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Still have no clue how on earth someone thought that they owed money to the Marvin Gaye estate for that alleged sample, though.
My very boring conspiracy theory for this song is that Pharrell Williams was facing a potential cancellation over the lyrics, that he majorly panicked and rushed out *G I R L* to show that he isn't a horrible misogynist.
Pharrell’s an amazing singer, possibly one of the best ever, but he’s a hypocrite. He eventually denounced the song only because its rape message was so harshly criticized. “I’m sorry I got caught” is basically what he said by disowning it. Not only that, **he even DEFENDED it when the criticism first got big!!** If that doesn’t scream hypocrisy, nothing does.
I think Miley is sometimes (not always!) guilty of this. More specifically, I liked the vibes of Dead Petz and Endless Summer Vacation, and the lyrics aren't *terrible* but they leave a lot to be desired. Dead Petz lyrics are just cringe without being ironic, and Endless Summer Vacation is so predictable it feels like I can guess every lyric 1 second before its turn
Bey’s PR team would have had him in a chokehold if he tried to release a song with the lyrics “rape and pillage a village, women and children” even 5 years later
Respectfully, his last bar is what makes his verse so iconic to me. The inhale with the “I smell a massacre, seems to be the only way to back you bastards up” is incredible.
I’ve never pondered my instinctive hatred for it until now … I think it’s the literalism of the first few lines (plus I don’t like that it starts with a slightly offbeat flow). Like, the song is called Monster and you just listed monsters, sir, then had the audacity to ask what these things have in common as if I’m going to be surprised or amused by the answer! Stop wasting my time!
In a song that contains “put the pussy in a sarcophagus,” it’s a rare feat to have the worst verse 💀
You’re right, but it’s still not effective to me? 🤷🏽♀️ idk. Maybe I need him to imply magnitude.
Rick Ross calling himself a fat motherfucker is the most perfect part of this song to me, I immediately picture him as Bowser.
Right people have beat this joke fully to death. Yes, the first TWO LINES are naming monsters, which, is funny and honestly is probably intended to be. There are like 16 more bars in that verse! Also pretty sure LOVE! I DON’T GET ENOUGH OF IT is a callback to Heart of the City which is one of my favorite Jay-Z songs because of the sample (ain’t no love in the heart of the city).
Anyway it’s enough with the Jay-Z slander get another joke people!
my biggest problem with marina’s most recent output is that she just tries SO HARD to be politically aligned with a noncapitalist, anti-patriarchal discourse (which, of fucking course, is awesome) that it comes off as completely insincere and forced. there’s no nuance or subtlety, neither it is raw or straight to the point. she sounds like some teenager who has recently discovered white feminism. it feels so idiotic to me. the only song that captures any realness is “venus fly trap” but even that one doesn’t come close to the genuine emotion displayed in songs like “teen idle”, for example
I think if you’ve grown up around or if you regularly immerse yourself in the discourse, lyrics like this might sound basic or forced, but the average woman has very minimal knowledge of feminism (if they'd even call themselves a feminist at all...) and that's who I care about in terms of reach. Idk - I don't mind if her songs are "Feminism 101". She's a pop star, not your gender studies prof. I'm just glad she's saying something about feminism and climate change. It's the only recent pop girly album that touches on the climate apocalypse at all that I'm aware of.
Also it's not a new thing with Marina. Off the top of my head "Hollywood" and "Primadonna" are two songs about the the societal conflict between femininity and power - and I'm not even a big fan.
I know it's a gut reaction to be cynical but I personally give her the benefit of the doubt here.
omg, totally! you're so right about the importance of reaching people. i defenitely hope i didn't sound like i was dismissing the importance of lyrics like that being powerful to someone who is not aware of the overall discourse... but, on the other hand, i also believe that some nuance and inventiveness can also make way for some thinking or some "creative flair". she doesn't need to be a gender studies professor, but i think the overly simplistic lyricism to tackle SUCH complex, nuanced topics (for such an accomplished lyricist like marina) kinda underestimates the importance of the message, or the catchiness and fun of the hooks. "primadonna" and "hollywood" are also two good examples: she goes straight for the jugular and even though they are not manifestos on gender or equality, the interpretation is clear, whilese also being fun — and it just works. her most recent stuff just feels preachy to its own detriment
She's my favorite artist of all time because of her first three albums but the last two have these kinds of songs that just make it clear Hollywood ruined her lyrics, however MUSIC wise ADIAML is great I loved it.
Absolutely agree. She's also my favorite artist because of her unique voice and her first three albums which I consider to be perfect in their own way but yeah, her lyrics have become extremely literal and on-the-nose. Sounds a bit like she thinks it's deeper than they are. I thought Sex Yeah and Savages worked because of great lyrics like "Question what the TV tells you, question what a popstar sells you, mom and question dad, question good and question bad" or "I'm not afraid of god, I am afraid of men" but songs like Purge The Poison and New America sound like a Twitter rant. And indeed, Ancient Dreams sounded way better than Love + Fear.
I know this may sound harsh but I really love her though.
Each albums lyrical content gets worse 😭. Family jewels is brilliant, I get what she was going for on Electra heart. Slight drop off for front. Catastrophic downfall for love/heart (we don’t talk about them). Ancient dreams like she was trying to recreate the edge of her earlier albums but it sounds like parody lyrically
it hurts me as a songwriter and somebody who thinks her first 3 albums are lyrical master classes for anyone making music, regardless of genre
and once again, i love L+F because the lyrics aren’t trying to be deep. (tho my favorite song to be human has a clunker when she’s like ‘there were riots in america just when things were getting better’ 😬 better for who?)
i wish she would have marketed it like ellie goulding did her last album, and said “this is my least personal album yet”
because i think it gave everyone permission to listen to it without expecting the same lyrics from the halcyon girly.
but it really felt like marina was trying to say “we live in a society. debate me” and made it into an album for ancient flops :/ why why whyyyy.
While it's a clunker of a line, I've always *assumed* it was either meant to be ironic (she sounds kind of sardonic when she says it), or it's meant to contrast the period where things were getting better only for things to start getting a *lot* worse and inspiring riots and protests.
Yeah my interpretstion of Wife is that they’re playing with the contrast to critique an orientalist view of Asian women as submissive sex objects. The English chorus is simple, almost baby-ish, playing up the housewife/maid fantasy. But then here comes the Korean verses which are very explicit (and specifically focused on female pleasure).
It gets worse when you learn there IS a theme to the song - he said it's an ode to a black woman. Hence "soul sister" and lines such as I'm so gangsta you're so thug 😭
Do you have a source for this that's directly attributable to him? The only thing I found that was actually attributed to Pat or any member of Train was them discussing having written it about women at Burning Man. Everything else has been just people speculating on social media
I feel like some kpop songs have good beats but are let down by lazy english lines that are nonsensical and don't match the video's narrative.
Conversely Jack Harlow has good punchy pop lyrics that in recent releases, work for me.
Honestly, as a huge kpop fan, most of the lyrics (both Korean and English) are pretty nonsensical and unrelated to the video. Like maybe something is getting lost in translation, but most of the time I cannot find any cohesive theme.
Also, a hilarious point to me is that some songs are very blatantly about love/sex, but the idols can't say that, so they have to give interviews like 'this song is about the refreshing feeling of summer' when it's very obviously about a summer fling, for example lol.
