This definitely causes me to want to make like a bat out of hell.
But you’ve been cold to me so long
I’m crying icicles instead of tears.”
5. "Muskrat Love" - America
I'm not sure this deals strictly with lost love. In fact, it's hard to know just what it does deal with. The title alone suggests problems ahead.“And they whirled and they twirled and they tangoed,Now, I like to jing the old jango as well as the next guy, but I have to believe that some thematic possibilities have been overlooked when the lyrics center on the mating habits of muskrats.
Singin’ and jingin’ the jango,
Floatin’ like the heavens above
It looks like muskrat love.”
6. "Love Hurts" - Nazareth
“Love is like a cloud, holds a lot of rain.”Some songs touch the heart. Some touch the soul. Others, like this one, touch the intestines with a feeling not unlike that induced by food poisoning. Sometimes they make the muskrats start to look good.
“Love is like a flame, it burns you when it’s hot.”
7. "Pictures of You" - The Cure
The pictures described in this song seem to have been posed in front of a fun house mirror.“You were angelsMake song words fit randomly with but my vertigo and other feelings strong.
So much more than everything
Hold for the last time then slip away quietly
Open my eyes
But I never see anything.”
8. "Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've?)" - The Buzzcocks
“And we won’t be together much longerWorse? You want worse? What's worse than these lyrics?
Unless we realize that we are the same””You disturb my natural emotions
You make me feel like dirt
And I’m hurt
And if I start a commotion
I’ll only end up losing you
And that’s worse”
9. "MacArthur Park" - Richard Harris
Nothing begs for a metaphor like a lost love, especially one that is so much like a pair of wrinkled trousers.“As we followed in the danceThis song's sole redeeming quality was that, at well over seven minutes in length, it gave radio DJs the opportunity to take a potty break.
Between the parted pages and were pressed
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants”
10. "You Are the Everything" - R.E.M.
For all of you lovers who have always dreamed of sleeping with your teeth in your mouth:“Late spring and you’re drifting off to sleepI have been here, and now I must be going, as quickly as possible.
With your teeth in your mouth
You are here with me
You are here with me
You have been here and you are everything”
