Songwriting is hard. Let me rephrase that. Writing a good song is hard, writing a bad song is amazingly easy and quite a popular pastime. I thought of that after hearing “Windmills Of Your Mind” for the first time in a long time. So let’s once again put the heads of lyrical offenders on sticks as a warning to others.
Vanilla Fudge “Windmills Of Your Mind” (Noel Harrison)
Can you believe that this piece of crap won the Oscar for best original song in 1968? Granted it was competing against “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” but that’s no excuse. “The world is like an apple whirling silently in space?” The most evil thing about this song is that it gets stuck in your head and makes you think you’re schizophrenic. The spacey gibberish of the lyrics actually works pretty well with the Fudge treatment.
Gruppo Sportivo “Horse With No Name” (America)
This song might have worse lyrics than “Windmills,” if that’s possible. Yes, you can describe the desert by saying “there were plants and birds and rocks and things.” But you can also describe the Amazon rainforest, the Rocky Mountains, and my back yard the same way. And when is the heat ever not hot?
Gruppo Sportivo was a wacky Dutch art-rock band that I discovered when I was a college radio DJ. They always seemed to me like a Euro version of the Tubes. And that’s a good thing.
Bunny Rugs and the Upsetters “I Am I Said” (Neil Diamond)
This song comes up in any discussion of bad lyrics, mainly due to the poetry of “I am, I said/ To no one there/ And no one heard at all/ Not even the chair.” There are other words that rhyme with “there” and most of them would have made more sense if Mr. Diamond had put just a little effort into it. “So I combed my hair.” “I was mauled by a bear.” Try it as a party game the next time you get together with friends.
Pastel Vespa “Ironic” (Alanis Morrissette)
Dictionary.com has this to say:
The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply “coincidental” or “improbable,” in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly
The firefighter who lived next door to me had his house burn down. He was on duty at the time. That’s ironic because he made his living protecting other people’s homes from fire but couldn’t protect his own. Rain on your wedding day is not ironic, it’s coincidental. Get the difference, Alanis?
13 Nightmares “Everything I Own” (Bread)
The singer says that he would give up everything he owns, including his life, to get his woman back. Here’s the thing: if you give up your life to get somebody back you’ll be dead. And your ex-girlfriend probably isn’t into necrophilia.