Sample lyrics:
I see a little silhouetto of a man/ Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango/ Thunderbolt and lightning very very frightening me
Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is proof that even if a song doesn't make sense, it can still be a worthwhile hit. No one has every really pinned down what the lyrics mean, and the band has remained tight-lipped as well. Regardless, it still managed to become one of Queen's most recognizable hits--if not THE most recognizable hit.
Sample lyrics:
I'm too hot/ Called a police and a fireman/ I'm too hot/ Make a dragon wanna retire man
This song's nonsensical lyrics didn't stop it from becoming a full-blown phenomenon. Which is absolutely fine--everyone is listening for the instrumentals in this one anyways.
Sample lyrics:
Blah-blah-blah-blah/ blah-blah-blah-blah
This is another case where you could cut out all the nonsense words in a song and nothing of value would be lost.
Sample lyrics:
A-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop-bam-boo
Little Richard's biggest hit might have nonsense lyrics, but that doesn't mean it's a bad song. Although it's a far cry from what we would call rock and roll today, "Tutti Frutti" was an important and catchy development early in the genre.
Sample lyrics:
Someone left the cake out in the rain/ I don't think that I can take it/ Cause it took so long to bake it/ And I'll never have that recipe again
Okay, technically, this was originally by Richard Harris, but the Donna Summer version is better--and that insane cake lyric shows up in both. If you think you don't need a disco hit about a soggy cake, then you clearly have never listened to "MacArthur Park."
Sample lyrics:
.38 revolve like the sun round the Earth
Jay-Z tried to look tough and cool by dropping a gun reference. But you know what's really cool? Heliocentrism.
Sample lyrics:
Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly/ Will it ever stop?
I guess if you want to be suuuuper generous, a harpoon can technically "flow", but I'm not feeling generous. The song is a classic, but honestly, a lot of the appeal comes from the silly lyrics.
Sample lyrics:
But I set fire to the rain/ Watched it pour as I touched your face/ Well, it burned while I cried
It's a good thing that Adele is an accomplished singer, because she clearly does not have a future in science. Even if you set aside the blatant violations to the laws of nature, the song's central image of setting fire to water is still pretty convoluted...even for a breakup song.
Sample lyrics:
You're the best girl I ever did see/ The great Larry Bird, jersey 33/ When you take a sip, you buzz like a hornet/ Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets
This entire song and its nonsensical lyrics (which basically run from start to finish) sounds like the guys in LFO were being forced to rap at gunpoint.
Sample lyrics:
My apologies, are you into astrology/ Cause I'm trying to make it to Uranus
Kanye West rapping dumb lyrics? Who could imagine such a world? Yet here we are, with America's favorite nutjob making an anus joke.
Sample lyrics:
I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now/ Why? Cause she's already dead
Taylor Swift might have made the jump from country to pop, but regardless of the genre she's it, she can't seem to help being absurdly angsty. Her entire career is pretty much one long lyric that doesn't make any sense.
Sample lyrics:
Should I stay or should I go now?/ If I go, there will be trouble/ And if I stay it will be double
As much as I love the Clash, I hate indecision that much more. Just make up your mind and stop singing about it!
Sample lyrics:
I only want to die alive/ Never by the hands of a broken heart
No one turns to Ariana Grande for deep, thought-provoking lyrics. And that's probably for the best, because the infamous line about "dying alive" in "Break Free" is clear proof she's incapable of them. I'm sure it sounded complex and complicated in the recording studio, but over the airwaves, it just sounds insane.
Sample lyrics:
I am the egg man/ They are the egg man/ I am the walrus/ Goo goo g'joob
The good news is this--when John Lennon was writing the Beatles' hit "I Am the Walrus" he wasn't going for clarity. In fact, he was trying his best to stuff the song full of puzzling, nonsensical lyrics. And that's exactly what he did! Sometimes a little silly fun is all you need to get people humming along.
Sample lyrics:
Uh, girl you're hot and cold/ That makes you warm
Tyga has managed a true feat with this line from his 2017 song "Temperature." In some sense, he's right--if you add hot and cold together you get warm. A truly brilliant scientific breakthrough. But, in the context of this love song, that makes no sense. We specifically call people "hot and cold" if they're sending us mixed signals. We call people "warm" when they are being friendly. Oh god, now Tyga's got me stating the stupidly obvious too...
Sample lyrics:
It's everyday bro, with the Disney Channel flow/ 5 mil on Youtube in six months, never done before
If you don't know who Jake Paul is, consider yourself lucky. The disgraced former Disney Channel star is now a disgraced current Youtube star and seems incapable of doing anything but flexing. While the song racked up over 260 million views on Youtube, it's also (thankfully) the #5 most disliked video on the platform too.
