Putting Words In Your Mouth

Lyrical ideas have dominated my thoughts for a long time.

Or perhaps I should say that ideas about lyrics have dominated my thoughts for a long time.

Popular music is a compelling expression of many things, among them, emotion, culture, and wit. The best music marries the music itself with lyrics of beauty, strength, cleverness, or humor. I hope to look at these types of lyrics in the future.

But for today, I am interested in bad lyrics. But not just bad lyrics -- rotten lyrics. The worst lyrics you can possibly imagine. Not just nonsense lyrics of the Maresy Doats variety. Like them or not, songs like that are almost tolerable since they do not presume to take themselves seriously. The really horrible songs, however, employ lyrics that combine self-satisfying gravity and importance with ridiculous sentiment and just plain awful word choice.

I hope to roll out a few of the best, by which I mean the worst, songs I have come across in my many decades of musical enjoyment, and I hope you will join in with your own.

My first nominee is “Jesse’s Girl,” written in 1981 by rock “star” and sometime soap opera “actor” Rick Springfield. The lyrics to this song are so bad, they will make you laugh. When you are not laughing, you likely will be retching. Take a look.

Jesse's Girl

Jesse is a friend
Yeah, I know he’s been a good friend of mine
But lately something’s changed that ain’t hard to define
Jesse’s got himself a girl and I wanna make her mine

And she’s watchin’ him with those eyes
And she’s lovin’ him with that body, I just know it
And he’s holding her in his arms late, late at night
You know I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
Where can I find a woman like that

I play along with the charade
That doesn’t seem to be a reason to change
You know I feel so dirty when they start talkin’ cute
I wanna tell her that I love her, but the point is probably moot
Cos she’s watchin’ him with those eyes
And she’s lovin’ him with that body, I just know it
And he’s holding her in his arms late, late at night

You know I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
Where can I find a woman like that
Like Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
Where can I find a woman
Where can I find a woman like that

And I’m lookin’ in the mirror all the time
Wonderin’ what she don’t see in me
And I’ve been funny, I’ve been cool with the lines
Ain’t that the way love supposed to be
Tell me
Where can I find a woman like that

You know I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I want Jesse’s girl
Where can I find a woman like that
Like Jesse’s girl
I wish that I had Jesse’s girl
I want, I want Jesse’s girl

Copyright © 1981 Rick Springfield, RCA Records


First off, I include the copyright only out of sense of propriety, since it is beyond comprehension that anyone would steal these lyrics or falsely claim their ownership.

I also note that Mr. Springfield’s search for a woman like Jesse’s is very likely to be made more difficult by a past that includes having written lyrics like these. And while he tells us that he’s “been funny” and “cool with the lines” with Jesse’s unnamed girl, I have a feeling that a guy with a gift such as his for turning a phrase is more likely to have been Strange-funny than funny of the “haha,” charm-the-clogs-off-my-best-friend’s-girl sort. I have no difficulty in believing that Mr. Springfield spends lots of time looking in the mirror; unfortunately, whatever else Jesse’s girl does not see in him, she does not see a poet.

Not to put too fine a point on it, these lines -- “You know I feel so dirty when they start talkin’ cute, I wanna tell her that I love her, but the point is probably moot” -- are probably the worst and stupidest couplet in the history of the English language. These lines manage to be simultaneously illogical, silly, offensive, and voyeuristic. I will put those 25 words up against any other 25 words in the history musical lyrics as a measure of sheer idiocy.

As Yeats could have told Mr. Springfield, “Hearts are not had as a gift. But hearts are earned.” Unfortunately, I have a feeling that these two poets run in different circles.