From “Angel Face” by Joan Osborne:
You made my heart beat like God made the thunder
“Aristocracy is like a crown of thorns, it takes believers…”
– Anastasia / Elliott Murphy
From “The Boys Are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzy:
Man, when I tell you she was cool, she was red hot, I mean she was steamin’
It mixes metaphors in a crazy way that just works.
Fat bottomed girls
You make the rockin’ world go round…
Get on your bikes and ride
“Fat Bottomed Girls” - Queen
Let’s swim to the moon, uh huh
Let’s climb through the tide
“Moonlight Drive” - The Doors
“I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grave.”
Yeah, I know. But it’s the right lyric even if he doesn’t actually say it.
“I’m that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type, make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type”
“I can’t tell you where the journey will end…but I know where to start.”
“There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.”
“Walk with me, Suzy Lee, Through the park and by the tree, We will rest upon the ground,
And look at all the bugs we found”
“Then came the churches, then came the schools,
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules,
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads”
“ Four that wanna own me, two that wanna stone me, one says she’s a friend of mine”
“Once there was a way to get back home, Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry, and I will sing a lullaby”
“Oh, let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone”
“Then she gets you on her wavelength and she lets the river answer”
“The fragrance of those promises you never dared to vow; the splinters that you carried, the cross you left behind”
“I dreamed about you, baby, it was just the other night; most of you was naked, ah, but some of you was light”
“This truck needs a half tank, these wheels need a two-lane; this radio needs three songs to play
to get me across town to you”
“Broken bottles and graffiti, beer and girls and poppin’ wheelies, love was fun and life was easy”
“I won’t ever slack up, punk you better back up
Try and play the role and yo the whole crew’ll act up”
Taylor Swift, as the major songwriter of our time, has come up with some doozies.
You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath
“All Too Well”
(Sorry. Above post was Billie Eilish Bad Guy, Avicii Wake Me Up, Beatles All You Need Is Love, White Stripes I Can Tell We Will Be Friends, Cohen Dance Me To The End Of Love, Cohen Suzanne, Cohen Come Healing, Cohen Waiting For The Miracle, Luke Bryan Knockin’ Boots, Sam Hunt Water Under The Bridge, House of Pain Jump Around, respectively.)
“Leave, when time only salts your wounds”
Brilliant Resilience, The Flatliners
The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep
The Mother, Brandi Carlie
I wonder just what kind of truck Luke Bryan drives that goes through half a tank of gas in the space of three songs?
As a parent, I can’t beat this one by Dylan:
May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.
That’s what I like about Dylan. Yeah, he can write almost incomprehensible and surrealistic, though highly poetic lyrics, but he also comes up with straight lines such as these (in “Forever Young”) that seem simple but are so moving that anybody can relate to them. Even if you’re not a parent (like me).
“Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now.”
Dylan again, from Mr. Tambourine Man:
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
Yeah, you could quote the whole lyrics of “Mr. Tambourine Man” (and it’s a long song, much longer than the Byrds version), it’s pure poetry from start to finish, one of his masterpieces that IMHO let him deservedly win the Nobel for literature.
I’ve mentioned before that I was best man (literally and figuratively) for my brother’s wedding and for my toast to the couple I recited this. Seeing tears in people’s eyes choked me up a bit.
My brother’s MIL (a cold nasty bitch) apparently thought I wrote those words, and told my brother I was a lousy poet.
You’ve been telling me you were a genius since you were 17
In all the time I’ve known you, I still don’t know what you mean
The weekend at the college didn’t turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge, I can’t understand
Steely Dan - Reelin’ in the Years.
Single lines?
“I wanna destroy you” - “I Wanna Destroy You” - The Soft Boys
“I went home with the waitress/the way I always do” - “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” - Warren Zevon (“How was I to know/she was with the Russians, too” if we need the completion of the verse.)