Memorable lyrics

Cafe Society
1

I have little doubt this subject’s been done before, but I’m sure there are many newly discovered gems that we want to share.
For some reason I’ve never bothered to look at the lyrics for one of my favorite Pearl Jam songs “Black” (and you can’t really listen for grunge lyrics either) and found that it was a break up song. And at the climax of the song is the verse

“I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life,
I know you’ll be a sun in somebody else’s sky, but why
Why, why can’t it be, why can’t it be mine”

sung with convincing anguish by Eddie Vedder.
So anyone else want to share some memorable lyrics they’ve discovered?

2

Black happens to be my favorite song precisely because of the lyrics.

Everlong by the Foofighters, This Velvet Glove by the Chili Peppers, 10 Years Gone by Zeppelin and The Only Answer by Mike Doughty are some of my other favorite love and/or break-up songs.

3

Hardly undiscovered, but for me, Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man has some unforgettable lines tucked away in it:

4

I, too, love Pearl Jam’s Black …I like the line: All I ever taught her was everything

Anyway, some of mine:

Ah, but it’s hard to live by the rules;
I never could, still never do

Talk of the Town , The Pretenders–another wistful song, full of regret.

All my possessions are causing me suspicion, but there’s no proof

Don’t Dream It’s Over --Crowded House or Sixpence None the Richer

5

Beth Nielsen Chapman did this album Sand and Water, which I picked up and listened to now and then because I liked her voice and I liked her songwriting.

Then one day I actually heard it and it tore me apart. I read up on it and found out that her husband had died young (of cancer, I think?) and she wrote some of these songs while he was dying and some after he had died.

It’s not just the lyrics though, it’s combination of that + how she sings them. She convey great intensity of feeling.

6

For my money, Modest Mouse writes the best lyrics I’ve ever heard. Consinstantly too. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but I think the beginning of the song Stryofoam Boots wins for me:

Strofoam cement shoes. I love it. Rest of lyrics here. No band has lyrics that make me think more than MM.

7

I just remembered another good one, Ennio Morricone’s “A Gringo Like Me”. When I first heard this song, I was convinced it was a tongue-cheek parody, not too familiar with the grandiose spaghetti western tradition. But the fact that this song is genuine makes all the better . Well anyway, the opening goes

“Keep your hand on your gun
Don’t you trust anyone
There’s just one kind of man
That you can trust
That’s a dead man…
Or a gringo like me.”

Classic.

8

I like it when a writer can sum something up in a couple of lines as when Shane McGowan describes London:

“Your architects were madmen
Your builders sane but drunk”

(‘London You’re a Lady’)

Or when Richard Thompson has a dying biker say:

“I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home”

('1952 Vincent Black Lightning")

9

Here are my two songs:

Kansas - Dust in the Wind
And all your money won’t another minute buy

Rush - Limelight
All the world’s indeed a stage and we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another’s audience
Outside the guilded cage