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Songs where the lyrics are nonsensical on purpose.

Blazer

Blazer

Nov 27, 2003
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Rogue luthier employed at Knooren Handcrafted bass guitars
#1
I love the anecdote of Bob Dylan telling Paul McCartney and John Lennon that while he loved their melodies, he did tell them that their songs weren't making a statement. I mean "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" what is it really saying?


Of course, we know what happened next: inspired by what Dylan told them, Paul and John started writing more introspective songs. John even telling the other Beatles, when bringing in the song "Help" that it was autobiographical. Which in the end had scholars starting to dissect their lyrics and as a response to that: John started writing songs with nonsensical lyrics to spite those people. "Dissect THIS!"



Whereas Paul decided to go a simpler route, "Want a song about nothing? I'll give you a song about nothing!"



Fast-forward to the early nineties and the alternative rock boom takes over. Kurt Cobain is in the Sound City studio at Van Nuys, recording what would become the "Nevermind" album. And is suffering a bit of a writer's block. When he fails to get the lyrics for the song "On a plain" together, he decides to just write whatever comes to mind, even going as far to include the lines: "what the hell am I trying to say?" and "I'm done and I can go home"



A contemporary of Cobain, Beck also broke through during the same time period. But, putting in more influences of blues and combining it with Hip Hop, rather than the Punk Rock of Nirvana. But when cutting his teeth doing clubs, Beck quickly found out that the audience wasn't paying attention to what he sang about, and so he began to write songs that very much like Nirvana's "On a plain" were just random lines stringed together. If only to see who of the audience members were truly paying attention and waiting until somebody would yell, "What kind of hogwash are you singing about?"

Nobody did.


And yes, that also includes his break-out single.
 
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#7
AnchorHoy said:
Killer Groove

OTOH I haven't the slightest idea what he's really talking about
My best guess would be sex :cool:



Meanwhile, I'm still thinking.......
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Come on, he's plying flowery, sexy automobile metaphors onto a woman as cajoling compliments, this being a reminiscence of a then recent era when cars were sleek and sexy.
Bang a gong, get it on, ring my bell… yep, it's all about sex. The very term rock'n'roll is derived from the blues lyric "my baby rocks me with a steady roll". And the "meanwhile, I'm still thinking" is derived from Chuck Berry.
 
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#8
Jeff Hughes said:
Bob Dylan is sort of a pioneer of imagery-rich stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Look at "Hard Rains Gonna Fall." Everyone makes their own code about what it is about to them.
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That song was clearly a reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and the threat of nuclear war via intercontinental ballistic delivery systems.
 
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#9
Brian Eno talks about using words, not for their meaning, but their rhythmic and mellifluous nature. My favorite example.
Miss Shapiro
/
Lyrics

All the peasants in the squares at the tables and their chairs
Set to salvage certain numbers from the wonder of the tundra
And the muses in the gloom counting needles in their rooms
On the carpet in the corner in a kind of secret slumber
While the information rain slashed the dirty window pane to the square
Smokey broads and smoky windows in the square
Come, come, charmer, come on over for the day
Disappearing cocoa forests flash and die
Fortunes crumble, all demolished in the bay
Over forty pointed people in the careful, pointed steeple
Looked to see the lucky number, yes, the wonder of the tundra
Had come up to fame and fortune singing his tune, my tune, your tune
Wooing daughters of the gifted on the carpets of the courtrooms
While the tickets were expensive
The show was quite relentless in the square
Smokey broads and smoky windows in the square
Come, come, charmer, come on over for the day
Disappearing cocoa forests flash and die
Fortunes crumble, all demolished in the bay
Dalai Llama lama puss, puss, stella maris missa nobis
Miss a dinner Miss Shapiro, shampoos, pot-pot, pinkies pampered
Movement hampered like at Christmas, ha-ha, isn't life a circus?
'Round in circles like the archers, always stiff and always starchy
Yes, it's happening and it's fattening
And it's all that we can get into the show
Smokey broads and smoky windows in the square
Come, come, charmer, come on over for the day
Disappearing cocoa forests flash and die
Fortunes crumble, all demolished in the bay
Smokey broads and smoky windows in the square
Come, come, charmer, come on over for the day
Disappearing cocoa forests flash and die
Fortunes crumble, all demolished in the bay
Smokey broads and smoky windows in the square
Come, come, charmer, come on over for the day
 
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#11
Michedelic said:
Come on, he's plying flowery, sexy automobile metaphors onto a woman as cajoling compliments, this being a reminiscence of a then recent era when cars were sleek and sexy.
Bang a gong, get it on, ring my bell… yep, it's all about sex. The very term rock'n'roll is derived from the blues lyric "my baby rocks me with a steady roll". And the "meanwhile, I'm still thinking" is derived from Chuck Berry.
Click to expand...

"Banging [or kicking] the gong" was 1930's hepster slang for doing opium---see Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher:

She messed around with a bloke named Smokey
She loved him though he was kokey
He took her down to Chinatown
And he showed her how to kick the gong around
 
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#12
Blazer said:
I love the anecdote of Bob Dylan telling Paul McCartney and John Lennon that while he loved their melodies, he did tell them that their songs weren't making a statement. I mean "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" what is it really saying?
Click to expand...

Please provide a citation for that anecdote. I've read plenty about the Beatles and about Bob Dylan, but this claim is new to me. Everything I've read indicates that it was Lennon's being influenced by what he heard on Dylan records, rather than direct advice from Dylan, that inspired him to begin incorporating autobiographical elements in his own songs.

Authentic anecdote about Dylan's lyrics: Andy Warhol said that Dylan's opaque mid-'60's lyrics that had his fans worshiping at his feet were just Dylan imitating the Beat poets, especially Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but that, quote, "The amphetamines made it magic."
 
#17


A lot (not all) classic-era Yes lyrics are like this - not at all clear what, if anything, is actually being said. It makes it almost shocking when you get a song like South Side of the Sky and can say it's about anything (mountaineering, in that case). I always thought of them as an equivalent to abstract painting, where the point is not to make a picture of anything but to focus on the object itself, as pure color, shape, and materials. Abstract lyrics are about the feel, mood, and the actual phonetics of the words.

Then, of course, there's this...
 
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#19
hrodbert696 said:
The other route to this is Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti," which originally had VERY clear lyrics, lyrics so explicit they left absolutely zero doubt what the song was about and you couldn't play it on the radio. So they rewrote them all as nonsense words.
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All the more uproarious when one considers that Pat Boone also recorded it.
 
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