Most inane couplet

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Splott Man
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 10:41 AM

Bonnie...

same song:

I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss
Well a few of the verses well they've got me quite cross...

The extra "well" just makes the scansion worse!

GUEST,Bobby Bob, Ellan Vannin...

Slade were probably referencing a popular saying of the time - "Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life."

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 10:07 AM

Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy wuzzy had no hair,
Fuzzy wuzn't fuzzy, wuz 'e?

Maybe a triplet rather than a couplet, sorry!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,Net-Caster
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 10:01 AM

Since there's no requirement that these couplets be in songs, how's about this weak and clumsy opening:

"This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order..."

and indeed much of the rest of it.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 09:50 AM

The rest of Teddy O'Neill ISN'T whimsical or awful though, that's just the point - it's actually a sensitive & sympathetic - and sad - song. (But I know exactly what you mean: All 897 verses of Sweet Glanlee get my vote in W&A category, fortunately for everyone it's too long to post here).

I do think McCartney's line is better, more interesting - makes you want to know what's going to happen next because usually it's the pretty girls who catch the attention in pop songs.

"More moronic than oxy" - love it!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,Bobby Bob, Ellan Vannin
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 09:21 AM

With regard to alanabit's nomination of I Saw Her Standing There, the original lines by Paul McCartney were to have been -

Well, she was just seventeen.
She'd never be a beauty queen,
But . . . etc.

It was Mr Lennon who suggested the more vague (and suggestive) You know what I mean?

I also thought that Bonnie is a bit hard on Teddie O'Neill. It's surely just the style of song, more would-be whimsical than plain awful, more pathos than pathetic.

Unfortunately, I was beaten to the Bernie Taupin lines, which I've always thought poor. However, with the 12 days still upon us, I think we ought to thank Slade for the wonderful thought,

Look to the future now,
It's only just begun.

More moronic than oxy, I fancy.

Lhiuish,

Bobby Bob

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 08:30 AM

Aaaaugh, Splott, don't even get me STARTED on Bernie Taupin! What's that awful lyric from Elton John's (?first) big selling album that ends "got me quite cross"? If anyone remembers, post it please. Deserves to be permanently enshrined in the Mudcat Hall of Shame.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: GUEST,Old Nic Kilby
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 08:22 AM

How about this one from S B G (thats Sabine Baring Gould not Silver Backed Gorilla)
"Hare wasnt hisn
Now in prison"
From
Old Adam was a Poacher
The tune is a stunner,the words are S B Gs

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Sorcha
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 08:12 AM

Where ever you go,
There you are.

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Splott Man
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 06:27 AM

If I were a sculptor,
But then again, no... - Bernie Taupin

I liked the Marc Riley list.
In some respects, pop lyrics are an easy target, as a a song will become a hit on its overall sound, or because the artiste is already successful, rather than its content.

The train leaves at half past ten,
It'll be back tomorrow, same time again. - His Bobness

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Newport Boy
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 05:52 AM

In my rogues gallery, I have a copy of a sol-fa setting for male voices of 'Myfanwy' by Joseph Parry. An old-fashioned, but beautiful tune, published in 1875. I'm fairly sure that words and music were by Parry, although this copy attributes them to Mynyddog (Richard Davies 1833-77).

To come to the point, this copy has English words, attributed to Cubelyn (who I've failed to identify) which start:

Why shoots wrath's lightning, Arabella,
from those jet eyes? What clouds thy brow?

Even my (English) male choir found these impossible to sing. The more common translation is:

Why is it anger, O Myfanwy,
That fills your eyes so dark and clear?

Much better, although still not up to the Welsh.

Phil

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: alanabit
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 05:43 AM

"She was just seventeen/You know what I mean".... ("I Saw Her Standing There - The Beatles") That second line is horrilble in all songs, in which it appears.

The rhyme of "California" with "warn ya" was probably funny once...

I have always wondered whether the atrocious rhyme: "The city's clamour could never spoil/The dreams of a boy and goil" (Hart/Rogers "Manhattan") was a spoof of a New York dialect or the result of a very bad hangover for Lorenz Hart.

I fear this is going to be a very long thread!

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Nick
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 05:19 AM

I can see them they can't see me
I feel out of sight
I can see them they can't see me
Much to my delight

Moody Blues - Nice to be Here

Drivel

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 05:17 AM

"British singer Des'ree has gained the dubious distinction of being responsible for the worst lyric in pop history.

In a fiercely fought BBC Radio poll in London, she took the prize for: "I don't want to see a ghost, it's the sight that I fear most, I'd rather have a piece of toast, watch the evening news."

She secured almost 30 per cent of the vote in the listener poll conducted by BBC DJ Marc Riley.

The runner-up prize went to Snap for "I'm as serious as cancer, when I say rhythm is a dancer."

Third place went to Razorlight for the lyric "And I met a girl, she asked me my name, I told her what it was."

Michael Fry, lead singer of ABC, had been hoping to land the prize with his lyric "Can't complain, mustn't grumble, help yourself to another piece of apple crumble."

"I have been waiting for this kind of accolade for years," Fry told BBC Radio before the result dashed his hopes of dubious immortality.

"I would say to anyone writing songs that you shouldn't really put food in song lyrics," he said before finishing in a disappointing fourth place.

"Foodstuffs and rock 'n' roll just don't go together."

Immortality is such a fickle jade ;)

Giok

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 04:41 AM

A quatrain, not a couplet, but no "inane" category is complete without it. The song (Teddy O'Neill) is an otherwise poignant and sorrowful lament of a young Irish colleen when her lover departs on an emigration ship. And THIS is the opening verse! (Dolores Keane very sensibly sings the second verse first and doctors these lines up a bit, so you don't tend to see them now in the lyrics sites - an excellent argument for the oral tradition if ever there was one.) You won't find this in the DigiTrad:

I've seen the old cabin he danced his wild jigs in
As neat a mud cabin as ever was seen
Considering 'twas used to keep poultry and pigs in
I'm sure it was always most elegant clean

Subject: RE: Most inane couplet
From: cptsnapper
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 02:39 AM

Kissed her once again at Wapping. After that there was no stopping.

Ewan McColl Sweet Thames Flow Softly

Subject: Most inane couplet
From: michaelr
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 12:11 AM

I nominate this gem:

Sure don't know what I'm going for
But I'm gonna go for it, for sure

(Grateful Dead, "Saint of Circumstance" by Weir/Barlow)

Your turn!

Cheers,
Michael