Author(s): Johnny Sharp

Humour

This is a witty celebration of the worst lyrics ever to grace the airwaves. After all, there are bad lines, and then there are really bad lines. Snap sang "I'm as serious as cancer" in "Rhythm Is a Dancer", while Duran Duran opined 'You're about as easy as a nuclear war' in "Is There Something I Should Know". Spandau Ballet even named a song, "Instinction", after a word that didn't exist. And even the mighty have their off days - Bob Dylan may have written protest anthem "Blowing in the Wind" but he also wrote "Wiggle, Wiggle, like a Bowl of Soup". Even Kate Bush, who spent 10 years writing her eagerly-anticipated "Aerial" album, came out with a song (Mrs Bartolozzi) about a washing machine: "Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy / Get that dirty shirty clean"...This is a supremely well-written book on a great topic, by an author who has toiled at the cliff-face of British pop music for years. Who better to steer a narrative path through the convoluted wordplay and hackneyed cliches of crap lyrics?It features awkward phrases, mixed metaphors and platitudes: they're all here to entertain and amuse. This title offers a celebration of the very worst pop lyrics of all time ...ever. 'Why do I find it hard to write the next line?' Spandau Ballet once asked. Even the greatest songwriters (and Spandau Ballet) have had the odd bad day at the office. Or more likely, a bad few minutes in the studio toilets scribbling the first words they can think of on the back of their tranquiliser prescription shortly before the vocal has to be recorded. Johnny Sharp has trawled half a century of lyrics to find the funniest examples of crippled couplets, outrageous innuendo, mixed metaphors, shameless self-delusion, nefarious nonsense and flagrant filth. Not to mention unforgivable over-use of alliteration. "Crap Lyrics" is a humorous celebration (and occasionally, condemnation) of over 120 of the most ridiculous hooks, lines and stinkers from pop poetry through the modern ages. Johnny Sharp has spent 15 years as a music journalist, and several of those years writing for NME under the name Johnny Cigarettes, so he knows that ridicule is nothing to be scared of. He's serious as cancer when he asks: Are we human, or are we dancer? And where do we go from here? Is it down to the lake, I fear? While moving like a tortoise, full of rigor mortis? Whether you're a diplomat, or even down the Laundromat, if you have ever heard a song and thought 'You what?', this is the book for you. First published 2009.