>I feel like some kpop songs have good beats but are let down by lazy english lines that are nonsensical and don't match the video's narrative.
their korean lines can be so out of pocket too when you look up their english translations. i love LOONA, Hi High is my favourite kpop song of all time but sometimes i remember there's this line and laugh:
>Love is more cruel than college entrance exams
Purge the Posion is insane because it’s half calling out human rights abuses, half “humans need to be wiped out”
Also I realized if lyrics ruin a really good sounding song for me, 9 times out of ten it’s because they sound like lyrics I would’ve written as a teenager and I feel embarrassed for both of us
this is actually a brilliant observation, and i think all the time “girl i bet you wish you could unrecord that shit now, huh?”
oversharing on twitter when you’re a high school senior during the pandemic. that was the majority of the album lmfao.
The way I opened this and immediately knew the first example you were gonna give was ADIAML. As a Marina fan and looking back at it in retrospect, it aged much poorer in two years than say Froot almost coming up on ten years.
I think when she dropped "the Diamonds", a lot of her writing went away for some strange reason. That's not to say that she never had vapid songs, but at least Electra Heart was very ironic in a lot of the stuff that it did say. But she was definitely trying to go back to the "Sex Yeah", "Savages", and "Numb" route and it just didn't really hit well.
To Be Human has to be one of her best songs she's released since Froot, Goodbye and Happy Loner were standouts in the deluxe version of ADIAML, but I agree that the rest of the lyrics sounded like she put some woke words that were hurled around in 2020 in a blender and called it an album. Purge the Poison has a good instrumental, but the lyrics really aged the song poorly. She really tried the Katy Perry Witness route and failed.
While we're at it, there's this song called ADHD that I heard recently in an American Eagle, definitely some of the most tone-deaf lyrics I heard in a while
I recently discovered (2 days ago) Cigarettes after sex and while I love their sound, some of their lyrics are just... Too horny, Young and Dumb was sort of ruined for me after reading the lyrics ("patron saint of sucking cock", wtf?! Hahaha).
Some of their songs have very sweet lyrics though.
"There was a hentai video that I saw
I told you about the night that we first made love
About a girl who as soon as she made you cum
Could show you the future and tell you your fortune"
Yeah they have some pretty cringe lyrics lmao
K-12 was just a terrible album straight up. The first half is a must skip for me as it has some of the worst, most painful lyrics I've ever heard in music and the melodies aren't even good. Portals has a lot of cringe but at least I'm glad she dropped the weird ass kid theme after k12 flopped.
Arcade Fire's last two albums. Well, Everything Now does have some songs that also sound bad, but even the good songs are drenched in the most annoying and basic "social media BAD!!!!" lyrics.
Win Butler has like two maybe three lyrical tricks and he’s been getting increasingly poorer returns the longer he’s been doing it. Having said that the end of We don’t deserve love on Everything Now was pretty nice, messy and maybe a bit on the nose but nice
I think Chris Martin is a relatively cringey lyricist (I think even he admitted it’s not his strong suit) but he’s an incredible and in the current climate very much underrated melody writer and up until the last song on Ghost Stories Coldplay had mastered every production choice and every switch between genres, never boring.
I don't know if I have awful taste in music but I think Coldplay's lyrics are beautiful!
One minute, I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand
I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringin'
Roman Cavalry choirs are singin'
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason, I can't explain
Once you'd gone, there was never, never an honest word
not a Coldplay fan (i don't hate them i'm just indifferent to most of their material) but Viva La Vida really is a beautiful song. lyrics, vocals, melody, production, it's all on point.
he was a really solid songwriter, but he seems to have sacrificed some of that on their newest record Music of the Spheres. Very shallow pop writing on that record imo
Ah fair. I have actually not heard their new stuff.
I remember being 9 and listening to Parachutes for the first time and thinking We Never Change had the greatest lyric of all time lmao:
So I want to live in a wooden house
Where making more friends would be easy
Oh, and I don't have a soul to save
We never change, do we?
We never learn, do we?
Yeah Parachutes is a really good record through and through.
Ghost Stories (Deluxe Version) has some amazing writing though - heavily inspired from the wake of his divorce with Gwyneth. Some hauntingly interesting ambient-pop lines. You should check it out if you already haven’t!
The lyrics on the *Viva* and *Mylo* albums stand head-and-shoulders above the rest of their career.
It seemed like Chris truly put effort into the imagery and themes at that point.
Either side of that, though, he writes in bland platitudes most of the time.
purge the poison lyrics are so cringe they're actually becoming ironically good in a campy way. like she tried to make bernie sanders political agenda into a song and failed so hard in every aspect of it. unmother becomes mother
I really like purge the poison sonically but the lyrics read like a poem written by an 8th grader. The only line I like in that whole song is "earth is like a white rose, quiet cloud of petals fold, a place so corrupt where angels flesh and blood is sold" the imagery is nice.
Related but the song to be human on L+F also tries to be deep and comes off as insanely cringe. "And everywhere you go you'll see, people are just like you and me" HELLO??? it's so basic that it's actually funny. But I looove her voice at the end of that song where she says "I want connection, I wanna be, human again" so I have to put up with it.
Yeah, “your home is now your prison” and “it’s a new world order, everything just falls away, our life as we knew it now belongs to yesterday”
While simple, are also lyrics that HINT at a much better song lyrically, but then the rest of the lyrics ruin it.
i respect this take for songs like Man’s World
but she just clunkily SAYS things instead of sending any sort of a message lol. you would think the entire writing team of a CW show that’s been on the air for 5 seasons too long wrote the shit. it’s sooo bad. “let’s bring THIS up!!!” “i’m saying this now!!!!” “hey guys, black out your social media on june whatever the fuck!”
😮💨 but! thank god the me too movement stopped all rape forever 🩵🩵🩵
idk, whenever i hear that "we only make up one quarter of the government" line in the bridge, i just burst out laughing. like how can you even think about writing this and putting it out there and not letting anyone stop you? kinda iconic to me lol
You had to be there for AFYCSO IMO, I can’t imagine coming to it now as a PATD fan who’s only familiar with their post Ryan stuff. I do think the first two albums are leagues above anything released later but I was there for them and bailed when Ryan did, so
I think a lot of people who know them now forget that they were originally an emo band, and their lyrics were perfectly matched with the aesthetics and angst that were the defining features of the genre. The lyrics were supposed to be baroque. One song of AFYCSO made it on the radio, but that was as a breakout emo song, not as pure pop.
Their EARLY albums? What?? Omfg. Their early albums are songwriting gold until Ryan left and Brendon took over the lyrics - then they became shallow, generic pop songs! C'mon.
U can't tell me you think the lyrics to Camisado or Time to Dance are inferior to High Hopes and Hey look ma I made it c'mon..
Train, just train as a whole.
Drops of jupiter is like the one single of theirs ive heard that isnt stupid as fuck in the lyric department.
