View source for Word Salad Lyrics

{{trope}}
{{quote|''I get the odd night when I'm halfway through "Don't Look Back In Anger" when I say to myself. "I still don't know what these words mean!" I'm thinking what the... what the... "stand up beside the fireplace". Why?''|'''Noel Gallagher''' of [[Oasis (band)|Oasis]]}}

Some songs are very lyrically direct. Other songs, however, are the musical equivalent of [[Word Salad Title]]. [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|They might have some kind of symbolic meaning]], the songwriter went for the feeling associated with the words rather than the direct meaning or [[Rule of Cool|maybe he/she just strung together a bunch of lines that sounded cool]]. Either way, the results are [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|incomprehensible]]. Can also extend to [[Word Salad Title|the title]] (often [[Non-Appearing Title|so weird it isn't in the lyrics]]). Common results when listening is [[Mondegreen|hearing the lyrics wrong]] or [[Something Something Leonard Bernstein|not even bothering to make up words]].

A special case is Japanese music. A lot of apparently incomprehensible Japanese lyrics are actually puns or other wordplays based on alternate translations of the kanji used, similar-sounding words, or (most often) both. Much of what may seem gibberish even in the original Japanese, is actually clever and/or [[Incredibly Lame Pun|silly puns]] or [[Double Entendre]] for those who know their kanji well enough. Of course, a lot of the "alternate reading" wordplays are just as incomprehensible as the main readings. See the ''[[Azumanga Daioh]]'' example below.

[[Lyrical Shoehorn]] (which in literature is known as Dada Poetry) where words are used exclusively for their sound, cadence, and alliteration; with no concern for meaning.

See also [[Surreal Theme Tune]], [[Scatting]], [[Word Salad Title]], [[Word Salad Philosophy]], and [[The Walrus Was Paul]]. Not to be confused with [[Viewers Are Geniuses|Listeners Are Geniuses]], where lyrics are loaded with literary, mythological, or pop-cultural references that are confusing only to non-geniuses.

{{examples}}
== Music examples ==
===  Metal ===
* Pretty much all of [[Black Sabbath]]'s work until the end of the [[Ozzy Osbourne]] era. For instance, "Symptom Of The Universe" is pretty much a combination of strange fantasy imagery and [[Meaningless Meaningful Words]]:
{{quote|''Take me through the centuries to supersonic years
''Electrifying enemy is drowning in his tears
''All I have to give you is a love that never dies
''The symptom of the universe is written in your eyes }}
** [[Word of God]] that this song had a deep meaning when he wrote it, then he came down and forgot.
* [[System of a Down]] does this sometimes. "DDevil" and "Vicinity Of Obscenity" are good examples.
** "Banana banana/ banana terracotta/ banana terracotta/ teracotta pie./ Do we all/ learn defeat/ from the whores/ with bad feet?"
*** Ah, but there actually is a meaning behind Vicinity Of Obscenity. {{spoiler|The common theory, at least, seems to be getting an STD from a whore who claims to be 'clean'.}}
** Don't forget I-E-A-I-A-I-O. The verses consist of toungue twisters and the chorus consists of lyrical vowel sounds, but the best part comes toward the end. Knowing System Of A Down, there could very easily be a meaning, [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|or maybe not.]]
{{quote|''Mine delusions acquainted,
''Bubbles erotica,
''Plutonium wedding rings,
''Icicle stretchings,
''Bicycle shoestrings,
''One flag, flag everyone,
''Painting the paintings of the alive! }}
*** ''One flag, flaggy, but one''
** How about Pictures?
*** Parachute your chocolate soul
* [[Deftones]] have a few of these, such as "Engine No. 9":
{{quote|''This ain't no motherfuckin' stick up just pick up the stick up
''And watch it roll real close rolling out of my hand 'til
''It cracks to that fucking dome living off the curb
''That peels you from the curb a lick rest off
''Do you dig many in '93 been making them fools 'bout
''Round bumping around me you'll want to run from
''Underground at the best walk the live from the verb
''On the beats I won't see you fuckin' head }}
* [[DragonForce]]. Their lead singer, ZP Theart, has admitted that the band's lyrics only have to [[Rule of Cool|sound cool]] and have the right number of syllables.
** Possibly lampshaded in ''The Last Journey Home'':
{{quote|''Sever the soul from the forgotten sickness, escape this lie
''Challenge the dream before the long departed, a mindless rhyme }}
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgBQwqi1OYU Every] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxemC6pVe6M&feature=related single] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXEQCZg4Nns&feature=related song] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk9cwB2syB4&feature=related by] the Caliornian [[Doom Metal]] band ''Om.'' ''Every single one of them.''
* A lot of European Death/Black/Doom/Folk/Viking Metal can sound like this when the non-English-speaking musicians try to sing English lyrics; particularly when they're loaded with mythology or literary references.
* Before they commercialized their sound in the late 1970s and wrote about partying, leather, [[Intercourse with You]], and [[Ambiguously Gay]] imagery, [[Judas Priest]] of all bands wrote lyrics like this. Of course, this was the '70s, so songs like [http://www.metal-archives.com/viewlyrics.php?id=3954 "Dissident Aggressor"]{{Dead link}} are probably really about [[Watch It Stoned|drugs]].
{{quote|''Through cracked, blackened memories
''Of united dispersal
''I face the impregnable wall
''Stab, brawl! Punch, crawl!
''Hooks to my brain are well in
''Stab, brawl! Punch, crawl!
''I know what I am, I'm Berlin }}
** Even more so than their earlier work, more recently 'Judas Rising' has genuinely set a standard of bombastic meaninglessness, and it is awesome.
{{quote|''White bolts of lightning
''Came out of nowhere
''Blinded the darkness
''Created the storm
''War in the heavens
''Vengeance ignited
''Torment and tempest
''Attacks like a swarm
''Forged out of flame, from chaos to destiny
''Bringer of pain, forever undying
''Judas is rising }}
* [[Rob Zombie]], oh gods, [[Rob Zombie]]; especially in the early days with his band [[White Zombie]]:
{{quote|''Well sweet little sista's high in hell cheat'n on a halo
''grind in a odyssey holocaust heart kick on tomorrow
''breakdown agony, said "ectasy" in overdrive she come a
''riding on the world - thunder kiss'n ... 1965 - yeah - wow! }}
* [[Rammstein]]'s "Laichzeit" qualifies. Some fans think it's about sex because, well, many of their songs are and some parts of it can be explained this way, but most of it can't. It's more-or-less random words strung together or maybe real lyrics with every second word replaced by something else.
** Similarly, from another Neue Deutsche Harte band, Eisbrecher, we have "This is Deutsch", which is a hilarious ([[Bilingual Bonus|if you speak German]]) parody of [[Gratuitous German]]. If you don't speak German, the song just sounds cool.
* The Dillinger Escape Plan can be pretty damn confusing even if you somehow find out what they're screaming about. Often their lyrics just sound like a variety of sentence fragments.
* Heavy metal music is parodied by Brazilian satirical band Mamonas Assassinas in their song "Débil Metal" (a blatant throwback to [[Sepultura]] at that), sung in incoherently put-together English phrases:
{{quote|''Walking in the dark, now there's just some cookies
''Which is not for you, I know it's not yet
''I just can't explain, it melts in my mouth
''Dying to me now is popcorn }}
** However, the chorus more than clarifies the song's message:
{{quote|''Can't you understand?
''Can't you understand, boy?
''So shake your head
''So shake your head, sucker }}
* [[Dream Theater]] did this a lot in their early work, most notably [https://web.archive.org/web/20130627024235/http://www.sing365.com/music/Lyric.nsf/Under-A-Glass-Moon-lyrics-Dream-Theater/B55174D478BE50DB48256A2200088052 "Under a Glass Moon"].
{{quote|''Nervous flashlights scan my dreams
''Liquid shadows silence their screams
''I smile at the moon chasing water from the sky
''I argue with the clouds stealing beauty from my eyes }}
** Part 3 of "Octavarium" has shades of this as well, since it is just Mike Portnoy mashing up the titles of his favourite songs/bands etc., while keeping to the song's theme of "everything ends where it begins".
{{quote|''Sailing on the seven seize the day tripper diem's ready
''Jack the ripper owens wilson phillips and my supper's ready
''Lucy in the sky with diamond dave's not here I come to save the
''Day for nightmare cinema show me the way to get back home again }}
* Not really sure what category Pure Reason Revolution falls under, but their lyrics certainly qualify. They seem to tell something... but not... quite... I equate it to a splash of red on a painting to represent an apple.
* The Melvins' lyrics frequently seem to consist of equal parts words that sound cool together, sentence fragments, and nonsense syllables. This is further compounded by their trademark sometimes unintelligible growled vocals, and the fact that they've only ever included printed lyrics to a few songs in their liner notes. "Hooch", the only song on the ''Houdini'' album to have its lyrics printed, appeared on an episode of ''[[Beavis and Butthead]]'', and amusingly Beavis' [[Mondegreen]]s made slightly more sense than the official lyrics. Compare "Exi-tease my ray day member half lost a beat away" to Beavis' "Exit is my raging member, band on a TV".
** Given the absurdist leanings of the band to outright lie in interviews and have their main website designed to give absolutely no information, they're probably [[Lyrical Shoehorn]] material.
* Annihilator's "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V36WV4mZCpk Word Salad]" from their 1989 album ''Alice In Hell''.
* [[Sonata Arctica]] have the Song ''My Dream's But A Drop Of Fuel For A Nightmare'', which is about, well, dreams and dream imagery. It contains this beautiful part:
{{quote|''Now I'm a target, I'm hot and frozen,
''stormy rain I'm stuck in an elevator
''wet from the muddy water,
''breathing hot air, winds convey me...
''bababababaaaa...
''the number talks and I cry in my own Hell....
''bababababaaaa...
''Wide awake, I'm asleep, see a friend as a ghost
''I'm skating with a seal,
''the tarantula, the fly, the broken ring
''the dusty little flea
''an ugly giant, a disappointed child
''here comes a rabid snake
''the broken violin, a wild ballet
''Shakespeare and company
''refuse to kill the kitten scratching me... }}
* [[Ronnie James Dio|Dio]], "Holy Diver".
{{quote|''Shiny diamonds
''Like the eyes of a cat in the black and the blue
''Something is coming for you...
''Holy diver
''You're the star of the masquerade
''No need to look so afraid...
''Ride the tiger
''You can see his stripes but you know he's mean
''Oh don't you see what I mean''<ref>I'm afraid we don't.</ref> }}
** Dio is famous for this trope as a whole.
* A feature of many [[Marilyn Manson]] songs, as exemplified in the following excerpt from "Doll-Dagga-Buzz-Buzz-Ziggety-Zag" (the title is [http://www.mansonwiki.com/wiki/Doll-Dagga_Buzz-Buzz_Ziggety-Zag one long line about pot]):
{{quote|''All the goose step girlies with the cursive faces and
''We know it's all Braille beneath their skirts
''I'm bulletproof bizzop and swing heil and
''I don't really care what gentlemen prefer }}
** Later in the same song, you get:
{{quote|''Trumpet-mouth junkie-saints go
''Silver tongue marching down the stairway to substance
''Cocaingels and asses give me opiate masses
''Fill up your church porn preachers and we'll fill up our glasses }}
* [[Metallica]] lyrics sometimes seem like a sequence of short, cool-sounding phrases, such as "The End of the Line".
** It's a lot more prevalent on ''St. Anger'' and ''Death Magnetic'' than the 'classic' Lightning/Puppets/Justice albums, but a ''lot'' of their less well known songs are essentially word-salad riffs on the theme of the song name.
*** And in fairness they never even really tried to go with deep, meaningful songs anyway instead opting for the infinitely less pretentious 'sounds badass to sing' approach.
* [[Bruce Dickinson]]'s ''Tears of the Dragon''. The song is about being scared of the future;
{{quote|''I throw myself into the sea''<ref>Throw yourself into a situation you don't know the outcome to. Relevant.</ref>
''Release the wave let it wash over me''<ref>And accept the consequences of the previous line.</ref>
''To face the fear I once believed''<ref>Because whatever's out there probably isn't that bad.</ref>
''The tears of the dragon for you and for me''<ref>Ok...what?</ref> }}
* Since Bruce was mentioned, when [[Iron Maiden]] isn't straightforward they get as wordy and trippy as possible. Their [[Filk Song]] "[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]" has many sentences which hardly have anything to do with Huxley (opening line: "Dying swans, twisted wings, beauty not needed here").
* [[Metalocalypse|Dethklok's]] "Blood Ocean."
{{quote|''Time. Lies. Trapped. Inside
''Dark. Minds. Concubines.
''BLOOD. OCEAN.
''Crickets. Cry. Shriek. The night.
''Trapped. Ticks. Rule. The mind.
''BLOOD. OCEAN. }}
* [[Faith No More]], "Epic". It consists largely of contradictory references to an unspecified "it". Actually, most of Mike Patton's lyrics for his various projects would qualify.
** "Epic" [[Fridge Brilliance|makes sense]] when you consider that it's about {{spoiler|auto-fellatio.}}
** "Land Of Sunshine" does this almost literally, since the lyrics are almost entirely taken from fortune cookies and a [[Church of Happyology|Dianetics]] questionnaire. The results ''almost'' make sense if read as a sarcastic parody of cults and self-help movements though.
** Just about any of Chuck Mosley's lyrics qualify for this.<ref>Lead vocalist for the band's first two albums.</ref>
* "Abigail" by Fair To Midland contains this:
{{quote|''If there's a nurse that takes your ears in rations
''sets a plate to feed the stifled steel
''if there's a nurse that feeds you germ-soaked dinners''
''on a tray of bones and orange peels}}
** And generally, while their lyrics are often...[[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|layered in metaphor]], but not quite word salad.
* Pretty much anything by [[Nightwish]]. Example:
{{quote|''For nature hates virginity
''I wish to be touched
''Not by the hands of where's and why's
''But by the Oceans' minds. }}
* Pretty much everything [[Fates Warning]] wrote in their early days.
{{quote|''Flame is burning, center of a fountain yearning
''Water springs eternal, spiritual water, physical fire
''Above center is sky, cold, cold neverness
''Just vastness filled with stars upon stars
''In the four corners of life are the golden mirrors
''Reflecting what you are and what you are to be
''In the first is a young boy, white dove in his hand
''In the second is a warrior in armor
''In the third is an old man, gold watch in his hand
''Fourth and last, no reflection at all
''No reflection at all!'' }}
* Dave Wyndorf, lead singer of [[Monster Magnet]], admits that when he gets stuck on the lyrics to a song, he just writes something about volcanoes, because volcanoes are [[Rule of Cool|"always cool"]].
{{quote|From '''Silver Future'''...
''You know the truth and you're so put together
''Baby I could stick you on the lip of forever
''Even a volcano has a price to pay'' }}
** Not that he isn't perfectly capable of producing word salad lyrics without talking about volcanoes.
{{quote|From '''Negasonic Teenage Warhead'''
''I can tell just by the climate and I can tell just by the style
''That I was born and raised on Venus and I may be here a while
''Cos every supersonic jerkoff who plugs into the game
''Is just like every subatomic genius who just invented pain
''I will deny you, I will deny you baby'' }}
* A lot of material from Dance Gavin Dance.
{{quote|From '''Swan Soup'''
''Another sucker punch,
''You were late for dinner, I was late for lunch.
''You wanna know the truth?
''I eat a lotta soup
''What’s it like to punch a drum,
''So belong and hold it tightly son.
''You wanna know the truth?
''I eat a lotta soup.'' }}
* Diablo Swing Orchestra, an eclectic avant-garde metal band, has lyrics that seem to exist purely to accentuate the (operatic) singer's voice. For instance, the first verse of ''Bedlam Sticks'':
{{quote|''In a place where long lost souls are led astray
''A penny is a cheap price to pay
''We play those poke'em in the nostril games all day
''Oh the fun! Oh the joy! They all would say
''Ode to tranquil meant to soothe
''Head riots, all them bells in my mind in high pursuit
''In love with a spine, I try to stroke it most of the time
''I wish they could, I wish they would
''Leave us alone'' }}
* [[Black Metal]] band Bethlehem definitely qualifies, especially with lyrics like this from the song ''Luftstehs'Ibläh'' (Lingering Fart):
{{quote|''yeah, what is it then?
''Stinky-Cunt puked once in awhile
''In a bucket of cats
''And Satanic Sewing-Machines
''The Evil Sausage sinking
''sank
''When Childish Greasy Pizza
''picks at their hair
''Fussy struggle horn and having a flat chest
''To cause irrelevant blows of mayhem
''When foul-toothed Dirk stinks out of his mouth
''Biting flesh in the Land of Vertical
''Smiles
''Hellchrist Evil and Painfulness Kiss
''master of the six silver strings of hell
''as well was a little bit unimportant
''Sturmbas, the great countess of Eva
''wanted to stay in the bar in the little asshole'' }}
* [[Ministry]] usually made lyrics from sampled speeches or relatively sane lyrics, but apparently had some [[Word Salad]] pent up in their system. The result of getting it all out was the staggeringly incomprehensible "Jesus Built My Hotrod".
{{quote|''Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true. Jerry lee Lewis was the devil. Jesus was an architect, previous to his career as a prophet. All of a sudden I found myself in love with the world, so there was only one thing that I could do: Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long...''}}

