Today's Music is Driving Me Crazy

Okay, this has got to stop. Right now I'm listening, for lack of any better options, to a song by Maroon Five called "Goodnight Goodnight." If every other mediocre falsetto-plagued Maroon Five song is any indication, I'll be hearing this song several hundred thousand times over the next few weeks.

The song contains these haunting lyrics:

I’m sorry, I did not mean to hurt my little girl
It's beyond me, I cannot carry the weight of the heavy world
So goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight
Goodnight, hope that things work out all right, yeah
Whoa

Pop song lyics are supposed to be stupid, but holy crap already. "It's beyond me, I cannot carry the weight of the heavy world"? That's a mixed metaphor combined with a cliche and topped off with pointless redundancy. And in case the title of the song didn't clue you in, you're in for a lot of repetition of the phrase "goodnight goodnight" with this song. The phrase pops up twelve times, for a total of twenty-four goodnights.

And that's restrained compared to John Mayer's latest effort, ironically entitled "Say What You Need to Say." Mayer, in his typically earnest, breathy style, croons, "Say what you need to say" a whopping thirty-six times in this song. Is he trying to be funny? Or is he just trying to see how annoying he can be and still get 13 year old girls to swoon over him?

The all time champion of excruciatingly relentless repetition, in my view, is American Idol star and apparent one-hit-wonder Bo Bice, who manages to squeeze into an already supremely shitty song called "The Real Thing," a stunning FORTY repetitions of the phrase "tell me." A sampling:

Tell me what we got, tell me it's a lot tell me it's the real thing
Tell me not to change and always be the same, tell me that's a good thing
It's a good thing
Tell me not to lie, tell me not to wait
Tell me that you want the same things as me
Tell me that it's fate driving me insane
Tell me it's the real thing

I'm pretty sure pop songs weren't always this bad. I remember my mom complaining about the repetitiveness of Police lyrics when I forced her to listen to them during a long car trip to Florida, but I can't find a single song of theirs where a phrase was repeated more than twenty times -- and usually their repetition was in the background, or the tail end of a song, such as where repeated chorus of "Sending out an S.O.S." that finishes out the song "Message in a Bottle."

The worst offender being heavily played on the radio right now is a song called "Believe," by the sometimes listenable mope-rock band Staind. The crux of the song is overwrought crooning of the phrase "Believe in me," and the song is filled out with meaningless and embarrassing cliches.

Believe in me
I know you've waited for so long
Believe in me
Sometimes the weak become the strong
Believe in me
This life's not always what it seems
Believe in me
Cause I was made for chasing dreams

Hang on there buddy. What do you want me to do again? Your lyrical complexity is baffling. And speaking of Staind, what is up with all the touchy-feely mope metal out there these days? Whatever happened to the swaggering bravado of a Billy Squier or Sammy Hagar? The Staind song starts right in with:

I sit alone and watch the clock
Trying to collect my thoughts
All I think about is you

And so I cry myself to sleep
And hope the devil I don't meet
In the dreams that I live through

Are you freaking kidding with this crap? You're crying yourself to sleep? I hope you run into Ted Nugent on the subway some day. He'll give you something to cry about.

The worst is the metal ballads that try to sound deep by borrowing terms from pop psychology. The word of the moment is closure. Take this line from Hinder's "Better Than Me":

The bed I'm lying in is getting colder
Wish I never would've said it's over
And I can't pretend... I won't think about you when I'm older
Cause we never really had our closure
This can't be the end

Or this one, from Daughtry:

And I never thought I'd doubt you,
I'm better off without you
More than you, more than you know.
I'm slowly getting closure.
I guess it's really over.
I'm finally getting better.

For crying out loud, other than the fact that Daughtry is feeling a little better about the breakup, it's the same freaking song.

The band Chevelle even has a song called "Closure," which features these impressively banal lyrics:

Closure has come to me myself,
You will never belong to me.
Closure has come to me myself,
You will never belong to me.

Yeah. Seriously.

Three Doors Down is always good for self-absorbed generic earnestness. In their latest offering, a song called "Let Me Be Myself," they whine:

Lately i'm so tired of waiting for you
To say that it's ok, but tell me
Please, would you one time
Just let me be myself
So i can shine with my own light
Let me be myself
Would you let me be myself

Hey, Three Doors Down? It's really none of my business, but I really think you guys should return the algebra textbook in which you found these lyrics scrawled to the fourteen year old girl who owns it.

Enough with this crap already. If you guys can't write meaningful, original, genuine lyrics about real human emotions, then at least write garbage with conviction. Take these lyrics, from Def Leppard's Rock of Ages:

Rise up, gather round
Rock this palace to the ground
Burn it up let's go for broke
Watch the night go up in smoke
Rock on! (rock on!)
Drive me crazier, no serenade
No fire brigade, just pyromania, c'mon
What do you want? What do you want?
I want rock 'n' roll, yes I do
Long live rock 'n' roll

Now that's the shit. Take a look at anything by AC/DC, early Van Halen or ZZ Top for inspiration, if you're still having trouble.

Oh, and John Mayer: If you ever decide to cover another Tom Petty song, watch your back.

If you enjoyed this post, may I also recommend: James Blunt's Songwriting Journal | The Rhythm of Love | Nobody Does it Better Find more funny blogs at Humor-Blogs.com