Dr. Rosenpenis
24th September 2006, 10:41
Aye. Seventeen.
Toto
The song is 'Africa'
Does he actually sing the line "sure as Kilimanjaro rises like an Olympus above the Serengeti"? Yes he does. Has he actually been to Africa? Fuck no.
Michael Jackson
Black or White
As he is indisputably neither, this song hardly rings true. I also recall the line, "I saw you kicking dirt in my eye." Now I'm 100% sure that MJ has not been in any fights, and if I am in fact wrong, they have probably been against petrified children. Nevertheless, if he did in fact get dirt in his eye he would spend the next two to three weeks in an isolation chamber breathing pure oxygen and bleaching his innards.
The Bangles
Walk Like an Egyptian
I don't know if you've ever seen these miscreants "walk like an Egyptian". Luckily I have, and so I can tell you that they have grasped not only the wrong end of the stick, but they have in fact proceeded to beat themselves over the head with it.
"How does an Egyptian walk?" you ask. The answer? Much like everyone else. Which immediately invalidates any premise for this song being made, much less it being a hit.
Simply Red
'Money's Too Tight To Mention'
It's impossible to write a suitably vituperative commentary about 'Money's Too Tight To Mention'. It's just so intensely and obviously awful and hypocritical, its innate and fulsome awfulness and hypocrisy seem to lend it a kind of organic armour plating. All brickbat and obloquy just glance uselessly off its hideously tinny, self-satisfied bulk, and Period Head rises from the debris inviolate and inevitable like the cockroach from nuclear apocalypse, still yelping like a castrated banshee and rhyming "mention" with "pension". Pension. For the love of god.
Madonna
Like a Virgin
oh never mind
AC/DC
For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
I imagine that AC/DC believed they were all about rock 'n' roll. However it turned out they were in fact all about disgustingly cheesy guitar, school uniforms and dubiously high vocals. I for one am suspicious about any man whose singing range exceeds that of my natural hearing. Whenever this song is played, there are cannons which fire in time with the singing. Now I have never considered heavy artillery as an integral part of rock... Maybe I missed the point.
Elton John
'Belfast'
Almost indescribably crass.
C+C Music Factory
Things That Make You Go Hmmm
None of the things in this track in my opinion make you go "hmmm". Where, for example, are the talking dogs or David Ikes of the modern day claiming to be the reincarnation of Albert Fish? They're not on this track, I'll tell you that for nothing. I don't think any other song has so comprehensively failed to achieve its simple titularly-stated aim except for maybe Toni Basil's 'Hey Mickey', which apparently and straightforwardly set out to attract the attention of someone named Mickey but ended up annoying the ever living fuck out of me and about several million other people instead.
Phil Collins
'We're Sons of Our Fathers'
From the title’s uplifting statement of shining, irrefutable truth, you might expect this song to be one long transcendental wingding of eternal verity writ large.
What you’ve in fact got is your non-whey-protein-eating, patchouli-smelling drama teacher encouraging everyone to “reach out and touch one another” hybridised with your crusty old next door neighbour who has an extensive collection of footballs assiduously stolen from neighbourhood kids for the purposes of exultantly refusing to give them back pontificating about what’s wrong with young people today.
Sociologists actually have names for the psychosocial phenomena evident in Phil’s lyrics. "When I was a boy, did we have more respect? / this world seemed a nicer place to be". This is a classic example of Geoffrey Pearson's respectable fears.
"Our sons and daughters seem to be beyond our control / their smile is fading fast, they're losing their soul" -- apart from the fact it should be "their smiles are" and "their souls", this is a typically unrealistic interpretation of perceived "deviant" behaviour that catalyses a moral panic within the framework of a deviancy amplification spiral.
So, in conclusion, we can see Phil Collins knows the sum total of diddly squat about youth and was doubtless born bald and 40. He is such an archetypal woolly liberal tosh merchant, I'm physically mortified that he is associated with pop culture.
Phil Collins
Another Day In Paradise
JUST SHUT UP MORON
Michael Bolton
'When A Man Loves A Woman'
We can all see that the only person Michael ever loved was Michael and so the hirsute crooner can't really speak with authority on this challenging issue, either as a man or a woman. I'm fairly confident I know which gender category Michael falls into but, given the baritone and the adam's apple, I am willing to entertain the possibility that he could in fact be a man.
Unless...unless in some despicable aggregation of perverted science he is both man and woman at once. In which case, being in love, as previously acknowledged, with him/her self, s/he really could speak with authority on this challenging issue. This entry will be removed in the event of documentary proof of this scientific outrage!
