The 40 Worst Lyricists In Rock — #40 to #31

40 • Anthony Kiedis
The Buddhist in the frat house.

If Jim Morrison had done yoga and strutted onstage with a sock on his dick, he’d have been the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman. While Kiedis is often facile (“American equality has always been sour/An attitude I would like to devour”), he’s also lapsed into downright evil: “Fuck ’em just to see the look on their face.”
Worst lyric: “Psychic spies from China/Try to steal your mind’s ­elation/Little girls from Sweden/Dream of silver screen quotations/And if you want these kind of dreams/It’s Californication” (“Californication”)
Bonus Worser lyric: “Intercourse with a porpoise/Is a dream for me/Hell-bent on inventing/A new species/Bust my britches/Bless my soul/I’m a freak of nature/Walking totem pole” (“Nobody Weird Like Me”)

VIDEO: Red Hot Chili Peppers at Live Earth 2007

39 • Billy Corgan
Pretentious? Moi?

The suspicion that Corgan believes himself a poet was confirmed in 2004 when a collection of his atrocious verse, Blinking With Fists: Poems, was published. Whether with the Smashing Pumpkins, Zwan or solo, Corgan traffics in the overwrought intellectual despair of a spurned teenage diarist. On “Cupid de Locke” he uses the words hath and ye entirely seriously. That he delivers them in a grating, nasal whine doesn’t help, either.
Worst lyric: “’Cause you’re all whores and I’m a fag/And I’ve got no mother and I’ve got no dad/To save me the wasted, save me from myself/I lie just to be real and I’d die just to feel” (Smashing Pumpkins, “Tales of a Scorched Earth”)

38 • Paul McCartney
Still not confined to “Yesterday”: the Wimpy Beatle’s sodden oeuvre.

Apparently born with neither self-examination nor introspection genes, McCartney is the king of cloying and superficial rock lyrics. Less obvious while John Lennon was around to add acid edge to his mimsy musings, this became a big problem as soon as McCartney went solo—where he descended into weedhead whimsy and sentimental cotton candy like “La la la la la la lovely Linda/With the lovely flowers in her hair.”
Worst lyric: “Ebony and ivory/Live together in perfect harmony/Side by side on my piano keyboard/Oh, Lord, why don’t we” (Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, “Ebony and Ivory”)

37 • Bryan Adams
“Summer of ’69.” Heh-heh! Get it? 69!!!

This British Columbian’s ­lyrics embody all the worst things about his native Great White North: They’re syrupy as a maple tree, whiter than an Edmonton Oilers home stand, more generic than Canadian prescription drugs and full of more hoary metaphors than this sentence. “Now, now,” protested a (fictional) official in the South Park movie, “the Canadian government has apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions!” If only.
Worst lyric: “She’s black coffee, little bit of cream/Sweet brown sugar, my midnight dream/Black pearl, my kinda girl/Just the kind of thing to rock my world” (“Black Pearl”)

36 • Common
Never trust a rapper in a sweater-vest.

Common wasn’t above dissing Ice Cube on “The Bitch in Yoo” (“I heard a ho say you her favorite rapper/So I had to slap her”), but don’t be fooled—he’s also a self-righteous hippie. The principled rhymer’s earnest neo-soul thoughts touch on abortion (“Turning this woman’s womb into a tomb”), social injustice and his own vegetarianism.
Worst lyric: “I’m your worst nightmare squared/That’s double for niggas who ain’t mathematically aware” (“Making a Name for Ourselves”)

35 • Dashboard Confessional
Self-flagellating teen spokesman for sadness.

Most of us chuck our eighth-grade diaries; Chris Carrabba sings his. To legions of ­adoring fans, this former special-ed teacher’s vein-opening anthems about love and heartbreak are emo gospel. To the other 99 percent of the world, they’re crybaby doggerel. In concert, Carrabba will sometimes step back from the mic, letting his worshipping throng take over. Devotees call it a thrilling, impassioned moment of fan/star symbiosis. We say, even he’s too embarrassed to sing some of that stuff.
Worst lyric: “The hint of these new tears are sharp/I try to choke them back, but it’s useless/I am useless against them/They are beating me with ease” (“The Sharp Hint of New Tears”)

34 • Henry Rollins
Beefy nihilist.

Ever since hardcore pioneers Black Flag broke up, this self-styled Renaissance man has ­produced material that is unremittingly intense and silly. He claims to write only when he’s ­unhappy, as is made plain by tracks such as “Burned Beyond Recognition” and “Gun in Mouth Blues”; other men would just try and meet more girls.
Worst lyric: “I want to disconnect myself/Pull my brain stem out and unplug myself” (Rollins Band, “Disconnect”)

VIDEO: Henry Rollins dishes an ass-kicking to our resident punk enthusiast

33 • Diddy
Hip-hop is really about the delivery, anyway.

“Don’t worry if I write rhymes; I write checks,” he famously bragged; sadly, Diddy sometimes insists on writing rhymes, too. He sometimes relies on ghostwriters, saddling his hires with the challenge of authoring lines corny enough to sound plausible clunking off the tongue of a guy whose own couplets define hip-hop corniness. To his credit, Puff’s comic obliviousness to his vocal and musical limitations remains almost subversive in its capacity to infuriate hip-hop purists.
Worst lyric: “Come here girl/Let me creep in your world/Let me see the backside of your moon/No Vickies only La Perl-a/Let me take you to Indonesia” (“Diddy Rock”)

32 • Matisyahu
If this is a lengthy Andy Samberg skit, please stop—we get it.

A Hasidic Jew from suburban New York who performs roots-reggae in orthodox garb and got his start at open-mic nights. What could go wrong? Oy gevalt! Most reggae singers have ganja as an excuse for hazy lyrics about Zion and Babylon. Bodily pure Matthew Miller can only blame the truth and sunlight emanating from his “humble heart.”
Worst lyric: “Me no want no sinsemilla/That would only bring me down/Burn away my brain no way, my brain is to compound/Torah food for my brain let it rain till I drown” (“King Without a Crown”)

31 • Carly Simon
Needy singer-songwriter mistakes herself for a poet.

In her early-’70s heyday, Simon was romantically linked to both Warren Beatty and Mick Jagger—which helped inspire a litany of codependent lyrics in which she cast herself as the whiny ­victim. While her contemporaries mined their relationship woes for insights into human behavior, Simon just moped.
Worst lyric: “You walked into the party/Like you were walking onto a yacht/Your hat strategically dipped below one eye/Your scarf it was apricot/You had one eye in the mirror/As you watched yourself gavotte” (“You’re So Vain”)

40-31 | 30-21 | 20-11 | 10-2 | THE WORST LYRICIST EVER