I’ve always loved dissecting song lyrics, but doing that for videogame music always feels like a coin flip. More than anywhere else, the medium is absolutely rife with nonsense lines that range from charmingly accidental to hilariously unhinged.
Take the raid boss Sugar Riot in Final Fantasy 14. Her combat theme includes the desperate, meta lyrical struggle: "Now we come to orange / Gotta rhyme something with orange / 'Cept that nothing rhymes with orange / Think that I'll just forget 'bout orange."
It’s a little goofy and fits her graffiti artist shtick, but the lyrics still give me insane whiplash every single time I hear them. It’s a perfect example of how videogame lyrics can stumble into charm through sheer desperation.
Embracing the Ridiculous
Then there is the edgy stuff. Take Devil May Cry’s Devil Trigger theme:
"All of these thoughts runnin' through my head Arm on fire, veins burnin' red Frustration is gettin' bigger Bang, bang, bang, pull my Devil Trigger."
Does the song go hard? Yes, absolutely. But do I also think its lyrics are ridiculous? I absolutely do. It leans heavily into the over-the-top persona that defines the series, yet the writing itself is undeniably cheesy.
My personal candidate for the worst videogame lyrics, however, has to be the opening song for Dead Island by Who Do You Voodoo? I almost have to commend just how closely the song toes the line between terrible and hilariously good. It is a product of its time, and it shows:
- "Handful of fingertips, toss 'em up like confetti"
- "Stable of corpse bitches, I'm a pimp of the dead."
I don't know any other song that could have gotten away with those specific lines without inducing a cringe response. It’s so bad it loops back around to being memorable, but it remains a low point for lyrical quality in the medium.
When Lyrics Actually Work
That doesn't mean all videogame vocal music sounds like it was written with a heavy dose of teen angst. Some tracks elevate the narrative through clever writing.
Portal’s Still Alive is by far one of my favourite tracks ever penned for a game. Written from the perspective of GLaDOS as she writes her assessment report, it plays as the credits roll with lines like:
"Now these points of data make a beautiful line And we're out of beta, we're releasing on time So I'm glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned For the people who are still alive."
It’s the perfect blend of Portal’s slightly dark humour without veering into total cringe or silliness. It gives players a glimpse into the sadistic robot’s actual fate while serving as a memorable outro.
Similarly, I am a huge fan of Nier: Automata’s Weight of the World. This end-credits song is theorized to be from different characters' perspectives depending on which language you listen to it in. As someone who regularly bumps the English version, I adore the chorus:
"Cause we're gonna shout it loud Even if our words seem meaningless It's like I'm carrying the weight of the world."
It is incredibly befitting of the journey 2B undertakes throughout the game. It serves as the best culmination of that game's gripping narrative you could ask for, proving that videogame lyrics can carry genuine emotional weight.
Your Turn
But what about you? Is there a videogame lyric that's proper stuck with you—either for being powerful and impactful, or for being so utterly ridiculous that you have to wonder what was going through the writer's head when they penned it?
Drop a comment below with the lyric and which game it’s from. Let’s compare the masterpieces and the masterbatches of gaming audio.
