“Industrial Disease” by Dire Straights
“Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong”
In Love Is the Seventh Wave, Sting starts repeating lyrics from Every Breath You Take, but finishes off with: “Every cake you bake, every leg you break”.
I loved the original line in Disney’s Aladdin before the PC Police made them change it: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face / It’s barbaric, but, hey, it’s home!”
And, from Existential Blues: “Some girl with psychic powers, she said ‘T-Bone, what’s your sign?’ / I blinked and answered ‘Neon’, I thought I’d blow her mind.”
Two by Dylan:
From Talking WWIII Blues
- I lit a cigarette on a parking meter.
Just a normal day
And Bob Dylan’s some number dream (the one from Bringing it all Back Home)
- who directed me down to the Bowery slums
where people carried signs around
saying Ban the Bums *
And Tom Lehrer, on that wonderful protest song Smut (he’s for it.)
When correctly viewed
Anything is lewd
I can tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man
*
And finally, though this is not really a line, at the end of Amarok, by Mike Oldfield (about 58 minutes into track one) he has a Margaret Thatcher imitator talking about endings. She finally does a clunky jig, followed by the sound of glass breaking as she dances right out a window.
Reading this thread made me pull out some old Zappa albums. Joe’s Garage, a triple album, tells the story of Joe and his quest to understand his sexual identity, amongst other things.
In the song A Token Of My Extreme, Joe goes to visit L. Ron Hoover at The First Church of Appliantology. L.Ron informs Joe that he is a latent appliance fetishist. Joe protests that he has never been attracted to “a toaster or a color tv”, which leads to this exchange:
Joe: Are you telling me
I should come out
Of the closet now
Mr. ron?
L.Ron: No, my son!
You must go into
The closet
That’s where they all live
So if you want an
Appliance to love you
You have to go in there
And get you one
A latent appliance fetishist…it still kills me.
Actually, sung by Harris, but written by Jimmy Webb.
From Big Bottom by Spinal Tap:
My baby fits me like a flesh tuxedo
I like to sink her with my pink torpedo
From Mable by Goldfinger:
*Then on Tuesday mable left me
I heard she’s going out with Charlie
She saw his package from what i know she said:
“that looks like a tube of cookie dough!” *
Penis humor. Good stuff.
Sorry, another Barenaked Ladies song again…Grade 9–
“…and I went to the high school dance/My dad said I had to be home by eleven/Oh man, I’m gonna miss Stairway to Heaven!”
I laughed out loud when I heard that line. It’s so typical of my high school dances in the 80s when Stairway was always the last song (my first slow dance, BTW 
). But, pretty much, the whole song is hilarious.
Now, there’s only two things in life
But I forget what they are…
- John HiattSheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do”:
“He was high on intellectualism/
I’ve never been there, but the brochure looks nice.”
Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” Live Aloha from Hawaii:
Instead of singing, “Because I love you too much, baby.”
He sings, “I hope this suit don’t tear up, baby.”
KISS’s “Beth”
“Beth, I know you’re lonely,
And I hope you’ll be allright.
Cause me and the boys
Will be playing all night.”
This is funny on two levels. First, the melody is so lovely and on its face seems to be a love song to Beth…but really it’s more of a “fuck you” song. He certainly makes it clear where his priorities are, doesn’t he?
The other reason I find it funny is because it’s KISS, for pete’s sake. One wonders what it is they’re doing all night because clearly it isn’t writing inspired lyrics. Maybe they’re exchanging makeup tips?
Well, the humor in this line is about 80% delivery, so do yourself a favor sometime and listen to the whole song (which completely rocks, by the way: it’s the song playing in the background in “Fight Club” when they enter the club and head downstairs)
Tom Waits, “Goin’ Out West”
*I don’t need no make up
I got real scars
I got hair on my chest
** I look good without a shirt ** *
Really, ya gotta hear it to appreciate it…