Cruellest lines/songs

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

I remember Kurt Cobain once saying he could never write a line as cruel as "A simple prop to occupy my time" in REM's 'The One I Love'.

What's the cruellest lines in a song you know? 'Idiot Wind' and 'Positively 4th Street' are generally vitriolic, I suppose, but I can't think of a line that sticks out.

I'm more thinking of when a line comes in unexpectedly, like in Devine & Statton's 'Under the Weather' or They Might Be Giant's 'They'll Need A Crane' ("And there's a restaurant we should check out, where the other nightmare people like to go / I mean nice people, baby wait, I didn't mean to say nightmare", although maybe that's more self-loathing).

Any thoughts?

― Nick, Friday, 16 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

John Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?" and "I Found Out" are both scathing to say the least... then again I've written tracks called "Declan Swan's Mum is Ten Grand Richer" and "Why Does My Fart Smell So Bad?" which are just jibes at certain things.

― Charlie Frame, Friday, 16 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'Fuck wit Dre' from The Chronic always struck me as a bit cruel. Basically the track is a put-down of Eazy E, who is threatened with extensive sodomy of which i can't exactly reproduce the lyrics at the moment, but there's also something that goes: "put down the candy and let the little boy go." which I always found hilarious. Of course rap is full of this type of cruelty, as will no doubt be shown in following responses.

― Omar, Friday, 16 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Your relations are all power" -- Gang of Four

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 16 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

ll cool j - "you look like a MORON!" from "You Can't Dance"

― Jake Becker, Saturday, 17 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one side:

You kept right on loving, I went on a fast,

Now I am too thin, and your love is too vast.

(Tonight Will Be Fine - Leonard Cohen)

the other side:

"Well if you must just take then I'm a piece of cake"

(Charlotte Street - Lloyd Cole and the Commotions)

it doesn't count between them:

Your mind is like a vacant lot that's for sale

(She Lives By The Castle - Felt)

― youn noh, Saturday, 17 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Soft Boys-"I wanna destroy you" especially the line "And when I have destroyed you I'll come picking at your bones/And you wont have a single atom left to call your own".

― Michael Bourke, Saturday, 17 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"You say she's a virgin?/Well I'm gonna be the first in" --Quadrophenia

― JM, Saturday, 17 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The song by Anal Cunt called "I sent a thank you card to your rapist". Enough said.

― Luptune Pitman, Saturday, 17 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Wilco - Via Chicago : "I dreamed about killing you again last night / And it felt alright to me."

― Maurice, Saturday, 17 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

haha,.. analcunt,... you could just write down just about everything theyve done,....

― Mof, Monday, 19 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh come on. These lines are just rude, mostly. For cruelty, Jarvis Cocker is your man. Sustained venomous quoting required: "You started getting fatter / Three weeks after I left ya / Now you're going with some kid / Hurts like a bad comedian / Oh are you gonna go out / Or will you just stay at home / Eating boxes of Milk Tray / Watch TV on your own / Aren't you the one / With the razzmatazz and the nights on the town?".

Wire's "Mannequin" is great, too. "You're so fucking thin / You don't even begin / To interest me / There's no animosity / Not even curiosity / It's just you don't interest me."

I wonder what horrible things it says about me that both my picks are weight-related putdowns of women.

― Tom, Monday, 19 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

oh you know her miss groupie supreme/yeah you know her vera vogue on parade/red eye shadow/green mascara/yuck she's too much... well bye bye sugar/and not a minute too soon - Rip Her To Shreds, Blondie

There's plenty more where that came from, but I'm not going to write out the whole song. Her sneers are the best bit, but I can't type a sneer.

― Madchen, Monday, 19 March 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Another Dylan line has come to mind: 'You just kinda wasted my precious time, but don't think twice it's all right'. I think I always used to be seduced by the breeziness of the tune into thinking this was a forgiving, kind-hearted song. Now I think about it, he's probably being as sarcastic as hell.

I've been kind of disappointed with the responses to this thread. Tom's right about Pulp I guess, and Youn's contribution was interesting. But am I to conclude that there aren't many other good admissions of cruelty in pop lyrics? Just goes to show you how self-justifying most writers are. I want to hear the other side of the wounded party stories that run through pop music.

― Nick, Monday, 26 March 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A lot of times the cruelty comes in the delivery, though. I mean a song like Glen Campbell's awesome "Where's The Playground Suzie" moves through concern, defensiveness, abjection etc. etc. and the lines "But what merry-go-round can you ride without me / To take your hand / How would you stand?" could be you-need-me desperation but the raging way he sings them come across as you-are-nothing-without-me cruelty. With a side order of desperation, obviously.

― Tom, Wednesday, 28 March 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

[is cruel he right word? I know this is scary... ]

so you want the truth without tears/ but can't you see what's happening here?/ did you think that'd you'd feel better if I closed yr eyes forever/ my dear?

is the hangman like a sandman?

if you cry long enough you know that I'll agree/ but you know that it's the truth we seek/ it's like something underwater turning ten fathoms deep/ and swimming after you and me...

["to close your eyes forever": Cath Carroll in Myra Hindley mode, from the very underrated _England Made Me_, on Factory of all labels]

― mark sinker, Wednesday, 28 March 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, that's all..I don't thin of you that often. Leonard Cohen's Chelsea Hotel No 2, on Janis Joplin giving him head on an unmadde bed while the limosine waited in the street.