===  Rock ===
* Just about any song by Bush, especially "Little Things".
* The Shins and, by extension, Broken Bells, the collaboration between The Shins' singer and writer and DJ Danger Mouse.
* "Walking Contradiction" by [[Green Day]].
** The meaning of the song is in the title itself, basically.
* A substantial fraction of lyrics by [[wikipedia:Jason Molina|Jason Molina]] (Songs:Ohia / Magnolia Electric Co.) is WSL. Here's the beginning of one of his better known songs:
{{quote|''They come in sorry for the second vanquisher
''To have so much to pretend
''Themselves not so against
''Though overtaken
''This we'll survive, surviving those... }}
** Is it about the [[wikipedia:Cabwaylingo State Forest|forest]] or about a [[wikipedia:STDP|spike-timing-dependent synaptic plasticity]]?
* Anything by [[Cocteau Twins]]...basically. Vocalist Elizabeth Fraser went on to guest spots on albums by the Future Sound of London, Craig Armstrong, Massive Attack, and a few soundtracks, with much the same lyrical style.
** Fraser herself has been fairly elusive regarding whether or not any of her lyrics and invented words have meaning. She has stated that she possesses a special dictionary of sorts that contains the words she sings, but despite acknowledging the use of an invented language, has described the basic effect of her words as thus: "They don't mean anything, though, that's the thing. You know all the transcendent sounds. It's all sound all the way through."
** Or you could call them Word Puree Lyrics, aka [[Singing Simlish]].
** Subverted on ''Heaven Or Las Vegas'' where she confessed a lot of the songs were about her newly-born daughter.
* Most of [[Beck (musician)|Beck]]'s songs qualify as this, but he actually has stories behind almost all of them. A prime example is "Loser":
{{quote|''Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare
''Banned all the music with a phony gas chamber
''<nowiki>'</nowiki>Coz one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
''One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag
''With the rerun shows and the cocaine nosejob
''The daytime crap of the folk singer slop
''He hung himself with a guitar string
''Slap the turkey neck, and it's hanging from a pigeon wing }}
** Of course Beck is known for making up his own words in his songs. This was of course [[Lampshading|lampshaded]] on his appearance on ''[[Futurama]]'' with his "Becktionary".
{{quote|'''Beck''': You know, when I'm upset, I write a song about it. Like when I wrote "Devil's Haircut", I was feeling really... what's that song about?
'''Bender''': Hey, yeah! I could write a song! With real words, not phony ones like "odelay."
'''Beck''': "Odelay" is a word! Just look it up in the Becktionary! }}
** Here's another gem from "Hotwax"
{{quote|''I can't believe my way back when
''My Cadillac pants going much to fast
''Karaoke weekend at the suicide shack
''Community service and I'm still the Mack
''Shocked my finger, spicin' my hand
''I been spreading disease all across the land
''Beautiful air-conditioned,
''Sitting in the kitchen
''Wishing I was living like a hit man }}
* One of the more interesting examples has to be [[They Might Be Giants]]' "On Earth My Nina", whose lyrics are [[Mondegreen]]s from playing TMBG's "Thunderbird" backwards.
** [[They Might Be Giants]] songs in general. They [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|seem to mean something]], but [[True Art Is Incomprehensible|good luck figuring out what.]]
*** Except for "The Statue Got Me High", which they've basically admitted is about a guy who's looking at a statue and then his head explodes.
*** Linnell has stated that the music for "Don't Let's Start" was written before the lyrics, and the lyrics were chosen mostly because the words fit the number of syllables for the melody. When asked about the meaning of the song, Linnell simply stated it was about [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|"not let's starting."]]
** Their "Crystal Fortress" song is about [[Homestar Runner|Strong Bad]], asking for him to "come down from his crystal fortress". Strong Bad not only doesn't get the lyrics, but openly mocks the singer in the background.
** [[The Stone Roses]] did something similar to "On Earth My Nina" with "Don't Stop": They basically played along to a backwards recording of their song "Waterfall", then wrote new lyrics based on mondegreens of the backwards vocals. Resulting in things like "Pain, blue singer / he's pain, just a guitar"
* "One Week", by [[Barenaked Ladies]], although they do stuff like that for fun in a lot of their songs.
** The "One Week" example is lampshaded in "Testing 1,2,3" off the following album (The music video is more obvious about it, highlighting the next point), which is a [[Take That]] at the people that don't understand their lyrics.
* The Flaming Lips do this often, with lines such as "Once in a while/the zebras run/to the spaceman and his gun/in the spider's web" or more infamously "I was born/The day they shot a hole in the Jesus egg", which became the title of a compilation of their earlier work.
* "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" by [[REM|R.E.M.]] definitely qualifies.
{{quote|''Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, [[Earthshattering Kaboom|boom!]]''}}
** Jellybeans were [[Ronald Reagan]]'s favorite food, so it's probably a reference to his administration.
** Most songs from ''Murmur'' are like this; Michael Stipe states a lot of his early lyrics were written more for the sound of the syllables than their meaning, hence puzzling lines like "deal the porch is leading us absurd" or "up to par, Katie buys a kitchen-size, but not me in".
*** Guitarist Peter Buck admitted this in a late 90's interview, saying that "''Murmur'' is such a lyrically dense album that I don't think people will ever get it all. And some of it's not there to get. Certain bits are just words that sounded good strung together."
*** Never forget "See could stop stop it will red."
*** "Orange Crush". [[Word of God]] declares it to be a commentary on the Vietnam War, with the title being a reference to Agent Orange.
** The R.E.M. song "Losing My Religion" also has bizarre lyrics; [[Word of God]] declares it to be a song about obsession and unrequited love, although good luck figuring that out by listening to it.
*** Word of God [[Flip-Flop of God|says a lot of conflicting things]] about "Losing My Religion", most likely just to [[Lying Creator|screw with listeners]].
** "Charades, pop skill. Water hyacinth, named by a poet. Imitation of life." Just about any R.E.M. song qualifies.
*** Well, more like 2/3 of them. "Everybody Hurts" being the most obvious aversion.
** "Stand".
** "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight". What is the sidewinder? Mike admits the lyrics are in fact meaningless. Ditto "Drive" from the same album.
*** A sidewinder is a kind of snake. And its title is probably a [[Shout-Out]] to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".
** The End of "Daysleeper" gets a bit like this: "The ocean machine is set to 9 / I'll squeeze into heaven and valentine / my bed is pulling me / gravity..."
** "Have you ever seen the televised St. Vitus subcommittee prize/investigation dance? Those 'ants in pants' glances/Well look behind the eyes/It's a hallowed hollow anesthetized/Save my own ass, screw these guys/smoke and mirror lock down."
* Brazilian band Engenheiros do Hawaii uses a lot of these, though none of them flying as fast as one would expect from some cases seen in this trope.
* The Presidents of the United States of America do this often, usually for comedic purposes. On example, "Twig," starts like this: "Some weepy creepy willow pillow boggy shit....," and descends from there.
* Most of [[Queen]]'s songs, such as "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Another One Bites The Dust" (although the latter does have the underlying thread of street gangs).
* 75% of [[Nirvana]]'s songs. Which was, of course, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FklUAoZ6KxY parodied by Yankovic], too.
** A particularly glorious example is "On a Plain":
{{quote|''Somewhere I have heard this before
''In a dream my memory has stored
''As a defense I'm neutered and spayed
''[[Lampshade Hanging|What the hell am I trying to say?]] }}
* While there might be a meaning behind it, [[Alanis Morissette]]'s "Thank U" has verses that qualify in this trope:
{{quote|''How 'bout gettin' off of these antibiotics?
''How 'bout stoppin' eatin' when I'm full up?
''How 'bout them transparent danglin' carrots?
''How 'bout that ever-elusive kudo? }}
* [[Radiohead]] have been known to write some of their lyrics by pulling random phrases out of a hat, particularly on ''Kid A''.
** This is, perhaps, excusable, as Thom Yorke was notoriously obsessed with Dadaism during this period and wrote the lyrics to some of the songs on ''Kid A'' following Tristan Tzara's instructions for writing a Dada poem.
*** [[Lyrical Shoehorn]] plays enough of a role in their songwriting period that this features on ''all'' of their albums, to some degree. "I'm teetering on the brink / Of honey sweet / So full of sleep", anyone?
* Shaun Ryder, the lead singer of Happy Mondays, is known for writing incomprehensible drug-induced stream-of-consciousness lyrics.
** "You're twistin' my melon, man!" '''must''' have been written while he was on the KFC.
* The Manic Street Preachers are another example. Not only have they mashed together various words into lyrics ("Cos reality for TV is Disney not King, Rodney" in ''Dead Yankee Drawl'' for an early example), but they have also included references to people and concepts not immediately accessible to the listener, leading to [http://www.manics.nl an unofficial website that tries to decipher most of the references]. This may also be a Listeners are genius example. While many of Nicky Wire's lyrics are just plain incomprehensible, Richey Edward's songs do have meanings... They're just composed of insanely obscure and complicated references.
* Many Soul Coughing songs seem to just consist of cool-sounding nonsense. Which may possibly be explained due to the lyricist's fondness for...[[Watch It Stoned|recreational pharmaceuticals]].
{{quote|''I'll scratch you raw, l'etat c'est moi
''I drink the drink and I'm wall to wall
''I absorb trust like a love rhombus
''I feel I must elucidate
''I ate the chump with guile
''Quadrilateral I was, now I warp like a smile }}
** The verses of "Casiotone Nation" consist of variants of "the five percent nation of (arbitrary noun)" or "The People's Republic of (arbitrary noun)", which the band would change every time it was played live.
** Not to mention the refrain from "Down to This", which was assembled due to Doughty being a little hyper and repeating various other [[Ear Worm]] phrases while working the door at a local club. "You got the tickets/and I got the list" (which [[It Makes Sense in Context|made sense in the context]] of that activity) eventually became the phrase "You get the ankles/I'll get the wrists.
* Morphine's "Super Sex": it ''might'' be a collection of [[Gratuitous English]] seen and overheard while on international tour, or just a very impressionistic take on a late night out on the town, but:
{{quote|''Automatic Taxi Stop Electric Cigarette Love Baby
''Hotel Rock'n'roll Discotheque Electric Super Sex }}
** Justified given Morphine's [[The Beat Generation|beat generation]] style. Beat poetry tends to [[Lyrical Shoehorn]] as often as it makes even symbolic sense.
* James, due to their tendency to spawn everything out of jams and improvs and then let Tim just go nuts over the top. The ''Wah Wah'' album is the best illustration of this, and "Frequency Dip" is the Crowning Moment Of Bonkers, with its complete garbage about sediment layers, false hair-dos and "some kind of sink unit". "Of Monsters And Heroes And Men", from their latest album, is also deranged.
* Many of [[Coheed and Cambria]]'s lyrics sound like this. For example, from "Mother Superior": "Mother superior come catch the rabbit he runs (my how've you been), YOU'RE FRIGHTENED OF LEAVING THIS TRULY GONE FISHING AMALGAM (go fetch your gun)"
** The capitalized lyrics were, for the first YEAR I had that album (''No World For Tomorrow''), a complete mystery. Until I did some dictionary work on amalgam. Basically, the line seems to refer to the narrator (probably Claudio, who shares the name with the songwriter/vocalist of the band, yet is not really a [[Self Insertion]] or [[Author Avatar]]) saying that he's confused and just kind of "out of it" (truly gone fishing), and he's either literally two people in one (Amalgam is a word meaning a mixture, I believe), or that he's simply split between several different decisions.
*** A lot of Coheed's lyrics start making more sense if you read the comics that the music is based off of.
* Early [[Modest Mouse]].
* [[Weezer]]'s "Dope Nose", which Rivers Cuomo has admitted has "no meaning whatsoever". It's not as extreme as some other examples, but it does feature a few baffling lines like "cheese smells so good on a burnt piece of lamb".
* Pretty much anything by Robyn Hitchcock. One of the earlier examples is "Leppo and the Jooves", in which the first stanza goes as follows:
{{quote|''Crabwise
''Over the Andalusian extensions of the life and loves of Noddy
''Through the windows of disgust
''The teeth of Leppo and his managers awry
''No time to cry }}
** Peaked out in "Unsettled", e.g.:
{{quote|''Got a heart exact tomato flourish
''on a spike of greedy prongs
''If a baseball dug moussaka Alan wraps the biscuit in a
''Novel thongs accepted every turning bends away
''Biting off a crust, the troubled hey do you ...}}
::...but it should be noted that Quirky Hitch frequently reshuffles or reinvents lyrics on the fly when playing live.
* The [[Pixies]] were masters at this. Most of their lyrics make no sense whatsoever. Some fans would say that's a part of the band's genius. I think the best example of this is "Mr. Grieves":
{{quote|''Hope everything is alright
''What's that floating in the water?
''Oh, Neptune's only daughter
''I believe in Mr. Grieves
''Pray for a man in the middle
''One that talks like Doolittle }}
** Much like the Oasis example below, Black Francis claimed in interviews that during the ''Bossanova'' sessions he'd "write lyrics on napkins 5 minutes before recording". Thus earning the album an honorary mention.
* The ending theme to ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex]]'', "Lithium Flower" by Scott Matthew and Tim Jensen:
{{quote|''she's so cold and human
''it's something humans do
''she stays so golden solo
''she's so number nine
''she's incredible math
''just incredible math }}
** The song makes complete sense, however, when listened to in its entirety: it's sung from the perspective of a man enamoured by an amazing surfer girl (In context: Motoko's ability to net dive. Cyber-surfing,) and trying to come up with crazy, made-up similes to describe how awesome she is ("So matador, so calm, so oil-on-a-fire"), before going on about her ability to surf ("wow, where did she learn how to surf/You know I've never seen the girl wipe out"). These types of lyrics are typical in many of Yoko Kanno's soundtracks, and none of it is because [[Engrish|she's Japanese.]] She speaks, reads, and writes fluent English, among other languages.
* [[Bjork]]'s "Pagan Poetry"
{{quote|''On the surface simplicity
''but the darkest pit in me
''is pagan poetry
''pagan poetry }}
** Björk pretty much epitomizes this trope.
** Less "random words," more [[Mind Screw|"surreal beyond comprehension."]]
* The song "The Messenger" by Your Favorite Enemies, written for ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'' is a bit more normal by the standards of some of the other songs here, but the lyrics still descend frequently into "what the heck does that ''mean''" territory. For example:
{{quote|''Shouting worship choked in a wave of silver
''The offering's grief for Deceiver's pride,
''Salvation man is a cup of fire
''But hope is the star on a morning tide }}
** or:
{{quote|''The Pilgrims are gathering and the marching band, the marching band's howling
''Compassion is the flag a righteous man, a righteous man will hold }}
** It's not just "The Messenger." Their other, non-Dissidia songs are pretty confusing too.
* [[Phish]] does this often. Some songs, like "Cavern" or "Stash," feature vivid imagery worked into a narrative that makes no rational sense, whatsoever. As a taste, here's the first verse of "Chalk Dust Torture":
{{quote|''Come stumble my mirth, beaten worker.
''I'm Jezmund the family berzerker.
''I'm bought for the price of a flagon of rice.
''The wind buffs the cabin
''You speak of your life
''Or more willingly Locust the Lurker. }}
** Subverted in their song "Down with Disease," which mentions jungles, head-dwelling demons, and a thousand barefoot children, but which is actually about hallucinating while ill.
* Train's "Drops of Jupiter". It definitely ''seems'' to have some sort of meaning, but it's so wrapped up in abstract similes and such that it's incomprehensible.
{{quote|''Now that she's back in the atmosphere
''With drops of Jupiter in her hair, hey, hey
''She acts like summer and walks like rain
''Reminds me that there's room to change, hey, hey
''Since the return from her stay on the moon
''She listens like spring and she talks like June, hey, hey. }}
* Syd Barrett's lyrics started changing from psychedelic fairy tales to word salad towards the end of his tenure with [[Pink Floyd]], and this continued through his solo work. The ultimate example being "The Word Song", with lyrics that consist entirely of a non-rhyming list of unconnected words ("Stained, glaucous, glycerine, gold, goat, clover...")
** Leading up to the chorus of "Rats" Syd goes progressively (regressively?) deep into word salad, peaking with (what else?) a list of words, or pretty much so: "Bam, spastic, tactile engine, heaving, crackle, slinky, dormy, roofy, wham, I'll have them, fried bloke, broken jardy, cardy, smoocho, moocho, paki, pufftle, sploshette moxy, very smelly, cable, gable..." Not entirely unconnected though (some are linked by sounding similar, for example).
* Brazilian band Skank sometimes has this. Helped by usage of [[Gratuitous English]], [[Gratuitous Spanish]], and [[Singing Simlish|inane singing]] ("Beat it laun, daun daun, Beat it, loom, dap'n daun, Beat it laun, daun daun").
* The band Falling Up does this with a '''whole album''', ''Fangs!''. Some of the tracks: "Exit Calypsan", "Goddess of the Dayspring Am I", and "The Color Eotopian"
* Some of Five Iron Frenzy's songs fit this trope, especially "Heat Stroke" and the original live version of "Fistful of Sand" (they hadn't written lyrics for it yet, so the singer made up gibberish on the spot).
{{quote|''The phone of Zanzibar, mighty needs I ever come,
''mandolin feeding devils, see the fool I am!
''Feels like nothing, kills like something, don't you take my life away,
''don't it take my life away, shown by killing me!
''Feels like nothing, Heaven goo!
''Kills like nothing, Heaven deed!
''Feels like nothing, kills like something, gonna take my life away!
''Feel somebody peel some Coke but (five syllables of gibberish)! }}
* Many of the songs on Panic at the Disco's newest{{when}} album ''Pretty.Odd.'' are examples of this trope, most notably perhaps "Mad as Rabbits" which opens with the following verse:
{{quote|''Come save me from walking off a windowsill
''Or I'll sleep in the rain
''Don't you remember when I was a bird
''And you were a map?
''And now he drags down miles in America
''Briefcase in hand
''The stove is creeping up his spine again
''Can't get enough trash }}
** Then again, the entire album ''was'' done in the style of [[The Beatles]]...
* [[My Chemical Romance]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egG7fiE89IU Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)]
{{quote|''Oh let me tell you 'bout the sad man
''Shut up and let me see your jazz hands
''Remember when you were a mad man
''Thought you was Batman!
''And hit the party with the gas can
''Kiss me you animal! }}
* Ludo's "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XH3oMNKApI Love Me Dead]"
{{quote|''Kill me romantically
''Fill my soul with vomit
''Then ask me for a piece of gum.
''Bitter and dumb
''You're my sugarplumb.
''You're awful, I love you! }}
* A milder example from Chiodos (from I Didn't Say I Was Powerful, I Said I Was A Wizard)
{{quote|''Sightings of shape shifting
''Dissolved into the darkness
''A final opinion is of less value
''Than an appreciation of,
''And tolerance for obscurity }}
* Pick a [[Red Hot Chili Peppers]] song at random, and chances are it'll probably be a word salad song. A good example is "Can't Stop":
{{quote|''Knockout, but boy, you'd better come to
''Don't die, you know, the truth is, some do
''Go write your message on the pavement
''Burning so bright, I wonder what the wave meant? }}
** Or "Give it Away":
{{quote|''Realize I don't wanna be a miser
''Confide with sly you'll be the wiser
''Young blood is the lovin' upriser
''How come everybody wanna keep it like the kaiser }}
** A repeated section in "By The Way": Each time, four two-word phrases are said, different for each of the four times this section appears. They don't appear to be significant in any way to anything.
** "Especially In Michigan":
{{quote|''Life is my friend, underwater violins
''Order now from Ho Chi Minh
''A porcelain that comes in twins }}
** While the initial lyrics to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMXqlCbgzkQ "Death of a Martian"] make sense (and are in fact quite [[Tear Jerker|tear jerking]]), the outro to the song is as word salad as it gets:
{{quote|''She's got a sword in case though this is not her lord in case the one who can't afford to face her image is restored to grace. Disappeared. No trace. Musky tears. Suitcase. The down turn brave little burncub bearcareless turnip snare rampages pitch color pages...down and out but not in Vegas. Disembarks and disengages. No loft. Sweet pink canary cages plummet pop dewskin fortitude for the sniffing black noses that snort and allude to the dangling trinkets that mimic the dirt cough go drink its. It's for you. Blue battered naval town slip kisses delivered by duck muscles and bottlenosed grifters arrive in time to catch the late show. It's a beehive barrel race. A shehive stare and chase wasted feature who tried and failed to reach her. Embossed beneath a box in the closet that's lost. The kind that you find when you mind your own business. Shiv sister to the quickness before it blisters into the newmorning milk blanket. Your ilk is funny to the turnstyle touch bunny whose bouquet set a course for bloom without decay. get your broom and sweep echoes of yesternights fallen freckles...AWAY!!!''}}
* The Hombres' 60's garage rock novelty [http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/elizabethtown/letitallhangout.htm "Let It All Hang Out"] was deliberately written to be as nonsensical as possible, as a parody of Bob Dylan's lyrical style. [http://markprindle.com/mcewen-i.htm One interview] does reveal some lines at least had some basis in private jokes among band members, however. Amusingly, the line "Hot dog, my razor broke!" came about because the singer suddenly exclaimed it to the guitarist while they were trying to brainstorm for lyrical ideas - He had been shaving at the time and his razor did in fact fall apart.
* T. Rex's "Rip Off," apparently written to appeal to Americans. If you ever wondered about Dylan's influence on the world...well, "the president's weird, he's got a burgundy beard"...
* [[Clutch]] loves this trope. The best example may be "10001110101":
{{quote|''Ribonucleic acid freakout, the power of prayer. Long halls of science and all the lunatics committed there. Robot lords of Tokyo, smile! Taste kittens! Did you not know that the royal hunting grounds are always forbidden?}}
* [[Led Zeppelin]]'s "Stairway to Heaven", which combines references to Celtic mythology and Christianity, concepts from ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', and outright lyrical noodling.
** In fact, any Led Zeppelin song that isn't about [[Intercourse with You]], and even some of ''those'' ("All My Love," anyone?).
*** "All My Love" is [[Grief Song|about Robert Plant's son dying prematurely.]]
{{quote|''I saw a lion, he was standing alone with a tadpole in a jar}}
* Many of [[Blue Öyster Cult|Blue Oyster Cult]]'s songs, particularly from the ''Imaginos'' album.
{{quote|''Oyster boys are swimming for me
''Save me from the deathlike creature}}
** That song is kind of an [[Updated Rerelease]]. The original lyrics are from a previous song called "Subhuman" on the ''Secret Treaties'' album. For ''Imaginos'', they remixed it and added the parts about joining the Cult. Nonethless, even though they are may favorite band, I still don't know what the hell most of their songs are about.
*** It should be noted that the "Oyster boys" line is also present in the original "The Subhuman".
** Their album covers used to include an address that you could send a SASE to for copies of their lyrics, but you'd be sorry if you did.
* Scott Weiland has a fondness for this with some of his bands' songs. "Big Bang Baby" by Stone Temple Pilots and "Slither" by Velvet Revolver are a few examples of his often nigh-incomprehensible lyrics.
** "Interstate Love Song" doesn't seem to have anything to do with either love or an interstate.
* [[Electric Six]]'s weird ballad "Jimmy Carter" references politicians, the [[Backstreet Boys]] and Slouching Towards Gomorrah without any logical connection between the themes whatsoever:
{{quote|''Like Harry Truman dropping bombs out of the air
''like any self-respecting multi-billionaire
''This is who you are
''five dancing teenage boys who sing their way into our hearts
''Backstreet’s back
''Alright. }}
** The majority of Electric Six's work is like this.
* Neutral Milk Hotel have such moving yet surreal lyrics as "Blister please, with those wings in your spine/Love to be with a brother of mine/How he'd love to find/Your tongue in his teeth/In a struggle to find/Secret songs that you keep/Wrapped in boxes so tight/Sounding only at night as you sleep".
** "Rubby Bulbs". Choice line: "I need to fill your lungs with smallpox." [[Nightmare Fetishist|Pleasant dreams.]]
* Rogue Wave, with such gems as this from "Stars and Stripes":
{{quote|''Never had a false alarm
''Softer than a baby's arm
''All hands are right}}
** Occasionally you can hear a line or two of something meaningful, but Zach Rogue has a tendency to mumble a bit, so it's never quite coherent.
* "Love Underground," by Robbers on High Street. Extremely catchy... and really nonsensical.
* Although he has a Dylanesque sophistication to him (and this Troper is, admittedly, one of his biggest fans) anything by Dan Bejar aka Destroyer, also of The New Pornographers. He also is infamous for referencing not only others' lyrics, but HIS OWN ones as well. There's an entire [https://web.archive.org/web/20100126041509/http://www.deftone.com/destroyer/index.php?title=Main_Page wiki] dedicated to analyzing his lyrics.
* Also: "The Geeks Were Right," by The Faint. Catchy? As hell. Logical? Not the least. Thought it does seem to have a pseudo-[[Green Aesop]] in it of sorts. At the very least, it states for one line that [[Humans Are the Real Monsters]]... and then ignores it.
** That's not even their worst example. Try "Forever Growing Centipedes". The lyrics are just as bizarre as the title. My best guess is that it has to do with chaos theory and anarcho-primitivism, but really, will we we ever know?
* The [[Eels]]' "Hidden Track" (yes, that's the actual name of the song, and it's not even particularly "hidden") consists of drummer Butch sing/speaking lyrics like "Jacuzzis and bunnies / A broken fondue set / Kool G is in the outhouse / you can be my Mr French". The official story to it is that there was an online contest for song titles, then the band just ended up putting a bunch of them together to use as lyrics. However, it seems that no one in the fan community remembers any such thing, so it was probably just written to ''sound'' like that was what happened.
* JJ72 - "October Swimmer" especially
* [[Animal Collective]]'s ''Feels''. All of it.
** They're all [[Silly Love Song|quirky love songs]]. Or [[Breakup Songs|end-of-relationship songs]]. This said, each individual song has, beyond the underlying premise, ''plenty'' of [[Word Salad]] and/or [[Mind Screw]] ([[Running Gag|"Word Parsley"?!]]) to go around. Which is true of most of their material, frankly.
* Some of King Crimson's works, especially "The World is my Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum" which also fits [[Word Salad Title|World's salad title wax museum]]... w...wait...what did I just say?
** That particular song's actually a rather clever sort of word salad—it's a bunch of overlapping phrases, along the lines of ''[[Wheel of Fortune]]'''s "Before and After" category.
* [[Yes]]. For a real treat check out the lyrics for "Tales from Topographic Oceans" by [[Yes]], which starts out: "Dawn of light lying between the silence and sold sources / Chased amid fusions of wonder / In moments hardly seen forgotten / Coloured in pastures of chance dancing leaves cast spells of challenge / Amused but real in thought / We fled from the sea / Whole..." and goes on like that for another 79 minutes or so. Like the R.E.M. example above, this partially comes about because Jon Anderson treated the vocals as another instrument, prioritizing how the words sounded over whether they necessarily made sense.
** This is actually a songwriting technique designed to move a writer's focus away from lyrics which are completely logical but a pain in the neck to easily sing or listen to. It's a way of adding "danceability" and earwormishness.
** One of the best-known songs by [[Yes]] is Roundabout, which features the extraordinary lyrics, "In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky and they stand there"<ref>band members have said that the song was inspired by the mountains of Switzerland, so tall they seem to "come out of the sky," making this line a relatively reasonable metaphor</ref>.. How extraordinary are those words? Well, a history of Progressive Rock, written by Will Romano (available on Amazon) is entitled, "Mountains Come Out of the Sky".
*** Roger Dean's cover art for the live ''Yessongs'' set actually includes, among other things, images of - you guessed it - mountains coming out of the sky and standing there. ''Upside down''.
** "Close to the Edge" one-ups that with "A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace / [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?|And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace....]]"
** Also "The time between the notes relates the colour to the scenes"
** "Yours Is No Disgrace" off their second self-titled
{{quote|''Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face.
''Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human race,
''On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place,
''If the summer changed to winter, yours is no disgrace. }}
*** Interestingly, a later lyric in the same song about a "shining flying purple wolfhound" is often singled out as a demonstration of their word salad lyrics, but is actually one of the few lines that make literal sense. A "Purple Wolfhound" is the nickname for a kind of British fighter jet, so it's perfectly reasonable for one to be shining and flying. "Yours Is No Disgrace" is meant to be a [[Protest Song]] about the Vietnam War, although it ''is'' a very obtuse one.
** "The Gates of Delirium" has "Power spent passion bespoils our soul receiver / Surely we know!" One has to wonder what Jon Anderson's grocery lists look like.
** Starcastle, a band that built its career on soundling like Yes, took this to its ultimate extreme:
{{quote|''Rolled in velvet crystal
''Broken reds with scarlet
''Hand-me-down of sundry seas
''Melting golden flesh is cracked in garden circles grown
''Of me }}
** Yes also influenced the style of neo-prog band IQ, whose songs are equally confusing. (Zero Hour for example,)
{{quote|''Yesterday is up for auction
''Souvenirs are in demand
''In the rooms where rocking horses
''Carried us on moonlit strands
''Thunder crash and flash of lightning
''Storms of metal raining down
''Little hands that cradle ashes
''Little eyelids heavy, head run aground }}
* The Mars Volta embodies this trope, with lyrics like "Trackmarked amoeba lands craft/Cartwheel of scratches/Dress the tapeworm as pets/Tentacles smirk please/Flinch the cocooned meat..."
** And no discussion of TMV's word-salad lyrics is complete without the infamous line "The kiosk in my temporal lobe is shaped like Rosalyn Carter!"
* A lot of Porcupine Tree's early material is like this. "Jupiter Island," the first song on their first real album, starts things off and it stays that way up until "Signify," and even on that album you have songs like "Sever."
* Prog rock group [http://www.emersonlakepalmer.com/ Emerson Lake and Palmer] had its fair share of incomprehensible lyrics including "right before your eyes, we pull laughter from the skies and he laughs until he cries, then he dies, then he dies"
** That's when they worked with former [[King Crimson]] lyricist Peter Sinfield.
* [[Gorillaz]] songs are usually blunt and poignant, but there's a few incomprehensible doozies in there as well, like the chorus to 19/2000:
{{quote|''"Get the cool~ Get the cool shoeshine (lalalalalalalaaa) Get the cool~ Get the cool shoeshine!"''}}
* "Incense & Peppermints" by [[Super Punk Octo Pudding Gas Mark Seven|Strawberry Alarm Clock]].
** They even [[Lampshade]] this in the lyrics: "Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns."
* The lyrics for Brian Wilson's ''Smile'' project, written by Van Dyke Parks: "Columnated ruins domino" indeed. One of the main reasons The Beach Boys didn't complete it in 1967 was that Mike Love started complaining that he didn't understand the lyrics, and even got in an argument with Parks over them.
** Most of Van Dyke Parks' lyrics qualify as word salads.
* [[The Beatles]]' "I Am The Walrus" is one of the most famous examples of this trope.
** "Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye!"
*** To be fair, much of the apparent "salad" had actual meaning for [[John Lennon]], and the line "Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe" was added specifically to [[Writer Revolt|confound attempts at literary analysis]].
** "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" is another Beatles example, although not quite as nonsensical as "Walrus".
** "Come Together" is another one. It's not completely word salad, as the sentences are at least syntactically correct. However, I don't think anyone knows what toe-jam football is.
*** "Word salad" is by definition syntactically correct, but nonsensical. It's a psychiatric condition resulting from damage to a certain area of the brain.
*** Although, if your early warning tells you you have muddy water, a mojo filter might be a nice thing to have.
** "Glass Onion" is another example, full of [[Shout-Out]]s to earlier Beatles songs of this type.
** And, of course, "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds". [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?]] And "Sun King".
*** You might have noticed all of the above songs were by [[John Lennon]].
** Parodied (like everything else in the Beatles' career) by [[The Rutles]], with such ditties as "Good Times Roll" and "Piggy in the Middle".
** The infamous [[Mondegreen]] "Some day monkey won't play piano song."
*** Might not count because the real lyrics [[Gratuitous French|aren't in English at all]].
** ''Because'' opens with the lyrics "[[Fetish Fuel|Because the world is round, it turns me on]]". It only makes less and less sense as the song goes on.
* [[David Bowie]] often wrote this, sometimes using the Burroughs "cut-up" technique. A prime example of this would be his song [[Word Salad Title|"Fall Dog Bombs the Moon"]] from the album ''Reality''.
** "Life On Mars?"
{{quote|''Sailors fighting in the dance hall
''Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
''It's the freakiest show
''Take a look at the Lawman
''Beating up the wrong guy
''Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
''He's in the best selling show
''Is there life on Mars? }}
*** "Life on Mars?" is about the isolation of a young girl who escapes her unhappy home life at the cinema, so the chorus is probably referring, montage-style, to the endless parade of movies she sits and watches to forget reality. "The best-selling show" is just a popular film, and the title phrase can be an extension of how badly the protagonist wants to get away.
** A better example would be "Little Wonder," which [[Name Drop]]s the seven dwarfs, but otherwise is mostly random nonsense.
* [[Frank Zappa]] does this a lot, particularly in a song called "Ya Hozna" which further confuses things by playing all the lyrics backwards.
* It's been pointed out that many of [https://web.archive.org/web/20130529113548/http://www.frampton.com/lyrics.html Peter Frampton's lyrics] are just a bunch of random lines stuck together with no attempt at a narrative or thematic concept. "Show Me The Way" is a particularly notable offender.
* The Band's "Chest Fever": "'She's stoned' said the Swede/And the Moon Calf agreed/But I'm like a viper in shock/With my eyes in the clock." The lyrics were reportedly made up on the spot.
* "Blinded by the Light" by [[Bruce Springsteen]] ([[Covered Up|or Manfred Mann]])
** Really, ''most'' of the lyrics from ''Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ'' fit this trope. Of course, that was during his "next Bob Dylan" phase.
{{quote|''Wizard imps and sweat sock pimps, interstellar mongrel nymphs...''}}
* No mention of [[Bob Dylan]]? "Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule."
** Bob Dylan invented this trope in music. His lyrics, which were influenced by surrealist poetry, prompted John Lennon and Mick Jagger, among others, to step up their songwriting, and generally introduced the idea that rock/pop lyrics didn't all have to be "Love Me Do".
** Dylan's use of this trope could be called "Word Garnish Lyrics", because while he used surreal wordplay, usually the songs themselves have a fairly straightforward meaning. "Visions of Johanna", the source of that line about the jewels and binoculars, is ultimately a song about lost love.
** Word parsley! (Hey, that'd be [[A Good Name for a Rock Band]].)
** Dylan's style was parodied in ''[[Walk Hard]] - The Dewey Cox Story''; during his 'Dylan' phase (where he is blatantly ripping off Bob Dylan in every facet of his life), Dewey performs a song called 'Royal Jelly', the lyrics of which two of his band members find completely incomprehensible ("Mail boxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the Coliseum..."). The third immediately snarls that they're idiots, and that "[[True Art Is Incomprehensible|this song is very deep]]." Another one, 'Farmer Glickstein', embraces this trope to such a degree that even the singer ends up admitting in the song that he's got no idea what he's singing about.
* [[Paul McCartney]] was prone to this trope on occasion. His most prominent example is probably "[http://www.lyricsdepot.com/paul-mccartney/juniors-farm.html Junior's Farm]".
{{quote|''You should have seem me with the poker man
''I had a honey and I bet a grand
''Just in the nick of time I looked at his hand
''I was talking to an Eskimo
''Said he was hoping for a fall of snow
''When up popped a sea lion ready to go }}
** If anyone can explain what "[http://www.lyricsdepot.com/paul-mccartney/jet.html Jet]" is supposed to mean, I'm all ears.
* Most [[Oasis]] songs. As the page quote shows, Noel Gallagher, writer of the majority, [http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/gallagher%20i%20have%20no%20idea%20what%20my%20songs%20mean has admitted] sometimes even he doesn't understand the lyrics. An excerpt of "Champagne Supernova" ([http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5851553.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2 which he also doesn't understand]) frequently enters lists of Worst Lyric Ever ("Slowly walking down the hall/Faster than a cannonball/Where were you while we were gettin' high?").
** Some other examples include:
*** "I Hope, I Think, I Know":
{{quote|''I hope I think I know
''If I ever hear the names you call
''And if I stumble catch me when I fall
''<nowiki>'</nowiki>Cause baby, after all
''You'll never forget my name }}
*** "Shakermaker" (although intentionally written as a psychedelic/insane kind of song):
{{quote|''I've been driving in my car with my friend Mr. Soft
''Mr. Clean and Mr. Ben are living in my loft
''Aaaaaaaaaa-ahhh, Shake along with me }}
*** "Some Might Say":
{{quote|''The sink is full of fishes
''She's got dirty dishes on the brain
''All my dogs been itchin'
''Itchin' in the kitchen once again" }}
** Honorable mention goes to "Supersonic", which was written in the half-hour before its recording, so it wouldn't make sense anyway.
** All of the aforementioned songs were written by Noel Gallagher while high as a kite, which should make up for an explanation.
* Al Stewart's "Red Toupee" song: "To Catalina in a fishing boat/They call it Henry Cisneros/We got no money but we still stay afloat/The jellyfishes don't scare us...In your Red Toupee".
* Shudder To Think went for this fairly frequently, a couple of the most surreal examples being "Shake Your Halo Down" ("Stick a fish in a tattoo gun/ see what color ink comes out") and "Hit Liquor" ("Party of mouths/ a finger fan courtship / The case of her bones are softer than loose meat"). The latter may just be an incredibly cryptic version of an [[Intercourse with You]] song though.
* "Black Hole Sun" by [[Soundgarden]]. Chris Cornell himself admits that have little real meaning:  "Lyrically it's probably the closest to me just playing with words for words' sake, of anything I've written. I guess it worked for a lot of people who heard it, but I have no idea how you'd begin to take that one literally."  He also said, "I was just sucked in by the music and I was painting a picture with the lyrics. There was no real idea to get across."
{{quote|''In my eyes, indisposed
''In disguise as no one knows
''Hides the face
''Lies the snake
''The sun in my disgrace
''Boiling heat
''Summer stench
''Neath the black the sky looks dead }}
** Many Soundgarden songs are like this. The lyrics to "Outshined":
{{quote|''I got up feeling so down
''I got off being sold out
''I've kept the movie rolling
''But the story's getting old now
''I just looked in the mirror
''Things aren't looking so good
''I'm looking California
''And feeling Minnesota }}
* The "Willow Farm" portion of the [[Genesis (band)|Genesis]] song "[[Supper's Ready]]" definitely qualifies.
{{quote|''There's [[Winston Churchill]] [[Crossdresser|dressed in drag]],
''he used to be a British flag, plastic bag, what a drag.
''The frog was a prince, the prince was a brick, the brick was an egg,
''the egg was a bird.
''(Fly away you sweet little thing, they're hard on your tail)
''Hadn't you heard?
''(They're going to change you into a human being!)
''Yes, we're happy as fish and gorgeous as geese,
''and wonderfully clean in the morning.
...
''Feel your body melt;
''Mum to mud to mad to dad
''Dad diddley office, Dad diddley office,
''You're all full of ball.
''Dad to dam to dum to mum
''Mum diddley washing, Mum diddley washing,
''You're all full of ball. }}
* The Whitlams' "No Aphrodesiac"
{{quote|''Forty, shaved, sexy, wants to do it all day
''With a gun-totin' trigger-happy tranny named Kinky Renée.
''Tired teacher, twenty-eight, seeks regular meetings
''for masculine muscular nappy-clad brutal breeding
''while his wife rough-wrestles with a puppy
''all aquiver on a wine-soaked strobe-lit Asiatic hall of mirrors and a dash of loneliness
''There's no aphrodisiac quite like it. }}
** [[Head-Tiltingly Kinky|Sounds hot.]]
** And then they intentionally tried to top themselves on "Chunky Chunky Air Guitar".
{{quote|''She came from the Cocos Islands
''With a limp and a snow-shaker huh
''Hocked by a fine Arabian Ginger Monsignor
''He said you ain'ts gets nothing
''Cause nothin' gets made by Koreans
''He had dubbin in his hair
''And he played the tamborine. }}
* "This Is A Call" by [[Foo Fighters]]. The chorus is pretty straightforward, but the verses seem to just consist of cryptic wordplay, the strangest line being "Seems that all the cysts and mollusks tend to barter".
** Dave Grohl admitted that most of the lyrics in the album were scribbled 20 minutes before he recorded the songs, and that "a few of them aren't even words".
** Or "All My Life":
{{quote|''All my life I've been searching for somethin'
''Somethin' never comes, never leads to nuthin'
''Nothin' satisfies, but I'm gettin' close
''Closer to the prize at the end of the rope
''All night long I dream of the day
''When it comes around, and it's taken away
''Leaves me with the feelin' that I fear the most
''Feel it come to life when I see your ghost }}
* A recent{{when}} example is [[Bowling for Soup]]'s "I Gotchoo", especially obvious since their lyrics are generally witty, not that it detracts from the song.
{{quote|''Waves hit rocks and folks get wet,
''I was gonna say somethin' but now I forget,
''Chocolate covered cherries with the milk on the side,
''I'll meet you at the party if I find a ride,
''Helicopters fly and birds like to nest,
''Elvis or The Beatles,
''Who care's who's the best, (the Beatles)
''Raleigh is the capital of North Carolina,
''Peanut Butter sandwich with some Aunt Jemima }}
* Like a lot of other prog rock groups, [[Jethro Tull]] is susceptible to putting out Word Salads. Despite such extended examples as "Thick as a Brick" and "Baker Street Muse", their most egregious example is probably "Cold Wind to Valhalla".
* A lot of songs by Half Man Half Biscuit don't even try to make sense, but most of ''Four Skinny Indie Kids'' sounds like the singer randomly flipping through a dictionary.
* Some of [[16 Horsepower]]'s early material qualifies. Individual stanzas and verses make sense, but they don't fit together into a cohesive song; the overall effect is like David Eugene Edwards exploded a hymnbook and pasted the page scraps back together at random.
* Every single Guided by Voices side project name (example: the Moping Swans), album title (example: Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia), song title (example: Bright Paper Werewolves) and 80% of the lyrics (example: -from Jabberstroker "Cling to the sides, brain-boy we lost our numb-er selves in jail leaving a groovy wit matter on a sailing sky, alive and jabberstroking"). Bob Pollard lives for Word Salad Lyrics. Must be all the beer.
* [[Linkin Park]]'s High Voltage pretty much consists of these kinds of lyrics.
{{quote|''I've been digging in the crates ever since I was living in space
''Before the rat race
''Before monkeys had human traits
''I mastered numerology and big bang theology
''Performed lobotomies with telekinetic psychology'' }}
** "High Voltage" was written back when they were a more purely hip-hop group (under the name Hybrid Theory) and Chester Bennington hadn't yet joined the group. The songs they wrote afterward averted this trope.
* In the fadeout of "Seven Stars" by [[Uriah Heep]], David Byron apparently got tired of repeating the numbers 1-7, and started running down the letters of the alphabet.
* [[Sparklehorse]] ''lived'' on this trope. Example: The Knives of Summertime.
{{quote|''A flock of knives
''Cut the sky
''And buried in my black eyes
''And the clouds they bled
''In my head
''And autumn rain soaked the dry beds
''And the hurricane
''Of her eyes
''Wailed away the knives
''The knives of summertime }}
* [[The Doors]]:
{{quote|''Peppermint, miniskirts, chocolate candy,
''Champion sax, and a girl named Sandy.
''There's only four ways to get unraveled:
''One is to sleep, and the other is travel, da-da!
''One is a bandit up in the hills;
''One is to love your neighbor 'til...
''His wife gets home.'' }}
** Christ, it's hard to describe just how weird that song is. For reference, [https://web.archive.org/web/20130930075941/http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-Soft-Parade-lyrics-The-Doors/F6CB7BED4BCF951C4825689700347737 these are the lyrics]. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
* Interpol loves this trope, e.g.:
** ''Slow hands'': "We spies, intimate slow hands, killer for hire, you know not yourself, we spies, intimate slow hands, you let the face slap around yourself;"
** ''Narc'': "Touch your thighs, I'm the lonely one, remember that last sweat 'cause that was the right one;"
** ''The Heinrich Maneuver'': "How are things on the West Coast? I hear you're moving real fine, you wear those shoes like a dove, now strut those shoes, we'll go roaming in the night;"
** ''PDA'': "Yours is the only version of my desertion that I could ever subscribe to, that is all that I can do, you are a past winner, the last dinner, I'm raping all around me, until the last drop is behind you [...] sleep tight, grim rite, we have two hundred couches;"
*  Tom Petty (minus the Heartbreakers, on "Full Moon Fever") in "A Mind With A Heart Of Its Own": "Well the man out to end us had a hurricane business / He'd raise them from babies all by himself / But his teen-age accountant had become surrounded / He drank up the party and everyone left." There's also random mentions of Brooker and Micanopy, are/were two suburbs of Gainesville (Petty's hometown).
* [[Everything Else]]'s "What Can't Be Seen". [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] with the line "You don't know what I mean."
* Primitive Radio Gods' "[[Overly Long Title|Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand]]" seems to be trying to say something profound...until the last line of the third verse: "And bathe yourself in zebra flesh".
* The Cardiacs' lyrics were always purposely surreal so as to allow fans to make their own interpretations of each song. I still have no idea what to make of stuff like "The Duck and Roger The Horse" though.
* Almost any [[Steely Dan]] song. Go ahead, pick one. (The effect is spoiled if you get the references though.) One example in particular, "Throw Back The Little Ones":
{{quote|''Lost in the barrio
''I walk like an Injun
''So Carlo won't suspect that something's wrong here
''I dance in place
''And paint my face
''And act like I belong here
''Throw back the little ones
''And pan fry the big ones
''Use tact, poise, and reason
''And gently squeeze them }}
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INnFvMgET1E "Take the Skinheads Bowling"] by [[Camper Van Beethoven]].  According to band member and songwriter David Lowery,
{{quote|The lyrics were purposely structured so that it would be devoid of meaning. Each subsequent line would undermine any sort of meaning established by the last line. It was the early 80′s and all our peers were writing songs that were full of meaning. It was our way of rebelling. BTW this is the most important fact about this song. We wanted the words to lack any coherent meaning. There is no story or deeper insight that I can give you about this song.|David Lowery|[http://davidlowerymusic.com/300songsblog.cfm?feature{{=}}1650209&postid{{=}}1106686 David Lowery - 300 Songs Blog]}}

