Strange how my heart beats
To find myself upon your shore.
Strange how I still feel
My loss of comfort gone before.
Garbage - Queer
Hey boy, take a look at me
Let me dirty up your mind
I’ll strip away your hard veneer
And see what I can find Garbage - Vow
I can’t use what I can’t abuse
And I can’t stop when it comes to you
You burned me out but I’m back at your door
Like Joan of Arc coming back for more
Yet more Garbage - Dumb
I never claimed to be your saviour
I said I had a dirty mouth
Stop analysing my behaviour
If you’re too dumb to work it out
I’ve got to keep myself together
You know I hate to disappoint
A masochistic lamb to slaughter
Maybe you miss the point
But wait, there’s more Garbage - You Look So Fine
You look so fine
I want to break your heart
And give you mine
You’re taking me over
I know…you’re sick of it…Garbage - Drive You Home
It’s funny how
Even now
You still support me after all of the things that I’ve done
You’re so good to me
Waiting patiently
And isn’t it sad that you still have to ask if I care
I guess I better stop here…for now.
I learned the truth at seventeen
that love was meant for beauty queens
and high school girls with clear skinned smiles
who married young and then retired
The Valentines I never knew
the Friday nights charades of youth
were spent on one more beautiful
at seventeen I learned the truth
And Carly Simon’s portrait of suburban disfunction:
That’s the Way I Always Heard It Should Be
My father sits at night with no lights on;
His cigarette glows in the dark.
The living room is still;
I walk by, no remark.
I tiptoe past the master bedroom where
My mother reads her magazines.
I hear her call sweet dreams,
But I forget how to dream.
Yeah, I’m old.
Yeah, right? Trent Reznor certainly has a way of doing that. Hurt is also that way (as much because of the raw, spare way in which it’s sung as of what’s being sung):
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real Tori Amos has some kickass opening lines too:
“Leather”
look i’m standing naked before you
don’t you want more than my sex
i can scream as loud as your last one
but i can’t claim innocence
“Waitress”
so i want to kill this waitress
she’s worked here a year longer than i
if i did it fast you know that’s an act of kindness
“Muhammad My Friend”
muhammad my friend
it’s time to tell the world
we both know it was a girl back in bethlehem
And one of many that I really like from Radiohead:
“Pyramid Song”
i jumped in the river and what did I see?
black-eyed angels swimming with me
a moon full of stars and astral cars
and all the figures i used to see
“Early one mornin’ while makin’ the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down
I went right home and I went to bed
I stuck that lovin’ 44 beneath my head”
– Johnny Cash - Cocaine Blues
"Here in northeast Ohio
Back in 1803
James and Dan Heaton
Found the ore that was linin’ Yellow Creek
They built a blast furnace
Here along the shore
And they made the cannonballs
That helped the Union win the war
Here in Youngstown…"
– Bruce Springsteen - Youngstown
(Honourable mention goes to the following lines, even though they don’t open the song:
“Taconite, coke and limestone
Fed my children and made my pay
Them smokestacks reachin’ like the arm of God
Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay”
Dayum.)
“These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Some day you’ll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you’ll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms”
– Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
"She always brings me what I need
Without I beg and sweat and bleed
When we’re alone at night
Waiting for the call
She feeds my skin
Sixteen and on the run from home
Found a job in Times Square
Working Live S&M shows
Twenty-five bucks a fuck
And John’s a happy man
She wipes the filth away
And it’s back on the streets again"
– Queensrÿche - Spreading the Disease
“Love is a razor
And I walked the line on that silver blade
Slept in the dust with his daughter
Her eyes red with the slaughter of innocense”
– Iron Maiden - The Evil That Men Do
Well, I guess I could go on. But all of a sudden I feel like putting on tight leather pants and play air guitar in foggy English forrests. With abbeys in the background and stuff.
got you where i want you, motherfucker,
i got five up on your dime.
if you wanna peep on somethin’,
peep what i got stuck between your eyes.
since i don’t believe a word you say,
save it for another, baby brother, swallow, time to pay.
From Lyle Lovett’s “An Acceptable Level Of Ecstasy (The Wedding Song)”:
“The two-step it drug like a ball and chain
While the band was playing something like ‘Moon River’ or ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’”
It’s such a great setup for stuff that comes later, like:
“Nobody knew
That the flowers were furnished by the funeral parlor
And the whole thing was paid for by the funeral director
Who poisoned the saxophone section”
In a Musician interview, Lyle said that the song was inspired by a conversation he and his dad had at a cousin’s wedding…the cousin’s father owned a funeral parlor, and dad was wondering how they’d bankrolled the reception.
I’ve also always loved Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well” (with lyrics by Jane Brown Thompson):
“I get along without you very well, of course I do,
Except when soft rains fall and drip from leaves, then I recall
The thrill of being sheltered in your arms”
