Even better is the wordsmithing just before that line:
"She keeps her Moet & Chandon in her pretty cabinet;
Well, verbenabeast and Jonathan Chance have already started the Rush quotes, but I’ll take a different one:
“You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill.
I will choose a path that’s clear–I will choose free will.”
(Rush, Free Will)
And from a Faire song I love, about a selkie trapped on land:
“Her brown eyes reflect all the dance of the sea,
But her tears have a salt all their own…”
–Lady Amber (Linda King) The Selkie
It gives me the shivers–exile and alienation in two poignant lines. I need to track Linda down to hear it live again.
Funny, but one of my favorite lines comes right afterwards:
“I will turn your face to alabaster
When you find your servant is your master.
You’ll be wrapped around my finger.”
It is as much the attitude as it is the line.
But I really like clever, even profound, lines in not so profound songs.
Dylan was trying too hard to be profound.
I like mine in Robert Palmer’s Simply Irresistable.
The line “She’s so fine, there’s no telling where the money went!” really is a great line. And in such an unexpected song.
(Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post contributed to this post.)
From Deep Purple’s “Hush”:
“She’s got lovin’ like quicksand
Only took one touch of her hand.”
“Summer’s going fast
Nights growing colder
Children growning up
Old friends growing older”
Rush, Time Stand Still.
Some good breakup lines:
“Or the lip print on a half-filled cup of coffee/ that you bought and didn’t drink/ At least you thought you wanted it/ that’s so much more than I can say for me”
- Elvis Costello, “Good Year for the Roses”
“And the license said you had to stick around/ until I was dead/ But if you’re tired of looking at my face/ I guess I already am”
- Liz Phair, “Divorce Song”
“Without you, my life has become/ A hangover without at end/ A movie made for TV/ Bad dialogue, bad acting, and no interest/ Too long with no story and no sex”
- Pulp, “TV Movie”
You can’t run a country by a book of religion
Not by a heap or a lump or a smidgen
Of foolish rules of ancient date
Designed to make you all feel great
While you fold, spindle, and mutilate
Those unbelievers from a neighboring state.
–Frank Zappa, Dumb All Over
How’d that extra word get in there? It should have been “A hangover without end.” Sorry, Jarvis.
“We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue.”
Eloquent summary of relationships.
Soul Coughing lyrics are more sound-worthy than meaningful, but there are tons of great ones all the same:
“I will lash out dancing like a madman when you’re gone” – Mr. Bitterness
“I got a feeling everybody knows, I’m gonna slip into the field like Han Solo” – Rolling
“Born to be a god among salesmen, working the skinny tie” – Blue-eyed Devil
“Midlevel manager says he heard about some mulatto girl shot him in the mouth and left him in the hotel near the midsouth offices” – Collapse
But one of my favorite lines from any song is from Van Morrison’s Sweet Thing:
“And I will raise my hand into the nighttime sky/and count the stars that’s shinin’ in your eye.”
just because it’s sappy.
Dean Friedman’s 1977 bubblegum hit Ariel:
That’s just plain good fun!
Time for some Warren Zevon!
And if California slides into the ocean,
Like the mystics and statistics say it will,
I predict this motel will be standing,
Until I pay my bill.
Don’t the sun look angry through the trees?
Don’t the trees look like crucified thieves?
Don’t you feel like desperadoes under the eaves?
Heaven help the one who leaves.
*
- Desperadoes Under the Eaves
Time marches on
Time stands still
Time on my hands
Time to kill.
Blood on my hands
And my hands in the till
Down at the Seven Eleven
Gentle rain falls on me
And all life folds back into the sea
We contemplate eternity
Beneath the vast indifference of heaven.
*
- The Vast Indifference of Heaven
I’ve been lying
On a bed of coals
I’ve been crying
Out of control
I roll and I tumble
Every time I come down
I’m too old to die young,
And too young to die now.
*
- Bed of Coals
I went home with a waitress,
The way I always do.
How was I to know,
She was with the Russians too?
I was gambling in Havana,
I took a little risk,
Send lawyers, guns and money,
Dad get me out of this!
An innocent bystander,
Somehow I got stuck,
Between a rock and a hard place,
And I’m down my luck.
And I’m hiding in Honduras,
I’m a desperate man,
Send lawyers, guns and money,
The shit has hit the fan.
*
- Lawyers, Guns and Money
Did you light the candle?
Did you put on “A Kind of Blue”?
Did you use that Ivy League voodoo on him too?
He thinks he’ll be all right,
But he doesn’t know for sure,
Like every other unindicted co-conspirator.
Mata Hari had a house in France,
Where she worked on all her secret plans,
Men were falling for her sight unseen…
She was a genius.
*
-Genius
How are you going to make your way in the world woman,
When you weren’t cut out for working?
When your fingers are slender and frail?
How’re you going to get around,
In this sleazy bedroom town,
If you don’t put yourself up for sale?
Where will you go,
with your scarves and your miracles,
Who’s going to know who you are?
Drugs and wine and flattering light,
You must try again till you get it right,
Baby you’ll end up with someone different every night.
All these people,
With no homes to go home to,
They’d all like to spend their nights with you,
Baby I would too.
But tell me how you’re going to make your way in the world,
When you weren’t cut out for working,
And you just can’t concentrate.
And you always show up late.
You said you were an actress,
and I believed you were
So I drank up all the money,
With these phonies in this Hollywood bar…
*
- The French Inhaler
Well I’m sitting here, playing solitaire,
With my pearl handled deck.