===  Pop  ===
* It seems a lot of Aqua songs take after this trope; and if not this, then there is definitely [[Singing Simlish|some Simlish being sung.]]
* "Oh Industry" by [[Bette Midler]], lyrics to which may be found [http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/beaches/ohindustry.htm here.] Great song, but... "the mud's prophecy"? "Hydrogen fuel, it burns so clean; throbs in the veins, a mother lovin' machine"? Whaaa?
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlVI7ZNiFlI&ob=av2e ''The Look''] by Roxette. This was their breakthrough hit in the US and UK, despite having lyrics that weren't even supposed to be kept, let alone make sense. Tasty like a raindrop!
{{quote|'''Per Gessle''': "Walking like a man, hitting like a hammer"... the first two verses are guide lyrics, words just scribbled down to have something to sing. Couldn't come up with anything better, so we kept them. Everybody gets lucky sometimes...}}
** Perhaps recognising a winning formula, they later had a massive hit with [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCorJG9mubk&feature=channel ''Joyride''], which if anything was even sillier.
** In fact, pretty much the ''entire discography'' of Roxette can be listed here, though at least a few of the ballads are relatively coherent.
* The song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiH9dbAsAp0 She Amazed Me]" by German power-pop band Rivo Drei. [[Dilbert|Scott Adams]] wondered one day about how hard it would be to write a hit song, so he asked his blog's readers to submit lyrics that ''seemed'' to ''almost'' make sense, then gave them to the band to arrange into a song.
** Just so you can see how this turned out, here's the first verse:
{{quote|''She had runaway eyes, and marshmallow kittens
''My heart heard a dream like ten-thousand mittens
''Woah-oh-oh, a tear in her hand
''She spread deja vu all across the land
''She spins round and round with a frog in her ear
''Whispering fountains, and rocks she couldn't hear... }}
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2v87y5e9mA "Welcome Machine Gun" by Hubert Kah]:
{{quote|''Martha planned to make a movie, movie made in stereo
''Then she went to California, winded up on radio
''Round about the Navy ballroom, get the man in gabardine
''Kiss him once and kiss them all and send me cards on Halloween
<nowiki>*</nowiki>chorus*
''Monday up to Saturday, you kick yourself from 9 to 5
''Sunday's always wonderful, you wander on the TV line
''Love is not a silly notion, love is not a monorail
''Love is like the way you love a candle in a hurricane }}
* Tanita Tikaram typically pens word salad lyrics.
* David Sylvian: a mismash of mythology (Krishna, Orpheus, Shaman, Alchemy), [[Meaningless Meaningful Words]] ("I am far from the future and ambush the world"), and [[Purple Prose]] ("the room of sixteen shimmers"), best served with a hint of violence (bullfighter; boy with a gun, man who skins rabbits).
* The Argentinian humor group [[Les Luthiers]] has several songs specifically created to sound as foreign language songs, but they really have nonsensical lyrics, usually in Spanish. Among these are ''Oi Gadoñaya'' (presumably Russian, but really absurd Spanish) and ''Gloria Hossanna, that's the question'' (nonsense juxtaposed Latin words). They even have an instrumental song, ''Miss Lilly Higgins sings shimmy in Mississippi's spring'' which includes a section of "scat-like" sounds. They really are (again) nonsensical Spanish phrases:
{{quote|''Papa, batata, batata dirán
''tanta pavada taraba a un titán
''Vida para tribu,
''estúpido bidet se traba.
''Tipa brava dura daba prioridad.
''Tapa pava hervida,
''probará varón tu piba.
''Trampa obtura entrada,
''vivir a pan. }}
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00 "Prisencolinensinainciusol"] by Adriano Celentano is perhaps better classified as Word ''Puree'' Lyrics; the lyrics are an Italian speaker's imitation of what English ''sounds'' like, and are thus complete gibberish.
* A lot of [[Tori Amos]]'s songs. The explanations behind them are often even weirder.
{{quote|''Lemon pie, he's coming through
''He's our commander still
''Space dog. }}
** Lyrics like "tuna, rubber, a little blubber in my igloo" make perfect and complete sense to her.
** ''Boys for Pele'' was even panned for its incomprehensible lyrics. Her fans consider it one of her trademarks, and they like to interpret her songs. Although a lot of the time, you need Tori to explain what her songs are about, since her lyrics are ''that'' cryptic. For example, Tori alludes that "Riot Poof" is about homosexuality (which would explain the "poof" in "Riot Poof"), but the lyrics just don't make any sense.
{{quote|''this alliance you say
''<nowiki>'</nowiki>i'm on the threshold of greatness girl'
''so you burn your pagoda
''through the congo till there's
''a broken bond
''on the birth of the search
''white trash my native son
''you know what you know
''so you go chain her to your flow
''she bites through your dried
''lean meat as she's
''going to the movie show
''in a bath of glitter and a tiny shiver
''she crawls through your java sea
''black sahara i'm stepping in
''to your space oddity }}
* Of Montreal's ''Skeletal Lamping''. The whole album. The fact that it's basically an (''incredibly'' disjointed) hour-long single doesn't help. Earlier songs have Word Salad Lyrics to a degree, but none even come close to this album.
** The lyrics make slightly more sense if you know that ''Skeletal Lamping'' is a concept album about a middle-aged black transsexual who lives in Norway. His name is Georgie Fruit, and he has issues to work through. Lots of issues. (The second half of the previous album, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is also focused on the singer's alter-ego.)
* The English version of "Twister", the theme song of ''[[The World Ends With You]]'', is definitely one of these. Many of the lyrics appear to be intentional [[Mondegreen]]s of the Japanese lyrics.
** Needs more candy canes...
* [[Lemon Demon]]'s "Word Disassociation" is pretty much this in its purest form.
* Almost every song by Cincinnati's electro indie pop band The Seedy Seeds.
* Ricardo Arjona sometimes goes too far into "post-modern metaphors", so they decided to create [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TyF9ixMyq4 this].
* Several of Shakira's songs can fall into this. The best example is "Eyes Like Yours." "Crossed a river of salt/Just after I rode/A ship that's sunk in the desert" springs to mind.
* Although the rest of the song is relatively straightforward, the first line of Duran Duran's "New Moon on Monday" is "Shake up the picture with the lizard mixture".
** The lyrics for Duran Duran's "Reflex" apparently don't mean anything at all... they're just random nonsense that sounded vaguely good.
* "Burning Down The House" by Talking Heads.
** And then there's "I Zimbra" which is adapted from a Dadaist poem by Hugo Ball:
{{quote|''Gadji beri bimba glandridi
''Lauli lonni cadori gadjam
''A bim beri glassala glandride
''E glassala tuffm I zimbra }}
* [[The Cars]] were fond of using a series of disconnected images as lyrics. "Moving in Stereo" is a good example.
* Plastic Bertrand's "Ça Plane Pour Moi". The lyrics make absolutely no sense, even in the original French. (There was a French genre called ''yaya'' that had Word Salad Lyrics as a ''defining aspect''.)
* Morning Musume's song "Koi wa Hassou Do The Hustle" is like this.
** "Koi no Dance Site" as well. It makes even less sense if you look up the translated lyrics.
** Other [[Hello! Project]] examples include Hana wo Puun, Seishun Bus Guide ("I want to be reborn as a microphone"), Edo no Temari Uta II (which only makes sense if you know something about the Edo period), Robokiss, Konnichi pa...
* Brazilian musician Carlinhos Brown writes lyrics based on sonority of the words, even if they don't make sense (a translated example: "Wheels in G, songs in C, A Brazilian, ô An entire form, ô, You, you, you").
* And then there's <s>[[Harry Potter (film)|Albus Dumbledore's]]</s> Richard Harris's "MacArthur Park". The chorus is thus:
{{quote|''MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
''All the sweet, green icing flowing down
''Someone left the cake out in the rain
''I don't think that I can take it
''<nowiki>'</nowiki>Cause it took so long to bake it
''And I'll never have that recipe again
''Oh no! }}
** The rest of the song makes considerably less sense. Perhaps they made a good choice casting Harris as [[Cloudcuckoolander|Dumbledore.]]
** There was a story about somebody interviewing him about all the symbolism in that imagery, and he said that no, it was really about a cake in the rain.
* [[Madonna]]'s "Candy Perfume Girl"
{{quote|''Rush me ghost you see
''Every center's my home
''Fever steam girl
''Throb the oceans }}
* This is [[Girls Aloud]]'s entire shtick. "Love Machine" is their most famous example. More recent ones are "Sexy! No No No..." and "Miss You Bow Wow".
{{quote|''We're only turning into tigers when we gotta fight back
''Let's go, Eskimo
''Out into the blue}}
* [[Spandau Ballet]], frequently. "True"'s "Take your seaside arms and write the next line" is just the start. The most blatant example (it even hangs a lampshade on it) is "Instinction", which starts:
{{quote|''Cheap bed, in the red
''Sleep the words out of your head
''Cold floor, nice and raw
''Eat the meat that's on the floor }}
** ...and keeps going in the same vein (the most quoted line being "Stealing cake to eat the moon", and if you think it probably makes sense in context, go look it up on [[YouTube]]). A lot of their other hits also lean heavily on lyrics that just sound good rather than making any actual sense, but worthy of particular mention is "Lifeline", which on first hearing not only sounds like it makes sense, but even like it might have a proper storyline. Until you try to work out what the story actually ''is''...
* [[Lady Gaga]]'s "Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)."
* Elton John's "Grey Seal" is pretty word salady. But nothing beats [http://www.eltonography.com/songs/solar_prestige_a_gammon.html Solar Presitge A Gammon]. It almost sounds like he's singing in French, but half of it is random English and the rest of it is gibberish.
* "I Want You" by Savage Garden. Human... cannonball?
** Interestingly, the second verse of "I Want You" compares "the time of talking using symbols using words" to "a deep sea diver who is swimming with a raincoat," implying that words have become entirely inadequate for expressing his feelings, which may result in this. "Human cannonball" aside though, it mostly makes sense.
* Michael Nesmith's 1967-68 [[The Monkees|Monkees]] songs, which also usually had [[Super Punk Octo Pudding Gas Mark Seven|inscrutable titles that appeared nowhere in the lyrics:]] "Daily Nightly", "Auntie's Municipal Court", "Tapioca Tundra", "Writing Wrongs", "Circle Sky."
** "Daily Nightly" is Nesmith's commentary on [[wikipedia:Sunset Strip curfew riots|the 1966 Sunset Strip curfew riots]]. Still, knowing that doesn't make the song much easier to understand...
* "The Na-Na Song" by Sheryl Crow.
* The lyrics to "The Riddle" by Nik Kershaw are, in the words of the artist himself, "nonsense, rubbish, bollocks, the confused ramblings of an 80's popstar".
** This was really the lyrical equivalent of Lorem Ipsum that escaped as the result of [[Executive Meddling|over-eager executives at the label]]. Running out of time before the recording session, he cobbled together some nonsense to fit the melody and laid it down as a vocal, and then struggled to write the proper lyrics. Before he could break the bad news, someone had decided to release the single as it was and promote it with a competition to decipher the lyrics.
* The Magnetic Fields occasionally make use of this, particularly in their early work. From "Living in an abandoned firehouse with you":
{{quote|''Take me out to the beach and I'll tell you my secret name
''Take me under the sea and we'll derail the trains
''Let's run away into the caves I still love you I still love you baby
''You're in your own little box with ribbons in your hair
''And there's dust in your mouth and worms in the air
''Hideous city of unknown words...
''That's where I live when I go to sleep
''In an abandoned firehouse with you. }}
* [[P!nk]]'s "Feel Good Time". It's pretty unusual for her, but once you learn that [[Beck (musician)|Beck]] was a co-writer,<ref>In fact, it was originally going to be a collaboration between Beck and William Orbit for a solo album the latter was working on. Then someone got a hold of the demo and wanted to use it in ''[[Charlie's Angels]]: Full Throttle''; Beck didn't want to be associated with the movie himself, but didn't mind letting someone else sing the song</ref> lines like "paint our money black, spend it on the enemy" seem a little less odd.
* Train's music, particularly "Hey, Soul Sister" - not particularly made better by the fact that Pat Monahan was writing about what he thought Burning Man would look like.
* Place names are prone to point to locations which sound good lyrically but make no sense; "Born and raised in South Detroit" ("Don't stop believin'", Journey) lands in downtown Windsor, Ontario, Canada while "East California" ("Kids in America", Kim Wilde) ends up somewhere near [[Peanuts|Snoopy's brother's doghouse]] in the Needles, California desert.

