I appreciate how hard it is to write a good song lyric. Because of my love of a good lyric I also love the hopeless lyrical dreck that sometimes gets foisted on an unsuspecting public. It’s been a couple of years since Cover Freak has provided a survey of lame lyrics, so it’s high time to do it again.

Dunghill “A Horse With No Name” (America)
This song gets a lot of attention for the timeless observation that the “heat was hot.” And rightly so, but the rest of the song doesn’t make sense either. My personal favorite is the description of the glories of nature as being “plants and birds and rocks and things.” That could describe a national park or a strip mall in Hoboken. It’s brilliant in its complete artlessness.

This version is incredibly schizophrenic. It starts out out as a breezy, twangy jog and then takes a hard left turn into death metal. And back again.

The Fargone Beauties “Stairway To Heaven” (Led Zeppelin)
This song stands as an everlasting monument to the golden era of radio payola. The song is way too long, and nobody knows what the hell it’s about. The only way it became a classic rock staple is because radio programmers and disc jockeys got huge amounts of cocaine and hookers from Atlantic Records.

A lot of people have heard Dolly Parton’s cover of this song, but I prefer the Fargone Beauties when I’m looking for a bluegrass rendition, mainly because it’s shorter.

Hybrid Kids “MacArthur Park” (Richard Harris)
Another song that aspires to pretentious poetry and ends up being pure gibberish. Why is the park melting? Why won’t he have that cake recipe again? And what’s with the pronunciation of the word “striped?”

This song is a great period 80s piece with its ska/spy guitars and cockney attitude. You can almost see the skinny ties.

Sally Anne Marsh “Windmills Of Your Mind” (Noel Harrison)
It just boggles my mind that this steaming turd of a song won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1968. Granted it was competing against “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” but can 1968 really have been that bad a year for movie music? I realize that “Windmills” was originally written in French and then translated into English. I just can’t imagine that the translation was that bad. The source material had to have been pretty horrid.

For reasons I can’t comprehend this song has been covered way too often, mostly as a slowly trudging endurance test for the listener. This time around it’s an energetic disco-tronic dance tune. And when people are dancing they’re too busy to listen to the lyrics.

Pomplamoose “My Favorite Things” (from The Sound Of Music)
This is an example of why you should never give a rhyming dictionary to a lyricist. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, brown paper packages tied up with string are nobody’s favorite thing. Couldn’t they have at least come up with a better way to work the word “string” into the lyrics? And you can think about your favorite things all you want when a dog bites you, but you should also think about getting a rabies shot.

I’ve really been digging Pomplamoose lately. They always make me smile.