IMHO: Incubus and their spotty lyrics

I’m a big Incubus fan. I have nearly all of their CDs. I love them because musically, they’re nothing short of awesome, especially when it comes to Mike Einziger’s guitar work. However, they fall incredibly short in a key area, namely lyrics. Brandon Boyd can’t write lyrics to save his life. Yeah, he strikes gold with songs like 11am, Pardon Me, and Monuments and Melodies. Contrast them with some of his not-so-good efforts, like Stellar (“I need you to see this place, it might be the only way that I can show you how it feels to be inside you”), A Kiss To Send Us Off (“bring your mouth and respective irreverence”), and of course, the anti-Bush hit, Megalomaniac (“Hey megalomaniac, you’re no Jesus, yeah you’re no fucking Elvis”). Their newest album, Light Grenades, is the best (or worst, depending on your viewpoint) example. From the opening Quicksand (“sometimes you fall in love and touch the sky, sometimes it’s like falling in quicksand, I’m somewhere in between”) to the terrible Dig (“we all have a sickness that cleverly attaches and multiplies… you’ll act as a clever medicine”) and Earth To Bella (Part 1) (“you think you’ve got it all figured in”), it becomes obvious that Brandon should either retake high school English or let someone like Ben Kenney, who is a good lyricist, take the pen and notepad for a few tracks. Related to this shortcoming is the fact that Incubus is also one of the more glaring examples of poor English that I have in my library. Yes, I know that songs don’t have to follow every convention of grammar, because a song is different from a term paper, but with these guys it just gets out of hand. Take the line from Earth to Bella and add that to the pre-chorus of Leech, “I’m kicking myself that I shared spit with you” (what the…?). I could go on and on for many more paragraphs, but will leave off with this doozy from another Light Grenades track, Love Hurts: “Love hurts, but sometimes it’s a good hurt.” Uh, no Brandon, not really. Unless you’re Chris Brown.