Stupidest Political Lyric?

Only tangentially related to the topic at hand: Did anyone else hear the Pierre Boulez was recently arrested at an airport for proclaiming that all opera houses should be burned down?

And, from the same song, "liposuction for your bad mouth, boy / cut out your tongue, effigies are sold" imagery so luridly sensational in a supposedly political song that even the Daily Sport might have thought twice about invoking it.

And "Europe's gravestone carved in plastic".

There's a lot more where those came from ...

The rabbits/fascists thing is an ace lyric and also isn't Nicky Wire's ('s a quote). The title of that song ("If You Tolerate This...") is much sillier - tolerate WHAT Nicky??

XTC's "The Smartest Monkeys" is perhaps the smuggest political song, like many political tracks it's against everything that nobody could possibly be in favour of and nothing else. It marries this stance to a lame evolutionary metaphor and pats itself on the back for three minutes accordingly.

While it's not that specifically political, Husker Du's "Turn On The News" (which I always heard as "Turn OFF The News") rubs me a very wrong way. It's a decent enough song, but the lyrics ("With all this uptight pushin' & shovin' / Keeps us away from who we're lovin'") sound like stuff hippies would laugh at. (Of course, this song is enshrined in the R&R Hall of Fame, wahoo.) I'm more partial to "Newest Industry", where the lyrics (while not that topical nowadays - or aren't they?) actually say something. (It's something along the lines of "governments are evil, piss off", but, hell, it's a convincing argument, and it RAWKS, woo.)

We must have a Catweazle fan here, surely? Or just a medievalist?

"Christian nation, assimilate me/Take me in your arms and set me free/ I am part of a degenerate elite/Dragging our society into the street/ Into the abyss and to the sewer don't you see/The man just told me, he told me on TV"

Oingo Boingo's "No Spill Blood", awful, the song written by every 15- year-old boy who just read his first Orwell novel.

"The rules are written in the stone/Break the rules and you get no bones/All you get is ridicule, laughter/And a trip to the house of pain!"

You get no bones? WTF?

Oingo Boingo's "Burn Me Up" "Who do I have to go and kill to get my face on a dollar bill?"

Silly boy, Tom, *that's* a quote too. It's actually a very blunt, moving appeal taken from a propaganda poster by the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War that was posted in England at the time of the conflict -- I stumbled across it last year in the Tate Modern. The main photo shows the body of a baby killed in bombing, possibly Guernica. The 'this' becomes all too painfully obvious as a result (and arguably that prediction came all too true with WWII...). So you can knock him for that title, at least -- the use of it, perhaps, but still.

HEY! Thanks a lot, John Lennon (and Yoko too, I presume, for running down all our women. (This song was written by the same two people who had an entire apartment building in the Dakota to STORE THEIR FUR COAT COLLECTION. So perhaps I should also mention "imagine no possessions ..." ?)

Yep, it's true, sort of -- can't find the link, but the story goes that he was dragged out of his Swiss hotel room (not an airport) and submitted to a couple hours of questioning before the Polizei got their heads out of their bottoms. The proclamation in question, by the way, was made OVER THIRTY YEARS AGO!

Jefferson Airplane's self-titled 1989 reunion album, btw, is a gold mine of dumb political lyrics. "Political men they burn their lives out talkin' / We people of the earth just keep on walkin'" and "Well they're much too old to care about the future / They're sewing up the past with shining sutures", just for starters...

Maybe Madonna could cover this one?

Another head hangs lowly Child is slowly taken And the violence caused such silence Who are we mistaken

But you see it's not me, It's not my family In your head, in your head they are fighting With their tanks and their bombs And their bombs and their guns In your head In your head they are cryin' In your head Zombie What's in your head, in your head Zombie

Another mother's breakin' Heart is taking over When the violence causes silence We must be mistaken It's the same old theme since 1916 In your head, In your head they're still fightin' With their tanks and their bombs And their bombs and their guns In your head they are dyin'

In your head, in your head Zombie What's in your head, in your head Zombie

Could've been easily written by a mildly intelligent 5 year old. I'm not even going to mention that song about drug use or the one about abortion. Even worse--if that's possible.

'Where is the backing from the TUC?'

is a high point.

Keep talking about the president won't stop air pollution/
Put your hand over your mouth when you cough/
That'll help the solution

That is just plain dumb on so many levels

Eddie and the Hot-Rods "Do anything you wanna do"

Look at that man lying in the street
I don't think that's the place to sleep
The government say you can't do that
But nobody's saying where's it at

You don't care, you don't hear, you don't speak
You don't feel it anymore
And it's not what you're fighting for

Big bad wolf come and knock on my door
Big bad wolf didn't like what he saw
The government say you can't do that
And nobody's saying where's it at

You don't care, you don't hear, you don't speak
You don't feel it anymore
And it's not what you're fighting for

Everybody talks about revolution
But some of us know

You don't care, you don't hear, you don't speak
You don't feel it anymore
And it's not what you're fighting for

On the other hand that B-Boys song hasn't been around long enough for us to know how forgettable it's gonna ultimately be.

Tells it like it is.

Save the Weak (5:30)
D. Davidson

Take a look at what you have, and the things you own.
And thank God that you've grown.
Children starving and lonely, no place to go.
I really feel that there's hope.

Feelin bad I'm feelin sad, let's lend a helping hand.

Oh save, oh save, save the weak.
With a little love, that's all they need.

All the love in your heart and the love inside.
A people cruel and cold yeah.
Children starving and lonely, no place to go.
I really feel that there's hope.

-Op Ivy

How about these from soon-to-be crusader for righteousness Ian MacKaye?:

I'm sorry. For something I didn't do.
Lynched somebody but I don't know who.
You blame me for slavery. A hundred years before I was born.

Guilty of being white.

I'm a convict of a racist crime.
I've only served 19 years of my time.

Or White Lion's succinct:

No more Presidents/And all the wars will end

Admittedly "Youth Against Fascism" could do pretty well too.

in fact, Our Favorite Shop's lyrics don't hold up well, but not a lot of that period's lyrics do (hello, Redskins!), and that's not really the point (though I might just be defensive 'cause I heart Manics). Radio 4 means well trying to fuse politics back into distressed white-boy funk, but they gotta quit giving interviews that rail against the meaninglessness of all other current dance music. Umm...it's late and I'm too inarticulate to be posting but unfortunately it's not stopping me

Also. The staple singers' one is a metaphor for 'pollution starts with yourself' i.e. clean up your own act before etc...

and where there used to be some shops
is where the snipers sometimes hide

a brave attempt at bringing home the problems of the middle east. sung in slightly-out-of-tune harmony. but all in all a terrible, knuckle-biting embarrassment of a line.

WELL THANK YOU BOBBY GILLESPIE - YOU HAVE REALLY OPENED MY EYES WITH THIS STRIKINGLY ORIGINAL INSIGHT OF YOURS.

"People dyin' (grins, flashes teeth, almost winks),
In the street;
They don't have, No food to eat"

I actually fell off the FLOOR laughing.

But even this has nothing on:

"I see liberals
I am just their fashion accessory"

or pretty much anything else by that despicable twat.

The song in itself isn't a bad one, but that particular lyric struck me as an really silly one. Yes, the racist president is part of a conspiracy that doesn't want you to find out there's life in Mars... Black and green power!

Who IS that???

If you’re going off to war then I wish you well
But don’t be sore
If I cheer the other team

Well, I'm sure Viktor Yanukovich will bear your support in mind.

my predictability is just part of my charm ;)