(Ray Brandes tracks lyrical highs and lows.)
In the 1950s, entertainer Steve Allen, a relic from the sheet-music era, virtually made a career out of a comic bit in which he spoofed the hilariously incoherent, sex-crazed nonsense he believed spewed from the mouths of young rock ‘n’ rollers. In one notorious sketch, he mocked Elvis Presley by singing “Hound Dog,” wearing a tuxedo, to a basset hound. To Allen, rock ‘n’ roll was a childish fad whose day would soon pass, leaving the charts once again to Rosemary Clooney and Perry Como.
Rock ‘n’ roll, of course, has outlasted Allen, Clooney and Como. In various guises including everything from rhythm and blues to heavy metal, hip-hop and punk, rock ‘n’ roll has for more than fifty years been the primary outlet for the creative energies of young people to express their politics, sexual frustration, anger and love. Its lyrics have horrified parents, been debated in Congress, discussed in college classes and scribbled on Pee-Chee folders ever since Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” hit the airwaves in 1955.
For all these years, rock lyrics have held the power to inspire us, make us laugh, call us to action. At times rock ‘n’ roll songwriters have reached sublime levels of poetry, capturing the essence of youthful emotions in ways Shakespeare could not have imagined. At other times, however, they can be as pompous, pretentious, corny and grammatically awkward as teenagers themselves.
Rock ‘n’ roll has produced flashes of brilliance like Van Morrison’s “If You and I Could Be as Two”: “’Twas on a Sunday and the autumn leaves were on the ground /It kicked my heart when I saw you standing there in your dress of blue/ The storm was over, my ship sailed through/ What is this feeling, what can I do?” and then dropped WTF clunkers like America’s “Horse With No Name”: “’Cause in the desert you can’t remember your name/ For there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.” (Bonus points for America in the Lyrical Hall of Shame: that song also produced the line, “There were plants and birds and rocks and things.”)
Chuck Berry to the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Ray Davies, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, John Hiatt, and Paul Westerberg are merely a handful of the poets to emerge in the rock ‘n’ roll era. They have time and again produced lines which have made me stop mid-song and marvel. But of course, bad song lyrics are infinitely more fun than the good ones. Isn’t “Coast to coast, LA to Chicago” just as fun to quote?
What are your favorite best and worst song lyrics?
— Ray Brandes