Terrible Lyrics Is Terrible...

What is it with the recent flood of pop songs with terrible lyrics? It's a new kind of terrible, the sort of terrible that has managed to go unnoticed because no one's terrible-radar is scanning that low.

And five minus one is... Nicole?

It simply must be the case that those buying Nicole Scherzinger's latest effort – Right There – either simply haven't noticed how laughably awful the lyrics are, or possibly believe the schoolyard chanting is laced with some kind of esoteric, impenetrable poetry. I fear it's more likely the latter.

"Me like the way that you hold my body

Me like the way that you touch my body

Me like the way that you kiss my yeah yeah yeah yeah me like it"

Yeah, you see the thing with good or acceptable song lyrics is that they convey more than just what's said. For a song lyric to work, it doesn’t have to provide some hugely revealing fundamental truth about the plight of humankind as we flash through the barely tangible plain that is existence with just our imperfect senses to guide us. To be of some value all it has to do is make an observation worth sharing or trigger an emotional response. "Me like the way you hold my body" just says nothing.

All it does is tell us that Ms Scherzinger loves the way some anonymous person holds her body, but that doesn't tell us anything about her, or us - everyone likes to be held a certain way. It's like me saying, "I like the way this food tastes". That doesn't tell you anything about how said food tastes, if you'd like that food, or what it says about people who do or do not like the food, all of which are the only things of any actual use to anyone.

Taken altogether, the only between-the-lines message that the lyrics do contain is that Scherzinger enjoys physical relations with the subject of the song, and enjoys oral sex. I'm not pointing that out to be opportunistically crude, but it's a barely concealed conclusion from the lyrics –

"Me like the way that you kiss my yeah yeah yeah yeah me like it"

"Me like the way he goin down down down down down"

Again, this doesn't tell us a lot about her or ourselves, just the bare and slightly discomforting fact that she likes these activities. Why she telling us these things, though, is maybe the interesting part.

And what about this lyric from the end of the song:

"Do you feel good for your let down good for you yeah...

"When you got up on that you do you right back"

I mean, I don't mean to be overly pompous, but seriously, that's barely English. 

"What? No, this is how I always stand..."

Jennifer Lopez is another who has just decided to throw any consideration for worthwhile lyrics to the proverbial wind. She even goes one step further in her much-loved classic, On The Floor:

"London to Ibiza

Straight to LA, New York

Vegas to Africa."

Firstly, she should be commended for rhyming Ibiza and Africa, but then we get to this section after being told, ad nauseam, to "get on the floor"

"Its getting ill it’s getting sick on the floor

We never quit, we never rest on the floor

If I ain’t wrong we’ll probably die on the floor"

Getting ill then sick on the floor isn't exactly the imagery I'm looking for in a fun dance tune. Plus, it would be difficult to "quit" or be at rest on any floor covered in sick.

I realise the meaning of those words has been changed by rap and afro-American culture - there's nothing wrong with that - but their use in this context is just bizarre.

Meanwhile, the last sentence, "if I 'ain't wrong, we'll probably die on the floor" is one of the strangest lyrics I've ever heard. As far as I understand it, Lopez is saying: "the music so good here that you won't stop dancing, leading in all probability to your unceremonious death in an unnamed nightclub".

I think it's time we all lowered our aforementioned radars – and fast.