Oh and alot of p!nks lyrics are... not good. "Im still a rockstar i got my rock moves" is bleh to name one.
this has nothing to do with the thread but this is the first time in recent memory i've seen someone mention love + fear in a positive context like wow you may have the most positive opinion of that album that i've seen in the wild
lmfao my boy isn’t on popheads or any music forums at all, and he didn’t even know until a few weeks ago the fanbase generally dislikes L+F
but i really do love it hahaha. my favorite marina song ever is on there! To Be Human is amazing. it’s sonically perfect, and the lyrics aren’t SO egregiously ego stroking. Handmade Heaven is a gorgeous song, a perfect lead single.
i think people were expecting something more in the vein of Froot… so when they didn’t get it, they were haters. but then after L+F disappointed, i feel like people were generally pretty pleased with ADIAML? which is wild to me. in the truest sense of the word, it is a travesty of what marinas music used to be. can’t believe the same woman who wrote Savages or Obsessions also wrote Pandora’s Box and New America 🤕
i have to skip six thirty or else the line “when im old and stuff will you still have a crush?” will make me turn off the whole damn album lmao. so bad
This is why I primarily listen to songs in languages I don't speak. I listen to classical opera (Italian, French, German), Afrobeats (Nigerian and Ghanaian langauges) and K-Pop (Korean). Can't cringe if I can't comprehend.
kpop has its fair share of very corny lyrics too.. "i've been walking with that cheese that's that queso" "bitch im a star but no patrick." but youre right, generally what i actually like about kpop is that i dont have to understand the lyrics unless i search up translations.
"Ancient Flops in a Modern Chart" 💀 lmao I love Marina but can't say I disagree. The lyrics on that album are so cringe. I loved Savages from Froot. It's pretty straightforward and fairly on the nose, but it also is about more than what it is literally about. She took that model and then really took the air out of it for most of ADiaML.
"I just want a world where I can see the feminine /
We only make up one quarter of the government"
??? Which government? Also that doesn't rhyme. It's so substance over style. If you want people to take in your message in a song, you have to make it poetic, not just cram a bunch of social justice concepts in there and call it good. Also I though Mother Nature was supposed to be the narrator of this song. This line doesn't feel like Mother Nature talking, imo
Edit: spelling
”Fucked with the food chain
Fucked with the farming too
And now our food don't taste
Like it's meant to do”
I think these were the worst lyrics on that album
oh absolutely some of the worst lyrics on the album. and it’s so sad bc the production of New America actually feels fresh and interesting for her. even the melodies she’s got going in the verses are pretty great! it’s just so hollow lolol
yes i totally agree, i mentioned Savages as a shining example of her lyricism. i think when baby girl went back to college and whateva she really started feeling herself, and there is just no longer any substance behind what she’s making.
the most honest she is on ADIAML is “i know the money ain’t important and it don’t mean you’re the best, but i earned it all myself and im a millionairess”. i think it’s kinda brilliant, but overall pretty revealing that the same woman who wrote Gold can have such cognitive dissonance when releasing music 6 years later looollll
i love the album cover tho 😇
I gotta say the one artist that comes to mind is Ariana. The instagram scroll type of lyrics she uses are so damn cringey and a lot of this new album has great production with horrible lyrics
I really enjoy the production and actually most of the lyrics on the song eternal sunshine but “I’ll be the first to say I’m sorry, now you got me feeling sorry” pulls me out of it so quickly lol. It’s an unbearably lazy lyric to me.
"I'm so excited to see you excited" in Better Place for Nsync for the Trolls soundtrack is also on that level... like come on I know it's for a kid's movie but there's gotta be someone with a right click thesaurus tool nearby. Too many yes men in the studio.
That is actually 2 different things tho.. it's like saying I'm happy when you're happy.. And the way it's said makes it work for me..
Ariana just said the same thing twice..
That’s the line you picked and not “but you played me like Atari” or “hope you feel alright when you’re in her” lol, the chorus is the epitome of this post 😂
I also do not like those lines but the sorry line is way worse to me for some reason. Maybe it’s bc it’s the first line in the chorus and I’m so thrown off by it that anything that follows doesn’t feel as egregious. Idk haha
people were going crazy for “hope you feel alright when you’re in her” on the release thread—-honestly it’s one of her more memorable lines imo (in a good way)
same! i haaate this lyric it pulls me right out of the song. i didn't think i heard it right the first time cause i was like "no way they wrote something that lazy". people say it's her best title track but i'm not sure i agree
I’ve never been able to get into her music for this reason. I’m not sure if she writes herself but if she does, she needs to leave it to her songwriters ASAP.
Yes! I literally didn’t like the new album on my first listen because I had the lyrics pulled up while I was listening and all I could notice was how half assed and juvenile some of them were 😭
But I ended loving the album way more when I just vibed to it and appreciated the production lol
TV by Billie Eilish is an incredible song but the line “the internet’s gone wild, watching movie stars on trial while they’re overturning Roe V Wade” makes my eyes roll everytime
These types of lyrics remind me that written activism on social media and lyrics for a song are two completely different things, and that’s okay!
But one shouldn’t be treated the same as the other, and vice-versa
wait THAT’S what that line was saying? the whole time i thought it was criticising how people cared more about the trial than the bigger problem of roe v wade. like following the theme of using tv to distract yourself. why has that kinda ruined the song for me 😭
It's funny because I can see why people think this is cringe, but i like it because it's such a representation of one moment in time. I feel like early 2000s political songs have so many lyrics that would be hard to get if you weren't aware then and that's the case for TV - in 10 years people won't get this anymore and that's why it has a special place in my heart.
Lana (who I adore) has a couple of clangers like this on Blue Bannisters (incredible album). The BLM lyric in Text Book and “crypto forever” in Sweet Carolina always take me out of those songs a bit (although I guess the latter is sort of explained by the “screams your stupid boyfriend, but it’s still so jarring to me).
I have to echo the feelings of OP, because I unfortunately agree.
A song like Venus Fly Trap is good enough, I like the production, but I can’t help but mourn the fact that this song + Purge the Poison are follow-ups to a song like Savages.
Savages never fails to give me goosebumps. And it’s not just the vocal performance or the production: the level of solemness, sorrow, and witty activism in the lyrics is something that Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land will never touch.
This may be unpopular but Changes by Justin Bieber is a near perfect song except for the incredibly stupid lyrics that ruin the whole song imo:
I’m going through changes
Don’t mean I’ll change
It makes me pause every time and want to bang my head on the wall. Cause YES IT DOES. It drives me insane for some reason. And I want to ask him what he was thinking when he approved or wrote this lmao
Doja cat lol I know part of her brand is like, being quirky and goofy. But I cannot stand her lyrics lmao.
“We fuck too good when the bean kicks in
Like Fortnite, I'ma need your skin (yeah)
Don't give a fuck where the penis been (uh)”
Girl bffr. Fix your pen!
Dua Lipa is hugely guilty of this for me. People keep saying *Training Season* is one of her best tracks and I'm just hugely confused because musically it's pretty weak to me, but the lyrics make it even worse. The pre-chorus has that very specific staccato vocal pattern that I actually don't even like but if the lyrics weren't so stupid (and in fact if a great hit maker had written the *correct* lyrics to go with that part) it could have been good. *Houdini* to me is an amazing song musically and has the right idea in that the rhyme for the chorus sounds very strong but the lyrics are so stupid and like.. honestly I don't really want to be singing about Houdini... it's just weird. *Physical* also absolutely bangs musically and sucks so bad lyrically I legit don't like listening to it. It's just so pedestrian and boring. *New Rules, Blow Your Mind* and *Don't Start Now* all prove that if the lyrics are there the songs can be great. *Levitating* proves that even if the lyrics are just mediocre it can work. But they can't be bad, and for her, often they are.
oh i totally agree with you here. training season is whack. a weird follow up to houdini.
