While getting ready to post a video from You-Tube for the best/worst cover song of all time post, I came across an old favorite; Tropical Hot Dog Night, by Captain Beefheart. I re-realized that the song makes little, if any sense (lyrics: Tropical hot dog night, like two flamingos in a fruit fight). Perhaps it makes sense to someone who's on LSD, but I don't partake in illegal substances, so it makes no sense to me. Of course, the song never had any commercial success, which brings me to the point of the post: Which HIT song has the words that make the least sense of all?

I'll start us off:

I am the egg man, I am the walrus, koo-koo-ka choo (the Beatles).

I'm sure there's a million hits out there with more meaningless lyrics. Start posting........

Pretty much everything REM ever did, but I still like them.

If you allow parodies, this is the best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njez8hs5O4s

"Hold a chicken in the air;
Stick a deckchair up your nose;
Buy a jumbo jet
And then bury all your clothes!
Paint your left knee green
Then extract your wisdom teeth;
Form a string quartet
And pretend your name is Keith!

Skin yourself alive;
Learn to speak Arapaho;
Climb inside a dog
And behead an Eskimo!
Eat a Renault 4;
Wear salami in your ears;
Casserole your Gran;
Disembowel yourself with spears!"

Louie Louie.

quote:

Perhaps it makes sense to someone who's on LSD

That reminds me of another song that makes no sense...although I like it: Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies,
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers,
That grow so incredibly high.
Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,
Waiting to take you away.
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,
And you're gone.

Maybe not the lyrics that make the least sense but definitely top ten of the worse songs ever written.

You have been warned.

How about A Whiter Shade Of Pale by Procol Harum? Even the band name makes no sense. Great organ riff though.

Cat Stevens
"Longer Boats"
Longer boats are coming to win us, they're coming
to win us they're coming to win us, Longer boats
are coming to win us, hold on to the shore, or
they'll be taking the key from the door.
I don't want no god on my lawn, just a flower
I can help along, 'cause the soul of no body
knows, how a flower grows, how a flower grows.
Longer boats are coming to win us, they're coming
to win us they're coming to win us, Longer boats
are coming to win us, hold on to the shore, or
they'll be taking the key from the door.
Mary dropped her pants by the sand, and let a parson
come and take her by the hand, but the soul of no body
knows, where the parson goes. Where does the parson go?
Longer boats are coming to win us, they're coming
to win us they're coming to win us, Longer boats
are coming to win us, hold on to the shore, or
they'll be taking the key from the door.

1) Take any journal of surgical medicine;

2) Pick out words at random, with a minimum of 3 syllables;

3) Chop up the syllables and rearrange them at random to create Franken-words;

4) Arrange THOSE words at random; and

BANG! Instant Mars Volta lyrics!

"Blinded by the Light", originally written by Bruce Springsteen for his Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ album, achieved more notoriety when it was performed by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Some of the lyrics include this line: "Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night." For the longest time I thought they were saying "Blinded by the light, wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night." Once I realized they were saying "deuce" I still thought the lyrics were stupid until someone told me that "deuce" actually refers to a 1932 Ford Deuce Coupe.

quote:

Originally posted by Altaholic:
"Blinded by the Light", originally written by Bruce Springsteen for his Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ album, achieved more notoriety when it was performed by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Some of the lyrics include this line: "Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night." For the longest time I thought they were saying "Blinded by the light, wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night." Once I realized they were saying "deuce" I still thought the lyrics were stupid until someone told me that "deuce" actually refers to a 1932 Ford Deuce Coupe.

When I was kid, I thought the same thing. I liked the song a lot better when I thought the lyric was douche.

quote:

Originally posted by indybob:

Louie Louie.

Absolutely!

And the lyrics that make the least sense of all are those that people make up as they're mumbling along to the Kingsmen, who were probably just mumbling some heeby-jeeby crap that they made up themselves as they were recording.

McArthur Park- what the hell is that all about?

quote:

Originally posted by DoktaP:

McArthur Park- what the hell is that all about?

Jeez, Doc, it's about a cake that was left out in the rain. It took so long to make it, so everybody's pissed that it got ruined.

