“Only football gives us thrills, rock n’ roll just pays the bills.”
Roger Taylor
“It’s a one time thing, it just happens a lot”
–Susanne Vega
So I found that life is just a game
But you know there’s never been a winner
Try your hardest, you’ll still be a loser
The world will still be turning when you’re gone
Wheels of Confusion by Black Sabbath
I like opening lines that draw you into a song. Here are a trio of examples:
Well my daddy worked in the coalmine
Till the company shut it down
Then he sat around and drank hisself blind
Till we put him back underground
Steve Earle - Oxycontin Blues
One summer evening drunk to hell
I stood there nearly lifeless
The Pogues - A Pair of Brown Eyes
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows
Two things, two things that don’t get old
Love and rock and roll
- Greg Kihn / Love and Rock And Roll
There’s a heaven and a hell and there’s an ‘Oh, well’
X - “White Girl”
Not really a rock lyric, but…
We were standing on a mountain top,
where the cactus flowers grow.
I was wishing that the world would stop,
when you said ‘we’d better go.’
Robert earl Keen
The sun in your eyes made some of the lies worth believing
- “Eye in the Sky”, Alan Parsons Project
I forgot the name of the song and the singer but the line is: Just because they so pretty that don’t mean that they so nice.
I love the intentional spoonerism in American Pie:
I was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck
Early in the morning I’ma giving you the warning “Don’t you step on my blue suede shoes”.
I was catching up on my Neil Young tunes the other day when I revisited The needle and the damage done. That one gives me a real gut punch, given my personal and professional history. “Every junkie’s like a setting sun”.
“Can we forget about the things I said when I was drunk?/I didn’t mean to call you that.” --Lit, “My Own Worst Enemy.”
The two that come to mind for me (being a little fast and loose with “single line,” but I’m clearly not the first!) are:
“We are young, wandering the face of the earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we’re only immortal for a limited time.”
–Rush, “Dreamline”
and
“Remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality, and dubious integrity
Their small-town eyes will gape at you in dull surprise
When payment due exceeds accounts received
At seventeen”
–Janis Ian, “At Seventeen”
Soy un pedador, I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me
How in the world can that line be considered good, let alone best?
Umm, snot my favorite, but it hooked a song that made the artist’s reputation and appealed to mucho many people.
Almost everyone feels despair and depression sometimes. The singer expresses that, then takes it into hyperbole (“why don’t you kill me”) so you know he’s still in control and a little amused by his own despair,
Think about the song you adore, and the very best lyric you’ve ever heard…and remind yourself that there are people out there who think that that song is absolutely terrible.
Conversely, think about the song you detest, the stupidest, most vapid lyrics you’ve ever heard…and remind yourself that that’s someone’s all-time favorite song, which speaks to them deeply.
Different strokes.
(SO tempted to post the lyrics to Mmmm-Bop…)
Not No Small Children’s hardest rocker, but
“You’re more than anything that anyone says about you”
sneaks up on me every time and slaps me in the feels.