Which pop hits were the least intelligible?

[Toby Gymshorts]

Which pop hits were the least intelligible?

Various Artist wrote: Ahh, a.k.a the Manfred Mann's Earth Band Gambit. Their decision to follow that same strategy with Blinded By The Light is what produced the memorably odd "Revved up like a douche" line among other things.

The line is "Revved up like a deuce" which, y'know, makes a lot more sense.

[Various Artist]

Which pop hits were the least intelligible?

Oh, I know – but Manfred Mann's Earth Band didn't, was my point, because they didn't check the correct lyrics and so just sort of winged it phonetically.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Which pop hits were the least intelligible?

Springsteen mentions it on his Unplugged. He couldn't understand what they were singing either. It's possible they were working from a tape and didn't have printed lyrics, it was a pretty early cover of the song.

[Jah Womble]

Which pop hits were the least intelligible?

That's a (potentially) interesting diversion for this thread: 'winged lyrics in cover versions'.

The one that always comes to mind with me is Megadeth's ill-advised cover of Anarchy in the UK. Presumably Dave M and co had no idea what a 'council tenancy' was, therefore busking it as 'c***-like tendency'. Which I imagine limited its airplay even more than it would've been limited in the first instance.

Kurt was fairly off the mark in Nirvana's unplugged version of The Man Who Sold the World, as well, singing of 'multi-millionaires' and such like...

Logan Mountstuart wrote: She must have really had her head up her own ass at this stage.

Oh no, that's definitely a horse. (Et, and indeed, cetera.)

[Satchmo Distel]

Which pop hits were the least intelligible?

Lene Lovich - Lucky Number

[MiserableOldGit]

Which pop hits were the least intelligible?

Satchmo Distel wrote: Claire Grogan and Siouxsie Sioux were serial offenders. Toyah perhaps less so but her material was dire.

Sacrilege! Claire Grogan's lyrics were always intended to be nonsense. Pinky Blue is a masterpiece of minimalism :-)

Siouxsie Sioux - how dare you! She's one of the finest lyricists of all time. Just marvel at the fact that the lyrics to Desert Kisses, Arabian Nights and Melt all existed on chart singles. All far better than that recent Nobel Prize winner's nonsense.

Curiously enough, while looking them up I noticed that a few different sites credited Andy Partridge with Arabian Nights, which is surely nonsense. I'm assuming that one site made the error and then it was plagiarised without checking by several of the others.