I actually listened to the lyrics of Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” recently. The point of the song, such as it is, is that his lover’s been going out dancing at night without him and he wants to be awakened to go out and dance too.
Until the final verse, when he suggests that instead of going out, they stay home in bed. And I thought, well, that other person wanted to go dancing, so as soon as you roll over and start snoring, Mister, they’ll be up and off just like every other night without bothering to wake you since you didn’t really want to go-go after all.
It’s a British thing–houses are “in” the street, not “on” the street. (Although I suspect Madness is playing with the difference between American and UK terms to suggest the idea of the old home planted smack in the middle of the road.)
If Scripture / hymns / Prayer Book content can be counted as “lyrics”: for a very long time, kids have been having these kind of problems with stuff generally in the “religion department”.
I – as a bright, pedantic, literal-minded and no doubt very annoying child – quarrelled strongly with Psalm 107 verse 23, “They that go down to the sea in ships…” As I saw the issue: to get to the seashore, you have to travel on land – which obviously, a ship cannot do; so how in the name of goodness, can people “go down to the sea in ships”?
It struck me as nonsensical; I was too young to “get” either the business of grey areas in this line – estuaries, creeks, etc., down which you can sail your ship to get onto the open sea; or the whole “poetic / figures of speech” thing, by which artists-with-words may be granted indulgence if it doesn’t totally make sense, but sounds good.
Is it possible the statement’s trying to convey that it’s Olympus, not Killmanjaro, rising above the Serengetti? The message does seem a little muddled.
Sweet’s “Fox on the Run”
“I don’t wanna know your name
'Cause you don’t look the same
The way you did before
Okay, you think you got a pretty face
But the rest of you is out of place
You looked alright before”
So - because she had the nerve to change her looks, her name is now mud?
And that her ostensibly pretty face is somehow not in accord with the rest of her?
Not to mention - no longer looking any good?
And the final line of the chorus after he lays out all the weapons and trains he’d eat for her is, “But you won’t do the same,” delivered as though this is some tragic truth. It should be, “But unlike me you’re sane.”
I got a 69 Chevy with a 396
Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor
General car ignorance. Fuelie heads are for small block Chevies. They won’t fit.
There’s no quick lyric to quote, but I always get annoyed at Tangled Up In Blue. it seems like the perspective and timeline shift all over the place, and not in a good poetic way, but in a “I forgot what I was singing about” way.
And The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia really conveys the Southern Gothic feel, but it makes no damn sense!
This is the type of song that’s all about the hook, and as long as the hook is ok, I don’t really give a shit about anything else. The verses are just filler. When the group of stoner kids cruising down the street in the big muscle car all shout out “FOX ON THE RUN” together, the song has served its purpose.
It’s when the verses of a song are extremely wordy, trying to be meaningful, but failing, that I actively consider them to be shitty lyrics. And if the song doesn’t have a good hook to make up for it, then I consider it to be a shitty song.
But I do, nonetheless. Especially in church, where I “fix” them… if the previous line ended with prove, and the last line ends with love? Then no problem, I’ll just sing LOOVE.
And since I’m usually processing next to the senior pastor, I get to amuse her, too.
While I actually love that song, yeah, there’s a lot wrong with it. I once heard an interesting discarded take in which Dylan sings the entire song in third person instead of first. I think in the take that made it to “Blood on the Tracks,” he forgot which perspective he was singing from a couple times.
What I dislike is when the last word of a verse is meant to be sung as a melisma, and the last word for a particular verse is multiple syllables, as opposed to the other verses that end in single syllables, and the instructions have you sing the multisyllabic word as a contraction, when you could just as easily change syllables halfway through the notes. For instance if it ended with “strongest” the instructions would have you sing “strooooOOOOoooooOOOOooooooOOOOOng’st” rather than “strooooooOOOOOoooongEEEEeeeEEEst”.
A 396 most likely IS a small block–you can bore out a Chevy small block to a 427 if you like. There’s even a small block 454 crate engine you can still get.
Big block Chevy engines were only introduced in '65, so a '69 was way more likely to have a small block engine than a big block, unless it was a Corvette, which debuted the big block 396 in '65. Might have had one in a Chevelle or a Camaro but in a song it’s more likely the actual model would be named if it was one of those rather than just being called a “Chevy.”
I would like to complain (at) (to) (about) “Angie Baby” and “Jackie Blue” if I knew what hell they were about, especially the former.
Sounding almost like a Python letter. (Dear Sirs…) (Or the ole “I’d like to complain” “You want to complain! Look at these shoes. I’ve only had them three weeks and the heels are worn right through”)
