12 Most Ridiculous Similes in Music History

For those of us who were asleep and/or drunk all through grammar school, a simile is a comparison of two things using "like" or "as," such as "Our public education was as pointless as an edible bicycle seat."

CRACKED offers the following lesson in similes-and how not to use them-as a community service, because we wish to make up for these shameful failures of our education system, and because "community service" is the part of our plea bargain that keeps us out of jail.

#12.
Goo Goo Dolls - "Iris"

Offending Lyric:
"When everything feels like the movies, yeah you bleed just to know you're alive"

We're not really sure what sort of movies the Goo Goo Dolls watch in their spare time. The movies we watch are full of good-looking people getting in gun fights with one another. If everything felt like the movies, we'd be jumping off of the top of buildings with firehoses wrapped around our waist. We're pretty sure that would do just fine as far as letting us know we're alive.

Maybe the Goo Goo Dolls confused the words "the movies" with "freshman and sophomore years of high school?"

#11.
Def Leppard - "Pour Some Sugar On Me"

Offending Lyric:
"Livin' like a lover with a radar phone"

How exactly does a lover with a radar phone live? Well, probably poorly if they're fucking someone who thinks a radar phone sounds like a cool piece of technology. You have to feel bad for Def Leppard's girlfriends, who presumably all got radar phones for Christmas back in 1987, when this song was released.

Even for the late '80s, "radar phone" doesn't sound like such a hot piece of technology. Here, Warrant's girlfriends were probably all getting car phones, along with new Trans Ams in which to install them. To make matters worse, when Def Leppard's girlfriends tried to phone their boyfriends to complain about their crappy gifts, instead of connecting the call, the radar phones would just measure how fast Warrant's girlfriends were driving in their new cars.

#10.
Culture Club - "Time"

Offending Lyric:
"Time is like a clock in my heart"

While this simile may not necessarily be inaccurate, it's not overly astute, either. What's that, Boy George? Time is like a clock? Why, land sakes, we never saw it that way! And, the clock is in your heart? Holy crap, George! Make an appointment with your cardiologist, and we mean today.

Other rejected lyrics from this song include "water is like a bucket in my knee," "bread is like a basket in my stomach," and "writing songs is like getting really high and playing a game of Operation."

#9.
Poison - "Every Rose Has Its Thorn"

Offending Lyric:
"Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song/Every rose has its thorn"

First of all, everyone knows (read: we just learned on Wikipedia) that roses don't even have thorns, they have prickles. But, Poison probably didn't have a dedicated botany research department so we'll let that one go.

The real problem is on the cowboy/sad song side of things. Forget "every" cowboy singing a sad song; we're having trouble thinking of one. Clint Eastwood? Anyone in Tombstone or Young Guns? There were probably no sad songs in any season of Deadwood simply because not many sad words rhyme with "cocksucker." So who's left? Michael Irvin?

Wait a second ... does the fact that roses don't have thorns and that cowboys don't sing sad songs suddenly make this work as a simile again? Friends, I believe we have just been outwitted by Poison.

#8.
Bob Seger - "Like A Rock"

Offending Lyric:
"Like a rock, chargin' out the gate"

In fairness, throughout most of this hit song, Bob Seger manages to find valid reasons to compare himself to a rock-he's stoic, unflappable and rigid-but toward the end of "Like A Rock" he somehow confuses the typical rocks he references throughout his song with much more proactive and much less rock-like stones that, evidently, sprint out of gates in certain circumstances.

Needless to say, anyone betting on Seger's boulder to win the Kentucky Derby probably wound up tearing up their tickets in frustration before being wheeled back to the asylum.

#7.
Ricky Martin - "She Bangs"

Offending Lyric:
"Cause she looks like a flower but she stings like a bee/Like every girl in history"

Come on, Ricky Martin, you can't possibly mean every girl in history. Mother Teresa? The Statue of Liberty? The Bee Girl from the Blind Melon "No Rain" video, who looked like a bee, but was as harmless as a flower?

We've searched the rest of the song for some kind of clarification. The chrous offers, "She bangs, she bangs/when she moves, she moves." Does this woman go clanging around in a medieval suit of armor? Does this also apply to "every girl in history?" How could such a virile, obviously not-gay man know so little about the nature of females?