Most Disturbingly Violent Lyrics Not In A Rap Song
By Matt Baker April 20, 2009
So this is obviously not a list of all the craziest, violent lyrics out there. Some aren’t even that violent, they are either just surprising or have an oddly visceral feeling to them… or are flat out violent. Anyway, most of these are songs I enjoy quite a bit and are just the ones that stuck out when I thought of the idea for this list.
Hayden – Killbear (2004)
This song only just makes the list because it is not really violence from one person to another, just an animal doing what animals occasionally do. But you don’t really expect a description and I think the torso bit is what makes it especially… I don’t want to say shocking, but there is something very graphic about that word. I also like the description that follows of what you should actually do when you meet a bear. You should always try and learn from others’ mistakes.
It charged up towards her
And stopped just before her
And stood up high
Swiped at her shoulder and dragged her by the torso
Around the site, And that's how my old love died
The Velvet Underground – The Gift (1968)
This might seem kind of odd just reading it if you do not know the song, but The Gift is an 8 minute song that pretty much consists of them reading a short story over some music. Essentially, Waldo Jeffers and his high school girlfriend are going to college on opposite sides of the country and never see each other any more. Waldo can’t afford to fly out and visit her so he packages himself in a box and mails himself to her house. Meanwhile, she has pretty much decided to dump him and is sleeping with other guys, she just has not had the guts to tell him. Her and her roommate discuss how Waldo is kind of a loser and the guys she screws now are a lot better, when the package arrives. After trying to open it for awhile, they are unsuccessful and decide to try another approach, which is pretty much where these lyrics come in.
Inside the package, Waldo was so transfixed with
excitement that he could barely breathe. His skin
felt prickly from the heat and he could feel his heart
beating in his throat. It would be soon. Sheila
stood quite upright and walked around to the other
side of the package. Then she sank down to her knees,
grasped the cutter by both handles, took a deep breath
and plunged the long blade through the middle of the
package, through the middle of the masking tape,
through the cardboard, through the cushioning and
(thud) right through the center of Waldo Jeffers head,
which split slightly and caused little rhythmic arcs
of red to pulsate gently in the morning sun.
The Tragically Hip – live Highway Girl (1991)
So these are not actually official lyrics to the song Highway Girl, but Gord Downie has a tendency to tell long, strange stories in the middle of some songs when they play them live and this is one of the more famous stories because it is pretty much out of nowhere. I’m including the entire story because it is just awesome.
She had a beautiful apartment
Well, actually it was a lousy apartment
But sh-she's very handy with her hands
And she's got architectural digest magazines
So she knows what she's doing
She likes to decorate her apartment in the santafé tradition
I told her it was dated
But I see more of the world than she does
She got an apartment where the property was cheap
Next to the free way
She said "I save lots of money but I lose lots of sleep, in my apartment where the property is so cheap"
And We'd Laugh! And We'd Laugh! And We'd Laugh!
Ah, and we'd take pop shots at the passing cars *Ping*
And We'd Laugh!
We were dumping the body and we'd laugh. We found a place that was dark and rotten, a place where the police helicopters would never spot it. I destroyed the map that we'd so carefully plotted. Every day we're dumping a body, she and me.
Every single day. And we'd laugh about it. That's when I knew it was time that we both killed ourselves together. Together we were nothing but a menace. Apart we were nothing but lonely. I read too much. I thought we should kill ourselves. She doesn't read a thing. She believed me. Are you really the messiah? Yes I am. She was younger than me too, she was younger than me. And I said to her, I said, “You know Colline, no one stamps on a burning bag of shit anymore. Nobody!” Are you really the messiah? Yes I am. Believe it. So we opted to kill ourselves, as I said, but we had one rifle and one bullet, so I told her to put her head down close to the barrel and put the barrel sort of into her mouth and I'd be right behind it with my head right behind hers and I said her life would end instantly; mine might have a few extra minutes of agony and suffering.
She couldn't pull the trigger, so we attached a string to it around the lamp and to the doorknob. The first person to come into her cheap fucking apartment would blow both our heads off.
We got, we got to thinking; we changed our minds. You know, I mean, we got scared. And, ah, and, and kind of chickened out
And we'd laugh, you know, we'd laugh together. What were we thinking? We're not; together we're not that bad. We're not that bad. We don't need to kill ourselves. We don't need to kill ourselves. And then the D-train rattled overhead and knocked the joor, door ajar, the joor adar, the door ajar, the door ajar, the jar adoor. The lock... the faulty lock, the door swung open. And killed her. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it
She Wants Revenge – Tear You Apart (2006)
Roz suggested this song for the list and the lyrics are quite unexpectedly violent, so I decided to include it. However, I don’t know anything about it and have never heard it, so I have no comments to make about it.
I want to hold you close
Soft breath, beating heart
As I whisper in your ear
I want to fucking tear you apart
Lou Reed – Oh Jim (1973)
This is from Lou Reed’s album Berlin. The entire album is quite dark and follows the relationship between two really unhappy people. The husband is an ass and the wife is a cheating bitch who has recently become a famous singer or actress, I don’t remember which (I sometimes get the impression Lou has not had good experiences with women). Anyway, in this song the husband kind of loses it with her. Later they are divorced and she gets addicted to drugs and they take her children away (there are children crying in the background of much of that song, which is, in itself, also somewhat disturbing). The album ends with her killing herself and him not being overly upset.
And when you're filled up to here with hate
don't you know you gotta get it straight
Filled up to here with hate
beat her black and blue and get it straight
Uh-huh
Radiohead – Knives Out (2001)
This is one of those songs that sounds kind of nice until you listen to the lyrics. Then you wondering what exactly is going on with Thom Yorke. Apparently he really doesn’t like somebody.
So knives out
Cook him up
Squash his head
Put him in the pot
The Decemberists – The Mariner’s Revenge Song (2005)
The story of this song is that a young man is out for revenge against the rake that took advantage of his widowed mother, drinking, whoring and gambling away their money until they lose their land and she dies of consumption. He spends the rest of his life trying to find the man, joining up with some privateers. Eventually he catches up to him and they are swallowed by a whale and he finally confronts him while they are sitting around in its stomach. The lyrics I have included here are his mother’s final words to him. Apparently an “I love you, take care of yourself” is too much to ask.
Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling
Of his grave
The Decemberists – Odalisque (2002)
Ok, so The Decemberists really could have an entire list like this all to themselves, between songs about 19th century serial killers, numerous songs about rape, prostitution or abuse, murdered bootleggers, etc. I am going to restrict them to these two songs however. I think, more than the other songs here, this song really needs some context. First, if you don’t know what an odalisque is (and how many people really do? I certainly had to look it up), they are the slaves of the concubines in a harem, so right at the bottom of the old slave totem pole. So this song is about an escaped odalisque who is being tracked down and most of the song is just sung by a narrator, but then one of the verses switches to the point of view of her master, so the lyrics get a bit creepier at that point.
Fifteen stitches will mend those britches right
And them rip them down again
Sapling switches will rend those rags alright
What a sweet sound it makes
…
Lay your belly under mine
Naked under me, under me
Such a filthy dimming shine
The way you kick and scream, kick and scream
Dead Kennedys – I Kill Children (1980)
I don’t even really know what to say about this song. Given that it is the Dead Kennedys I am sure it is a satire of something, possibly even an actual event, but because I was not yet born in 1980 it is hard to say what was going on at the time. Whatever they are supposed to mean, they are pretty disturbing.
I kill children
I love to see them die
I kill children
And make their mamas cry
Crush 'em under my car
I wanna hear them scream
Feed 'em poison candy
To spoil their Halloween