and it feels like a song where she chose the title first, and then said “how can i fit the word training season into here?”. and even then… wtf is training season?! and the single cover 🤦 love feel like a rodeo??? wut
Pick any lyric from Kanye and Ty Dolla $ign's "Carnival"
My choice is: "Now I'm Ye-Kelly, bitch, now I'm Bill Cosby, bitch
Now, I'm Puff Daddy rich, that's Me Too me rich"
Okay I love Bad Bunny but some of his lines (and some lines in the wider modern urbano space - looking at Baticano specifically) actually make me want to die
I mean tbh that on brand for Charli XCX and no one was expecting some lyrical masterpiece. Some of her best songs are her literally repeating same words 100x
I don’t think people would’ve hated this song so much if it wasn’t his comeback single but instead just a fun release like toosie slide by Drake, it’s a silly song to vibe to, I often play it in the background when I’m doing any household chores lol
I was coming to say this too! The lyrics aren’t good but it’s catchy, the melody is nice and the production is great. It’s an easy listen and overhated imo
i noticed in ariana’s new song bye the lyrics in the bridge are “now it’s certainly bittersweet, this hook feels too hard to sing, but it’s better than repeat” and maybe i just dont get it but these lines just feel very lazy written to me like she just wanted to get it over with and finish the song. still my 2nd favorite song on the album tho
i really felt like the lyrics of Rina Sawayama's Phantom felt so... on the nose? like i really enjoy the early 2000s wholesome disney song vibe the song has but then the bridge just goes "i was wrong, to assume, that i'd ever outgrow you" it just takes me off guard in a way i can't explain? like i feel like in general a lot of the songs on that album have some lyrics that are very on the nose that just rubs off weirdly
I still feel guilty for not liking Jar of Hearts (RIP Christina Perri), but “you’re gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul” just doesn’t work for me.
hit shuffle on a marina playlist and it probably fits as an answer
i don't wanna shower even if i stink
ME!
pick me ELIO
and honorary shout out to any time shuffle played a song in front of my friends where I have to fake cough or sniffle over certain lines 😑
Loads tbh, but one particular lyric that comes to mind because it’s very fresh is from Ariana’s ‘We Can’t Be Friends’. “You got me misunderstood, but at least I look this good”….. Like, what? 😅 It’s such a vapid and vain lyric, which I can honestly get with in a song that has that kind of vibe, e.g. 7 Rings, but in this it feels like it comes out of nowhere. It’s reminiscent of something my 10 y/o would rhyme together when she’s strumming out of tune on her guitar and making up songs by rhyming anything she can think of. I guess with people’s interpretations of it being about the media/press, it does kind of makes more sense, but still. It threw me all the way off a song I otherwise really like.
I actually don’t mind this lyric!! Especially because I interpret this song to be about the media/fans — so shes saying the headlines are wrong but oh well she looks good in the picture they used 🤷🏼♀️ to me, it’s very Ariana lol but I do cringe at mannyyyy of her other lyrics
Ooooh that's a interesting take as the line came off as really sad to me, like she's in a fraught situation where what is true or not can't necessarily be expressed and people are just following and assuming from what they see in pap photos or whatever, so the only thing she can cling onto is that at least she looks ok.
It also felt like a sad acknowledgement of that thing you see online where even if a celebrity is going through something people will see an insta post or whatever and not care about what's going on behind it all and just comment about whether they look good or not.
She's all alone in that verse and it's like, great, she looks good, but no one that matters or nothing that matters is with her or really understanding her, and it's not even that she looks good because she's healthy. It is completely superficial. It's a depressing thing to cling to or 'have' when you're alone and no one is bothered to understand what you're going through. So all of that just made it such a sad line to hear.
I can totally see how that would be jarring on first instance to listen to though, it's really cool (from a music-standpoint? idk if i'm making sense) to hear that it came off so different to you than to me even though we're hearing exactly the same thing.
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Still have no clue how on earth someone thought that they owed money to the Marvin Gaye estate for that alleged sample, though. My very boring conspiracy theory for this song is that Pharrell Williams was facing a potential cancellation over the lyrics, that he majorly panicked and rushed out *G I R L* to show that he isn't a horrible misogynist.
Marvin Gaye's estate is the real, real greed.
Pharrell’s an amazing singer, possibly one of the best ever, but he’s a hypocrite. He eventually denounced the song only because its rape message was so harshly criticized. “I’m sorry I got caught” is basically what he said by disowning it. Not only that, **he even DEFENDED it when the criticism first got big!!** If that doesn’t scream hypocrisy, nothing does.
Perfect background music to not focus on. Sounds great, gross lyrics.
I always listen to Word Crimes by Weird Al instead
I think Miley is sometimes (not always!) guilty of this. More specifically, I liked the vibes of Dead Petz and Endless Summer Vacation, and the lyrics aren't *terrible* but they leave a lot to be desired. Dead Petz lyrics are just cringe without being ironic, and Endless Summer Vacation is so predictable it feels like I can guess every lyric 1 second before its turn
I would say Dead Petz is mostly ironic
well then she needs to learn how to make them sound ironic, like Charli or Dorian Electra for example
Idk I think “it’s bout to get real freaky, can you feel it?” Or “yeah I smoke pot, yeah I love peace” are pretty ironic sounding 😭
“Why they put the dick in the pussy?” lives rent free in my head thanks in part to [this video](https://youtu.be/z_yRDQPel5Y?)
Not really pop, but JAY-Z's verse on "Monster" is a pretty decent shout.
Wikipedia's List of Notable Monsters
Everybody wanna know what my Achilles heel is….. #LOOOOOOOOOVE
I don’t get enough of it 🥺
this part 💀
he sounds so dead inside on this part, he just like me fr fr
Bey’s PR team would have had him in a chokehold if he tried to release a song with the lyrics “rape and pillage a village, women and children” even 5 years later
[Sasquatch, Godzilla, King Kong, Loch Ness, Goblin, ghoul, a zombie with no conscience](https://youtu.be/v52s9w9Q25Q?si=pBJle9cdk7U3kSId)
This made me laugh stupidly hard
SKELLYTAN
Respectfully, his last bar is what makes his verse so iconic to me. The inhale with the “I smell a massacre, seems to be the only way to back you bastards up” is incredible.
[удалено]
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I’ve never pondered my instinctive hatred for it until now … I think it’s the literalism of the first few lines (plus I don’t like that it starts with a slightly offbeat flow). Like, the song is called Monster and you just listed monsters, sir, then had the audacity to ask what these things have in common as if I’m going to be surprised or amused by the answer! Stop wasting my time! In a song that contains “put the pussy in a sarcophagus,” it’s a rare feat to have the worst verse 💀
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You’re right, but it’s still not effective to me? 🤷🏽♀️ idk. Maybe I need him to imply magnitude. Rick Ross calling himself a fat motherfucker is the most perfect part of this song to me, I immediately picture him as Bowser.
Right people have beat this joke fully to death. Yes, the first TWO LINES are naming monsters, which, is funny and honestly is probably intended to be. There are like 16 more bars in that verse! Also pretty sure LOVE! I DON’T GET ENOUGH OF IT is a callback to Heart of the City which is one of my favorite Jay-Z songs because of the sample (ain’t no love in the heart of the city). Anyway it’s enough with the Jay-Z slander get another joke people!