Alanis Morissette
Ironic
It's like Alanis Morissette, right, trying to sing a song about irony. That's comedy folks!
The Cure
'Killing an Arab'
"I’m a tortured gothic artist and you’re a bigoted, know-nothing lackey of the capitalist state and my song is about, like, standing on a beach and shooting an Arab because, like, I just can, cuz it, like, just means nothing, like in that one book about that one stranger who shoots an Arab just because he can cuz it means nothing, and the petit-bourgeois vacillations of your materialist philistinism are just, like, so cryptofascist man."
Def Leppard
'Gods of War'
Is there anything left to say about Def Leppard that hasn't already been said? Well, that's one of them there "rhetorical questions" beloved of American TV news anchors and Yoda. In particular, it's one of them there "rhetorical questions to which the answer is nevertheless no" especially beloved of Creed's Scott Stapp. For example: "Can you take me higher?" "Is this the end?" "Will I ever shut the holy goddamn motherfuck up?" OK, I paraphrased that last one a bit. (UPDATE: in the light of Creed's split, of course, this gag now makes no sense as well as being shit, proving that, when it came to having jokes made at his expense, Scott Stapp was unable to get even that right. Thanks for nothing, fuckface.)
One thing you can say about Def Leppard that has been said many times but is still worth repeating is that their drummer had only one arm. How cool is that. I don't think I could ever tire of contemplating the logistics involved.
So, anyways, the matter in hand: "War is bad, rah rah rah, leopard print spandex is good, I've got 'an armadillo in my trousers', we for some reason continued to release albums after 1984 despite the fact This Is Spinal Tap came out in that year, crystallising something that had previously been nagging vaguely in the backs of people's minds up to that point: that we are in fact a bunch of outrageously posturing, overly coiffured jessies."
Eagles
Desperado
A stupendous result for The Eagles in that they’re the first band to get an entire album in this list. Desperado was a "concept" album about being an outlaw in the old west. I can’t think of blander, more bloodless, conformist, MOR, establishment group less qualified to write songs on such a subject than the Eagles. And -- the bonus prize -- Desperado is painfully awful aseptic crap.
Des'ree
'Life'
Suggested by DarknessFish originally for the list Top Ten Most Batshit Insane Lines In Songs but, in a remarkable conjunction of nigh and mathematics, I had already found ten songs for that bad boy. Sure, Des'ree's 'Life' is actually worthier than most therein of a spot in that list and Des'ree herself surely deserves a place in a hypothetical Top Ten Most Batshit Insane Names In Humanity (try rateyourhumans.com? On Mars?) but tough bloody titty. I was absolutely unswervingly committed to the free and democratic cause of making this list a top twenty and, so, I decided to add 'Life' here, citing, as DarknessFish did, the line, "I don't wanna see a ghost / that's the thing that I fear most / I'd rather have a piece of toast" as the final and irrefutable proof that, song title not withstanding, Ms 'Ree knows the mother of all zippity zero zilches about breakfast.
Melanie C
'If That Were Me'
Now then. Several months have passed since this list appeared in its original top ten incarnation. Over time, more than ten ideas stacked up and I wanted to make it a top twenty, but I never had the necessary final few. Unlike the rest of you pathetic ingrates, Our Lord and Saviour, jeeeesus, heard my plea and delivered me. Yes, He saw that, for the longest time, I entreated from you suggestions enough to make a Top Twenty Most Terrible Songs Written About Something The Author Self-Evidently Knows Nothing About. He saw none has been forthcoming and he has delivered one and you bloody haven't. But maybe that's because HE WAS SENT TO EARTH TO DIE FOR OUR SINS AND YOU FREAKIN' WELL WEREN'T. YEAH. So, with jeeeesus on my side, I say: that's it. A top seventeen. The end. And if seventeen sounds slightly dumb, then it's ALL YOUR FAULT. You can all just piss off for all I care.
Here, we have Mel C singing about The Homeless. jeeeesus pointed out that singing, but not knowing, about The Homeless has already been covered in this list by Phil Collins but he made the persuasive case that out-Phil Collinsing Phil Collins easily warrants a place. Well done, Mel C! A singular feat. jeeeesus also italicised for me the bits in this song he feels are particularly retarded but I have to disagree with him and say the whole song is equally retarded all the way through. Although it's true Mel's jaw-droppingly-poor-taste, self-referencing narcissism does rather take the biscuit or the cake or the semolina pudding or whatever it is it's supposed to take.
I thought it was brilliant
I thought you might like this
Yes, I am drunk
In addition, where is an admin to change my name? Seriously.
