Back in the mid-80s when levity and piss-taking were an integral part of the music press, British weekly music mag NME ran a humourous column called Bismillah in its jokey Thrills pages. It was dedicated to highlighting excruciatingly bad lyrics – who can forget The Cult’s ‘Sittin’ on a mountain, looking at the sun/Plastic fantastic lobster telephone’ from Aphrodisiac Jacket, among many other dubious pearls?
Bismillah probably sealed the image of Cocteau Twins singing in gibberish when it ran the lyrics of Ivo, the opening song of Treasure, as: ‘Ping pong page scrub pandor pompadour/Henry he’s sweet he saved me.’ (They are, in actual fact, ‘Peep hole, peach blow, Pandora, pompadour/Pale leaf, pink sweet, Persephone.’)