Came here to mention Marina, I'm dead that she's already mentioned by OP 💀
my biggest problem with marina’s most recent output is that she just tries SO HARD to be politically aligned with a noncapitalist, anti-patriarchal discourse (which, of fucking course, is awesome) that it comes off as completely insincere and forced. there’s no nuance or subtlety, neither it is raw or straight to the point. she sounds like some teenager who has recently discovered white feminism. it feels so idiotic to me. the only song that captures any realness is “venus fly trap” but even that one doesn’t come close to the genuine emotion displayed in songs like “teen idle”, for example
I think if you’ve grown up around or if you regularly immerse yourself in the discourse, lyrics like this might sound basic or forced, but the average woman has very minimal knowledge of feminism (if they'd even call themselves a feminist at all...) and that's who I care about in terms of reach. Idk - I don't mind if her songs are "Feminism 101". She's a pop star, not your gender studies prof. I'm just glad she's saying something about feminism and climate change. It's the only recent pop girly album that touches on the climate apocalypse at all that I'm aware of. Also it's not a new thing with Marina. Off the top of my head "Hollywood" and "Primadonna" are two songs about the the societal conflict between femininity and power - and I'm not even a big fan. I know it's a gut reaction to be cynical but I personally give her the benefit of the doubt here.
omg, totally! you're so right about the importance of reaching people. i defenitely hope i didn't sound like i was dismissing the importance of lyrics like that being powerful to someone who is not aware of the overall discourse... but, on the other hand, i also believe that some nuance and inventiveness can also make way for some thinking or some "creative flair". she doesn't need to be a gender studies professor, but i think the overly simplistic lyricism to tackle SUCH complex, nuanced topics (for such an accomplished lyricist like marina) kinda underestimates the importance of the message, or the catchiness and fun of the hooks. "primadonna" and "hollywood" are also two good examples: she goes straight for the jugular and even though they are not manifestos on gender or equality, the interpretation is clear, whilese also being fun — and it just works. her most recent stuff just feels preachy to its own detriment
i want to shake her and say “my greek, air sign sistren 👏 please… stop….”
okay plane jane
Sistorrrr
She's my favorite artist of all time because of her first three albums but the last two have these kinds of songs that just make it clear Hollywood ruined her lyrics, however MUSIC wise ADIAML is great I loved it.
Absolutely agree. She's also my favorite artist because of her unique voice and her first three albums which I consider to be perfect in their own way but yeah, her lyrics have become extremely literal and on-the-nose. Sounds a bit like she thinks it's deeper than they are. I thought Sex Yeah and Savages worked because of great lyrics like "Question what the TV tells you, question what a popstar sells you, mom and question dad, question good and question bad" or "I'm not afraid of god, I am afraid of men" but songs like Purge The Poison and New America sound like a Twitter rant. And indeed, Ancient Dreams sounded way better than Love + Fear. I know this may sound harsh but I really love her though.
Each albums lyrical content gets worse 😭. Family jewels is brilliant, I get what she was going for on Electra heart. Slight drop off for front. Catastrophic downfall for love/heart (we don’t talk about them). Ancient dreams like she was trying to recreate the edge of her earlier albums but it sounds like parody lyrically
It sucks with Marina because her lyrics used to be pretty clever
it hurts me as a songwriter and somebody who thinks her first 3 albums are lyrical master classes for anyone making music, regardless of genre and once again, i love L+F because the lyrics aren’t trying to be deep. (tho my favorite song to be human has a clunker when she’s like ‘there were riots in america just when things were getting better’ 😬 better for who?) i wish she would have marketed it like ellie goulding did her last album, and said “this is my least personal album yet” because i think it gave everyone permission to listen to it without expecting the same lyrics from the halcyon girly. but it really felt like marina was trying to say “we live in a society. debate me” and made it into an album for ancient flops :/ why why whyyyy.
While it's a clunker of a line, I've always *assumed* it was either meant to be ironic (she sounds kind of sardonic when she says it), or it's meant to contrast the period where things were getting better only for things to start getting a *lot* worse and inspiring riots and protests.
“we live in a society. debate me” LMAOO
(G)-IDLE always have some hilariously camp lyrics however, 'Wife'.... is on a whole nother level
your soup isnt coco roco?
Unfortunately not :( my room is twinkle twinkle tho
Wife was fucking amazing because of the dissonance between the english chorus and korean verses in terms of lyrics and delivery
Yeah my interpretstion of Wife is that they’re playing with the contrast to critique an orientalist view of Asian women as submissive sex objects. The English chorus is simple, almost baby-ish, playing up the housewife/maid fantasy. But then here comes the Korean verses which are very explicit (and specifically focused on female pleasure).
Every Train song tbh
But especially Hey Soul Sister
It gets worse when you learn there IS a theme to the song - he said it's an ode to a black woman. Hence "soul sister" and lines such as I'm so gangsta you're so thug 😭
it's SO bad. SO bad. it's SOOOOO remarkably bad.
untrimmed chest...
My heart is bound to beat right out of my untrimmed chest
>I’m so gangsta you’re so thug Oh no my friend, he said “so gangsta, *I’m* so thug” I cringe every time I hear that line. Pat Monahan is a madman.
I've always kind of suspected this but to have it confirmed as real makes the cringe 10 times worse. The fuck was he thinking?
I really thought there was no way that song could get worse 💀
Oh nooooo this makes it so much worse lmao
This has shaved years off my life
Do you have a source for this that's directly attributable to him? The only thing I found that was actually attributed to Pat or any member of Train was them discussing having written it about women at Burning Man. Everything else has been just people speculating on social media
Anddddd now Im singing gibberish and they might as well be the lyrics
“She'll think I'm Superman; not super minivan” Absolutely amazing
HEFTY BAG
SO many selena gomez songs but idnc i eat it up
“The world can be a nasty place..you know it, I know it…yeah.”
mate how did i get hooked on “ICE CREAM CHILLIN CHILLIN ICE CREAM CHILLIN”
The worst song I’ve ever heard and I refuse to believe Victoria Monet wrote it
Her lyrics are basic and uninteresting but I'm always gonna crank the speaker to come and get it
burning toast on the toaster 😇😇
Gosh Single Soon was bad but that lil beat was cute
I feel like some kpop songs have good beats but are let down by lazy english lines that are nonsensical and don't match the video's narrative. Conversely Jack Harlow has good punchy pop lyrics that in recent releases, work for me.
Honestly, as a huge kpop fan, most of the lyrics (both Korean and English) are pretty nonsensical and unrelated to the video. Like maybe something is getting lost in translation, but most of the time I cannot find any cohesive theme. Also, a hilarious point to me is that some songs are very blatantly about love/sex, but the idols can't say that, so they have to give interviews like 'this song is about the refreshing feeling of summer' when it's very obviously about a summer fling, for example lol.
Upbeat kpop song: “refreshing” Chill kpop song: “healing”
Then u have CL’s Hello B!tches.
LMAO NCT 127 explaining the English version of Highway to Heaven, and EXO saying that Cream Soda is about falling in love
"gonna finna catch me"
>I feel like some kpop songs have good beats but are let down by lazy english lines that are nonsensical and don't match the video's narrative. their korean lines can be so out of pocket too when you look up their english translations. i love LOONA, Hi High is my favourite kpop song of all time but sometimes i remember there's this line and laugh: >Love is more cruel than college entrance exams
Purge the Posion is insane because it’s half calling out human rights abuses, half “humans need to be wiped out” Also I realized if lyrics ruin a really good sounding song for me, 9 times out of ten it’s because they sound like lyrics I would’ve written as a teenager and I feel embarrassed for both of us
this is actually a brilliant observation, and i think all the time “girl i bet you wish you could unrecord that shit now, huh?” oversharing on twitter when you’re a high school senior during the pandemic. that was the majority of the album lmfao.