― Geoff, Sunday, 8 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"You only said my name cos it rhymes with what you are" from 'My Name is Rich' by Joey Sweeney, but strangely, it sounds sad rather than cruel. Maybe 'indie' boys just don't have enough venom in them.

― youn, Monday, 9 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Nothing's changed; I still love you, oh I still love you / Only slightly, only slightly less than I used to"

('Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before' - The Smiths)

― Nick, Wednesday, 18 April 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

seven months pass...

whoever tori was singing about when she said "when you're only wet because of the rain..." poor bastard...

― karmik guy, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I always liked Merritt's (via Dean Wareham) "I was young, you were dumb." Not especially biting in print, but delivered in the Wareham drawl amid chiming Merritt pop noises, it's so casual as to be doubly cruel. And then "You just bore me more and more" in the chorus, with Wareham sounding bored as-is . . . not inherently cruel, but as close to cruel as a great big "What-ever" can possibly get.

― Nitsuh, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I always thought John Wesley Harding by Dylan was a paticularly nasty swipe agiasnt the folk movement w. its cardboard saints.

― anthony, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

P.J. Harvey: "You leave me dry." Ouch!

Most of Elvis Costello's _Blood and Chocolate_, but especially "I Hope You're Happy Now," which is just mindbendingly vicious (and check out his delivery, too).

Seek out Roxanne Shanté's "Big Mama," by the end of which you want to tell her, please, Shanté, stop doing the backstroke in a pool full of the blood of every other female MC in the world, it's just not seemly. (On the subject of, for instance, Monie Love: "You're illegitimate, tryna get a little bit/And I'm about sick of that 'Monie-in-the-middle' shit/Your album cold garbage/Had one good jam, now you think you a star, bitch/Breakin your neck tryin to be in the limelight/But give you a mic, and you can't even rhyme right/So get the fuck off the scene/ Cause I got a M-16 that says 'Shanny's the queen.'" Extra points for that "garbage"/"star, bitch" rhyme.)

And of course Anal Cunt are the kings of unbelievably nasty cruelty: "Conor Clapton Committed Suicide Because His Father Sucks"--!!

― Douglas, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Camper van Beethoven: Take the skinheads bowling. (Or am I misinterpreting something here?)

― alex in mainhattan, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

All this talk about cruel lines/songs, and no mention of Frank Zappa? No mention of "Brown Shoes Don't Make It," "Bobby Brown Goes Down," "Dumbo Go Away," and practically everything off Tinseltown Rebellion?

No mention of the Stones, either ... hmmmmm.

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Dylan's "Leopardskin pillbox hat" (spelling? can't be bothered to check) is cruel, all right, and the delivery makes it moreso.. 'I know what he really loves you for...' d'oh!
What abt Shellac, "Don't we deserve a look at you the way you really are." I don't even care what the lyrics are, sitting through that is cruel for sure.

― daria gray, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess saying Ween will seem a bit obvious, but despite being obviously juvenile and crude sometimes, I don't know how much any of it is as truly cruel as these lines; Baby, Baby, Baby Bitch / Please slip back into yourself / Baby, Baby, Baby Bitch / Go conquer someone else.

― Kim, Saturday, 1 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

two years pass...

Merritt...

Meaningless?
You mean it's all been meaningless?
Every whisper and caress?
Yes yes yes it was totally meaningless
Meaningless
like when two fireflies flouresce
Just like everything I guess
it was utterly meaningless
Even less
a little glimpse of nothingness
sucking meaning from the
rest of this mess
Yes yes yes it was thoroughly meaningless
and if some dim bulb should say
we were in love in some way
kick all his teeth in for me
and if you feel like keeping on kicking
feel free
Meaningless
Who dare say it wasn't meaningless?
Shout from the rooftops
and address the press
Ha ha ha it was totally meaningless
Meaningless
Meaning less than a game of chess
Just like your mother said
and mother knows best
I knew it all the time but now I confess
Yes yes yes how deliciously meaningless
Yes yes yes how effervescently meaningless
Yes yes yes how beautifully meaningless
Yes yes yes how profoundly meaningless
Yes yes yes how definatively meaningless
Yes yes yes how comprehensively meaningless
Yes yes yes how magnificently meaningless
Yes yes yes how incredibly meaningless
Yes yes yes how unprecedentedly meaningless
Yes yes yes how mind-blowingly meaningless
Yes yes yes how unbelievably meaningless
Yes yes yes how infinitely meaningless

― alex in montreal, Wednesday, 16 June 2004 23:29 (twenty-one years ago)

self -- 'mother nature's fault'

"she hated my lyrics, so i lied and said i threw them out
the only one who knows this is me, but now the record's out."

not necessarily /good/ but rather cruel.

― andrew l. r. (allocryptic), Thursday, 17 June 2004 00:35 (twenty-one years ago)

i had tender feelings that you made hard
but it's your heart, not mine, that's scarred
so when i go home i'll be happy to go
you're just somebody that i used to know

― ipsofacto (ipsofacto), Thursday, 17 June 2004 00:44 (twenty-one years ago)

shellac '1000 hurts'

him just fucking kill him
i don't care if it hurts
yes i do; i want it to.
fucking kill him, but first
make him cry like a woman.

― Ian c=====8 (orion), Thursday, 17 June 2004 00:52 (twenty-one years ago)

See, if I was in your blood
Then you wouldn't be so ugly...

Kid Creole, Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy

― Palomino (Palomino), Thursday, 17 June 2004 11:50 (twenty-one years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.