"Are we human? Or are we dancer?" Much of the Killers interview in the new issue of NME is taken up with trying to work out what the hell this line means.

Brandon Flowers claims it's a "mild social statement", inspired by a Hunter S Thompson quote about America "raising a generation of dancers". But if that's the case, why not dancers plural? And in what sense does being a dancer preclude you from being human?

It's a puzzle. Then again, the history of music is rich with what Alan Partridge would describe as "gibberish classics". These can be divided into the following broad categories.

1.Stupid questions

Noughties indie is full of these, from Chris Martin's "How long am I gonna stand with my head stuck under the sand?" (Coldplay, 'Speed Of Sound') to Richard Ashcroft's "And did those feet in modern times/Walk on soles that are made in China?" (The Verve, 'Love Is Noise').

Daft questions often find their way into song titles, too. Creedence Clearwater Revival's 'Have You Ever Seen The Rain?' and Chicago's 'Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?' are both crying out for curt one-word responses (namely, er, 'yes'). Others are rather more difficult to answer. Who's gonna ride my wild horses? I have no idea, Bono, sorry.

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2.Bad grammar

There's actually an entire website devoted to pointing out syntactical errors in pop songs. The best known, of course, is Paul McCartney's famously repetitious "In this ever changing world in which we live in" ('Live And Let Die') – although it's nowhere near as heinous as Michael Stipe's baffling "Leaving was never my proud" from 'Leaving New York'.

One that's always set my teeth on edge is the first line of All Saints 'Never Ever' ("A few questions that I need to know" - surely it's answers you're after?), an error mirrored by Brandon Flowers (him again) in 'Sam's Town' when he sings a line so circular it sort of makes your brain ache: "Why do you waste my time? Is the answer to the question on your mind." Riiight.

3.Sexual innuendo

Kiss' Paul Stanley is unquestionably the king of gibberish braggadocio. "Ooh baby, wanna put my log in your fireplace", he once sang (I'm no expert, but surely you want to stoke the fire, not provide its perishable fuel?). Meanwhile, “Baby, let’s put the X in sex/Love’s like a muscle, and you make me wanna flex” has the whiff of Mr Motivator about it.

P Diddy runs Stanley a close second, however. Some of his worst innuendos aren't offensive so much as weird and confusing: “Come here girl/Let me creep in your world/Let me see the backside of your moon/No Vickies only La Perl-a/Let me take you to Indonesia” ('Diddy Rock'). The words 'restraining order' spring to mind.

4.Pseudo-poetry

Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon dominates this field on account of unforgettably shonky lines such as, “Fiery demons all dance when you walk through that door/Don’t say you’re easy on me/You’re about as easy as a nuclear war” ('Is There Something I Should Know?').

Jim Morrison is another wretchedly pompous versifier, but his lyrics at least broadly make sense. Unlike much of Genesis' output. Consider this gem from 'Firth Of Fifth': “Now as the river dissolves in sea/So Neptune has claimed another soul/And so with gods and men/The sheep remain inside their pen/Until the shepherd leads his flock away” Yep, that's pretty much what sheep do, Einstein.

5.Basic gibberish

Pre-linguistic babbling in song has a long and fruitful history, from The Crystals' 'Da Doo Ron Ron' to Ministry's 'Jesus Built My Hotrod' ("Ding dang a dong bong bing bong" etc), but personally I'm more drawn to nonsensical metaphors/similes.

The Cure's Robert Smith excelled at these, cramming two into one verse of 'Let's Go To Bed' alone ("Let me take your hand, I'm shaking like milk…The fires outside in the sky look as perfect as cats").

Only the truly courageous lyricists, however, go so far as to make up words entirely. Debate has raged as to the meaning of "pompitous" ever since Steve Miller coined it in the 1973 song 'The Joker' ("Cos I speak of the pompitous of love") – although the fact that it is manifestly not a word didn't stop Miller from brazenly re-using it, in the song 'Enter Maurice'. Still, at least it's better than "zig-a-zig-aah".

6.Factual errors

Coldplay, once again, are guilty here – birds can't fly at the speed of sound, and it's actually fairly difficult to climb a ladder up to the sun, despite what Chris Martin claims in 'Talk'.

Many songwriters seem to lack basic geographical knowledge. This can cause embarrassment, as with The Spice Girls' reference to the "yellow man in Timbuktu" (erm, isn’t that in Africa?), or Sade's portrait of a Casanova who roams "Coast to coast, LA to Chicago" in her 80s hit 'Smooth Operator'.

Indeed, navigation is often a weak spot for lyricists, as evidenced by Roger Daltrey's head-spinning assertion (penned by Pete Townshend): "The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south" (The Who, 'Substitute'). Never go on an orienteering weekend with Roger Daltrey.

Other statements, meanwhile, are just plain wrong. "Here comes love, it's like honey/You can't buy it with money", sang New Order's Bernard Sumner in 'Crystal' (fairly easy to disprove, this one).

My favourite, though, is a fabulously dumb line from P Diddy's 'I Need A Girl (Part II)': "Have you ever been to Saint-Tropez/Or seen a brother play a mandalay?" enquires the Didster, blissfully unaware that there is no such instrument as a mandalay.

7.Noel Gallagher

So bad he needs his own category. Where to start with Noel's lyrics? 'Champagne Supernova' is the most famous example of Gallagher-penned nonsense ("Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball"), but it's by no means the worst.

Consider the extravagant gobbledegook of 'Go Let It Out': "Life is precocious in a most peculiar way/Sister Psychosis don't got a lot to say." Ungrammatical and meaningless: a double-whammy.

Although even that lyric is put in the shade by the master-class in meaninglessness that is 'D'You Know What I Mean', in which successive lines build on each other to create a kind of symphony of gibberish: "Look into the wall of my mind's eye/I think I know, but I don't know why/Questions of the answers you might need".

Suddenly, "Are we human, or are we dancer" doesn’t sound so daft after all...