Crappy Lyrics — Page 2

From Wicked: "Listen Nessa, uh Nessa, I've got something to confess a reason why, well, I asked you here tonight." and "Nessa, ah Nessa, surely now I'll matter less to you..."

That must be some of the laziest writing I've ever heard.

Speaking of CHESS, there's this gem from "How Many Women":

All of my struggles for qualifications -
My nights with Goethe and Proust
Recklessly abandoned
For you who thinks Chekhov is king to G3
And Joyce my college roommate!

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For years I never realized that Tim Rice is referring to James Joyce here. I thought he was just tossing in some oddball comment about Florence's college roommate!

That lyric is actually "But alone is alone, not alive."

Whether you like it or not, it's always good to quote accurately.

EDIT - for those of you tuning in late, After Eight had originally written "Being alone is alone, not alive."

Updated On: 4/16/14 at 03:01 PM

The problem I have with the "Nessa/confess a" and "dialyasis / a pal, a sis-" rhymes is that they are extremely forced and unnatural, in terms of how they scan. Schwartz scrifices natural speech patterns for "clever" rhymes.

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But I do hate the attempt to rhyme "Oz" and "was" in "Defying Gravity".

To be fair, E.Y. Harburg did it in The Wizard of Oz.

We're off to see the Wizard
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
We hear he is a whiz of a wiz
If ever a wiz there was
If ever oh ever a wiz there was
The Wizard of Oz is one because
Because, because, because, because
Because of the wonderful things he does
We're off to see the Wizard
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!

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I want to be a
part of B.A.
Buenos Aires
Big Apple

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King Triton in The Little Mermaid has two really bad ones:

How could she just suddenly
Completely disappear into thin water?

I realize they're trying to adapt the idiom "vanish into thin air" for the ocean, but it just sounds... stupid.


Don’t try that same old song!
I’ll have you grounded ‘til next year!
Am I clear?

Here he's berating Ariel for saving Eric, but it just sounds hokey, especially the grounding part.

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Also from The Little Mermaid:

She barely sticks a toe in
Down at the tidal pool

One of Ariel's sisters sings this in "She's in Love" when they're trying to figure out why she's so giddy. First of all, they're mermaids, so they don't have feet, much less toes. (At least, not yet Ariel). Secondly, a tidal pool is a pool of water remaining on land after a tide has retreated, and since they're not allowed to go to the surface or been close to shore, how would they know what one is? And third, what the hell does it even mean?

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"Music of the Night" has so many different versions, between the significantly different "Highlights" London cast album (i.e., the concept album) and the two current versions, which mostly divide up into West End and Broadway, that it would be surprising if some of them didn't have clunky lyrics. In one spot, the Broadway version is "Softly, deftly, music shall caress you, hear it, feel it secretly possess you." The London version, "Softly, deftly, music shall surround you, hear it feel it closing in around you" sounds forced, probably because there is no actual rhyme -- both lines end in "round you." Rhyming "surround you" might have worked with something like "Softly, deftly, music shall surround you, hear it, feel it, let its soul astound you," but the words themselves would be silly.

With the Broadway version being so much more elegant, I was surprised to hear surround/around in the U.S. tour.

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Or my personal favorite:

Victor, Victoria
Victor, Victoria
Victoria, what a Victor you are!

Brilliance.

Another WICKED one: "Down at the Ozdust, if only beCAUSE dust is what we come to do"

Seriously makes my skin crawl.

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That Wicked lyric is "If only because dust is what we come to" not "to do." Not that it makes it any better...

Updated On: 4/17/14 at 01:47 AM

This gem from "Miss Saigon"'s Telephone Song:

She is no whore!
You saw her too.
She's really more
Like the April moon.

This is terrible on several levels. Other than just being sappy (a Marine is saying this?!?), it doesn't even really rhyme. And on top of that, you couldn't come up with a rhyme for "too"?

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