===  Country  ===
* How about "She's My Kind of Rain" by [[Tim McGraw]]? A very rare example of word salad in country music:
{{quote|''She's my kind of rain
''Like love in a drunken sky
''She's confetti falling down all night
''She sits quietly there
''Black water in a jar
''Says, "Baby, why are you trembling like you are?" }}
** And then there's [http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/mcgraw-tim/when-the-stars-go-blue-16942.html "When The Stars Go Blue"], though it's a [[Covered Up]] [[Ryan Adams]] song.
* Big & Rich did this on occasion as well, most notably on "Real World". This one is made even weirder in that its melody and orchestration sound like a countrified "Bohemian Rhapsody":
{{quote|''Green, green grass and a rubber Russian bimbo
''No one's got a name for the brain in a scarecrow
''How can he believe what he sees on the TV
'Nothin' but extreme over-executed fantasy
''Happy dancin' feet down the street, down the corner
''Some, they say he's silly, some, they say that he's a loner
''How can you explain, he's got a name, nobody knows it
''Did anybody ever stop and offer him a Prozac? }}
* [[Faith Hill]]'s "Red Umbrella". Something about your love being like a red umbrella that you can see on her face, collecting tears in a bottle made of gold, and God crying. The writers tried to justify this at [http://www.the9513.com/faith-hill-red-umbrella/ The 9513] by claiming that they were inspired by "Strawberry Fields Forever".
* Lyle Lovett is a fan of this. "Cowboy Man" is a good example:
{{quote|''She said, I got a 40 gallon Stetson hat
''With a 38 foot brim
''We could dance outside the outside, baby
''Till we both fall in
''And you can rope me on the prairie
''And you can ride me on the plain
''And I will be your Cinderella
''If you'll be my cowboy man }}

