The Top 5 Worst LFO Lyrics

The Top 5 Worst LFO Lyrics

By: Brian Cotnoir

There was a time when I was growing up in the late 1990’s to early 2000’s where radio, MTV, and indeed the world were dominated by Boy Bands.  I mean, it was huge.  I remember not being able walk into the record stores at the mall without seeing at least 3 posters or cardboard cutouts promoting those various boy bands.  Everyone from age 8-16 had a favorite boy band; most Boy Bands came from Orlando, Florida and were created by Lou Pearlman.  Groups like Backstreet Boys, N-Sync, and O-Town dominated the airwaves during this time.  However, there were a few Independent Boy Bands that started on their own, and one of those bands was LFO.  Now LFO (short for Lyte Funky Ones) wasn’t as big or as popular as the Backstreet Boys or N-Sync, but they did have some moderate success, and I think most people who were around during this time could tell you the title of at least one LFO song.  LFO is from Massachusetts (my home state) and so they definitely got more airplay around here then probably the rest of the country, and their popularity—in Massachusetts at least—were up there with other homegrown Boy Bands like New Kids on the Block and New Edition.  However, one disadvantage LFO had going against them was that they didn’t have some hired studio songwriter(s) writings lyrics for them, so  they wrote their own song lyrics and well...you know when a white boy records a Rap Demo in their basement and thinks they’re going to be the next Eminem?  Well LFO is kind of the Boy Band Equivalent of that, and today I will be counting down the Top 5 Worst LFO lyrics.

5.) Every Other Time

As far as LFO’s songs go this was their last Big Hit, and is—in my opinion—their least bad track.  It has a nice flow it to it, the vocals sound great, it’s not a bad song except for this one lyric and that lyric is: “but then I think about the time when we broke up before the prom/and you told everyone that I was gay, okay?”.  Not only is that line incredibly stupid, but it also doesn’t flow.  Even when you hear them sing that line it sounds incredibly forced and like they were struggling to make it work. Oh well, now that I’ve talked about the Best of the Worst of LFO, let’s now start working out way to the Worst of the Worst of LFO.

4.) Sex U Up (The Way You Like It)

Seeing as most fans of Boy Bands were girls in their teens and pre-teens the subject of sex never was never really sung about.  There were always sappy songs about being in love or falling in love, but sex was a subject that was almost forbidden to boy bands to sing about.  “Sex U Up (The Way You Like It)” was one of LFO’s earliest singles, and yeah there are is so much wrong with this song.  The worst lyrical offender to this track is “I wanna sex u up/come on let’s get it on tonight/said I wanna sex u up/come on now let’s get it on”.  My God, they sound like a bunch of loser virgins who are trying to convince people that they’ve had sex, sorry LFO but you aren’t fooling anyone.  Oh and I really despise your AOL Instant Messenger abbreviation of the word You.  Just because you wrote a bad song doesn’t give you an excuse for poor grammar.

3.) Girl on TV

If you wanted to find success as a boy band in the late 90’s early 2000’s you needed to have a soulful love song where every member of the group professed their love to one specific girl in the music video.  I have to give LFO props for this one though: most love songs from Boy Bands are sung about some anonymous girl who doesn’t actually exist, but the lyrics to “Girl on TV” were actually inspired by actress Jennifer Love Hewitt (who also appears in the music video).  How could Jennifer Love Hewitt not fall in love with any of the guys in this band who wrote and sang a beautiful song about her?  It must’ve been the lyric: “Shooby-doo-wop and Scooby snacks/met a fly girl and I can’t relax/the only problem is she’s a movie star, oh/my friends won’t believe me if they could only see me/at the risk of soundin’ cheesy/I fell for the girl on TV”.  “Shooby-doo-wop and Scooby snacks”? Really? Really LFO? Did you really think that would be a great line?  I could forgive that if you didn’t forget to write a line for a word that rhymes with star and didn’t try to force so many rhymes with the letter E in the rest of that verse, but I’m sorry LFO that one was just bad.

Sorry I couldn't get this actual music video

2.) I don’t want to kiss you goodnight

Apparently none of the members of LFO had any idea on what to do at the end of a date either.  This is made clearly evident from the their song “I don’t want to kiss you goodnight”.  “I don’t wanna kiss you goodnight/if a kiss means the night is over/I don’t wanna say goodbye no, no, no/girl I don’t love me standing at your door/when this night could lead to so much more”.  Okay, LFO let me explain something to you: if you go on a date and you don’t get a kiss at the end of the night it means they don’t like you.  If you like them, but you don’t kiss them they’re going to think you don’t like them.  And believe me LFO the goal at the end of the date is to get that kiss, and for it to lead to other things.  So the next time you go on a date with the girl, you kiss her so she wants to drag you in her bedroom so you can wrap it, tap it, and then scrap it.

1.) Summer Girls

This is the one LFO track that I think everyone knows.  To this day is still LFO’s most successful charting song, but it also features some of the most horrendous and nonsensical lyrics put together in a song.  Lines like “New Kids on the Block had a bunch of hits/Chinese Food Makes me sick” and “Hip Hop Marmalade/Spic and Span/met you one summer and it all began/You’re the Best Girl that I ever did see/the Great Larry Bird Jersey 33”???????????????? What the f*ck LFO?!  How do you go from telling a girl that you like her to professing your admiration for Basketball Hall of Famer Larry Bird?!  And that’s just the tip of the Iceberg of badness in this song.  All “Summer Girls” is, is a song that features a bunch of nonsense lyrics and obscure pop culture references.  This song’s so bad, that it can’t even be parodied, because it makes fun of itself so much.

As Much as I’ve bashed LFO and their inability to write good song lyrics this whole post, I feel I should mention, I don’t think they’re the Worst Boy Band Ever.  I don’t even think they’re a terrible band.  They were a group of friends that started a boy band and found some success, and they did the Best they could with what they had.  They did not have the money or exposure or the marketability of other Boy Bands like Backstreet Boys or N-Sync, but they did all right.  And when I was in college and heard that LFO’s front man Rich Cronin passed away from leukemia, I felt so sorry for him, and his family, and the remaining members of LFO, because I truly believed that someday they would make a comeback and go on a Retro Tour with other boy bands like New Kids on the Block, O-Town, and 98 Degrees.  So to the remaining members of LFO, I hope you are doing well for yourself.