Terrible Sumner Tales

Picture that it's January 1963 and Johnny has just come home with a gift for you. It's your birthday. And then Johnny tells you to turn around and close your eyes, it's gonna be a great surprise and then puts a gun to your head and says, "Who's the worst lyricist of the last twenty-five years? Go!" Who would you choose? I would first say, "Johnnnnnnnnnnnnny, don't point that gun at me." And then I would say, "Why, Bernard Sumner, of course!"

Why Bernard? Well, let's review the bidding. At his best (Blue Monday, True Faith) his words are a glorious babble. Ex. I see a ship in the harbor/I can and shall obey/But if it wasn't for your misfortune/I'd be a heavenly person today. Or When I was a very small boy/very small boys talked to me/now that we've grown up together/they're afraid of what they see/That's the price that we all pay.

At his worst...well, I'm not sure we'll ever see any one else like him. The most obvious painful example is the chorus of Crystal with the absolutely blithering line of "Here comes love/it's like honey/you can't buy/it with money." Now, maybe there's something here that I'm not getting. Maybe in Manchester, honey is impossible to find and thus valued above all the wealth of the earth. So, when you find love "Hold onto it, mate! It's as precious as honey!" A Mancunian remake of Indecent Proposal would replace a million dollars with "a jar of honey." Pooh is a symbol of the reckless upper class that brainlessly guzzles the most precious thing in the world.
Or maybe Bernard was just hunting for a rhyme.

Other top bad lyrics:
Age of Consent: And I'm not the kind that likes to tell you/Just what you want me to
You're not the kind that needs to tell me/About the birds and the bees (when he sings this, it sounds even more absurd)

Subculture: I like talking in my sleep/When people work so hard/They need what they can't keep/A choice that leaves them scarred

Thieves Like Us: Love is the cure for every evil/Love is the air that supports the eagle

Round and Round: You think I am crazy, but what can I do/You waste your time, like my money/It ain't so funny, but it's true

Fine Time: You know I've met a lot of cool chicks/But I've never met a girl with all her own teeth/That's why I love you babe

Of course, that I know all these lyrics means that I've listened enough times to notice them. Because somehow, New Order overcomes my principled stand against terrible lyrics through some pretty great music. (Appropriate questions at this point are "Why all the dissection of old 80s music? Didn't you just review Black Celebration twenty years after the fact?" I have no good reply.)