===  Electronic  ===
* Half of Fluke's ''Risotto'' album is instrumental, but the half that's lyrical is definitely this.
* Scooter. To be fair, they're German guys singing in English, but does that really excuse lines like:
{{quote|''I want you back so clean up the dish
''By the way, how much is the fish? }}
** The [https://uncyclopedia.ca/wiki/Scooter Uncyclopedia article] has a selection of their more inscrutable quotes.
* Squarepusher's F-Train has the following for its chorus:
{{quote|''Axis discrepancy reveals hexagons beyond control anomaly,
''Mutilation colony reflects no triangular energy,
''Asynchronous matter avoided by a diagram invisibility,
''Subtle methods symmetry uncovered by a diagonal telemetry.}}
:And that's not even getting started on [[Mind Screw|the verses]].
* [[Underworld (band)|Underworld]] lyrics generally seem to emphasize setting a mood over having any literal meaning. "Born Slippy (Nuxx)" for instance - one ''kind of'' gets the impression that it's about a night of debauchery gone wrong from a handful of more direct lines, but it's full of passages like "Random blonde bio high density rhythm / Blonde boy blonde country blonde high density".
* "Fireflies" by the musical project [[Owl City]], featuring such gems like "Cause I'd get a thousand hugs/From ten thousand lightning bugs/As they tried to teach me how to dance." Then again, pretty much anything by Owl City fits this trope.
* "Hot Limit" by John Desire, especially because it's a [[Translation Train Wreck]] of a TM Revolution song.
** Many other Eurobeat songs are this as well.
* The Young Punx' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NzFeTC22UQ "Rock Star (Understand)"] is a particularly interesting case of this. The song is a cover of Asian Kung Fu Generation's "Understand", and like the above-mentioned theme from ''[[The World Ends With You]]'', the lyrics were chosen to ''sound'' like the original Japanese while still making some vague semblance of sense in English.
* [[Angelspit]] love this trope! From "100%"
{{quote|''Dip my tail in blood ink
''Write it down in red
''Scribe the words "Happy meal"
''Right across your head }}
** From "Vena Cava"
{{quote|''Empty, Heiress, Tantrums
''Psycho, with a gun
''Finger heresy
''Clean out the poison when you cut out your tongue }}
* [[Goldfrapp]], many times.
* The ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' opening "Red Fraction" by MELL is a prime example:
{{quote|''Get down on your knees
''Get a good head on your shoulders
''If it's for your guys
''Go to the end of the earth
''Do what you think, give it with dedication
''I'll put out your misery
''You made a mess
''For Christ sake, this rotten world
''Shit out of luck
''Go with my vision
''Light up the fire, right on the power
''Weapon...I have it all }}
** Granted, some of the lyrics could ''vaguely'' reflect some aspect of [[Heroic Sociopath|Revy's]] life.
*** When you've got the lyrics, the song makes sense. Deciphering them from the song, though...
* "Elektrobank", by the [[Chemical Brothers]]:
{{quote|"Who's this, doing this type of synthetic alpha beta psychedelic funking?"}}
* "Fireball" by Ken Martin.
* HORSE the Band. Their songs are either A. About video games, or B. complete randomness. There is no C. Here's a sample.
{{quote|''SUPER SAPPHIRE IS SMILING
''SUPER SAPPHIRE IS SMILING
''...STILL SUPER SAPPHIRE IS SMILING
''I am locked in his black hole gaze...
''I eat moons YET HE EATS DAYS!!!!}}
* [[Skinny Puppy]]. As if their music wasn't freakish enough. Exhibit A, "Convulsion":
{{quote|''heaven's trash fixation
''turning mass direction
''having a relationship without guilt
''mass direction
''off and away
''hazy circles round the eyes
''how long
''heaven's trash
''it's a vacant
''scathing vapor
''ancient role play }}
* The M Machine's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zPhgWQFrJc Promise Me A Rose Garden] gives us these lyrics:
{{quote|''I cannot be sure I see the future
''In my head, in my head
''Why make myself for all I need help for
''In my head, in my head }}