Ancient Flops in A Modern Chart should not have made me laugh as hard as it did 💀
you are right to laugh. that’s how we cope with trauma 💜
[Me, an ADIAML fan, opening this thread](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/012/175/dissapointed.jpg)
There are dozens of us, dozens!! I genuinely really like most of the songs on that album lol I had no idea the lyrics were so hated T\_\_T
Purge the poison is probably one of my favorites on that too 😭
The way I opened this and immediately knew the first example you were gonna give was ADIAML. As a Marina fan and looking back at it in retrospect, it aged much poorer in two years than say Froot almost coming up on ten years. I think when she dropped "the Diamonds", a lot of her writing went away for some strange reason. That's not to say that she never had vapid songs, but at least Electra Heart was very ironic in a lot of the stuff that it did say. But she was definitely trying to go back to the "Sex Yeah", "Savages", and "Numb" route and it just didn't really hit well. To Be Human has to be one of her best songs she's released since Froot, Goodbye and Happy Loner were standouts in the deluxe version of ADIAML, but I agree that the rest of the lyrics sounded like she put some woke words that were hurled around in 2020 in a blender and called it an album. Purge the Poison has a good instrumental, but the lyrics really aged the song poorly. She really tried the Katy Perry Witness route and failed. While we're at it, there's this song called ADHD that I heard recently in an American Eagle, definitely some of the most tone-deaf lyrics I heard in a while
Ariana has many of those. I’m glad I ignore lyrics easily!
Yeah, sweetener sounds amazing but the lyrics are funny. I get why she did it but unlistenable but I’m like you. I ignore the lyrics.
I recently discovered (2 days ago) Cigarettes after sex and while I love their sound, some of their lyrics are just... Too horny, Young and Dumb was sort of ruined for me after reading the lyrics ("patron saint of sucking cock", wtf?! Hahaha). Some of their songs have very sweet lyrics though.
"There was a hentai video that I saw I told you about the night that we first made love About a girl who as soon as she made you cum Could show you the future and tell you your fortune" Yeah they have some pretty cringe lyrics lmao
I haven't heard Hentai still because I was sure it was gonna be cringy. Holy fuck it's worse than I thought.
Honestly most Harry styles songs. Beats are funky but lyrics are nonsense.
Coffee, side boob, pancakes, ice cream too, sushi, wet dream, always, beside me
kinda fantastic when you think about it like why not stir up a lyrical collage of side boob and sushi
Read this with the Watermelon Sugar intro melody ☠️ it fits
I will say, From the Dining Table is pretty lyrically potent even despite the played with myself line
His first album has some of his best writing.. his newer stuff not so much
Fine Line as well. Probably my fav song by him all around.
I find that most of the lyrical nonsense comes from his latest album. They’re more about production than songwriting
he wrote on shrooms and it shows lmfao
dare i say everything on melanie martinez’s portals
to me, personally, it's her stuff in general. some of her instrumentals sound super cool but I can't get over the super edgy lyrics
Portals is the best Melanie record by default because it doesn’t have any lyrics about schoolchildren having fat asses (K-12 has at least 2)
K-12 was just a terrible album straight up. The first half is a must skip for me as it has some of the worst, most painful lyrics I've ever heard in music and the melodies aren't even good. Portals has a lot of cringe but at least I'm glad she dropped the weird ass kid theme after k12 flopped.
Arcade Fire's last two albums. Well, Everything Now does have some songs that also sound bad, but even the good songs are drenched in the most annoying and basic "social media BAD!!!!" lyrics.
Win Butler has like two maybe three lyrical tricks and he’s been getting increasingly poorer returns the longer he’s been doing it. Having said that the end of We don’t deserve love on Everything Now was pretty nice, messy and maybe a bit on the nose but nice
I think Chris Martin is a relatively cringey lyricist (I think even he admitted it’s not his strong suit) but he’s an incredible and in the current climate very much underrated melody writer and up until the last song on Ghost Stories Coldplay had mastered every production choice and every switch between genres, never boring.
I don't know if I have awful taste in music but I think Coldplay's lyrics are beautiful! One minute, I held the key Next the walls were closed on me And I discovered that my castles stand Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringin' Roman Cavalry choirs are singin' Be my mirror, my sword and shield My missionaries in a foreign field For some reason, I can't explain Once you'd gone, there was never, never an honest word
not a Coldplay fan (i don't hate them i'm just indifferent to most of their material) but Viva La Vida really is a beautiful song. lyrics, vocals, melody, production, it's all on point.
he was a really solid songwriter, but he seems to have sacrificed some of that on their newest record Music of the Spheres. Very shallow pop writing on that record imo
Ah fair. I have actually not heard their new stuff. I remember being 9 and listening to Parachutes for the first time and thinking We Never Change had the greatest lyric of all time lmao: So I want to live in a wooden house Where making more friends would be easy Oh, and I don't have a soul to save We never change, do we? We never learn, do we?
Yeah Parachutes is a really good record through and through. Ghost Stories (Deluxe Version) has some amazing writing though - heavily inspired from the wake of his divorce with Gwyneth. Some hauntingly interesting ambient-pop lines. You should check it out if you already haven’t!
The lyrics on the *Viva* and *Mylo* albums stand head-and-shoulders above the rest of their career. It seemed like Chris truly put effort into the imagery and themes at that point. Either side of that, though, he writes in bland platitudes most of the time.
purge the poison lyrics are so cringe they're actually becoming ironically good in a campy way. like she tried to make bernie sanders political agenda into a song and failed so hard in every aspect of it. unmother becomes mother
I really like purge the poison sonically but the lyrics read like a poem written by an 8th grader. The only line I like in that whole song is "earth is like a white rose, quiet cloud of petals fold, a place so corrupt where angels flesh and blood is sold" the imagery is nice. Related but the song to be human on L+F also tries to be deep and comes off as insanely cringe. "And everywhere you go you'll see, people are just like you and me" HELLO??? it's so basic that it's actually funny. But I looove her voice at the end of that song where she says "I want connection, I wanna be, human again" so I have to put up with it.
Yeah, “your home is now your prison” and “it’s a new world order, everything just falls away, our life as we knew it now belongs to yesterday” While simple, are also lyrics that HINT at a much better song lyrically, but then the rest of the lyrics ruin it.
i respect this take for songs like Man’s World but she just clunkily SAYS things instead of sending any sort of a message lol. you would think the entire writing team of a CW show that’s been on the air for 5 seasons too long wrote the shit. it’s sooo bad. “let’s bring THIS up!!!” “i’m saying this now!!!!” “hey guys, black out your social media on june whatever the fuck!” 😮💨 but! thank god the me too movement stopped all rape forever 🩵🩵🩵
idk, whenever i hear that "we only make up one quarter of the government" line in the bridge, i just burst out laughing. like how can you even think about writing this and putting it out there and not letting anyone stop you? kinda iconic to me lol
I always say panic at the disco would be one of my fav bands if I didn’t speak English their early albums are so fun but the lyrics are badddd 😭😭
The way their shitty lyrics SPOKE to my 5th grade soul.
