sting is the worst lyricist

[lilikoi]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Maybe Sting should start writing more instrumentals.

The school teacher-turned-rock star topped Blender's list of the worst lyricists, thanks to lines that betray "mountainous pomposity (and) cloying spirituality," the music magazine said.

The survey, contained in the November issue that hits newsstands next week, placed Rush drummer Neil Peart at No. 2, Creed frontman Scott Stapp at No. 3, Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher at No. 4, and soft-rocker Dan Fogelberg at No. 5.

Blender assailed Sting for such alleged sins as name-dropping Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov in the Police tune "Don't Stand So Close to Me," quoting a Volvo bumper sticker ("If You Love Someone Set Them Free"), and co-opting the works of Chaucer, St. Augustine and Shakespeare.

A spokeswoman for the English rocker, who is currently in Belgium on the Police's reunion world tour, did not respond to a request for comment.

Blender described Canadian rocker Peart's lyrics as "richly awful tapestries of fantasy and science," and said Gallagher "seemed incapable of following a metaphor through a single line, let alone a whole verse."

Further down the ranks, Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant (No. 23) was derided for his Tolkienesque musings on Gollum and Mordor in "Ramble On."

Carly Simon (No. 31) was mocked for rhyming "yacht," "apricot" and "gavotte" in "You're So Vain."

Paul McCartney made No. 38, thanks in part to "Ebony and Ivory," his socially conscious duet with Stevie Wonder.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071008/music_nm/lyricists_dc

and here is the entire list:

http://www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?ID=2882

 

[Not Right in the Head]

"I’m your worst nightmare squared/That's double for niggas who ain’t mathematically aware." That's not even correct unless "your worst nightmare" = 2.

 

[Mars_Rover]

But Sting name-dropping Nabakov made me read "Lolita" when I was a young lass. Ditto Paul Bowles' "The Sheltering Sky". There are worse things to turn people on to! I'd prefer intelligent if pretentious lyrics over the vile rap and pop lyrics one usually hears these days... with people boasting about their "bling" and their bottoms.

 

[lilikoi]

there's some funny shit on that list ;-) like:

10 • Jim Morrison
Why would a guy who looked this good shirtless want to be smart, anyway?

As a teenager, Morrison was alleged to have read a hundred books a week. Before his 1971 death in a Paris bathtub the Lizard King made pretentious-rocker history fusing French symbolism, Blake-ian romanticism and Beat shamanism into dreamlike evocations of L.A. excess. The result: poetry a drug-mad hippie would come up with if he’d never read a single book.
Worst lyric: “Breakfast where the news is read/Television children fed/Unborn living, living, dead/Bullet strikes the helmet’s head” (“The Unknown Soldier”)


and

12 • David Crosby
A ’60s legend who has traveled many roads, usually while high and possibly armed.

When he’s not singing sweet harmonies with Stills and Nash, getting brought up on drug- and weapons-possession charges or providing sperm to Melissa Etheridge, the walruslike folk rocker finds time to pen goofy hippie lyrics. Crosby writes about everything from existential indecision (“Almost Cut My Hair”) to wishing he could kick drugs (“Monkey and the Underdog”) to not always remembering his own name (his album If I Could Only Remember My Name).
Worst lyric: “Must be because I had the flu for Christmas/And I’m not feeling up to par/It increases my paranoia/Like looking into my mirror and seeing a police car” (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Almost Cut My Hair”)

 

[Mars_Rover]

Lilikoi, this list is hilarious - thanks for posting the link.

Sample:

16 • Ben Gibbard
He almost knocked the Dashboard Confessional guy off this list.

He’s the type who’s sensitive, wears glasses, likes long conversations, winter, standing by himself at weddings and disregarding his ex-girlfriends’ restraining orders. He’s the frontman for Washington-state indie-rock softies Death Cab for Cutie, and he’s got five albums of come-ons so abstruse the ladies will barely notice him tugging on their ankles. Gibbard’s romantic meditations are so awesomely overwrought, a local news program in Utah recently used DCFC’s 2005 song “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” to expose the scary culture of “emos.”
Worst Lyric: “Your heart is a river that flows from your chest/Through every organ/Your brain is the dam/And I am the fish who can’t reach the core” (“Lightness”)

 

[lilikoi]

Lilikoi, this list is hilarious - thanks for posting the link.

you might also like their list of "The 50 Worst Artists in Music History"

http://www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?id=466

 

[SeetheBoyHappy]

you might also like their list of "The 50 Worst Artists in Music History"

http://www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?id=466

Ah great list you got there!

 

[Quite Shy]

There are worse lyricists than Sting...surely all hair-metal (sexist nonsense) and all r'n'b hip-hop cack (guns, dope, penis size and ho's), for a start?

The Police were great but Sting's lyrics were always their weak point. The award they should have given him was World's Vainest Prick. Forever posing with his shirt off and looking pleased with himself.

Worst lyrics ever were The Cranberries' ''I Just Shot John Lennon''. I won't post a link as I don't want to get the blame for making you all hurl...

 

[Mars_Rover]

You have to admit though, Sting looked *amazing* with his shirt off

 

[lilikoi]

You have to admit though, Sting looked *amazing* with his shirt off

yes, well maybe he sould have joined the chippendales instead of writing songs ;-)

 

[moiaussi]

Who cares what he looks like. He's a wanker.

 

[raincoated lover]

Who cares what he looks like. He's a wanker.

Tuche.

 

[Comtesse]

I was disappointed to see that two of my top worst lyricists weren't included on the list: Bono and Melissa Etheridge. And I don't think Ben Gibbard belongs on that list - I like some of his lyrics. And Jim Morrison doesn't belong there either. He was a crap poet, but a great lyricist. I mean, just for "Moonlight Drive" he should be pardoned. And K-Fed shouldn't be included because, come on, he's such small beans. This list should only include people who think they're "serious artistes" not losers like him.

Apart from that, it's a pretty good list. Alanis Morrissette is also in my top-three worst lyricists. And Sting has always been a thorn in my side, so to speak.

 

[Mars_Rover]

But I think Blender's main objective with a list like that is (1) to amuse, and (2) to wind people up. If you filled the list with obviously dreadful lyricists like Gene Simmons and The Black-Eyed Peas and whatever rap moron is currently topping the charts, no one would pay attention -- it's too easy and obvious. You have to throw in a real artist like Paul McCartney and Jim Morrison, just for shock value.

Why weren't the Spice Girls on the list - didn't they "write" their own lyrics? Who else would have come up with zig-a-zig hahhh?

And not to change the subject, but why did Morrissey get into hot water for displaying the Union Jack, but those grotty Spice Girls can do the same with impunity?

 

[Not Right in the Head]

You have to admit though, Sting looked *amazing* with his shirt off

Well, I do have to admit that his male-pattern baldness thing going on with his chest hair is amazing, at least in a clinical sense.