Lyrical Dissonance/Quotes

""If the beat's all right, she will dance all night!""

- comedian Chris Rock, on women who don't pay attention to songs with misogynistic lyrics

"Can I take you out to the pictures, Jo-oh-oh-oan?

Yawn. Yeah, yeah, they'll go to the pictures and probably have six kids and a spaniel by the end of the next verse. Sometimes the Beatles can be so predictab-

But as she's getting ready to go, a knock comes on the door/BANG BANG Maxwell's silver hammer came down upon her head

We stop in our tracks, our ears prick up. What - I didn't just hear what I think I just heard, did I? No, no, of course not. It's obviously more of that tiresome innuendo. Mentally we block out all words except 'hammer', 'came' and 'head', and we wonder if the Beatles were really so sexually frustrated.

BANG BANG Maxwell's silver hammer made sure that she was dead

No doubt there. We're caught completely off guard. Our expectations foiled, screwed up, stamped on, kicked around the room, mauled by the dog and put out on the garden table for birds to nibble on. We start considering when this song was written, and try to remember if any of the Fab Four had just come out of rocky marriages at the time or had a history of mental illness. Are we really listening to a jolly little song about bludgeoning murders?"

- Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, analyzing Maxwell's Silver Hammer by The Beatles

""He didn't know the words, and couldn't read the lyric sheets, but the music was happy and made him feel good inside. Whenever he was having a foul day, rather than reaching for pop music in a language he understood, he'd usually reach for the strange album about creatures who might be giants [...] All at once, the happy, bouncy little song that kept him company turned into something painful, and Seiki cried for the first time in days.""

- Sailor Nothing

"I've got a brand new song, it is so happy happy!

I've got a brand new attitude, it is so hateful hateful!"

- Reel Big Fish, Brand New Song

"Had George Michael and Lindsay stayed, they might have discovered what Michael and Maeby did— that “Afternoon Delight" was more adult-themed than its innocent melody would have you believe."

- Narrator, Arrested Development

"The songs are always happy,

But nobody listens to me..."

- Lala, (lead singer for Kesson Shoujo わたしのココ,) ''Lala Song" (translated from Japanese)

"''She got a new apartment out on the escarpment

And in her glove compartment are my songs

She hasn't even heard them since she found out what the words meant

She decided she preferred them all wrong

Kind of like the last time, with a bunch of really fast rhymes

If we're living in the past I'm

Soon gone''"

- Barenaked Ladies, "Testing 1, 2, 3"

""I don't understand French, but if I could,

I would write beautiful songs about horrible things...""

- The Sound Of Animals Fighting, "Uzbekistan"

""This is without a doubt the happiest song about losing the will to live I've ever heard.""

- A YouTube comment on Komm Susser Tod.

"I should have known as soon as she said

"I like your music and the way it fucks with my head."

...

I should have known as soon as she asked

"Why do all your songs sound happy

But seem so sad""

- Get Set Go, I'm a Goner

""And when I find that girl, I'm gonna kill that girl! I'm gonna WHAM, BAM, BLAM, and drill that girl! Won't rest until that girl is safe and sound six feet below! Ooooooh, No! When I find my baby, I ain't lettin' her go!""

- Simon Webbe as Shanke, to some nice, smooth, jazzy disco music.