30 • Kevin Federline
Bob Dylan in Red Monkey jeans and a fitted Yankees hat.
Federline was already a successful dancer, model, actor, pro wrestler, text-messager, YouTube star and impregnator when he turned his attention to rapping on 2006’s Playing With Fire. And by introducing themes like wealth, power, illegal-drug consumption, fame and sexual prowess to hip-hop, he radically expanded the music’s lyrical possibilities. K-Fed’s urban realism had a stark documentary quality, and his portrayals of aspirant American excess bordered on the Fitzgerald-esque. Where will he go next? Wherever his mind rolls.
Worst lyric: “In Portuguese it means ‘Bring your ass’/On the floor and move it real fast/I want to see your kitty and a little bit of titty/ Want to know where I go when I’m in your city?” (“Popozão”)
29 • Timbaland
Even worse than Diddy!
What do Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back” and Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” have in common? They’re all great songs that would be even better were it not for a certain marble-mouthed producer dropping his clunky bon mots in the background. Tim may be a genius on the mixing boards, but hand him a pen and suddenly he’s as graceful as a beluga on roller skates.
Worst lyric: “Timbaland/Don’t you know I am the man/Rock shows from here to Japan/Have people shaking, shaking my hand” (“Are You That Somebody?”)
28 • Greg Graffin
Revenge of the nerd.
The Bad Religion singer has a list of academic qualifications as long as your arm—including a master’s in geology and a biology Ph.D.—so it’s little wonder he writes exactly like a concerned student. Graffin hit the ground running in 1982 with the naive indignation of “**** Armageddon … This Is Hell!” (“We’re living in the denouement of the battle’s gripping awe”) and has maintained similar standards ever since.
Worst lyric: “The arid torpor of inaction will be our demise” (“Kyoto Now”)
Bonus Worser lyric: “Damn your transcendental paralysis/We can work together and make sense of this” (“The Hopeless Housewife”)
27 • Will Jennings
Break out the Kleenex: It’s the new nabob of sob.
The Oscar-winning hack whom Hollywood execs call when they want the needle on the schmaltz-o-meter to fly into the red, Jennings is the lyricist who makes Diane Warren look as sophisticated as Cole Porter. Celine Dion’s Titanic nostrum, “My Heart Will Go On,” was one of his. So was Eric Clapton’s theologically tenuous “Tears in Heaven.”
Worst lyric: “The road is long and there are mountains in our way/But we climb the stairs every day” (Joe ****er, “Up Where We Belong”)
26 • Simon Le Bon
Luckily, everyone was distracted by the videos.
Part of Britain’s rich early-’80s crop of K-Mart Bowies, Duran Duran built a planet-size pop career on half-understanding Andy Warhol, Philip K. Dick and William Burroughs. Lyricist Le Bon specialized in a bewildering mishmash of sci-fi and pop art, apparently translated from the Japanese (“Dancing on the valentine”? “The union of the snake is on the climb”?). At least “Rio” and “Hungry Like the Wolf” seem more truthful—being about chicks, travel, yachts and stuff.
Worst lyric: “Fiery demons all dance when you walk through that door/Don’t say you’re easy on me/You’re about as easy as a nuclear war” (“Is There Something I Should Know?”)
Bonus Worser lyric: “The reflex is an only child, he’s waiting by the park/The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark” (“The Reflex”)
25 • KRS-One
Boogie Down Productions’ leader goes Oliver Stone on us.
Though initially revered as one of the first MCs to wield political messages, the hip-hop pioneer’s raps devolved quickly from shrewd antigovernment observations to crackpot tirades and bizarre diatribes against the FDA and the IRS (“In this particular system everyone’s a slave/Racist is how they want us to behave” from “Who Are the Pimps?”). “Rap needed a teacher, so I became it,” he boasted—but soon found few students willing to show up to class.
Worst lyric: “See, cows live under fear and stress/Trying to think what’s gonna happen next/Fear and stress can become a part of you/In your cells and blood, this is true” (“Beef”)
24 • Fred Durst
Be honest: It really is all about the he-said/she-said bull****?
Most bad lyricists wreck only one genre; Limp Bizkit’s genius was choosing both rock and rap to despoil. From the former, Durst appropriated macho bravado, homophobia and callow misogyny; from the latter he took pomposity, rage and self-pity. Whether telling the kids who used to beat him up in high school to lick his famous balls or celebrating Britney Spears’s “scent,” his repulsiveness knew no bounds (or, for that matter, depths).
Worst lyric: “Bullies always putting me down/Just a little skater boy they could pick on/I learned to forgive ’em/Now I got the balls they can lick on” (“Lonely World”)
23 • Robert Plant
Frodo Rocks!
You have to hand it to him: Among those who’ve read The Hobbit 38 times, Plant has probably slept with the most women. If only he didn’t sing about it, too. Zeppelin’s mix of Tolkien-esque fantasy, bluesy sexism, Satanism and flower-haired hippie whimsy set an astonishingly low bar for aspiring metal gods to limbo under.
Worst Lyric: “How years ago in days of old/When magic filled the air/’Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor/I met a girl so fair/But Gollum and the evil one crept up/And slipped away with her” (Led Zeppelin, “Ramble On”)
22 • Jon Bon Jovi
Emphatically not a cowboy.
Many rockers see themselves as modern-day outlaws, but Bon Jovi stretched the analogy to the breaking point with “Wanted Dead or Alive,” wherein he roams around on a “steel horse” toting a “loaded six-string” and claims that one can determine what day it is “by the bottle that you drink.” At least that showed some imagination, as elsewhere he contents himself with reheating Bruce Springsteen or—on 2000’s horrendous “Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen From Mars”—Elton John.
Worst Lyric: “My heart is like an open highway/Like Frankie said, ‘I did it my way’” (“It’s My Life”)
21 • Alanis Morissette
One hand in her pocket, one hand making a peace sign. No hands free to reach for a dictionary.
Alanis nearly surpassed Bono as rock’s reigning inspiration for high school yearbook quotations when her 1995 album Jagged Little Pill sold 17 million copies. Sadly, the cigarette-flicking free spirit didn’t offer a very good example to students. She didn’t bother to look up ironic, pronounced theater “thea-tah” and spewed ontological nonsense like “I don’t want to be a bandage if the wound is not mine.” And then she found God. Thanks for nothing, India.
Worst lyric: “Do you see everything as an illusion?/But enjoy it even though you are not of it?/Are you both masculine and feminine?/Politically aware and don’t believe in capital punishment?” (“21 Things I Want in a Lover”)
