Fanboy & Fangirl Discuss Funniest and Worst English Lyrics
5:46 PM
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BEAST,
BoA,
English,
JYJ,
Kara,
Lyrics,
Rainbow,
SHINee,
Shinhwa,
SNSD,
Super Junior,
TVXQ,
ZE:A
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6
comments
Fanboy:
When I first started listening to K-Pop, the first thing I noticed was the random sprinkling in of English. Personally, I like it, because it gives me something to sing along to. It's less effort for me to go out of my way to learn the Korean. However, there are always songs that have English lyrics that are awful or just plain hilarious.
Here's my list:
I consider myself a huge SHINee fan (hence why my Fanboy color is light blue. Mainly because I couldn't do yellow for BoA...). However, as much as I love their music, they seriously have the worst track record in English lyrics. Here we go...
- "Ring Ding Dong" - "Fantastic Elastic"
- "Lucifer" - "Loverholic Robotronic" & "Her whisper is the Lucifer"
- "Stand By Me" - "Together make it love." - I seriously thought they were saying, "Together, making love". Half of these boys are underage! (At the time of the song's release)
- "SHINee World" - "SHINee makes love right now!" - Hold up, what did these underage boys say?
- "A.Mi.Go." - "Cold heart, baby! Cold eyes, baby!" - I actually thought they were saying, "Cold hot, baby! Cold ice, baby!" Either way, it's still somewhat random even though the boys are "frozen in place" by her.
- "Romantic" - "Still I have romantic in my heart"
Ok, do I need to keep going with them? I think you get the picture by now. English lyrics in K-Pop can both be appalling and comical.
Fangirl:
Yes, the "Purple Line" quote really is infamous! It's thought that they meant to say, "I really want to get in touch with myself" but kinda failed. EPICALLY.
Pretty much every rap by Yoochun fits into this category too, as they are often penned by the man himself (Cassies affectionately refer to it as "Chungrish"). I think the best of the bunch comes from either "Shelter" or "My Girlfriend". Allow me to give you a sample: "My dear baby listen to the whistle/ little missile whisper of fiscal/ A theory of porno, oh no?" and "Maybe my love is bigger than Ginger bread man's vitality". HAHAHA.
The best comment I ever read about BEAST's "Every day I shock!" line is this:
I actually don't mind Rain's "I'm gonna be a bad boy" in "Rainism". I think it's the "magic stick" part that kills me!
More songs:
I think the prize for funniest and worst English (and... Yiddish) in K-pop simply has to go to ZE:A for "Mazeltov". It's one of those "must be seen to be believed" so I urge you to see the English subtitled music video. The English is so embarrassingly bad and so hilarious. The intro always makes me laugh - "It shut it down, love. It shut it down, blind. It shut it down, passion!". Then there's the inane list of the days of the week, the fact that they clearly have no idea what "Mochul tob" means, the "Latin girl, Mexican girl, Korean girl, Japan girl" line - it's too much! Hahahaha~! XD
What are some of your favorite 'Engrish' lyrics in K-pop?
When I first started listening to K-Pop, the first thing I noticed was the random sprinkling in of English. Personally, I like it, because it gives me something to sing along to. It's less effort for me to go out of my way to learn the Korean. However, there are always songs that have English lyrics that are awful or just plain hilarious.
Here's my list:
- DBSK - "Purple Line" - "Really wanna touch myself" -- Ok, this one is the standout English to me in all of K-Pop. I like this song, but every single time I listen to this song, this line catches me off guard every time! "What did he say?!"
- Super Junior - "Boom Boom" - "Twinkle twinkle little star" -- I like this song, but I hate this English. Mainly because I hate the song.
- Xiah Junsu - "Intoxication" - "Stroke you like a arpeggio" -- Haha, best pick-up line ever!
- BoA - "Be the One" - "Shake your heart!" -- Actually, this is my favorite BoA song, but this line is very strange. I try to think she's saying, "Shake it hard!" ... See? Makes so much more sense!
- JYJ - "I.D.S." - "I want you in my plans" -- Ok, so this does make sense, but I try to think that they're saying, "I want you in my pants," because I think that is so much funnier.
- SNSD - "Hoot" - Self-Explanatory...
- Rain - "Rainism" - "I’m gonna be a bad boy" -- This song easily has the best beat ever. Sadly, I cringe every time Rain's opens his mouth to start singing the English. It's so off-putting. :'(
- BEAST - "Shock" - "Every day I shock (shock) Every night I shock (shock)" -- Umm... what? This makes no sense to me. Not to mention, it sounds like they're saying, "Shuck." Sigh.
- Shinhwa - "Wild Eyes" - "if you wanna man like a Stronger" -- I think they're trying to say, "Stranger," so yeah, this is a total fail.
I consider myself a huge SHINee fan (hence why my Fanboy color is light blue. Mainly because I couldn't do yellow for BoA...). However, as much as I love their music, they seriously have the worst track record in English lyrics. Here we go...
- "Ring Ding Dong" - "Fantastic Elastic"
- "Lucifer" - "Loverholic Robotronic" & "Her whisper is the Lucifer"
- "Stand By Me" - "Together make it love." - I seriously thought they were saying, "Together, making love". Half of these boys are underage! (At the time of the song's release)
- "SHINee World" - "SHINee makes love right now!" - Hold up, what did these underage boys say?
- "A.Mi.Go." - "Cold heart, baby! Cold eyes, baby!" - I actually thought they were saying, "Cold hot, baby! Cold ice, baby!" Either way, it's still somewhat random even though the boys are "frozen in place" by her.
