Song lyrics that give me the heebie jeebies.

"Rubbin' sticks and stones together makes the sparks ingite
and the thought of rubbin' you is getting so exciting."

This is from the Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight." There is just altogether too much rubbing going on. "Rubbin' you"? Ew. Another winner from the same song is "But you've got some bait a waitin' and I think I might try nibbling." This is just not romantic. It's also not sexy. I don't know what it is. Probably creepy.

Also on the creepy front is Fleetwood Mac's "Second Hand News," in which the line "Won't you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff" appears. What stuff is that, exactly? Do my stuff? Dude, if someone wanted to make love to me (and I suspect that's what this song is about) and proposed it as "doing my stuff" I'd be so grossed out I don't thing we could EVER do said "stuff." Even if it was David Bowie. Even if it was David Bowie twenty years ago.

In the Paula Cole song "I don't want to wait," she somehow manages to make my ears bleed via poor language use TWICE. First, she says "So open up your morning light and say a little prayer for I." It's called the objective case, moron, and only Bob Marley gets away with abusing it. But later, even worse in some ways, is this: "wearing shrapnels in his skin." Now, when I look up the lyrics, it always says "shrapnel," which would be correct. But she clearly sings "shrapnels," which is equivalent to something like "gravels" as shrapnel already indicates several individual pieces. This came out just over 11 years ago, and I still have a little portion of my brain dedicated to hating it.

But it's not as old or as ubiquitous as Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die." The lyric is "But if this ever changin' world in which we live in..." Listen, I'm not the kind of grammar nazi who's going to quibble with ending a sentence in a preposition. "This ever-changin' world we live in" would have been fine." So would "world in which we live." I've even heard people say it's REALLY "world in which we're living," which would be fine! But it's not -- it's preposition abuse. I have actually perfected a technique for shutting off the radio and turning it right back on so I don't have to hear it. It now sounds (in my car) like this: "But if this ever-changing world in which we live (off-silence-on) makes you give in and cry..."


The song is "Lightning Crashes" by Live. The lyric is "Lightning crashes, a new mother cries. Her placenta falls to the floor." Ew, what? Why? Don't sing about placentas.

That's all for now. I'd be delighted if you commented with your own irritating lyrics.