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What are some of your favourite lyrics?


Benji

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49 minutes ago, Benji said:

Just a thread to share some lyrics you enjoy, with or without context and comment.

Like a fire, don't need water
Like a jury, needs a liar
Like a riot, don't need order
Like a madman needs a martyr
We don't need them

~ "Red Flag" by Billy Talent

"Up, and down". Up and down by the Vengaboys.

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"Standin' on the gone side of leavin'

She found a thumb and stuck it in the breeze

She'll take anything goin' close to somewhere

She can lay it down and live it like she'd please"


"Well, the wind had it's way with her hair
And the blues had a way with her smileAnd she had a way of her ownJust like prisoners have a way with a file"
 
- Guy Clark, "She Ain't Goin Nowhere"

The first two verses of that song always come to mind. I think I first read the lyrics to that song online when I was a teenager and didn't hear it until a little while later. I believe this is based on a moment where Guy Clark's wife Susanna was on the verge of leaving him because she was fed up with putting up with Clark and fellow singer-songwriter Townes van Zandt. He came back to the same period with the song "My Favorite Picture Of You" which was, IIRC, a photograph taken on the same day of a pissed-off Susanna Clark that Guy kept in his possession for the rest of his life. 
"I
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We Will All Go Together When We Go by Tom Lehrer has some great rhyming couplets, such as:

"You may have thought it tragic, not to mention other adjec-

tives to think of all the weeping they will do"

"Just sing out a te deum when you see that ICBM"

"There will be no more misery when the world is our rotisserie"

It's also an oddly nice sentiment in the face of nuclear war. If we all die at the same time, nobody will be left to grieve.

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You can stick your nine to five living and your collar and your tie. 
You can stick your moral standards 'cause it's all a dirty lie. 
You can stick your golden handshake. 
Stick your silly rules. 
And all the other shit that they teach the kids in school. 
'Cause I ain't no fool.
-- 
AC/DC - Rock and Roll Singer

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When the War is Over:

When the war is over
Got to get away
Pack my bags to no place
In no time no day
You and I we used each other's shoulder
Still so young but somehow so much older
How can I go home and not get blown away

You and I had our sights set on something
Hope this doesn't mean our days are numbered
I've got plans for more than a wanted man
All around this chaos and madness
Can't help feeling nothing more than sadness
Only choice to face it the best I can

When the war is over
Got to start again
Try to hold a trace of what it was back then
You and I we sent each other stories
Just a page I'm lost in all it's glories
How can I go home and not get blown away

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I just got reminded of the phenomenal John Prine line from Sam Stone:

"There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes/Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose"

 

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On 31/12/2022 at 14:37, Bobfoc said:

We Will All Go Together When We Go by Tom Lehrer has some great rhyming couplets, such as:

Tom Lehrer is responsible for my all-time favourite couplet, from The Vatican Rag, "you can do any steps you want if/you have cleared them with the Pontiff". Second only to Ira Gershwin's "he made his home in/that fish's ab-do-men".

On 31/12/2022 at 17:42, Daniel Bryan said:

Now the song is nearly over
We may never find out what it means

Still there's a light I hold before me
You're the measure of my dreams

- "A Rainy Night in Soho", by The Pogues

For as over-played and over-critiqued as it is, Fairytale of New York has one of my favourite lyrics:

You took my dreams from meWhen I first found youI kept them with me babeI put them with my ownCan't make it all aloneI've built my dreams around you

I think "I've built my dreams around you" is one of the most perfect romantic sentiments in song.

Captain Beefheart's My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains has a couple that come close to it - "my arms are just two things in the way, until I can wrap them around you", and "I hate to have other people hear me sing this song, if this reaches you before I do, follow it to 'I love you', that's where I'll find you".

Every single word of "Rake" by Townes Van Zandt.


A little-known one, but some of the most beautiful song-writing I've ever heard, is Dead Hour by The Guild League:

Could you try, when I die
To paint my shadow on the wall
And when these organs are defeated
Give the doctors free-for-all
Oh cut me out, cut me up
Little bits of me live on
I can feel someone else's breath filling my lungs

Oh cut me out, cut me up
Little bits of me live on
My heart in someone else's chest, these lines in song
A line in a song

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