POP songs needn’t be great art, but as you’re writing lyrics they might as well make sense. These artists just said ‘f**k it’:
The Reflex by Duran Duran
Simon Le Bon specialised in gibberish but usually there was a mood, an idea, a hot girl in the video. The lyrics to this exist purely because songs need words, but still everyone over 40 knows ‘the reflex is a lonely child who’s waiting by the park’. Why? Is he locked out waiting for his mum to get back from work?
Dance Hall Days by Wang Chung
A man takes his partner and does outlandish things to her. Is the stuffing of jewels in her mouth and eyes a metaphor? Pulling her ears and playing on her greatest fears? Doesn’t sound great. And taking someone by the heel is a judo move.
Raspberry Infundibulum by the Shamen
For those who don’t know, an infundibulum is a funnel-shaped cavity. So is ‘here I come for her raspberry infundibulum’ a very strange reference to sex? Or is the singer imagining himself a hummingbird? Also a tube connecting the hypothalamus and pituitary gland, so it’s about drugs. A pop song that needs a medical degree to understand.
Champagne Supernova by Oasis
The narrator will, apparently, one day be found ‘beneath the landslide in a champagne supernova in the sky’. Sounds like they need a structural engineer to assess the subsidence risk of this pyroclastic aerial sparkling wine explosion.
Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs
In truth most 50s lyrics were just sounds made with the mouth. This one leads with a feared apparition with horns and a woollen jaw to which the riposte is to dance and ‘not be L-seven’.
Firestarter by The Prodigy
The clown in the sewer has a thesaurus and is employing multiple synonyms. He is attempting to intimidate. It’s a novel approach. Luckily the track is f**king banging.
