Left his great job behind…
Jayhawks
Has special meaning for me, as does most of the rest of the song.
I met a gin soaked barroom queen in Memphis
-Stones
Well I was rolling down the road in some cold blue steel
I had a bluesman in the back and a beautician at the wheel
-ZZ Top
I am he as you are he as you are me as we are all together
- The Beatles
In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines*
- Bruce Springsteen
“Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb” - Pink Floyd. It really stands out when listening to the album through as a whole, coming after a quiet fade out interlude.
“It’s been 7 hours and 15 days” - Sinead O’Conner (props to Prince for writing, he’s great at first lines)
Hell yeah.
I’m in the phone booth it’s the one across the hall
If you don’t answer I’ll just ring it off the wall…
Blondie’s Hanging on the Telephone
“I’m alone”
The Metro, Berlin
I offer up two from Wilco:
“The ashtray says, we were up all night.”
-Shot in the Arm
and
“I dreamed about killing you again last night, and it felt alright to me.”
-Via Chicago
I’ve been saying let me out of here before I was even born…
(“Blank Generation”, Richard Hell and the Voidoids)
She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean, she was the best damn woman that I ever seen…
(“You Shook Me All Night Long”, ACmuthafuckinDC)
To be fair, that was actually written and originally performed by The Nerves.
“…it’s such a gamble when you get a face” is a great follow-up line as well.
Aisha, we’ve only just met and I think you ought to know, I’m a murderer .
Aisha - by Death in Vegas
What a drag it is, gettin’ old…
“He was born a little baby on the Appalachian Trial
At six months old he’d done three months in jail”
Bruce - Outlaw Pete
“Wake up, Maggie, I think I’ve got something to say to you
It’s late September and I really should be back at school”
(Maggie May, Rod Stewart)
Sets up the whole song, tells you everything you need to know about the *backstory * and the characters in just two lines, and does so without being at all heavy-handed or awkward.
Yep, that’s awesome as well.
Trivia: McCartney had the opening lines as “She was just seventeen / never been a beauty queen.” Lennon effected the change to the more ambiguous, streetwise, and, well, *Lennonian *lyric in the finished product.
Bo Diddley, “Who Do You Love?”
Chuck Berry, “Nadine”
The Kinks, “Lola”
Here’s a couple:
Marillion, debut album Script for a Jester’s Tear, first song (title track):
So here I am once more, in the playground of the broken hearts
One more experience, one more entry in a diary self-penned
Yet another emotional suicide, overdosed on sentiment and pride
IQ, debut album Seven Stories Into Eight, first song “Capital Letters (in Surgical Spirit Land)”:
If only I were a snake
I would fly from tree to tree
And eat the coconuts from their holes
Ha ha ha
(that’s actually the entire lyric)
With no genetic code, so pathetic am I
Don’t have the luxury of knowing someday I’ll die
(The song is from the point of view of a sentient computer abandoned on a deserted space station.)
“I left by the back door
With my wife’s lover’s smoking gun”
– Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, We Came Along this Road
Tells you the whole story right there.
Oh yes, great call! Gets you right in the guts, that one.