Bad rock lyrics, volume 1:

There are no shortage of bad rock lyrics. Some of them are even in extremely good songs (I still insist that "I'm a rocket man! A rocket man!" is a mighty dissapointing lyric for such a lovely melody), but the worst ones seem to make their homes in songs that are relatively shitty to begin with. In my opinion, most of the worst lyrics are the ones which sound perfectly fine at first - but the more you try to attach meaning to them, the more nonsensical they begin to sound. For example, take this nugget from Nickelback's "How You Remind Me," which is a shit song in addition to having shit lyrics:

This is how you remind me
Of what I really am
This is how you remind me
And this is how you remind me
Of what I really am
This is how you remind me

Okay, so - aside from being annoyingly repetetive, does anyone have any clue what he's talking about? I'm not referring to the fact that we still don't know "what he really is" - that part is kind of suspenseful. The song becomes a little more interesting if we treat it as a mystery - exactly what *is* this guy? We already know that he (groan) "never made it as a wise man, couldn't cut it as a poor man stealing." So there is our first hint - he's not smart, and he's not lower class. And he doesn't steal, although he may have tried it at some point. Also, he is (groan again) "tired of living as a blind man." So, if we do what we can to translate all of these clues, then we can come up with a reasonable guess as to who this guy is: dumb and middle class. And maybe he's had some sort of vision problems, but now he has glasses so he is no longer blind. I don't know.

No, what really gets me about this song is this: he doesn't ever tell us *what* reminds him of what he really is. How does this person he is singing to remind him? "This is how you remind me of what I really am" - that's not even a complete sentence! What is this person doing? Is he/she telling him what he really is? Does he/she leave notes around the house, in an attempt to get him to recall his true identity? Maybe he should change the line to "these notes are how you remind me," to be a bit more specific. But if that is the case, then where does the whole poor/blind/dumb thing come in? Perhaps he is singing to a poor, blind, wise man, who just by sitting there reminds him that he is none of these things.

But here's my favorite analysis, and the only one which seems to make sense. He's singing to himself, see, and "this" is in reference to the song itself. So basically, what he's saying is: "whiny, shitty songs like this are how I remind myself that I am a whiny, shitty, stupid middle class white kid." Oh well, at least he's honest about it... I have no idea why he has to remind himself so many times, though. Or why he feels a need to remind anyone with a car radio of it every half hour or so...