What's hard to figure out about that, anyway?

Whiter Shade of Pale, as previously mentioned, was my first thought when I saw this thread. Of course, we have no shortage of quality candidates.

The Blinded by the Light comments compel me to point out the archive of misheard lyrics.

Neil

quote:

Originally posted by Gigond Ass:
Maybe not the lyrics that make the least sense but definitely top ten of the worse songs ever written.

You have been warned.

I don't know why I clicked, but I did. I only got so far as "in the evenin'; it's pretty pleasin'", and I had to turn it off.

quote:

Originally posted by Vinyrd Skynyrd:
1) Take any journal of surgical medicine;

2) Pick out words at random, with a minimum of 3 syllables;

3) Chop up the syllables and rearrange them at random to create Franken-words;

4) Arrange THOSE words at random; and

BANG! Instant Mars Volta lyrics!

. You gotta admit, the music is/can be brilliant. Besides, where else are you going to hear lyrics like "She was a mink handjob in sarcophagus heels."

How could you have the blues in a place like this?

Some that bug me, for my own OCD reasons:

"I turn the engine but the engine doesn't turn" from the Wallflowers song about one headlight.

OBVIOUSLY, the engine turned if you say you turned the engine, so how can you then say the engine doesn't turn?

Also, the Doobie Brothers' lyric..."Catfish are jumpin'..."

Catfish don't jump, OK?

Oh, don't get me started.

How about Nick Drake...

"What will happen in the morning when the world it gets
So crowded that you can't look out the window in the morning."

OK, Nick, I got you, you're talking about the morning. I got it the first time.

Go listen to Hazy Jane II a few times and see if that doesn't get under your skin, what with all the morning in the morning stuff!

How about this Fugees nugget:

"3 A.M. in the morning on the Boulevard..."

As opposed to 3 A.M. in the afternoon?

Grace Jones murdered Bill Withers' syntax on Use Me:

"My friends feel that, it's their apponited duty,
And he keeps trying to tell me,
All you wanna do is use me..."

"My friends...he..."?

Oh, well, it's Grace Jones, but still.

Me stop now.

Neil K - that site is great - I particularly liked: Robert Palmer - Addicted To Love - "Might as well face it, you're a d**k with a glove"

As to real lyrics - I've never really gotten Norwegian Wood:
"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me...
She showed me her room, isn't it good, norwegian wood?

quote:

Originally posted by Squirreljam:
Neil K - that site is great - I particularly liked: Robert Palmer - Addicted To Love - "Might as well face it, you're a d**k with a glove"

As to real lyrics - I've never really gotten Norwegian Wood:
"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me...
She showed me her room, isn't it good, norwegian wood?

I always thought "Norwegian Wood" was pot.

"So, I lit a fire, isn't it good, Norwegian Wood?"



I may be wrong.

TCoDC - I'm good with that, makes at least some sense.

Kinda off topic, but a favorite mangled lyric is Enrico Palazzo's rendition of the national anthem in Naked Gun: (imagine very off key)

quote:

... And the rocket's.[pause]..red glare! Lots of bombs in the air, gave proof through the night, that we still had our flag. Oh does that star spangled banner wave o-o-o-over all we see, for the h-o-o-ome of the land, and the land...of the...FREE

Norwegian Wood does not refer to pot. The singer (Lennon) tells the story of being essentially duped by a woman (bird) who invites him up to her flat but doesn't sleep with him and leaves before he awakes. The wood is the cheap pine furnishings or wainscoating in the flat that she's proud of. As revenge in the end, the singer either burns some of her furniture or the flat itself.

Lennon wrote based off some dalliance of his while he was married to Cynthia. He told her at the time, that the story came from Paul.

Neil

I guess that's fair, but then why would he sing that he once "had" a girl?

Perhaps a play on words, by adding she once "had" him, as in implied that something was going to happen and then it didn't?

Plus, why wouldn't he just go home or back to his hotel instead of crawling off to sleep in the bath?

I'm diggin' ya, I'm just deciding that maybe I like the "drug version" better. In the "pot" version, he gets laid.

Thanks for the interesting information. I had never known any of that!