=== Experimental Rock ===
* [http://www.myspace.com/deerhoof Deerhoof]. They seem to have gone through the "deliberately ridiculous", ironic and post-ironic forms of this trope, and are now making songs about pandas, flowers, pickup bears and seeing the duck because ''those sound like awesome things to write songs about''.
** [[Ear Worm|"If I were a man and you a dog, I'd throw a stick for you!!!"]]
* "Eleven Saints" by Jason Webley with Jay Thompson.
* Pick a [[Captain Beefheart]] song. Any Captain Beefheart song.
{{quote|''Shish sookie Singabus,
''Snored like a red merry-go-round horse!
''And an acid gold bar swirled up and down,
''Up and down, in back of the Singabus.
''And the panataloon duck, white goose neck quacked:
''Webcore, webcore... }}
** Of course, Don Van Vliet, in both his music and painting, is a living incarnation of [[True Art Is Incomprehensible]].
** Van Vliet would probably sincerely tell you that all of those lyrics make perfect sense. He's really that eccentric, and seems to speak a language that nobody else does. At any rate, his lyrics are more about creating images than establishing a narrative.
*** Indeed, he's prone to making that claim. And in a way, those lyrics do paint a picture that makes sense to a person in a certain frame of mind, who also speaks Venusian or whatever language he uses. [[It Makes Sense in Context|His delivery has a lot to do with it]].
* The opening theme, "Logos Naki World", from the first anime of ''[[Hellsing]]''. It doesn't help that it's never been clarified what the actual lyrics ''are'', prompting many fans to make their own guesses, none of them anywhere near making sense.
** The OST has liner notes which contain lyrics to the song, just as expected the lyrics are still quite opaque:Don't be cool vibration/Revlofantasy
* Brian Eno, period. When he's not doing spacey ambient electronic music, he has lyrical Rorschach tests like this one from "Backwater" (complete with lots of gratuitous [[AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle]])
{{quote|''There was a senator from Ecuador who talked about a meteor
''That crashed on a hill in the south of Peru
''And was found by a conquistador who took it to the emperor
''And he passed it on to a Turkish guru}}
* Many of Faust's lyrics fit this trope. For example "Meadow Meal":
{{quote|''You are a fruit fork
''And the money you look up
''And the madame you look up
''And the middle you look up
''A wonderful wooden reason
''To stand in line keep in line }}
* Robert Wyatt's lyrics are often word salad, at least under a generous interpretation of "word".
{{quote|''Burlybunch the water mole
''Hellyplop and fingerhole
''Not a wossit, bundy, see?
''For jangle and bojangle. }}
* Pretty much everything by The Legendary Pink Dots. Won't you dance with me, my little pickled herring?
** Of course, there's [[Watch It Stoned|a very simple explanation]] for most of them.
** The Dots are one of those bands which thrive on a heady mix of [[Lyrical Dissonance]] and total [[Mind Screw]]. In the above case, [[It Makes Sense in Context|context certainly helps]], but... Yeah, so do drugs.
* Architecture in Helsinki. Really, you could just say their name and be done, but specific songs spring to mind pretty quickly: "Do the Whirlwind", "Heart it Races" (which also has an incomprehensible title), and "The Owls Go". (Attic in a basement with a knife serrated, I'll forget you.)
* Many of [[The Residents]]' earlier songs, especially "The Laughing Song":
{{quote|''A boiled old egg with a red peg leg
''Thought a porcupine was his daughter
''He soon found out that she had the gout
''And she often would wrinkle underwater }}
** For another example try this verse from "Walter Westinghouse":
{{quote|''Eat exuding oinks upon
''And bleed decrepit broken bones
''At caustic spells of hell!
''He sees the threads of worn-out treads
''And calls his color true.
''(Also pretty scary)
''Me, I cried out "God!"
''You dared me in the dark,
''I felt the hush fall quietly from my spark.
''So now I hide in piles of princely orange peels.
''It feels the way you told me how it'd always feel. }}

=== Folk / Folk-Rock ===
* Leo Kottke, "Bungle Party":
{{quote|''Great big pigs earthquake, but mainly they oink
''Ambulance bread trucks line up on your head,
''Got mashed potatoes, ain't got no bread. }}
* Wes Carr's single "Love Is An Animal." Especially a bridge.
{{quote|''Yeah, the doors have ears
''But they don't have eyes
''So you do not have to present disguises
''And the walls have mouths
''But they do not listen
''They seem to bite you when you're not welcome... }}
* Turin Brakes. Just Turin Brakes.
* [http://www.jonathancoulton.com/wiki/index.php/Flickr "Flickr"] by [[Jonathan Coulton]] has lyrics describing randomly selected photos from Flickr that had Creative Commons licenses. The first verse or so kinda makes sense before descending into randomness.
* America, the band responsible for the lyric "Alligator lizards in the air." In the chorus. And "Ventura Highway" overall makes much more sense than "Horse With No Name" (which actually tells a story) or "Tinman." Beautiful harmonies, though.
** There was a comedian who used to say that in an age of rebellion, America were rebelling against grammar.
{{quote|''where there ain't no one for to give you no pain''}}
:and
{{quote|''there were trees and birds and rocks and ''things}}
* [["Weird Al" Yankovic]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nej4xJe4Tdg "Bob"]. Every line is a palindrome, sung in a half-assed [[Bob Dylan]] voice.
* [[A Hawk and a Hacksaw]]: "I Am Not a Gambling Man".
{{quote|''There will be no hunting season,
''this year,
''all the hunters have been poisoned
''by an old beer.
''And in the cities and the towns
''all the banks are closed down.
''The bankers have all gone home
''to make love to their wives like they were twenty-five.
''And if you lie down by the roadside,
''leave some kind of sign by the roadside. }}
* Mocked in [[Modern Man]]'s Bob Dylan parody "Very Little Like a Train", where the chorus actually says multiple times, "Well, I don't know what I mean, babe, but I mean it a lot."
{{quote|''Plastic prophets in a box
''Were playing with a pink rag fox
''While spreading cheese and golden lox
''On bagels made of dreams.
''While out on highway sixty-one
''The Joker did what must be done
''And left it lying in the sun
''Exactly like it seems.''}}

=== Classical ===
* Pick a song written in Latin, any song in Latin. They almost always sound really [[Rule of Cool|awesome]], but are, when translated, revealed to be a random mix of grammarless, half-connected words. Sometimes the tense doesn't even stay constant. Then again, Latin is a dead language so it's not like the majority of people would know any better anyway.
** Well-exemplified by the music for the world-view portions of ''Rome: Total War''; it won several awards, but the lyrics are just random Latin words with no particular relevance to anything.
** Enya's "Afer Ventus" (from the album ''Shepherd Moons''), penned by Roma Ryan, is ''exactly'' this. Likewise "Cursum Perficio", which is a fair bit closer to intelligible Latin but is still filled with weird phrasings and apparently random grammar.
* The opera ''Four Saints in Three Acts''. The lyrics were written by Gertrude Stein, well known for her Word Salad Poems.
{{quote|''Let Lucy Lily Lily Lucy Lucy let Lucy Lucy Lily Lily Lily Lily Lily let Lily Lucy Lucy let Lily. Let Lucy Lily.}}