Toto
The song is 'Africa'
Does he actually sing the line "sure as Kilimanjaro rises like an Olympus above the Serengeti"? Yes he does. Has he actually been to Africa? Fuck no.
Michael Jackson
Black or White
As he is indisputably neither, this song hardly rings true. I also recall the line, "I saw you kicking dirt in my eye." Now I'm 100% sure that MJ has not been in any fights, and if I am in fact wrong, they have probably been against petrified children. Nevertheless, if he did in fact get dirt in his eye he would spend the next two to three weeks in an isolation chamber breathing pure oxygen and bleaching his innards.
The Bangles
Walk Like an Egyptian
I don't know if you've ever seen these miscreants "walk like an Egyptian". Luckily I have, and so I can tell you that they have grasped not only the wrong end of the stick, but they have in fact proceeded to beat themselves over the head with it.
"How does an Egyptian walk?" you ask. The answer? Much like everyone else. Which immediately invalidates any premise for this song being made, much less it being a hit.
Simply Red
'Money's Too Tight To Mention'
It's impossible to write a suitably vituperative commentary about 'Money's Too Tight To Mention'. It's just so intensely and obviously awful and hypocritical, its innate and fulsome awfulness and hypocrisy seem to lend it a kind of organic armour plating. All brickbat and obloquy just glance uselessly off its hideously tinny, self-satisfied bulk, and Period Head rises from the debris inviolate and inevitable like the cockroach from nuclear apocalypse, still yelping like a castrated banshee and rhyming "mention" with "pension". Pension. For the love of god.
Madonna
Like a Virgin
oh never mind
AC/DC
For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)
I imagine that AC/DC believed they were all about rock 'n' roll. However it turned out they were in fact all about disgustingly cheesy guitar, school uniforms and dubiously high vocals. I for one am suspicious about any man whose singing range exceeds that of my natural hearing. Whenever this song is played, there are cannons which fire in time with the singing. Now I have never considered heavy artillery as an integral part of rock... Maybe I missed the point.
Elton John
'Belfast'
Almost indescribably crass.
C+C Music Factory
Things That Make You Go Hmmm
None of the things in this track in my opinion make you go "hmmm". Where, for example, are the talking dogs or David Ikes of the modern day claiming to be the reincarnation of Albert Fish? They're not on this track, I'll tell you that for nothing. I don't think any other song has so comprehensively failed to achieve its simple titularly-stated aim except for maybe Toni Basil's 'Hey Mickey', which apparently and straightforwardly set out to attract the attention of someone named Mickey but ended up annoying the ever living fuck out of me and about several million other people instead.
Phil Collins
'We're Sons of Our Fathers'
From the title’s uplifting statement of shining, irrefutable truth, you might expect this song to be one long transcendental wingding of eternal verity writ large.
What you’ve in fact got is your non-whey-protein-eating, patchouli-smelling drama teacher encouraging everyone to “reach out and touch one another” hybridised with your crusty old next door neighbour who has an extensive collection of footballs assiduously stolen from neighbourhood kids for the purposes of exultantly refusing to give them back pontificating about what’s wrong with young people today.
Sociologists actually have names for the psychosocial phenomena evident in Phil’s lyrics. "When I was a boy, did we have more respect? / this world seemed a nicer place to be". This is a classic example of Geoffrey Pearson's respectable fears.
"Our sons and daughters seem to be beyond our control / their smile is fading fast, they're losing their soul" -- apart from the fact it should be "their smiles are" and "their souls", this is a typically unrealistic interpretation of perceived "deviant" behaviour that catalyses a moral panic within the framework of a deviancy amplification spiral.
So, in conclusion, we can see Phil Collins knows the sum total of diddly squat about youth and was doubtless born bald and 40. He is such an archetypal woolly liberal tosh merchant, I'm physically mortified that he is associated with pop culture.
Phil Collins
Another Day In Paradise
JUST SHUT UP MORON
Michael Bolton
'When A Man Loves A Woman'
We can all see that the only person Michael ever loved was Michael and so the hirsute crooner can't really speak with authority on this challenging issue, either as a man or a woman. I'm fairly confident I know which gender category Michael falls into but, given the baritone and the adam's apple, I am willing to entertain the possibility that he could in fact be a man.
Unless...unless in some despicable aggregation of perverted science he is both man and woman at once. In which case, being in love, as previously acknowledged, with him/her self, s/he really could speak with authority on this challenging issue. This entry will be removed in the event of documentary proof of this scientific outrage!