The country won’t give me no more methodone,
And they cut off your welfare cheque.
Carmelita, hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town.
Well I pawned my Smith Corona,
And I went to meet my man,
He hangs out down on Alvorado Street,
By the Pioneer chicken stand.
Carmelita, hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town.
*
- **Carmelita**Fleetwood Mac has some of my favs:
She is like a cat in the dark and then she is the darkness…
But time makes you bolder, even children get older, I’m getting older too…
From the Grateful Dead…
She’s a summer love for spring, fall and winter.
She can make happy any man alive.
And it’s just a box of rain, or a ribbon for your hair;
Such a long long time to be gone, and a short time to be there
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?
From The Pretenders…
Don’t harass me, can’t you tell
I’m going home, I’m tired as hell
I’m not the cat I used to be
I got a kid, I’m thirty- three, Baby!
(I used to sing this an awful lot two years ago)
Got in the house like a pigeon from hell,
Threw sand in our eyes and descended like flies.
I’ve always liked Robert Plant’s imagery:
"Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin’ to find a woman who’s never, never, never been born.
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams,
Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems. "
~ Going to California
“There’s an angel on my shoulder, In my hand a sword of gold
Let me wander in your garden. And the seeds of love I’ll sow.”
~ Houses of the Holy
“Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high in June, when movin’ through Kashmir.”
~ Kashmir
And one of my all-time favorite turns of phrase, from “Night Flight”:
“So I said goodbye to all my friends
And packed my hopes inside a matchbox
'Cause I know it’s time to fly.”
“Packed my hopes inside a matchbox”! Just a wonderfully eloquent statement, that.
And not forgeting:
Dancing Days.
Sounds of Silence has already been mentioned a couple of times. I just wanted to add that it was one of the first records I ever owned. I had it on 45 rpm vinyl, and played the hell out of it.
There are some songs that unerringly evoke a scene in my head. Steve Goodman’s The City of New Orleans is one:
Dealin’ card games with the old men in the club car.
Penny a point ain’t no one keepin’ score.
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin’ ‘neath the floor.
And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father’s magic carpets made of steel.
Mothers with their babes asleep,
Are rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.
Another is Kris Kritofferson’s Me and Bobby McGee as sung by Janice Joplin:
Busted flat in Baton Rouge
Waitin’ for a train
When I was feelin’ near as faded as my jeans
Bobby thumbed a diesel down
Just before it rained
That rode us all away to New Orleans
I pulled my harpoon out of my dirty red bandana
I was playin’ soft while Bobby sang the blues
Windshield wipers slappin’ time
I was holding Bobby’s hand in mine
We sang every song that driver knew
Every time I hear those, I’m transported to the scene. I can feel the train moving, see the porters, hear the rain and windshield wipers. Amazing.
Some lyrics are fun because they state something is terms so plain that when you hear them you just want to say YEAH! From Jesus Christ Superstar
Why waste your breath moaning at the crowd?
Nothing can be done to stop the shouting.
If every tongue were still the noise would still continue.
The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing!
And like so many others that have been posted some lyrics just say something so well, you can’t imagine it could be said better. Back to Janis Joplin singing about lost love in Me and Bobby McGee:
I’d trade all of my tomorrows
For one single yesterday
To be holdin’ Bobby’s body next to mine
In country music there should be no dispute:
Well, I was drunk the day my Mom got out of prison,
And I went to pick her up in the rain,
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck,
She got runned over by a damned old train.
David Allen Coe
I like Steve Goodman’s version better (he and John Prine wrote it).
<spoken>
John Prine and I were sitting around one day, and decided to write a country song that had everything that had ever been in a country song. That way, when we’re playing in a club and someone asks for a country song, we can play this one song and we’re done. So here’s the song…
</spoken>
Well it was all that I could do, to keep from cryin’,
Sometimes it seems so useless to remain
You’re always tryin’ to change me,
And that is why I’ll always stay the same.
And I’m gonna hang around as long as you will let me,
And I wouldn’t mind standin’ in the rain,
You don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin,
But you never even called me by my name…
*
Then some more of the song, then:
*
<spoken>
Well, we left out a lot of stuff. We left out mother, farms, trucks, trains, prison, big holidays like Christmas, getting drunk (thanks to Coe), and dead dogs like old Shep. And with all due respect, you can’t have a good country song without mother, farms, prison, trucks, trains, big holidays, getting drunk, and dead dogs. So here’s the last verse:
</spoken>
Well since the dog got drunk and died,
And mama went to prison,
Nothing 'round this farm has been the same,
God, you know, when Mom broke out last Christmas,
She drove a getaway laundry truck right into a train.
<chorus>
</i>
Me and Bobby McGee is course Kristopherson. I love the chorus:
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
Nothing ain’t worth nothing, but it’s free.
Feeling good was easy lord when she sang the blues
And bubby that was good enough for me, good enough for me and Bobby McGee.
When You Want to Fall in Love
When you want to fall in love, you may find less than love
But that’s a chance worth taking
—Don Black
I Know I Know Him Well
Wasn’t he good (oh, so good), isn’t he fine (oh, so fine)
Isn’t it madness he can’t be mine.
Didn’t I know how it could go, if I knew from the start
Why am I falling apart?
–Tim Rice, who says it’s the best he wrote.
My favorite Zevon line (and Lord knows, there are a host of Zevon lines I love!) comes from Searching for a Heart:
“They say love conquers all
You can’t start it like a car
You can’t stop it with a gun”
Damn, he was good!!