In May 2007 the British radio station BBC6 conducted a survey of the worst lyrics in pop.

BBC6’s Top 10 Worst Lyrics (listener poll):
1. Des'ree, “Life” (Sony, 1998): “I don’t want to see a ghost/It’s the sight that I fear most/I’d rather have a piece of toast/Watch the evening news.”
2. Snap, “Rhythm Is a Dancer” (Logic/Arista, 1992): “I'm as serious as cancer/When I say rhythm is a dancer.”
3. Razorlight, “Somewhere Else” (Vertigo, 2005): “And I met a girl/She asked me my name/I told her what it was.”
4. ABC, “That Was Then But This Is Now” (Mercury, 1983): “More Sacrifices than an Aztec priest/Standing here straining at that leash/All fall down/Can't complain, mustn't grumble/Help yourself to another piece of apple crumble.”
5. U2, “Elevation” (Interscope, 2001): “I've got no self control/Been living like a mole now/Going down, excavation/High and high in the sky/You make me feel like I can fly/So high/Elevation.”
6. Toto, “Africa” (CBS, 1982): “The wild dogs cry out in the night/As they grow restless longing for some solitary company/I know that I must do what's right/Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.”
7. Oasis, “Champagne Supernova” (Creation, 1995): “Slowly walking down the hall/Faster than a cannonball/Where were you when we were getting high?”
8. Duran Duran, “Is There Something I Should Know?” (EMI, 1983): “And 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.”
9. Human League, “The Lebanon” (Virgin, 1984): “Before he leaves the camp he stops/He scans the world outside/And where there used to be some shops/Is where the snipers sometimes hide.”
10. Black Sabbath, “War Pigs” (Warner Bros., 1971): “Generals gathered in their masses/Just like witches at black masses.”

Let’s get the ugly part out of the way first: I am in full agreement with No. 10, and no, I do not love Sabbath enough to let them get away with it. I’m not a huge fan, though I certainly like a handful of songs, “War Pigs” being one of them. But I thought the line was stupid when I first heard it, and I’m glad there are still people who haven’t immunized themselves against it over the years thanks to the riff bypassing that particular area of the brain.

“War Pigs” is one of only three songs chosen here that I would have picked out any of those lines from in particular. The others are No. 7 (whose negative properties, inextricable in my mind from a lousy period of my life generally, I discussed in an earlier column about the Modern Rock Top 10 of 1996) and No. 8, which struck me as gauche even when I was in third grade. (Everyone knew nuclear war was easy—it was a matter of two men pushing buttons—that’s what was wrong with it.)

Three others, though, I knew but hadn’t really thought of in terms of lyrics, much less god-awful ones. What I mostly remember about “Rhythm Is a Dancer” is the title phrase, plus the odd “feel the passion” to give the singer more than two notes to sing. It’s not that I’m necessarily surprised the song contains the line, “I'm as serious as cancer/When I say rhythm is a dancer.” It just never jumped out at me. Likewise, the U2 line strikes me as bald description of banal euphoria: more wallpaper than painting, and not much to get worked up over. “Africa,” of course, is total dogshit, so much so I never parsed the verses (being seven when the song came out surely has something to do with this), but on paper, that is some serious D&D-playing loserdom coming out, all right. Good to know that in addition to being the top session cats of the era as well as winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for the album containing “Africa,” Toto’s members all aced world geography.

The rest I’d never even heard until I saw this list. I watched the videos for each, and the results were enlightening. Des’ree: she rides a car through the desert. I’d seen this list without the lyric attributions before watching the clip, but it didn’t take long to guess which one this had been nominated for: “ghost/most/toast” is pushing it even if you’re in the breeziest mood of your life. Razorlight: I didn’t know Richard Ashcroft had an understudy. Did England really miss the Verve that much? For god’s sakes, why? On paper, I must admit that, “And I met a girl/She asked me my name/I told her what it was,” is my kind of deadpan mannerist comedy, but hearing this schmoe declaim anything above all those forcefully strummed acoustic guitars buried the offending line for me.

