This thread was inspired by the recent thread pitting those of us who love songs for their lyrics (hereafter known as “the Rockingest Rockinators north, south, east, and west of Pecos”) against those don’t listen to a single word the singer utters (hereafter known as “Yes, I think “Every Step You Take” is an appropriate wedding song, why are you looking at me so strange?”)
Rules are simple. Name songs whose lyrics strike you as heart-thumpingly lovely, and tell us why if you feel moved to type that much. To raise the bar a bit, let’s leave out love songs if we can. As per board rules, let’s try to respect copyright; keep your quotes brief, because, after all, that is why Eresh-kigal gave us links.
I’ll start with a Paula Cole song, “Bethlehem,” which starts like this:
Words cannot express how lovely this song is to me. The careful choosing of details, the unobtrusive approximate rhyme, the mingled despair and hope: it perfectly captures the experience of growing up in a place you hate. It’s even more beautiful when you hear her sing it–but I’m using it because it works as poem too.
“Scarborough Fair/Canticle,” by Simon and Garfunkel
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt (on the side of a hill in the deep forest green)
Parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme (tracing a sparrow on snow-crested ground)
Without no seams nor needlework (blankets and bedclothes a child of the mountains)
Then she’ll be a true love of mine (sleeps unaware of the clarion call)
Mary you’re covered in roses, you’re covered in ruin
You’re covered in secrets
You’re covered in treetops, covered in birds
Who can sing a million songs without any words
That would be my choice as well. Given the lyrics, it’s hard to say that’s not a love song, but it’s an entirely different kind of love. The love of artistic talent and expression coupled with empathy for the emotional pain that Van Gogh suffered from.
I will add Carole King, Tapestry:
My life has been a tapestry
Of rich and royal hue;
An everlasting vision
Of the ever-changing view;
A wond’rous woven magic
In bits of blue and gold;
A tapestry to feel and see;
Impossible to hold.
From Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Come On, Come On album:
It Was Only a Dream
We lived on a street where the tall elm shade
Was as green as the grass and as cool as a blade
That you held in your teeth as we lay on our backs
Staring up at the blue and the blue stared back
[ LYRICS DELETED ]
(this is a song about two kids, one girl, one boy–although it’s ambiguous- growing up and then one moves away. The description is lyrical [no pun intended!])
If those are the criteria then I can cite the Tragically Hip’s “Everytime You Go,” which is simply a description of a marriage of two poor people. The woman is described thus:
I’ve never heard a simpler, better description of how it is when a woman just blows you away.
I should have added “songs about the speaker’s current snogging partner in praise of her or his general or specific rockingness,” but I was distracted by my wife, who does, in fact, rock.
Oh all the money that e’er I had, I spent it in good company
And all the harm that e’er I’ve done, alas, it was to none but me
And all I’ve done for want of wit to memory now I can’t recall
So fill to me the parting glass, good night and joy be with you all
Sometimes there’s beauty in simplicity.
Submitted for your perusal—Waterloo Sunset. However, it’s hard to say whether the lyrics in and of themselves are exceptionally beautiful, or whether the song as a whole is exceptionally beautiful and that biases my view of the lyrics.
Wow. That really opens things up then. Here’s a song that, as a mother with a son, has lyrics that were meaningful to me. I used to sing it to my son often:
Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son
And listen closely to what I say.
And if you do this
It will help you some sunny day.
[ LYRICS DELETED ] Simple Man, Lynyrd Skynyrd
And I’m a Neil Young fan, as well:
Well, I dreamed I saw the knights
In armor coming,
Saying something about a queen.
[ LYRICS DELETED ]
This reminded me of MCC’s “This Shirt.” I always thought the lyrics were rather nice. It begins:
This shirt is old and faded
All the color’s washed away
I’ve had it now for more damn years
Than I can count anyway…
She then goes on to sing about all the things both she and the shirt have been through: the shirt has been a pillow and blanket, a cat gave birth on it, her boyfriend ripped the sleeve, it was lost in a bus station locker for a few days, and so on. As you listen to the shirt’s story that comes out in her her carefully-crafted words, you begin to agree with her that the shirt is more than “a faded piece of cotton,” as she puts it; it is a storehouse of irreplaceable memories from years of her life.
I’m rather fond of **Tasmin Archer’s ** *Sleeping Satellite * (my location pun may give that much away). Verses like this one:
and when we shoot for the stars
what a giant step
have we got what it takes
to carry the weight of this concept
or pass it by like a shot in the dark
miss the mark with a sense of adventure
The whole idea behind the song fills me with a weird mix of hope, frustration, confidence, optimism, pessimism, and other feelings I can’t put my finger on, all conflicting. But I love it. There’s an eerie beauty to the whole thing, like the moon itself.
“I faced death. I went in with my arms swinging. But I heard my own breath and had to face that I’m still living. I’m still flesh. I hold on to awful feelings. I’m not dead… my chest still draws breath. I hold it. I’m buoyant. There’s no end.”