- "Romantic" - "Still I have romantic in my heart"
Ok, do I need to keep going with them? I think you get the picture by now. English lyrics in K-Pop can both be appalling and comical.
Fangirl:
Yes, the "Purple Line" quote really is infamous! It's thought that they meant to say, "I really want to get in touch with myself" but kinda failed. EPICALLY.
Pretty much every rap by Yoochun fits into this category too, as they are often penned by the man himself (Cassies affectionately refer to it as "Chungrish"). I think the best of the bunch comes from either "Shelter" or "My Girlfriend". Allow me to give you a sample: "My dear baby listen to the whistle/ little missile whisper of fiscal/ A theory of porno, oh no?" and "Maybe my love is bigger than Ginger bread man's vitality". HAHAHA.
The best comment I ever read about BEAST's "Every day I shock!" line is this:
My theory is that Yoseob thinks he's pikachu so he can use thundershock attack. Hahahaha, thank you MelB for this gem!
I actually don't mind Rain's "I'm gonna be a bad boy" in "Rainism". I think it's the "magic stick" part that kills me!
More songs:
- Rainbow - Gossip Girl - "I wanna gushup gurr, I wanna gushup gurr, I wanna gushup, the sekshi and pretty"
- BEAST - Beautiful - The issues I have with this one are covered thoroughly (and hilariously) by Eat Your Kimchi. Make a lub baby!
- Kara - Pretty Girl - This whole song makes me cringe but the "If you wanna pretty, everyone a pretty" just tops it.
I think the prize for funniest and worst English (and... Yiddish) in K-pop simply has to go to ZE:A for "Mazeltov". It's one of those "must be seen to be believed" so I urge you to see the English subtitled music video. The English is so embarrassingly bad and so hilarious. The intro always makes me laugh - "It shut it down, love. It shut it down, blind. It shut it down, passion!". Then there's the inane list of the days of the week, the fact that they clearly have no idea what "Mochul tob" means, the "Latin girl, Mexican girl, Korean girl, Japan girl" line - it's too much! Hahahaha~! XD
What are some of your favorite 'Engrish' lyrics in K-pop?
I've just learned to laugh off English in non-English songs, since I listened to so much Cpop and some Jpop even before I ever tried Kpop. Half the time it ends up being either entirely nonsensical or hilarious, usually both.
What's worse is when they really garble the words...I remember there was a flap over Son Dambi's English in "queen". Tragic.
Yoochun's "really wanna touch myself" is just EPIC. "Twinkle twinkle little star" is actually from the original English lyrics of "Boom Boom", and I suppose they must have made sense in the original context, but I'm not sure they do in the Korean :/
Rather than pinpoint SHINee, let's just say it's SM's lyricists who mess up English, because a whole slew of the SM artists have weird English in their songs like that. You'd think it would be a simple matter of punching it into a word processor with English spelling and grammar check or taking it to a native speaker of English (hello, f(x)'s Amber?), but apparently not.
My recent favorites are from Infinite, since they're like my new obsession:
She's Back-"time will tell to my love"; I think they meant to say "time will show my love" or something like that?
BTD-"fly to the my heart"; this is just a grammatical thing, but a British Youtuber once commented asking, "do they just think, 'oh, there must be a 'the' in their somehwere, let's just stick one in there and hope for the best'?"
And let us not forget BoA's "electronic manic supersonic bionic energy" in Hurricane Venus! I love that line forever.
argh, that should say "there" and not "their" on the BTD comment. Fail to me.
Might I point out that being the BoA fan that I am. The "Hurricane Venus" lyrics actually make sense. "Venus" means a "beautiful woman" (derived from Greek mythology). The song talks about being a beautiful woman who is a natural force. Force being a "hurricane". Then she says, "electronic manic supersonic bionic energy," to back up her point of being a force to be reckoned with. It's just one big metaphor! :D
I think it really helped that she had an English album before her "Hurricane Venus" album, because it all (if I remember correctly) makes sense. Yay!
I agree. The English lyrics are just something to laugh about. :)
Hahaha this post made me crack up xD
And I agree, SHINee does have some of the weirdest English in their songs. But they will still be my favorite group, no matter how weird their English is!
But I really do wonder, is it that hard to get an actual fluent English speaker to look over the lyrics, before recording though?
OMG, this must have been done long time ago. Thanks a lot fanboy and fangirl.
Yes, I totally agree on the weirdest English ever in many of SHINee songs. Since I don't listen to other artists' songs, I can't comment on that. But I agree with everything else you said about SHINee songs. I thought the same thing when I heard "Stand by me". Uhm, "together making love" O_O and SHINee World with "SHINee makes love right now". Call me pervert or what? but I can't change my first thought when I listened to the songs the first time. I am not the one who usually look up for English translated lyrics either so I have been having wrong impression until now. >_< I'm not Korean but I just accept the song the way it is. When I just listened to English songs, I don't understand them either but still enjoy them very much. I always think music is something that has no language border. Even though yes, you will enjoy the song better when you understand the meaning. It doesn't mean I cannot enjoy a song without knowing what it means. Sounds so ignorant but that's just the way I am.
It's so funny the English lyrics they put into those KPop songs.
What especially stood out to me was B2ST's Shock, since "every day I shock, every night I shock" makes absolutely NO SENSE. but the song is really really catchy so I catch myself singing it without noticing sometimes.
Same with Lucifer, "Loverholic robotronic" even though it's the worst English, it's so catchy that it doesn't matter to me it makes no sense. Also, "twinkle twinkle little star" in Boom Boom is just funny to me, I really like that song :P I don't get why you said "I like the song" and then "I hate the song" in the same sentence though. haha.