Speaking of confessions, I’ve never heard all of The Lexicon of Love, so the follow-ups I’m even sketchier on. This lives up to Martin Fry’s explanation to Simon Reynolds in Rip It Up and Start Again that he was trying to make the ugliest music he could in response to that album, because this is one sour little pastry. And the “apple crumble” line really is the song’s core, if you will. (I apologize.) Finally, “The Lebanon” not only gets points for those awesome lines fitting perfectly within an equally awesome, er, meditation on terrorism, Phil Oakey gets double points for blueprinting the look Dave Gahan would take to the bank once he stopped cutting his hair a while. They even have the same facial expressions!

Before I open it to the wolves by asking which lyric(s) BBC6’s listeners forgot to include in this Top 10, allow me to indulge yet again my personal all-time favorite bad lyric. It’s from a tune everybody knows: “Your Song,” by Elton John. Take a bow, Bernie Taupin, for this all-time clinker: “If I was a sculptor/But then again, no.” That’s what Taupin should have said! Haw! Anyway, I’ve had my fun: now you have yours. 100 posts by Monday! Let’s do it!

1. Duran Duran, "Rio"
2. Bjork, "All Is Full Of Love"

3. a-ha, "Take On Me"

4. Michael Jackson, "Thriller"

5. Sigur Ros, "Svefn-g-englar"

6. Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

7. Radiohead, "Just"

8. Jamiroquai, "Virtual Insanity"

9. Madonna, "Like A Prayer"

10. OK Go, "Here It Goes Again"

MTV's Greatest Video Ever [MTV UK]

I had to. I'm sorry. Here's the original as a peace offering.

Nicole Scherzinger Sings National Anthem [YouTube via ONTD]
Nicole Scherzinger - Rio (Caress Brazilian Mix) [YouTube]
Duran Duran Rio [YouTube]

Pop stars Duran Duran, who shot to fame for a string of smash hits and dodgy suits in the 1980s, are officially cool at last.



Once panned for being pretty boys who used enough hairspray to blow a hole in the ozone layer, the British band have become a reference point for many of today's chart-topping acts, such as indie rockers Arctic Monkeys and American outfit The Killers.



"It's the greatest form of flattery," Duran Duran drummer Roger Taylor told Reuters in an interview before a sell-out Tokyo show earlier this week.



"Sometimes the music press try to write us out of music history a little bit, so it's been really cool that bands have actually said we were a good band, and they were good songs and they want to be a little bit like us and take something from Duran Duran."



While videos of them on yachts wearing silk suits might be painful to watch now, over 100,000 Internet pages are devoted to Duran Duran, who have sold more than 90 million albums.

Actually, the video for "Rio" is probably the least painful thing about Duran Duran, and I'd really like to see how many of those hundred thousand pages a) are devoted to Duran Duran and b) have been updated since Medazzaland. You mean to tell me that one out of every three people that bought Pop Trash made a Web site about it? If so, I'd say they were officially cool then.

Wild boys Duran Duran cool at last [Reuters]

Apparently the crowd forgot the words to "Save a Prayer," which Simon LeBon and the boys decided to present as a singalong opportunity to the crowd. How it managed to forget the relatively straightforward lyrics to that big ballad I'll never know, but hey, at least Duran Duran didn't try to get its fans to babble along about Renoirs and TV sets during a big old singalong of "The Reflex."

Gig review: Duran Duran in Auckland
Duran Duran at Vector Arena [New Zealand Herald via Reuters]
[Photo: Getty]

Well, at least the world knows that whoever gave Britney Spears the blessing-over-her-boobs treatment has found a new place to ply his wares. But really, whoever styled this shot should be fired—that shoe in the middle in particular looks more suited to a red tag sale at Nordstrom Rack than to any red carpet I've ever seen a picture of.

Red Carpet Massacre [Amazon]

Sadly, the Justin Timberlake-produced "Falling Down," which is the song that will be getting the new racy-clip treatment (it can be found here, at least for now) isn't so great, even if you compare it to "Skin Trade." Instead it's like a slightly more upbeat, yet somehow more draggy "Ordinary World," right down to the Simon-going-into-falsetto outro. (Le Bon told the NME that song "subconsciously came from a severe motorcycle accident he had in 1992," which might explain that odd similarity in part.) And the fact that the video was "inspired by a photo shoot in a fashion magazine that depicted models in rehab" ... well, I know it's Duran Duran and they've never exactly been "deep thinkers," but come on.

Duran Duran shoot X-rated video in LA [NME]