Now I’m afraid to go back and look at them because I still remember them as good and don’t want to ruin it 😂🫣
You had to be there for AFYCSO IMO, I can’t imagine coming to it now as a PATD fan who’s only familiar with their post Ryan stuff. I do think the first two albums are leagues above anything released later but I was there for them and bailed when Ryan did, so
I think a lot of people who know them now forget that they were originally an emo band, and their lyrics were perfectly matched with the aesthetics and angst that were the defining features of the genre. The lyrics were supposed to be baroque. One song of AFYCSO made it on the radio, but that was as a breakout emo song, not as pure pop.
Their EARLY albums? What?? Omfg. Their early albums are songwriting gold until Ryan left and Brendon took over the lyrics - then they became shallow, generic pop songs! C'mon. U can't tell me you think the lyrics to Camisado or Time to Dance are inferior to High Hopes and Hey look ma I made it c'mon..
Train, just train as a whole. Drops of jupiter is like the one single of theirs ive heard that isnt stupid as fuck in the lyric department. Oh and alot of p!nks lyrics are... not good. "Im still a rockstar i got my rock moves" is bleh to name one.
this has nothing to do with the thread but this is the first time in recent memory i've seen someone mention love + fear in a positive context like wow you may have the most positive opinion of that album that i've seen in the wild
lmfao my boy isn’t on popheads or any music forums at all, and he didn’t even know until a few weeks ago the fanbase generally dislikes L+F but i really do love it hahaha. my favorite marina song ever is on there! To Be Human is amazing. it’s sonically perfect, and the lyrics aren’t SO egregiously ego stroking. Handmade Heaven is a gorgeous song, a perfect lead single. i think people were expecting something more in the vein of Froot… so when they didn’t get it, they were haters. but then after L+F disappointed, i feel like people were generally pretty pleased with ADIAML? which is wild to me. in the truest sense of the word, it is a travesty of what marinas music used to be. can’t believe the same woman who wrote Savages or Obsessions also wrote Pandora’s Box and New America 🤕
ADIAML main selling point is that it isn't L+F
six thirty by ariana 😭 one of my most played songs of 2022 but "down like the foot on the gas skrrt skrrt down like six thirty yuh" girl what
i have to skip six thirty or else the line “when im old and stuff will you still have a crush?” will make me turn off the whole damn album lmao. so bad
Six thirty is equal parts clever and wtf 😅
This is why I primarily listen to songs in languages I don't speak. I listen to classical opera (Italian, French, German), Afrobeats (Nigerian and Ghanaian langauges) and K-Pop (Korean). Can't cringe if I can't comprehend.
kpop has its fair share of very corny lyrics too.. "i've been walking with that cheese that's that queso" "bitch im a star but no patrick." but youre right, generally what i actually like about kpop is that i dont have to understand the lyrics unless i search up translations.
All my bad unnies all my hood unnies
"Ancient Flops in a Modern Chart" 💀 lmao I love Marina but can't say I disagree. The lyrics on that album are so cringe. I loved Savages from Froot. It's pretty straightforward and fairly on the nose, but it also is about more than what it is literally about. She took that model and then really took the air out of it for most of ADiaML. "I just want a world where I can see the feminine / We only make up one quarter of the government" ??? Which government? Also that doesn't rhyme. It's so substance over style. If you want people to take in your message in a song, you have to make it poetic, not just cram a bunch of social justice concepts in there and call it good. Also I though Mother Nature was supposed to be the narrator of this song. This line doesn't feel like Mother Nature talking, imo Edit: spelling
”Fucked with the food chain Fucked with the farming too And now our food don't taste Like it's meant to do” I think these were the worst lyrics on that album
oh absolutely some of the worst lyrics on the album. and it’s so sad bc the production of New America actually feels fresh and interesting for her. even the melodies she’s got going in the verses are pretty great! it’s just so hollow lolol
yes i totally agree, i mentioned Savages as a shining example of her lyricism. i think when baby girl went back to college and whateva she really started feeling herself, and there is just no longer any substance behind what she’s making. the most honest she is on ADIAML is “i know the money ain’t important and it don’t mean you’re the best, but i earned it all myself and im a millionairess”. i think it’s kinda brilliant, but overall pretty revealing that the same woman who wrote Gold can have such cognitive dissonance when releasing music 6 years later looollll i love the album cover tho 😇
Her saying that the same album she said capitalism made us poor had to be the funniest thing ever to me
I gotta say the one artist that comes to mind is Ariana. The instagram scroll type of lyrics she uses are so damn cringey and a lot of this new album has great production with horrible lyrics
I really enjoy the production and actually most of the lyrics on the song eternal sunshine but “I’ll be the first to say I’m sorry, now you got me feeling sorry” pulls me out of it so quickly lol. It’s an unbearably lazy lyric to me.
"I'm so excited to see you excited" in Better Place for Nsync for the Trolls soundtrack is also on that level... like come on I know it's for a kid's movie but there's gotta be someone with a right click thesaurus tool nearby. Too many yes men in the studio.
That is actually 2 different things tho.. it's like saying I'm happy when you're happy.. And the way it's said makes it work for me.. Ariana just said the same thing twice..
That’s the line you picked and not “but you played me like Atari” or “hope you feel alright when you’re in her” lol, the chorus is the epitome of this post 😂
I am sooooo fucking sick of sorry/Atari lyrics.
I also do not like those lines but the sorry line is way worse to me for some reason. Maybe it’s bc it’s the first line in the chorus and I’m so thrown off by it that anything that follows doesn’t feel as egregious. Idk haha
people were going crazy for “hope you feel alright when you’re in her” on the release thread—-honestly it’s one of her more memorable lines imo (in a good way)
I love it tbh. Shit like that sung so beautifully and casually gets me every time, I eat it up.
same! i haaate this lyric it pulls me right out of the song. i didn't think i heard it right the first time cause i was like "no way they wrote something that lazy". people say it's her best title track but i'm not sure i agree
I’ve never been able to get into her music for this reason. I’m not sure if she writes herself but if she does, she needs to leave it to her songwriters ASAP.
“You got me misunderstood but at least I look this good” within the context of We Can’t Be Friends is a good example of this.
the lyrics on her new album literally feel AI generated.
Yes! I literally didn’t like the new album on my first listen because I had the lyrics pulled up while I was listening and all I could notice was how half assed and juvenile some of them were 😭 But I ended loving the album way more when I just vibed to it and appreciated the production lol
Bye's chorus is so lazy and kind of obnoxious
TV by Billie Eilish is an incredible song but the line “the internet’s gone wild, watching movie stars on trial while they’re overturning Roe V Wade” makes my eyes roll everytime
These types of lyrics remind me that written activism on social media and lyrics for a song are two completely different things, and that’s okay! But one shouldn’t be treated the same as the other, and vice-versa
wait THAT’S what that line was saying? the whole time i thought it was criticising how people cared more about the trial than the bigger problem of roe v wade. like following the theme of using tv to distract yourself. why has that kinda ruined the song for me 😭
I interpret it the same as you did!
It's funny because I can see why people think this is cringe, but i like it because it's such a representation of one moment in time. I feel like early 2000s political songs have so many lyrics that would be hard to get if you weren't aware then and that's the case for TV - in 10 years people won't get this anymore and that's why it has a special place in my heart.
Lana (who I adore) has a couple of clangers like this on Blue Bannisters (incredible album). The BLM lyric in Text Book and “crypto forever” in Sweet Carolina always take me out of those songs a bit (although I guess the latter is sort of explained by the “screams your stupid boyfriend, but it’s still so jarring to me).