Sample lyrics:
Gucci gang/ Gucci gang/ Gucci gang (Gucci gang)
Almost 30% of the lyrics in the 2017 "hit" "Gucci Gang" are literally just the song's title repeated over and over again. If that doesn't qualify as a song that makes no sense, then I don't know what does. This is arguably one of the dumbest songs on the list, so it should come as no surprise that it garnered over a billion views on Youtube and peaked at #3 on Billiboard's Hot 100.
Sample lyrics:
You a stupid h/ you a you a stupid h
If you've ever wanted to see Nicki Minaj dance in leopard print around a colorful, seizure-inducing set all while making veiled disses at other rappers, then the music video for "Stupid H" is for you. For everyone else, you'll probably be thinking, "What did I just watch?" after seeing it.
Sample lyrics:
He drinks a whiskey drink, he drinks a vodka drink/ He drinks a lager drink, he drinks a cider drink
It's clear that Chumbawumba has two issues going on here--nonsensical lyrics and a drinking problem.
Sample lyrics:
Kickin' in the front seat/ Sittin' in the back seat/ Gotta make up my mind/ Which seat should I take
"Friday" became a viral "hit" for Rebecca Black in 2011, but she probably wishes no one was paying attention. Produced by what's basically a pay-to-sing music production company, the song was filled with ridiculous lyrics about the joys of Friday. And while people definitely paid attention to it, the song was almost unanimously hated.
Sample lyrics:
Slow, slow hands/ Like sweat dripping down our dirty laundry
Once you're done vomiting from that lyric, can we take a moment to appreciate its absurdity too? Niall Horan's only job is to be hot, and he appears to be disgustingly incompetent at it.
Sample lyrics:
Baby, baby, baby oh/ Like baby, baby, baby no
Making fun of Justin Beiber lyrics isn't hard, but his 2010 single "Baby" might be the worst thing he's ever put out. Bubblegum pop isn't known to be particularly insightful, but Bieber's ratio of baby to other words is absurd, even for the genre.
Sample lyrics:
I'm hot cause I'm fly/ You ain't cause you're not/ This is why/ This is why/ This is why I'm hot
Mims might have thought he was making a simple statement of fact when he rapped those lyrics in his 2007 song "This is Why I'm Hot", but in reality, he was just another musician falling victim to dumb lyrics. And if you've got to spend 4 minutes convincing people that you are hot, then you probably aren't.
Sample lyrics:
Sounds like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah (talk too much)/ I'm like uh huh, okay, wassup, shut up
The crazy thing is that Trina's "Here We Go" isn't filled to the brim with bad lyrics or anything. But then you run across lines like this that are not only so dumb but also so unimportant to the overall effect of the song. No one would have missed all those blahs, and it probably would have made the song better.
Sample lyrics:
32 grams raw, chop it in half, get 16, double it times three/ We got 48, which mean a whole lot of cream/ Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight/ We back to 16
Maybe I'm just bad at math, but I just can't get those numbers to work out correctly. They might want to work on their skills a little more if they stand a shot of passing the math portion of the rap exam.
Sample lyrics:
United States is not 52 states, I'mma tell you just why it ain't/ It's 53 states, if you count my mindstate
We start off strong--there aren't 52 states, and Papoose knows it. A true geography genius. Then things quickly go downhill, geographically speaking, and we end this trainwreck of a lyric with a painfully bad rhyme.
Sample lyrics:
Sing about love, love is what you need/ Loving what you sing, and loving smoking weed (Weed, weed, weed, weed)
If you ever encounter someone who has never heard of Miley Cyrus, this single, dumb lyric will tell them everything they need to know about the wayward former Disney star.
Sample lyrics:
Spray paint the vegetables/ Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Sometimes nonsense doesn't work, but other times it does--and this is one of those cases. Beck might be a loser, but he's no idiot.
Sample lyrics:
Blanking magnets/ how do they work?
The strange duo that is the Insane Clown Posse tried to make a song about the awe and beauty of the universe, but what they ended up with is one of the most unintentionally hilarious songs of all time. The group might have thought the lyrics evoked a feeling of wonder, but in reality, they just made the two look kinda dumb.
Sample lyrics:
"I am not a Mayan, I'm a menace/ It's wild, you can lie like a professor/ I don't got the time to put you on the stretcher
Jaden Smith is not afraid to be creative or think outside the box. Unfortunately, a little time inside the box would be a good thing for him. The lines I've featured here are merely a small sample of the non-stop incoherence featured on Smith's 2017 hit "Icon"--which itself is merely a small sample of the non-stop incoherence that comes out of his mouth all the time.
