Ever been listening to a song? You find yourself listening to and loving every note and every word used, only to have a completely nonsensical lyric come up that just leaves you confused?
I just had Mama, I’m Coming Home by Ozzy Osborne come up on my shuffle. It caused me to reflect back on my relationship with my mom. I was really getting into it, only to have the following line from the refrain come up:
What does that mean? Anything? Nothing? Did he just need a word to rhyme with “time”? Were the drugs finally beginning to kick in at this point in his career?
Anyone who wants to can try and decipher this line or add their own entries.
Perhaps he means “sunshine” along the same lines as “ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone.” Or to go old school, he don’t care if it’s cloudy or bright 'cause he only has eyes for her.
I thought this topic was going to be more along the lines of Elton John’s “Solar Prestige a Gammon.”, or Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno’s “Miss Shapiro”:
Dalai Lama Lama puss puss
Stella maris missa nobis
Miss a dinner Miss Shapiro
Shampoos pot pot pinkies pampered
Movement hampered like at Christmas
Ha ha, isn’t life a circus
Round in circles like the Archers
Always stiff or always starchy…
As for old Ozzy, doesn’t he live in sunny South California? And being an old Brummie, he’s presumably talking about going back home to his old mum in Birmingham, Yoo Kay? Makes sense to me that he says he doesn’t care about [giving up] the sunshine.
In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins so I’m out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables
Dog food skulls with the beefcake pantyhose
Seriously, WTF? I never realized that this song made no sense until I heard Richard Cheese’s lounge version…
Occasionally a King Crimson song had a lyric that halfway made sense, but thankfully it always descended rapidly into incoherence:
*The gardener plants an evergreen
Whilst trampling on a flower.
I chase the wind of a prism ship
To taste the sweet and sour.
The pattern juggler lifts his hand;
The orchestra begin.
As slowly turns the grinding wheel
In the court of the crimson king.
On soft gray mornings widows cry
The wise men share a joke;
I run to grasp divining signs
To satisfy the hoax.
The yellow jester does not play
But gentle pulls the strings
And smiles as the puppets dance
In the court of the crimson king.*
This seems like the right place to mention the Bonzo Dog Band:
*Weeeeeell
Lookin’ like a muscle man
You crawled out from the swamp
Slimy, wild, you honey child
Give me your hump
You done my brain in
WHHAAHHH!
You done my brain in
Right in
And I just can’t handle it
Wooo!
You done my brain in!
*
from “You Done My Brain In”.
It should also be acknowledged that the Bonzos are almost certainly the only band to have used the word auto-da-fe in a love song.
Isn’t this the one with waht sounds like
“…wrapped up like a douche and a roller in the night”
and
“…and little early twirlie gave my anus curly-wirrly and asked me if I needed as ride…”
