Other lyrics I never really thought about

In the past fortnight, I’ve heard two maddeningly catchy songs, both of which have lodged in my mind like stray harpoons. And yet I can’t sing either of them, at least not out loud, because, in both cases, the lyrics are astronomically tasteless.

In fact, one of the songs is so obscene that I’m not even allowed to tell you its title. It is by a novelty pop act called K**t and The Gang, and is essentially a narrative work in which a man encourages someone to substitute one orifice for another. It is life-affirmingly puerile stuff, set to one of the most infectious and upbeat melodies imaginable.

The other song is Jonathan King’s bewildering anti-tabloid tract, The True Story of Harold Shipman, in which the disgraced pop mogul outlines his sceptical approach to the media by penning a jaunty little number about Britain’s most prolific serial murderer. Say what you like about old wonky gob, but he hasn’t half rustled up a toe-tapper. It would make a fantastic entry for Eurovision, if only its lyrics weren’t a) horrendously upsetting and b) written and performed by a convicted sex offender.

Generally, I’m a fan of real “what the hell?” lyrics, by which I don’t mean “bad” lyrics – although anyone whose heart isn’t strangely gladdened by Des’ree’s infamous lines, “I don’t want to see a ghost/It’s the sight that I fear most/I’d rather have a piece of toast” probably isn’t worth knowing.

Feel-good pop numbers with incongruously grim or complex lyrics: that’s what I like. Every Breath You Take, a stalker’s phone call set to music, is one famous example. More disturbing is the 60s classic Young Girl by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, whose jaw-dropping lyric was surely lifted straight from a court transcript: “Young girl, get out of my mind/My love for you is way out of line/Better run, girl/You’re much too young, girl … You led me to believe you’re old enough to give me love … With all the charms of a woman/You’ve kept the secret of your youth … And though you know that it’s wrong to be alone with me/That come-on look is in your eyes …”

If they were writing it today, they would probably include a line about his credit card details showing up in an online police sting operation.

The absolute king of unexpectedly murky lyrics, however, is Tom Jones. Take Delilah: on the face of it, a rousing sing-along anthem; a cross between a hen party and the good-natured gusto of a beer hall. Yet its sentiments are black as pitch. It opens with the paranoid narrator strolling past Delilah’s house and spotting “the flickering shadows of love on her blind” – a poetic way of describing a blow job viewed in silhouette. “She was my woman,” he declares, adding that “as she deceived me I watched and went out of my mind”. There’s a very real chance, of course, that Delilah isn’t “his” woman at all, just a random stranger.

Thus deranged, the narrator stands outside her house until dawn, at which point the situation rapidly worsens. ” At break of day, when that man drove away, I was waiting/I crossed the street to her house and she opened the door/She stood there laughing/ I felt the knife in my hand, and she laughed no more.” As far as chilling economy of language goes, “I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more” is up there with Edgar Allan Poe. And it gets nastier still. The psychotic murderer (played by Tom Jones, remember) sings the final lines to his victim’s corpse. “So before they come to break down the door/Forgive me Delilah/I just couldn’t take any more.” Tom Jones is on his knees, sobbing over the body of a woman he has just stabbed to death – and blaming her for bringing it on herself. The Sun Has Got His Hat On it ain’t.

The Green, Green Grass of Home functions as an unofficial sequel. To casual listeners, it is a nostalgic evocation of valley life, in which Tom visits his home town, meets his mum and dad, spots his childhood sweetheart, and smiles at an old oak tree he used to play on. And then in the final verse: whammo! Tom wakes up. It’s all been a dream. He’s actually in a prison cell on death row (“four grey walls surround me”), and the padre’s just arrived to walk him to the electric chair. As for the “green, green grass of home” – they’re going to bury him under it.

There should be more of this sort of thing in pop. You’re Beautiful by James Blunt, for instance, is infuriating: partly because it is actually quite a nice tune, but mainly because thanks to some indefinably smug aspect of his voice, every time you hear it you want to leap inside his larynx and kick your way out with barbed-wire boots on. Yet all would be forgiven, and it would become my favourite song of all time, if the final line revealed Blunt had been singing it to himself in a mirror while hanging a dog from a noose in his living room. Especially if there was a video to go with it.

· This week Charlie watched Dexter (FX) again and wondered if maybe he had missed the point in his review, if indeed there was a point. Charlie got so obsessed with Platinum Sudoku on the Nintendo DS that he started solving sudokus in his head whenever there was a lull in conversation. Charlie was crowned winner of Facebook, so everyone can stop playing now.

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