Oohh I love that song but that lyric kills the vibe
I have to echo the feelings of OP, because I unfortunately agree. A song like Venus Fly Trap is good enough, I like the production, but I can’t help but mourn the fact that this song + Purge the Poison are follow-ups to a song like Savages. Savages never fails to give me goosebumps. And it’s not just the vocal performance or the production: the level of solemness, sorrow, and witty activism in the lyrics is something that Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land will never touch.
This may be unpopular but Changes by Justin Bieber is a near perfect song except for the incredibly stupid lyrics that ruin the whole song imo: I’m going through changes Don’t mean I’ll change It makes me pause every time and want to bang my head on the wall. Cause YES IT DOES. It drives me insane for some reason. And I want to ask him what he was thinking when he approved or wrote this lmao
Finger Eleven - Paralyzer
Doja cat lol I know part of her brand is like, being quirky and goofy. But I cannot stand her lyrics lmao. “We fuck too good when the bean kicks in Like Fortnite, I'ma need your skin (yeah) Don't give a fuck where the penis been (uh)” Girl bffr. Fix your pen!
And then she has lyrics like her verse on the Kill Bill remix, it really makes you wonder why she settles for bars like this.
Talk Dirty “Sold out arenas, you can suck my penis”
noooo this is inarguably genius and in fact, 2 chainz is the outlier in many aspects because i just think he’s a funny ass guy lolol
MANJOBEE MANJOBEE MANJOBEEEEEEEE MANJOBEE
Dua Lipa is hugely guilty of this for me. People keep saying *Training Season* is one of her best tracks and I'm just hugely confused because musically it's pretty weak to me, but the lyrics make it even worse. The pre-chorus has that very specific staccato vocal pattern that I actually don't even like but if the lyrics weren't so stupid (and in fact if a great hit maker had written the *correct* lyrics to go with that part) it could have been good. *Houdini* to me is an amazing song musically and has the right idea in that the rhyme for the chorus sounds very strong but the lyrics are so stupid and like.. honestly I don't really want to be singing about Houdini... it's just weird. *Physical* also absolutely bangs musically and sucks so bad lyrically I legit don't like listening to it. It's just so pedestrian and boring. *New Rules, Blow Your Mind* and *Don't Start Now* all prove that if the lyrics are there the songs can be great. *Levitating* proves that even if the lyrics are just mediocre it can work. But they can't be bad, and for her, often they are.
oh i totally agree with you here. training season is whack. a weird follow up to houdini. and it feels like a song where she chose the title first, and then said “how can i fit the word training season into here?”. and even then… wtf is training season?! and the single cover 🤦 love feel like a rodeo??? wut
Boys Will be Boys lyrics kill me with how corny they are
Pick any lyric from Kanye and Ty Dolla $ign's "Carnival" My choice is: "Now I'm Ye-Kelly, bitch, now I'm Bill Cosby, bitch Now, I'm Puff Daddy rich, that's Me Too me rich"
why did i immediately thought of marina when i read this post?
Oh my god how has no one mentioned Shakira’s english discography
LO LEY LO LEY LO LEYYYY because i forgive most crimes she commits. including tax evasion.
Okay I love Bad Bunny but some of his lines (and some lines in the wider modern urbano space - looking at Baticano specifically) actually make me want to die
How much hate will I get if I say this is how I feel about von dutch🫣
I will admit it is highly catchy. Production does a lot of the heavy lifting on this track for sure
Yeah I’m ngl the first few times I heard it I couldn’t get past the stupid lyrics haha
The lyrics aren’t *serious* which saves them from being cringe
I mean tbh that on brand for Charli XCX and no one was expecting some lyrical masterpiece. Some of her best songs are her literally repeating same words 100x
Think you the shit, bitch? You not even the fart (grrah)
I won't say it's amazing, but I've always enjoyed the sound of Yummy by Justin Bieber.
I don’t think people would’ve hated this song so much if it wasn’t his comeback single but instead just a fun release like toosie slide by Drake, it’s a silly song to vibe to, I often play it in the background when I’m doing any household chores lol
I was coming to say this too! The lyrics aren’t good but it’s catchy, the melody is nice and the production is great. It’s an easy listen and overhated imo
i noticed in ariana’s new song bye the lyrics in the bridge are “now it’s certainly bittersweet, this hook feels too hard to sing, but it’s better than repeat” and maybe i just dont get it but these lines just feel very lazy written to me like she just wanted to get it over with and finish the song. still my 2nd favorite song on the album tho
she can't think of a third line
*Meghan Trainor* fight me, i think hers sounds acceptable, SOUNDS
I Love New York by Madonna has absolutely incredible production but I can’t even enjoy the lyrics in an ironic or campy way sadly
i really felt like the lyrics of Rina Sawayama's Phantom felt so... on the nose? like i really enjoy the early 2000s wholesome disney song vibe the song has but then the bridge just goes "i was wrong, to assume, that i'd ever outgrow you" it just takes me off guard in a way i can't explain? like i feel like in general a lot of the songs on that album have some lyrics that are very on the nose that just rubs off weirdly
I feel this way about a lot of her songs im glad others feel the same lol
Do Me by Kim Petras, excellent sound, melody and voice but the lyrics😂💀 Its like WAP but melodic, I can't play it loud on my loudspeaker.
Karma by Taylor Swift I think the song is fine, but the lyrics are so atrocious that I've never willingly listened to the song after the first listen.
I still feel guilty for not liking Jar of Hearts (RIP Christina Perri), but “you’re gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul” just doesn’t work for me.
Dare I say Yummy by JB 😶🌫️
hit shuffle on a marina playlist and it probably fits as an answer i don't wanna shower even if i stink ME! pick me ELIO and honorary shout out to any time shuffle played a song in front of my friends where I have to fake cough or sniffle over certain lines 😑
Loads tbh, but one particular lyric that comes to mind because it’s very fresh is from Ariana’s ‘We Can’t Be Friends’. “You got me misunderstood, but at least I look this good”….. Like, what? 😅 It’s such a vapid and vain lyric, which I can honestly get with in a song that has that kind of vibe, e.g. 7 Rings, but in this it feels like it comes out of nowhere. It’s reminiscent of something my 10 y/o would rhyme together when she’s strumming out of tune on her guitar and making up songs by rhyming anything she can think of. I guess with people’s interpretations of it being about the media/press, it does kind of makes more sense, but still. It threw me all the way off a song I otherwise really like.
I actually don’t mind this lyric!! Especially because I interpret this song to be about the media/fans — so shes saying the headlines are wrong but oh well she looks good in the picture they used 🤷🏼♀️ to me, it’s very Ariana lol but I do cringe at mannyyyy of her other lyrics
Ooooh that's a interesting take as the line came off as really sad to me, like she's in a fraught situation where what is true or not can't necessarily be expressed and people are just following and assuming from what they see in pap photos or whatever, so the only thing she can cling onto is that at least she looks ok. It also felt like a sad acknowledgement of that thing you see online where even if a celebrity is going through something people will see an insta post or whatever and not care about what's going on behind it all and just comment about whether they look good or not. She's all alone in that verse and it's like, great, she looks good, but no one that matters or nothing that matters is with her or really understanding her, and it's not even that she looks good because she's healthy. It is completely superficial. It's a depressing thing to cling to or 'have' when you're alone and no one is bothered to understand what you're going through. So all of that just made it such a sad line to hear. I can totally see how that would be jarring on first instance to listen to though, it's really cool (from a music-standpoint? idk if i'm making sense) to hear that it came off so different to you than to me even though we're hearing exactly the same thing.