The strange lyrics of Steven Seagal
For all intents and purposes, Steven Seagal is an utterly ridiculous human being. Outside of his short-lived stint as a marketable action hero that parlayed into a decades-long run as a staple of the straight-to-video doldrums, tales of his bizarre antics have since become legion.
At various points, he’s been banned from Saturday Night Live and branded the “worst host ever” by creator Lorne Michaels. He has also been announced to the world as the reincarnation of 17th-century monk Terton Chungdrag Dorie. Named by Sean Connery as the stunt choreographer who broke his wrist on Never Say Never Again, Seagal was also brought to tears by a screenplay he wrote himself.
That barely even scratches the surface of somebody who claims a mystic dog prevented his Aikido dojo from burning to the ground. Seagal told People he was “an advisor to several CIA agents in the field,” holds Russian and Serbian citizenship and lists Vladimir Putin as a friend. Allegedly, he left such a lasting influence on one-time co-star John Leguizamo that when he was asked about his washed-up movie star character in The Menu, the actor responded by saying, “I used Steven Seagal because I hate him.”
And yet, that barely holds a candle to the bonkers lyrics cobbled together by the aspiring musician across his two studio albums. Songs from the Crystal Cave and Mojo Priest were heralded as a brand new genre of music – by Seagal himself, of course – which he succinctly described as “outsider country meets world music meets aikido”. As well as writing the tracks, he also performed the vocals, both rhythm and lead guitar, drums, percussion, and ghatam.
Incredibly, neither record was resoundingly trashed, but they weren’t exactly rapturously received either. His sophomore effort, in particular, harboured an intense fascination with the posterior, seeing as lead single ‘Alligator Ass’ was joined on Mojo Priest by ‘Talk To My Ass.’
Reinforcing his undoubted credentials as the manliest man to have ever manned, the majority of his verses tend to focus on themes of copulation, and it’s enough to cause full-body cringe. The worst offender by far is ‘Strut,’ which contains the following interlude: “Me want the punani, see for make nice, She want the buddy, Him want the punani, And me know it nice.”
‘Jealousy’ saw him try his hand at being threatening through the medium of song, but it didn’t quite come off due to his inane threats: “I could ruin your livelihood, I could kill you I would, With the messiest shit you ever heard, I could trash your lip, mutate ya, You might lose your wife I might destroy your life.”
For unfathomable reasons, Stevie Wonder appeared on the song ‘My God,’ but as Seagal put it best on the very same track to help explain his ill-judged musical sojourn: “You can’t stand to be near me, Well I come from a different place, My philosophy’s from outer space.”
On the plus side, he hasn’t released any new music since 2006, which is a small mercy.
