Is Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car” the Corniest Song of All Time?

5 min readJan 24, 2017

My place of full-time employment has music on all day. During the day the playlist usually includes a mix of Huey Lewis and The News to go along with some Hootie and the Blowfish, and the occasional Phil Collins. During the evening, the torture is a little less extreme, as the playlist shifts over to a Stone Temple Pilots/Pearl Jam Pandora. But during the day, oh boy, during the day…

As one can tell, the daytime playlist is filled to the brim with corny songs. There are songs with ungodly asinine lyrics such as:

“What I want, you’ve got

And it might be hard to handle

But like the flame that burns the candle

The candle feeds the flame”

There are songs in which the singer almost certainly doesn’t sing a single consonant the entire song, relying strictly on the five (sometimes six) vowels he knows and likes, thank you very much. There are even songs that bring back horrific visions of the worst that music videos had to offer in the earliest days of MTV. But none, NONE, can hold a candle to Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car.”

It is time for the most important question that has ever been asked on the face of this lovely planet we call Earth: Is Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car” the corniest song of all time?

I have pretty thoroughly covered my “corny song bona fides” above, but just in case you forgot, here’s the music video for the aforementioned “Hip To Be Square” by Huey Lewis and the News:

I can’t confirm because I only watched the first five seconds, but I’m pretty sure if you watch the entire music video, you somehow magically end up wearing cargo shorts by the end.

But even “Hip To Be Square” can’t compete with “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car.” Billy Ocean’s 1988 [whatever the opposite of masterpiece is] song is the perfect trifecta of corniness. It combines incredibly hackneyed lyrics; heinously pop/dance tones; and a music video that makes you wish you no longer had the power of sight.

Let’s tackle these one at a time.

Lyrics

Here are the entire lyrics to Billy Ocean’s “GOMD, GIMC”:

“Hey (hey) you (you), get into my car

Who me?

Yes you, get into my car

Wooooooooooooooh. Wah! Yeah!

Who’s that lady

Coming down the road

Who’s that lady

Who’s that woman

Walking through my door

What’s the score

I’ll be the sun

Shining on you

Hey Cinderella

Step in your shoe

I’ll be your non-stop lover

Get it while you can

Your non-stop miracle

I’m your man

Get outta my dreams

Get into my car

Get outta my dreams

Get in the back seat baby

Get into my car

Beep beep, yeah

Get outta my mind

Get into my life

Oooooooooh

Oh I said hey (Hey) you (You)

Get into my car

Oh baby

Lady driver

Let me take your wheel

Smooth operator

Touch my bumper (Bumper)

Hey, let’s make a deal

Make it real

Like a road runner

Coming after you

Just like a hero

Outta the blue

I’ll be your non-stop lover

Get it while you can

Your non-stop miracle

I’m your man

Get outta my dreams

Get into my car

Get outta my dreams

Get in the back seat baby

Get into my car

Beep beep, yeah

Get outta my mind

Get into my life

Oooooooooh

Oh I said hey (Hey) you (You)

Get into my car

Oh baby, let’s go

I said open the door

(Get in the back)

Tread on the floor

(Get on the track)

Yeah (Yeah) Yeah (Yeah)

Let’s go

Oh baby

Ooooh, woooow, yeah

I’ll be the sun

Shining on you

Hey Cinderella

Step in your shoe

I’ll be your non-stop lover

Get it while you can

Your non-stop miracle

I’m your man

Get outta my… Get outta my…

Get outta my dreams

Get into my car

Get outta my dreams

Get in the back seat baby

Get into my car

Beep beep, yeah

Get outta my mind

Get into my life

Oooooooooh

Oh I said hey (Hey) you (You)

Get into my, hey (Hey) you (You)

Get into my car”

Just a few highlights for those who didn’t feel like reading those all the way through, or lost the ability to read as a result of trying to read all the way through.

“Hey Cinderella; Step in your shoe; I’ll be your non-stop lover; Get it while you can.”

“Lady driver; Let me take your wheel; Smooth operator; Touch my bumper.”

“Get into my car; beep beep, yeah.”

Now that Bob Dylan has broken the seal of Nobel Prizes for songwriters, I think we all know who is getting the next one… Mr. Billy Ocean.

Heinously pop/dance tones

For the next two categories we’ll need the music video, so here’s goes. Note: don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Billy Ocean doesn’t just lean on the synthesizer, he full-on pays first and last month’s rent on that bad boy. And how about that Ferris Bueller-esque sound effect at the very beginning of the video? I get it, Mr. Ocean, you reallllllly wanted everyone listening to this song over the next five decades to be able to identify this song as late 80s the second they heard it. I get it. I’m pretty sure the listeners could’ve handled more than three different sounds, total, in the entire song, though.