Alanis Morissette
Ironic
It's like Alanis Morissette, right, trying to sing a song about irony. That's comedy folks!
The Cure
'Killing an Arab'
"I’m a tortured gothic artist and you’re a bigoted, know-nothing lackey of the capitalist state and my song is about, like, standing on a beach and shooting an Arab because, like, I just can, cuz it, like, just means nothing, like in that one book about that one stranger who shoots an Arab just because he can cuz it means nothing, and the petit-bourgeois vacillations of your materialist philistinism are just, like, so cryptofascist man."
Def Leppard
'Gods of War'
Is there anything left to say about Def Leppard that hasn't already been said? Well, that's one of them there "rhetorical questions" beloved of American TV news anchors and Yoda. In particular, it's one of them there "rhetorical questions to which the answer is nevertheless no" especially beloved of Creed's Scott Stapp. For example: "Can you take me higher?" "Is this the end?" "Will I ever shut the holy goddamn motherfuck up?" OK, I paraphrased that last one a bit. (UPDATE: in the light of Creed's split, of course, this gag now makes no sense as well as being shit, proving that, when it came to having jokes made at his expense, Scott Stapp was unable to get even that right. Thanks for nothing, fuckface.)
One thing you can say about Def Leppard that has been said many times but is still worth repeating is that their drummer had only one arm. How cool is that. I don't think I could ever tire of contemplating the logistics involved.
So, anyways, the matter in hand: "War is bad, rah rah rah, leopard print spandex is good, I've got 'an armadillo in my trousers', we for some reason continued to release albums after 1984 despite the fact This Is Spinal Tap came out in that year, crystallising something that had previously been nagging vaguely in the backs of people's minds up to that point: that we are in fact a bunch of outrageously posturing, overly coiffured jessies."
Eagles
Desperado
A stupendous result for The Eagles in that they’re the first band to get an entire album in this list. Desperado was a "concept" album about being an outlaw in the old west. I can’t think of blander, more bloodless, conformist, MOR, establishment group less qualified to write songs on such a subject than the Eagles. And -- the bonus prize -- Desperado is painfully awful aseptic crap.
Des'ree
'Life'
Suggested by DarknessFish originally for the list Top Ten Most Batshit Insane Lines In Songs but, in a remarkable conjunction of nigh and mathematics, I had already found ten songs for that bad boy. Sure, Des'ree's 'Life' is actually worthier than most therein of a spot in that list and Des'ree herself surely deserves a place in a hypothetical Top Ten Most Batshit Insane Names In Humanity (try rateyourhumans.com? On Mars?) but tough bloody titty. I was absolutely unswervingly committed to the free and democratic cause of making this list a top twenty and, so, I decided to add 'Life' here, citing, as DarknessFish did, the line, "I don't wanna see a ghost / that's the thing that I fear most / I'd rather have a piece of toast" as the final and irrefutable proof that, song title not withstanding, Ms 'Ree knows the mother of all zippity zero zilches about breakfast.
Melanie C
'If That Were Me'
Now then. Several months have passed since this list appeared in its original top ten incarnation. Over time, more than ten ideas stacked up and I wanted to make it a top twenty, but I never had the necessary final few. Unlike the rest of you pathetic ingrates, Our Lord and Saviour, jeeeesus, heard my plea and delivered me. Yes, He saw that, for the longest time, I entreated from you suggestions enough to make a Top Twenty Most Terrible Songs Written About Something The Author Self-Evidently Knows Nothing About. He saw none has been forthcoming and he has delivered one and you bloody haven't. But maybe that's because HE WAS SENT TO EARTH TO DIE FOR OUR SINS AND YOU FREAKIN' WELL WEREN'T. YEAH. So, with jeeeesus on my side, I say: that's it. A top seventeen. The end. And if seventeen sounds slightly dumb, then it's ALL YOUR FAULT. You can all just piss off for all I care.
Here, we have Mel C singing about The Homeless. jeeeesus pointed out that singing, but not knowing, about The Homeless has already been covered in this list by Phil Collins but he made the persuasive case that out-Phil Collinsing Phil Collins easily warrants a place. Well done, Mel C! A singular feat. jeeeesus also italicised for me the bits in this song he feels are particularly retarded but I have to disagree with him and say the whole song is equally retarded all the way through. Although it's true Mel's jaw-droppingly-poor-taste, self-referencing narcissism does rather take the biscuit or the cake or the semolina pudding or whatever it is it's supposed to take.
I thought it was brilliant
I thought you might like this
Yes, I am drunk
In addition, where is an admin to change my name? Seriously.