Worst Make-Work Theme Song Lyrics Ever

I’ve been kicking this around a bit….perhaps it can be added to. This a short list of horrible song lyrics that were by definition written to fulfill an assignment, namely the creation of a movie or tv theme song. None of the lyrics below show any evidence of having been worked on for any longer than five minutes. But it’s really not about time, it’s about inspiration. Some terrific songs have been written in a matter of minutes. (The Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction is a famous example). If it spews brilliantly out of your forehead all of a piece in less than a half hour, of course that’s wonderful. But if it doesn’t…..uh, hadn’t you better keep working on it?

Here’s a list of five theme song lyrics so bad that they make me grind my teeth:

1. “Grease is the word; it’s got groove, it’s got meaning.”

and also:

” Grease is the time, it’s the place, it’s the motion, and grease is the way we are feeling”

I can assure you: it most certainly is not.

2. “It takes Diff’rent Strokes to Rule the World, yes, it does. Diff’rent Strokes to Rule the World”

We all know the expression “Different strokes for different folks”. It conveys a sort of feeling of tolerance and “live and let live”. The speaker is telling us “It’s ok to be a little quirky — it’s not for me to put you down for being who you naturally are.”  That’s a wonderful message, but that’s not what the song lyric is telling us. The song appears to be about ambitions of world domination. And anyway, as we all know nonconformists don’t rule the world; they are almost always burned at the stake.

3. “It’s alright, ‘cuz I’m Saved by the Bell“

This show is after my time, so I’ve never truly given it more than five minutes of my attention. Actually, I never made it past the utterance of the above-quoted lyric, which is perhaps the laziest writing I have ever encountered. The songwriters were apparently handed the title of the show, and then they padded that into a sentence with words so vague and meaningless they practically qualify as ape calls.

Again, the writers have taken a familiar idiomatic expression, and are so pathetic in their abilities that they then proceed to use the phrase incorrectly, as though they had never encountered  English before.

4. “Eight is Enough to fill our lives with love”

Among many another things, the sentiment is backwards….isn’t the idea of the show that eight is a LOT of children?

But the lyric seems to say, “Eight isn’t much at all. Why, just think of it! It only takes EIGHT CHILDREN to fill our house with love!” I should think, uh, ONE would be enough to do that? Some people manage with a small dog!

And there’s that laziness again. They merely took the name of the show, and then  added some crap to the back end.

And now, here’s where I may run into trouble. (Maybe I should have saved it for the Unpopular Opinion Blog)

5. “We Are the World, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start givin'”

OK this one wasn’t written for a show, but for a charitable campaign. Feeding hungry children is of course unassailable, the worthiest possible goal. That’s why this cause deserves far better than this piece of hackwork. As songwriting, this jingle is wretched, absolutely execrable. It’s as though a five year old cut up a bunch of Hallmark cards, tossed them into the air and glued them onto a piece of colored construction paper. The tune is no better than the lyrics, a feeble-minded drone drilled into the consciousness of the public through torturous repetition.

I remember all of the promotional hype at the time about how “amazing” it was that the song was written in “just one night!”

My reaction was “THIS was all they could come up with in 24 hours?”

“Let’s start givin'”?