Smash hit

5. Your son/daughter/new born child

The B-side of the above category. It is every parent’s delusion to believe their baby is beautiful when everyone else thinks it looks like, well, a baby. And they’ll almost certainly have the same reaction to the song, given that is basically an extended remix of ‘Coochee-coochee-coo!’

Such songs also tend to herald an artist’s imminent descent into the comfy-slippered realm of MOR. Even one of the best of this icky sub-genre, Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely (from his last great album, Songs In The Key Of Life) was the beginning of a path that led directly to I Just Called To Say I Love You.

One of the exceptions that proves the rule is Loudon Wainwright III’s warmly humorous Rufus Is A Tit Man, written about his breast-feeding son who grew up to follow in his singer-songwriting footsteps, but disproved the hetero-centric central assertion of his father’s song by turning out gay.

6. Drugs are great / oh no, actually drugs are terrible and you shouldn’t do them, even though I have done and had a fantastic time.

If I went home after five pints of Carling Extra Cold and wrote a song about how great Carling Extra Cold was as its cool crisp tasting liquid soothed the fire in my ever-expanding belly, I’d be rightly dismissed as a dribbling pub rock bore with stale lager where my brain cells should be. But five grams of cocaine? A large sack of heroin? Feel free to impart thy wisdom from your travels down the road of excess!

And when you’ve milked that subject into a shrivelled old teat and finally kicked the habit, why not write some more songs comparing your drug addiction to a demonic possession, and warning us why we shouldn’t do what you’ve spent the last five albums glamourising? After all, wasn’t it the same Red Hot Chili Peppers who once wrote the paean to heroin that is Under The Bridge, then followed it up a few albums later with ‘Snow (Hey Oh)’ asking us to ‘listen to what I say’ on the evils of all things narcotic? Why, yes it was.

7. Football

Even the supposedly ‘good’ football songs are abject tosh. Whenever lists are compiled, shortly before every major international tournament, of the best ever football songs, the top two invariably include a song featuring a rap by noted rhyme weaver John Barnes, and another featuring the world-renowned vocal talents of David Baddiel and Frank Skinner. Ye Gods. Their first problem is that football chants are all very well in their place, but have the lasting musical value of whoopee cushion when put on record. Their second problem is that the songs tend to take the game seriously. I love football as much as anyone, but it is fundamentally ruddy daft, as the likes of Half Man Half Biscuit, The Fall, and precious few others have so wisely realised.

8. The pressures of fame

Most often to be found on the second or third album of an artist who has found sudden fame through the happy-go-lucky charm of their early recordings but who now finds themselves asked to pen a follow up album while hugging a radiator in the Chateau Marmont and suffering from cocaine-induced paranoia attacks. They’ll tell people this is a ‘darker’ record, which means it’s like their last one, except without the tunes, humour or self-awareness, and written from a perspective that is now totally alien to that of the humble listener. Remember The Streets’ chirpy hit album A Grand Don’t’ Come For Free? And wouldn’t you rather forget the miserable, paranoid follow-up, The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living?

9. The aesthetic appreciation of young girls

Back in the age before ‘political correctness’ (c. all radio phone-ins) ruined everything, the likes of the Rolling Stones could write a song like Stray Cat Blues, about seducing a 15 year-old, and it would only add to Jagger’s reputation as a lovable rogue.

But in the current moral climate, he’d be in all sorts of trouble. Even ‘Does Your Mother Know?’ would be a taboo question, while just imagine the scenes if Gary Puckett’s ‘Young Girl’ was unleashed on today’s paedophobic public.

I suspect that within days of its first radio airing, a Mr G.Puckett’s home address would be published on the internet, and a torch carrying mob would descend on his house in Basingstoke. His property would be daubed with misspelt insults and his car windscreen smashed, which would be all the more unfortunate since the Gary Puckett in question now lives in Florida.

10. Journalists

At its best, a great lyric can succinctly articulate universal human sentiments, resonating with the listener through the empathy of a common experience.

‘Will you still love me tomorrow?’ Well, we’ve all had cause to wonder.

‘I Will Survive’? We feel your pain!

“My album only got given six out of ten, and they make jokes about me being short,” moaned Kelly Jones of Stereophonics on Mr. Writer.

‘Hmmm, can’t say I’ve been in that position too often,” thinks 98.6% of the music-consuming public.

Crap Lyrics, by Johnny Sharp, is published by Portico Books, priced £7.99.

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