=== Hip-Hop ===
* "Feel Good Inc" by [[Gorillaz]]. Whether this is also an example of [[Indecipherable Lyrics]] is debatable, because the lyrics aren't ''that'' poorly enunciated, but they're so bizarre that they sound like a [[Mondegreen]] and throw off attempts to decipher them that way.
{{quote|''You've got a new horizon, it's ephemeral style
''A melancholy town where we never smile
''And all I wanna hear is the message beep
''My dreams they've got to kiss because I don't get to sleep, no... }}
** Actually, the "message beep" part makes perfect sense if you notice that right before the chorus, there's a noticeable bleep, and the song changes pace from the dark, somewhat monotone sound to a blissful chorus, that gives a sensation of being filled with bright sunlight. The whole song relies more heavily on the music rather than the lyrics. Damon Albarn himself gives this for a reason why he doesn't put lyrics in the booklets for his albums: "If you didn't get it from the sound, then you've already missed the point".
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIfSaDNVjXI Chip Tha Ripper's S.L.A.B. Freestyle] contains some pretty impenetrable metaphors, to the point of internet notoriety.
{{quote|''Interior crocodile alligator/I drive a Chevrolet movie theater''}}
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8wh0cdK0cw&feature=related This] song from Busdriver.
* Before they became more well known for instrumental hip hop, The Avalanches' music included rapping that largely fit into this trope. "Rap Fever" for instance:
{{quote|''Untraceable calculators with electronic eyes
''Rap fever!
''Paisley-striped animal collisions
''Rap fever! }}
** Of course, their most famous song "Frontier Psychiatrist" doesn't make much sense either.
{{quote|''Did I ever tell you the story about Cowboys!
''Midgets, the indians and, Frontier Psychiatrist
''I felt strangely hypnotised
''I was in another world, a world of 20.000 girls
''And milk! Rectangles, to an optometrist, the man with the golden eyeball
''And tighten your buttocks, pour juice on your chin
''I promised my girlfriend I could... violin violin violin violin... }}
* The whole point of the [[Insane Clown Posse]] song "Scatterbrain"
{{quote|''Horrified jelly worms with electric infantago,
''Dinosaur crybabies cookin' shrimp in San Diageo.
''Full moons mean nothing without your roller skates,
''When the water runs dry and blood fills the great lakes.}}
* [[Kool Keith]] has done this on most of his albums, but took it to legendary heights under his "Dr. Octagon" psuedonym.
{{quote|''My vomit fluctuates, covers your skull like protoplasm
''Lightning bugs turn pink, on my tongue catches spasms
''Green elephants, I battle streets with a zebra
''My mechanism is more than Dionne's psychic voodoo
''African beads, snakeskins, cold script through you my medical passes
''You can't see, with greedy glasses
''Carbon dioxide, pour right through 'em with gases. }}
* Nearly everything by [[Aesop Rock]]. Though at least some of it is comprehensible, it's hard to separate it from the more bizarre parts.
{{quote|''You are dealing with a reborn icicle age poltergeist,
''Uprock, sidewalk cycles stuck at the bus stop.
''Wookie foot must not sleep under the invaders, no batteries, no jumper cables. }}
* WreckdoM's "Gallows Hill", which was recorded for a [http://songfight.org/ song fight][http://songfight.org/songpage.php?key=gallows_hill competition], has lyrics that were written by way of playing mad libs with that site's forum members. Thus explaining lines like:
{{quote|''Gallows hill is a Goomba I've found
''It's a tumultuous table, and there's no coconut syrup around
''So if you've got the Chinese apple, then let's make a plan
''To masticate away
''so you can hold my rectum }}
* Pretty much any lyric in any given [[Death Grips]] song.
{{quote|''Got the DNA of gothic lemons
''Shredded thirteen times out of eleven
''Your bad ideas are the ATM
''Shed my skin, leave it for the homeless to sleep in }}

=== Jazz ===
* The '40s swing tune: Mairsey Dotes.

=== Punk ===
* "Ça Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand: It shares a near identical melody and arrangement (and the same backing musicians) as "Jet Boy Jet Girl" by Elton Motello. However, "Jet Boy Jet Girl" is a peppy tune about a jilted, possibly homicidal, underage gay boy and his relationship with an older man, while "Ça Plane Pour Moi" is French (and occasionally [[Gratuitous English]]) word salad. One of the English phrases included is "I am the king of the divan!" for example.
** If you pierce through all of the bizarre French slang, [[Intercourse with You|the meaning of the lyrics]] becomes pretty clear... That said, it's pretty incoherent and whacked out, suggesting [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?|lots of speed usage during the writing process]].
* [[Wire]] are notorious for this trope, or rather for very subtly subverting it: Quite often, their least comprehensible lyrics are actually loaded with meaning. "Outdoor Miner", for example, sounds like utter gibberish, but is actually about a chlorophyll-eating insect. [[Lyrical Dissonance|And it's really catchy]].
** Doubly subverted with "The 15th", which is a passionate song about... nothing, really.
** "Kidney Bingos" plays this one pretty straight, although there is an implied theme, and it can be read as a very abstract [[List Song]]. The chorus alone is "Money spines, paper lung, kidney bingos, organ fun"...
*** [[Running Gag]]? All of the above are serious [[Ear Worm]]s...
** "German Shepherds" makes this scary.
* The Dead Milkmen have also been known for word salad lyrics, most notably on "Smokin' Banana Peels," in which such phrases as "Mites are living in your eyelashes" and "Dip your breasts in shimmering lip balm" are interspersed among the more coherent lyrics. Other examples include:
** "I Am The Walrus"
{{quote|''I sold my niece to Edwin Meese
''And I wonder what life's about
''I talked of tires while your dog caught fire
''And I wonder what life's about }}
** "Where The Tarantula Lives"
{{quote|''Jim Bakker got eaten by wombats
''The fever's spread to town
''Ol' Doris Day has been taken away
''Has anybody seen my downs? }}
* Glassjaw is certainly fond of this trope, with [[Word Salad Title]]s thrown in for good measure.
{{quote|''It's a shame that our messiahs move their pawns
''from different mountains
''And we're left to dance these bodies 'round the fountain
''If a leader preaches worship to the sheep within the valley
''Who'll be riding in a tank that says 'just married' }}
* Don't forget At The Drive-In, the band which eventually spawned TMV. The song lyrics for that band are also way out there, though for both bands, the lyrics are heavy on metaphor and DO have meaning. Either Cedric Bixler-Zavala thinks on a higher plane than most people, or [[Cloudcuckoolander|he just doesn't think like us.]]
** Either that, [[Obfuscating Insanity|or he's totally fucking with us]].
* And Also The Trees (even their name is wordsalad) have tons of these. examples include "i could live in the space between his heartbeats" , "while all around him wallpaper dies" from the aptly named "wallpaper dying" and "She moves painless, slow and flowing Across the wild and trembling path and the headless clay woman's motionless beauty shines" from headless clay woman. though one can't help but feel like it's all just symbolism you fail to grasp.
* Pretty much anything by early 90's post-punk group Drunken Boat (though ''not'' the currently active, entirely different band going by that name). Taken to extremes towards the end of "Spin Around", where suddenly two overdubbed tracks of the lead vocalist come in, babbling like [[Talkative Loon]]s about two entirely different things ("trolley... car... c-cable car? c-c-cable car"), and eventually having a cryptic conversation with each other:
{{quote|''Go to the government.''
'''I went to the government office.'''
''Go.''
'''I demanded my piece of the pie'''
''What pie?''
'''This will get results...''' }}
* On the self-titled debut by That Petrol Emotion—when they were still post-punk—a wildly-varied (but great!) profusion of styles were attempted: unified, primarily, by loud guitars and killer hooks. More of a head-scratcher, "Cheapskate" knelt before the altar of [[The Fall (band)|The Fall]]:
{{quote|''And double-breasted
''A pretty serious dude
''Commits an iceberg
''To hum those blues }}
* Melt-Banana's lyrics (and name) are of the "sounds, not meanings" variety, to the point that most of the time, none of the (rapidly shouted, heavily Japanese-accented) words are decipherable even in isolation—it's pretty much only about their rhythmic/percussive qualities. (Yasuko Onuki actually seems to be pretty good with English but, of the uses it can be put to, "communication" doesn't make the list when she's in a studio.)
* The secret track on NoFX's album ''Wolves In Wolves' Clothing'' has Fat Mike singing either this or outright [[Singing Simlish]] to the tune of various songs the band made. This was (if I recall) because the lyrics to those songs had not actually been written yet at that point.
* This and [[Lyrical Shoehorn]] are the defining tropes for a lot of [[Goth]] music. Bands are pretty evenly split between those who will admit to this (eg, Bauhaus), and those who insist that [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|there is a deeper meaning that listerners are too dense to understand]] (eg, Sisters of Mercy). Examples:
** Bauhaus' "Terror Couple Kill Colonel". The title was taken from a tabloid headline.
{{quote|''And as he lay there
''Playing games with his pain
''He felt his choice of jobs
''Was such a mistake
''He could have been a doctor in a soft easy chair
''Instead he chose three stars
''A territorial affair }}
** Sisters of Mercy's "Dominion/Mother Russia"
{{quote|''In the light of the fact
''On the lone and level sand stretched far away
''In the heat of the action
''In the settled dust
''Hold hold and say
''In the meeting of minds
''Down in the streets of shame
''In the betting of names on gold to rust
''In the land of the blind
''Be...King, king, king, king }}
** Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Songs From the Edge of the World"
{{quote|''Let the fire fall in
''The footsteps we leave
''Painted on the ground
''We'll watch the stars
''Come crashing down
''Upon our heads
''Like a madding crown }}
* A few early Wildhearts songs. Assuming that the words to If Life Is Like A Love Band I Want An Overdraft have actually been deciphered correctly, any guesses what "fists, gists and communists, I feel like a log, it's a dog in onyx" is meant to mean?
* [[Wilco]]'s "Born Alone" is, [http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/watch-wilcos-new-born-alone-video-and-read-the-story-behind-its-lyrics/244656/ according to] [[Word of God]], entirely made of this trope. The lyrics are a mishmash of random words found in a book of 19th-century poetry that Jeff Tweedy was looking through as he wrote the song.
** There's also Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Hoodoo Voodoo", which actually had [[Posthumous Collaboration|lyrics written by]] Woody Guthrie. Justified because Guthrie was just writing a silly song to entertain his kids:
{{quote|''Jinga jangler, tinga lingle, picture on a bricky wall
''Hot and scamper, foamy lather, huggle me close
''Hot breeze, old cheese, slicky slacky fishy tails
''Brush my hair, kissle me some more }}
* A few songs by Worm Quartet are like this:
** [http://www.thefump.com/fump.php?id=105 "Call Me Jennifer and Steal My Stapler"]
{{quote|''Why can't strudel bitch and pout?
''Why won't bicycles put out?
''[[Lampshade Hanging|What's this stupid song about?]] }}
** [http://www.thefump.com/fump.php?id=1114 "The Laundromat of Sin"]
{{quote|''A riboflavin travesty
''Goes up and down the tapestry
''That graces my new haggis tree
''By cowlight and bi-nightly }}
** [http://www.thefump.com/fump.php?id=1124 "A Worm Quartet Christmas"]
{{quote|''The voice of my thermostat cut through the night
''Like a fat Presbyterian licking a kite }}
** Steve Goodie's Worm Quartet tribute [http://www.thefump.com/fump.php?id=1290 "Ecstasy of the Bilious Waterpoodle"] also qualifies:
{{quote|''Can Malibu Barbie get a part in the next Sharon Osbourne docu-drama bout left-handed Ukrainian mambo enthusiasts who find themselves suddenly expurgated in coleslaw?}}

=== Internet Original ===
* Ghost from [[True Capitalist]] Radio seems to be keen on inventing his own songs with rather surreal lyrics including
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuFz7fV_zt0 Money success fame...] [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|bronies]]?
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOgtCEvTTW8 She blinded me with science!] There she goes again! I don't believe it! She's doing a barrel roll! And she's a melting pot of friendship!
* [http://www.youtube.com/user/BadLipReading Bad Lip Reading], a Youtube artist who specializes in taking music videos or political ads and redubbing them with nonsense lyrics/dialogue.
** Take for example [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQOJwDMZMXw Dirty Spaceman], assembled using clips from the Nicki Minaj and Will-I-Am music video "Check It Out".
{{quote|''Tonight I'm leaving, though I'm bleeding
''Now you know me as
''Dirty spaceman, yeah
''And now I'm leaving, got that spaceman head
''And now I'm leaving
''Now I'm leaving
''Angelmouth ate my jedi jello
''Now she feels the burn
''Now she feels the burn
''And now I'm feeling extra angry
''I'm the dirty spaceman }}
** Or take, as a more recent example (and one which was not ultimately taken down due to copyright challenge), [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcszN8jRB8 Morning Dew], a mash-up of Bruno Mars, Jay-Z, and Lady Gaga.
{{quote|''A midget said "Speak with an accent"
''So I did
''Just so I could steal his porsch
''While he was tied to a stake
''In the rain }}
** Then there's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhDhDRvHaGs Rick Perry].
{{quote|''Ice cream. That is cheap. Fact.''
''And then I suspended Marsha off this bridge, and took a virgin heifer nightriding for a while; we never got a dead spirit. We hated it though. It's disgusting.''
''Someone had a grade-A lungfish decorate their home for a merry fool's function.''
''What's good is to get these goats for our computer industry!''
''I'm bored by famine. I cannot wait for a medieval cookie, a cinnabon, hot yellow cool-aid, and save a pretzel for the gas-jets!''
''Some do the olympics; and some defy the titans. Ice cream.''
''You know, I had this girl, who was too ugly to ride; and we were bitter. This princess-and-the-mustache, one-size-fits-all, everybody-hookup? Babe.''
''You can borrow my CDs, but not one every day! You could try my Kwanzaa CDs; but they're not yours, and you don't have to take any of them.'' }}
* Gunnarolla's [http://youtu.be/yGXRpYxIFFY "What If I Was A Llama?"] and [http://youtu.be/7YvCsqDU7YU "The Chicken Told Me I Was Gay"] both demonstrate what happens when you let [[YouTube]] commenters write your lyrics one line at a time:
{{quote|''I'm not sorry.
''I ate my pony
''Please don't go aw-ay
''You know that old donkey?
''potatoes are itchy!
''The fridge is my best friend
''(I am [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|a brony!]]) }}

=== Other ===
* Tom "T-Bone" Stankus's immortal 1979 recording [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkvQ-NdMPBM "Existential Blues"] eagerly dives into Word Salad Lyrics for the [[Mind Screw|sheer weirdness of it]]:
{{quote|''The elusive butterfly has just tip-toed past my door
''My buddy likes the Yankees; she says "Hey, T-Bone, what's the score?"
''And I say, "Well, Reggie got 1 in 1 in 3, and [[Chicago (band)|25 is 6 to 4]]."
''Is the left-wing really pinko? Colonel Sanders, what a bore!
''You ask so many questions, what answers should I choose?
''Is this schizoid paranoia, or just existential blues?

