worst lyricist of the grunge-rot era: gavin rossdale or daniel johns

I first thing I noticed about him was that green strat he played, which looked like he's taken a screwdriver to, to 'rough it up'

"I'll take 'Guitars With Unrealistic Wear Patterns' for 500"

no more maybes
your baby's got rabies
sitting on a ball
in the middle of the andes

You say that money isn't everything
But I'd like to see you live without it
You think you can keep on goin’, livin’ like a king
Ooh, babe, but I strongly doubt it

wow maybe money *is* everything

SWALLOWED FOLLOWED
…etc everything about love blah blah
SWALLOWED SORROWED

discareded rhymes
borrowed, hollowed, furrowed, marrowed

Bernard Sumner is Stephan Merritt.

SWALLOWED
OH NO

the most interesting thing ABOUT rossdale is the marilyn story & of course pungent smoothbrain that he is, he denies it

He talks earnestly about his lyric writing approach, I'll give him that

https://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/gavin-rossdale-of-bush

Gavin: There's always got to be something within there - threads of things. But I like that sort of Ginsberg-y, stream-of-consciousness approach to words, rather than, say, country songwriting where there are narratives and stories and places and names and descriptions. That's a specific approach, and I've never related to that because for me, it tied things down too much. I like broader stories. It doesn't always have to be time and place and descriptions.

It's just a tool. It's a decision and approach you can take. I like things that sort of float more, and have more schizoid elements to them. At the same time, I feel like I have over the years changed and done different things. More cohesive things, because I was always aware of that. But I just like things that are a little more jagged and fit in together.

I don't, for instance, do that thing that some people have done where you have a very obscure title that doesn't appear in the song at all. You know that game? I don't do that. That's really kind of out there. Like Tool.

If you took something like At The Drive-In, and Cedric's [lead singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala] approach to lyrics, that is like, holy mackerel! What is going on? And that's in every song. But somehow, when he sings it, it has a cohesion. But that is on another level of like, "What the hell is that about?" Whereas I was a soft-core version of that, where there are threads. But I also like the idea that for all of us, our thoughts are scattered and our attention is short and things bounce around - so that's part of it. That's what I feel is an integral part of it.

lol, I just remembered that I originally thought the lyric in Silverchair's 'Tomorrow' was 'you're gonna wade through that void'. The truth...may have surprised me.

HATE IS WHAT I FEEL FOR YOU
AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I WANT YOU DEEEEAD

I've got a fair capacity for taking in trivial details, but haven't the foggiest who daniel johns actually is!

i prefer Bush over Silverchair just due to Rossdale's lyrics sounding better in context than Johns'. i always felt the worst lyrics i heard from the grunge-rot era belonged to Candlebox though.

There are many contenders, really.

Too heavy, too light
Too black or too white
Too wrong or too right
Today or tonight
Cumbersome

Here's something that is automatic
It's wax ecstatic (prounced 'uh-static')
When life is nothing less than tragic
It's wax ecstatic
When life has lost all its magic
It's wax ecstatic
When life can't promise the fantastic
It's wax ecstatic

i wondered if i should include the candlebox guy

may-yay-be you meant to include the candlebox guy/but you didn't anyway

lmao

Wonder is Rossdale high-fived himself after the opening couplet here:

Do you feel the way you hate
Do you hate the way you feel
Always closest to the flame
Ever closer to the blade
I am poison crazy lush
Built these hands to lift me up
We are servants of our formulaic ways
I'm screaming daisies
From fourteen miles away
I've got my own time
Got it all today

WE ARE THE YOUTH
SO TAKE YOUR FASCISM AWAY

we are the problem child
we spend our lives on trial
we walk an endless mile
we are the youth gone wild

oops *they call us problem child*

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

no more maybes
your baby's got rabies
sitting on a ball
in the middle of the andes

― ivy., Sunday, 5 November 2023 19:07 (two weeks ago) link\

just wanted to make sure you all remember this amazing insight before voting

Always wondered if David Bowie cared about Rossdale swiping lyrics from “Life on Mars?”

songfacts.com on the significance of "Everything Zen":

This song helped bring the word "asshole" into the mainstream. The first verse contains the line "Should I fly Los Angeles, find my asshole brother," which most radio stations left as is. This type of profanity would have been removed just a few years earlier, but standards of acceptable profanity were being lowered. The TV show NYPD Blue was using it on primetime US TV, something that had never been done before.

Should have censored "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow"

Amazing how much more regressive American radio got. I heard a ridiculously censored “You Oughta Know” a while back that eliminated the “go down on you in a theatre” with a comical echo effect. No matter. Terrestrial radio is dying

actually that part was routinely censored back when the song first came out on American radio too. I had no idea what she was saying there until someone played me the unedited track much later

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The funniest was when they censored “45” in “Santeria”

maybe it was a columbine thing

It was really 9/11 that sent FM radio into conservative meltdown mode. I remember that “COP” got blocked from Sublime’s “April 29, 1992”

Pure Massey car

VERY HARD TO DRINK