''The amenities of life have been chasing my soul
''And my mind is transcendental, and I'm losing all control
''And I'm sinking in the quagmire of illusions and Thoreau
''I cry out, "My name is T-Bone!" as a hound dog digs a hole
''You ask so many questions, what answers should I choose?
''Is this Plato's heebie-jeebies, or just existential blues?}}

== Non-music examples ==
=== Anime and Manga ===
* ''[[Lucky Star|Motteke! Sailor Fuku!]]'', which is quite appropriate considering it somewhat parodies shows with songs exactly like it.
** It doesn't help that what the song actually says changes depending on who you're talking to. Is the second line about being wrapped up in a sailor uniform, a school uniform being wrapped in the person wearing it, or ''rapping'' in a sailor uniform? It's so confusing!
* The Team Dai-Gurren theme from ''[[Gurren Lagann]]'' (technically called "Rap is a Man's Soul", but more often called "[[Refrain From Assuming|Raw Raw Fight The Power]]") is mostly a [[Hot-Blooded]] anthem about going [[Beyond the Impossible]], but then there's the second verse...
{{quote|''Second-best, dedicates to the real peeps
''What we got to say is so real thing
''Cuz, revolution ain't never gonna televise
''Kicking the mad flow, microphone phenotype
''Open your third eye, seeing through the overground
''I'm about to hit you with the scream from the underground
''Whole city is covered with the cyber flavor
''"G" is in your area, one of the toughest enigma }}
* From [[Dragon Ball]]: Sparkle sparkle, the galaxy's a POPCORN SHOWER!
* The anime ''[[Weiss Kreuz]]'' has image songs for all the major characters. "Spiritualized", the song for psychic Schuldig, is like this, likely to illustrate the chaotic feeling of touching unshielded minds.
{{quote|''Goodbye, my mars
''I shot your pigs
''Goodbye, strange fruits
''Get higher, get higher }}
* On the other side of the Pacific, the composer J.A. Seazer has produced the most thick metaphorical songs for the anime ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]''. All lines typically devolve into one of two categories: word salad invoking a barrage of relevant imagery, or obtuse commentary. Then again, only in Japanese is it possible to eloquently sing:
{{quote|''I am a imaginary living body come to its end (Watashi hatenaru kuusou seimeitai)}}
** Looking at the translations, JASEAZER is a [[Refuge in Audacity]]. He can get away with writing a song that basically names off all of the components of an ornamental crest (I Am All the Mysteries in Creation) or a song that lists geological eras (Palezoic in My Body) and ''have them work''.
* All of the English songs on the ''[[Soul Eater]]'' OSTs, as well as the French one. "Step Up" in particular comes to mind.
{{quote|Times I get into it they're appealing from the dirt
White spot so easily cursed by the rose mary's flirt }}
* ''[[Azumanga Daioh]]'''s OP, "Soramimi Cake," is a great anime example of a word-salad song.
{{quote|''LU LA LU LA The piano is a melody in the world's field of blooming dreams
''Believe in the broken clock and who's side will time be on?
''Why is my heart waiting so much for that tender-hearted someone?
''Tell me a wonderful future MOONLIGHT, MOONLIGHT SLEEPIN'
''LU LA LU LA The girl of awakenings will kiss the apple of memories and
''In a book opened with sorrow and longing, the bell meant for the two of us will ring
''Because I want to hold you tight my dear one
''Don't cry any more GOOD BYE SADNESS
''The words on the mysterious door read "Soramimi Cake"
''WONDERLAND! Welcome, to you FAIRYLAND! It's the magic of love
''LOVE'S ALL WAY! Every day, the temptations of wheat, so fluffy
''CAKE FOR YOU! Eat, for tonight is TEA FOR YOU! A tea-party in the constellations
''The chorus of angels at the window is to you, just your ear playing tricks?
''The voice saying "I love you, I love you" }}
** Somewhat justified, in that much of the lyrics are odd puns and wordplays in the original Japanese. For example, the song title, "Soramimi Cake", which is pronounced "soramimi keiki" and is usually translated "Fancy Hearing Cake", sounds a lot like "sora mimikaki". "Sora" is typically translated as "sky", and the kanji used to write it is also translatable as "air" or "empty". "Mimikaki" is a device for cleaning out earwax, and the two kanji used to write it can be translated as "ear" or "edge", and "scratch", "scrape, or "noise" respectively. So with a slight twist, the title becomes "Empty Ear Noise".
* Most of the ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'' [[Image Song]]s (and indeed, most Image Songs in general) are designed to make sense, as they're written to give depth to the characters. Not Nagato Yuki's. As we don't really understand what's going on in her head, some of her image songs get nigh-incomprehensible. "Under Mebius" (which [[No Pronunciation Guide|actually means]] [[Gratuitous English|"Moebius"]]) starts out with English word salad, then segues into the kind of equally nonsensical Japanese you'd hear from a human computer:
{{quote|''Under section, might Mebius
''Replay play play Mebius
''Land wake but our Mebius ring the ring
''Existence, past, present, local time difference''
''Amendment, improper, restartable''
''Selection, comprehension, junction search, manual'' }}
** The opening of ''[[Haruhi-chan]]'', "The Story Up To Now", really takes this [[Up to Eleven]], combining anime references, [[Mythology Gag]]s, obscure Japanese puns, and... words fail, just [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnagFy5ThJo watch this.]

=== Film ===
* "Can You Picture That?" by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, from ''[[The Muppet Movie]]''.

=== Live-Action TV ===
* ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' parodies this trope with "Idiot Control Now", their [[Mondegreen]]-ish remake of "Burning Rubber Tires", a song performed by the [[Fake Band]] in ''[[Pod People]]''.
* ''[[The Mighty Boosh]]'' with their crimps.

=== Radio ===
* Parodied in the ''[[Hancock's Half Hour]]'' radio eisode "The Poetry Society" where Hancock trues to ingratiate himself with a group of snobbish intellectuals by attempting to imitate their word salad verses. Naturally they immediately denounce him as a fraud, but when his idiot friend Bill tries it they hail Bill as a fellow genius.
* The song "Whackit on the Dram" from the ''Hamish & Dougal'' episode "Fame Idol" is a string of random Scots words and just plain gibberish, concluding "Hi-ho! For the open road!"

=== Theater ===
* 'Exquisite Corpse' from ''Hedwig & the Angry Inch''.
{{quote|''A random pattern with a needle and thread
''The overlapping way diseases have spread
''to a tornado body with a hand grenade head,
''and the legs are two lovers entwined. }}
* Some of the lyrics from Jonathan Larson's unfinished play [[Tick, tick... BOOM!]] can tend this way, in particular ''Actions Speak Louder Than Words'', which seems more concerned with what sounds pretty than what makes sense.
{{quote|''Cages or wings?
''Which do you prefer?
''Ask the birds.
''Fear or love, baby?
''Don't say the answer
''Actions speak louder than words. }}

=== Video Games ===
* Deadpool's theme from Marvel vs Capcom 3 is pretty nonsensical, appropriate to the man himself. Here's just the first verse:
{{quote|''Do the walk, do the talk, don't be fool, go to school
''Do the watch, do the touch, do with all the thing you have
''Do the club, do the bed, don't be shy, do the lie
''Do the cry, do the shout, do it do it never do it }}
** Don't you understand what I mean when I say so?
* Big the Cat's theme from ''[[Sonic Adventure]]''. [http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/s/segasoundstudio9560/lazydayslivininparadise561985.html Here are the lyrics].
** Some lines make sense, but... some of them definitely ''don't''. Lines like "Happy, Happy Muy Amable", and "Okay, all you have to do is sit up, look left, right, up, and down" make me wonder what Ted Poley was smoking...
** And from the same game, we have "My Sweet Passion (Theme of Amy Rose)". Or at least, one line of it.
{{quote|The Sphinx was so cute, I had to shave it.}}
*** It's possible it's talking about a breed of hairless cat known as the Sphinx, but if so... WHY?!
*** Some fans assume this was some form of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|innuendo]]
** While we're on the subject of Sonic, many songs in that series don't make sense. Cashell's "Un-Gravitify" from [[Sonic Riders|Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity]] makes such little sense that any attempts to find a meaning in it are futile at best. There are even several sentences that are just plain gramatically incorrect!
* "Daikenkai" from ''[[Pop'n music]]'' and ''[[Dance Dance Revolution]]''. Here's a translation of the refrain (and let's not talk about the rest of the lyrics):
{{quote|''Nonsense from a spinning head, high tension, and a strong beat
''From a five-match janken game comes tactics for big opinions}}
** Another from Pop'n Music and DDR is "CURUS". It's obviously got a vague love theme, but...some lines make absolutely no sense. Take for example the beginning of the extended version of the song (note - lyrics may not be 100% accurate):
{{quote|''Think you slip away
''While I make my doing through you
''So I wonder how
''You picked me up to this real
''Make me so far grown
''How I'm daring to respect
''That's so off my pain
''Sometime, someplace, everywhere }}
* "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2giCw8JrRY And Then To CODA]", the main theme of ''[[Solatorobo]]'', has nothing to do with the game's plot or setting, aside from a few token mentions of the sky and winds.
* Several songs from the ''[[Armored Core]]'' series. Composer Kota Hoshino's engrish makes the lyrics up to interpretation to say the least.
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYHv1h7-12E Thinker]:
{{quote|''I'm a thinker, I can break you know
''I'm a shooter, trust me baby
''Aztec jumper, feel it in the wind
''Crafting power in peace now with me
''See Seabiscuit running forward
''All are as you're seeking hour
''Outer space and someone waits there
''Sounds of mechs that play in the fallout }}

=== Web Original ===
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110424025656/http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2059182,00.html TIME.com's list of "Top 10 Songs with Silly Lyrics"], many of which have already been mentioned on this page.
* The [http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama "Llama Song"] - the only common thread is the titular concept of llamas:
{{quote|''Llama llama
''Cheesecake llama
''Tablet brick potato llama
''Llama llama
''Mushroom llama
''Llama llama
''[[Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion|Duck]] }}
** The verse is even worse:
{{quote|''I was once a treehouse
''I lived in a cake
''But I never saw the way
''The orange slayed the rake }}
** Or this little gem:
{{quote|''Is that how it's told now?
''Is it all so old?
''Is it made of lemon juice?
''Doorknob, ankle, cold. }}
* The [[Mondegreen]] [[Gag Sub|version]] of the Tamil song "Kalluri Vanil" by Prabhu Deva, commonly known as "Benny Lava" among Internet-faring English-speakers.
** In Brazil, it's "Rivaldo Sai Desse Lago" (Rivaldo, get out of this lake).
** Likewise, the versions of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtJRNyPK-lc the Indian Thriller] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fSpI4oZoDc Tunak Tunak Tun].
* [[Jon Lajoie]] parodies this in "WTF Collective" with MC Confusing:
{{quote|''Yeah you're whack, cause everybody understands what you say
''But when I get on the mic, I make milk outta clay
''And I play air guitar with a tube of toothpaste
''And I say karate pencil case and put it on tape}}
** And again in "WTF Collective 2":
{{quote|''MC Confusing back in this bitch
''With a parking sandwich and chicken ticket
''I got a liquid face lift from a a fig with big tits
''And my wrist got twisted by a Brit with fig spit }}
* One of ''[[Not the Nine O'Clock News]]'''s songs had a [[Surreal Music Video]] and word salad lyrics—except for the chorus, which was, "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQamw4xxxHY "Nice video, shame about the song."]
* "Gang Fight", the [[Bad Lip Reading|poorly lip-read version]] of "Friday" by Rebecca Black, has major themes of chicken (which, by the way, is for us to no eat) and gang fights, and then there's this:
{{quote|''Ain't no chicken from China I'm blastin'
''I'm grabbing a routine vaccination
''With chicken and sweet carp on the side }}
* [[Songs to Wear Pants To]]'s [https://web.archive.org/web/20130514114041/http://www.songstowearpantsto.com/songs/i-empty-my-baby/ "I Empty My Baby"]: A fan sent Andrew some already pretty silly lyrics for him to use in a song, and added that the lines didn't necessarily have to be in the same order. Andrew took the [[Literal Genie]] approach, and changed the order of every single word. Thus:
{{quote|''I empty my baby out my pockets to make me feel just right
''I sweat dry anti-fungal cream every day and every night
''You know my eye drops you every time I look for you
''Get out my feet you at me
''eyes get really so get so every my start time you don't me
''At look and }}
* Some songs by Jonti Picking (a.k.a. The Weebl) tend to have those lyrics at least in some portions of the looping song.
* Every song [[Gag Dub|subtitled]] by Buffalax or in the style of him ends up like this, given that the subtitles are just [[Mondegreen|what the foreign singing sounds like]], rather than a straight translation. Still, there's no doubt that lines like "Who put the goat in there? The yellow goat I ate!" and "In your yard I am the Ferengi man, very odd and chunky!" qualify.
* In the webcomic [[Quantum Vibe]], [http://quantumvibe.com/strip?page=302 Chari and Prebakar] take this trope [[Up to Eleven]]

=== Western Animation  ===
* [[Phineas and Ferb]] make a song with meaningless lyrics in the episode "Flop Starz"
{{quote|''Chicka chicka choo-wop
''Gitchi gitchi goo means I love you }}
** Most songs in the series end up like this. A delicious example is "Dance, Baby" from "Candace Disconnected". The moment the song is sung is random and silly, and the lyrics top it off:
{{quote|''Dance, baby, dance, baby, shake your hips
''Go down to the pier and get some fish and chips
''Groove, baby, groove, baby, motivate your limbs
''Never eat a cactus if you're out of practice }}
* In ''[[The Weekenders]]'', the in-universe band ''Chum Bukkit' have a song called "Suffused Elephant Quaff Winces Exasperating" with lyrics consisting of notes whose original meanings were mangled by Carver's lack of penmanship.
* "Killer Tofu" by the cartoon rock band, [[Doug|The Beets]]
* The second song in [[Imaginaria]], ''Anything Is Possible Now'', seems to literally try to form some cohesion to footage obviously edited together from multiple shorts. It manages to pull it off for the most part.
* Most likely unintentionally, Patrick's song he wrote in the [[SpongeBob SquarePants]] episode ''Sing a Song of Patrick'' has some pretty nonsensical lyrics.
{{quote|''This song is over, except for this line.
''You win this round, Broccoli!  }}
* [[Winx Club]] transformations, namely the "Enchantix" theme song, get this. It sounds like they just threw a bunch of semi-relevant words in.
* There's a lot of singing in ''[[Adventure Time]]''. Most of the time, the lyrics make zero sense.
* "Glen Belt"'s song in ''[[I Am Not an Animal]]'': "Why do you reject me? / You know I'm full of diseases / Quattro formaggio / Pizza made with four kinds of cheeses". [[It Gets Worse]].

{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Music Tropes]]
[[Category:Word Salad Tropes]]