That’s not complimentary to the US in general: "I don’t need your war machines, I don’t need your ghetto scenes…
Pink Floyd’s “Time” is a seriously depressing song wrapped in snappy instrumentation. I really like the instrumentation. Pink Floyd is always depressing, though.
Why has no one mentioned Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven?” It’s somewhat cliched, but the constant references to death are weird.
No, it’s not just you. There is I Remember Larry on the album Bad Hair Day, where Al sings about getting back at an obnoxious practical joker thus;
Say, do you remember
when I broke in Larry’s house
Late at night and tied his mouth with a rag
Then I dragged him by his ankles
to the middle of the forests
And stuffed him in a big plastic bag
If the cops ever find him,
who knows what they say
But I’m sure if old Lar’ were still with us today
He would have to agree with me
it was a pretty good gag
At the end of the same album is The Night Santa Went Crazy, in which Kris Kringle snaps and massacres all of his elves and barbecues the reindeer.
As for the Vanna White song, Al does a repeat with Everything You Know Is Wrong, which is just a nonsensical string of happenings that are hilariously absurd, in which he name-drops celebs and and pop culture references seeingly randomly.
IMO, the violence is just juvenile black humour. Think about context; no one is going to take Weird Al seriously. Especially not when the offending ditty is squeezed in between a clever parody of Nelly’s last single and a Radiohead song done polka-style.
I always did too. A friend of mine hated that song because of the “so help me Jesus” line - I guess he interpreted it as religious. One can only assume he wasn’t listening very carefully to any of the OTHER lyrics. When I told him my interpretation was that it was a vampire (“with dark hair/and soft skin/forever”) he said, “Oh, so the ‘so help me Jesus’ is IRONIC!” And then he decided he loved the song.
Dork.
Glad someone other than me thought it was vampires.
I hate this song. I hate it with the fire of the Cracks of Doom. It gave me such a rollicking case of the relationship insecurities when it was popular that I still turn it off when it comes on. I HATE IT.
Father Figure by George Michael. It’s a sensual song spoken by a man who wants to be a paternal figure to his child like lover:
“That’s all I wanted/To be warm and naked by your side.”
“That’s all I wanted/To see my baby’s blue eyes shine.”
“I will be your father figure/put your tiny hand in mine.”
“Greet me with the eyes of a child.”
Well, blech.
If I Could Fly is also a bit yucky because a grown man is lusting over a teenager.
“She’s just 16 years old/Leave her alone they say.”
Listen to “them” and be glad you can’t fly lest some father cut off your…wings.
Then we have Sunny Came Home, a catchy little tune that talks about a disillusioned woman burning the house down, presumably around her husband:
"Get the kids and bring a sweater
Dry is good and wind is better
Count the years you’ve always known it
Strike a match, go on and do it. "
Not to worry, I mentioned Don’t Fear the Reaper way back on page two! Post #70 in this thread.
Thanks for the heads up on this guy! I ordered “Guitars, Guns & Groceries” last week and just got it in the mail tonight. I’m having my first listening to it now. A lot of music I have to listen to a couple of times to like, but this one is good on the first play. Haven’t listened to Loudon Wainwright III in years, but Lawrence’s lyrics remind me of Wainwright.
A couple of songs that haven’t been mentioned:
The Night has a Thousand Eyes by Bobby Vee:
*They say that you’re a runaround lover
Though you say it isn’t so
But if you put me down for another
I’ll know, believe me, I’ll know
CHORUS
'cause the night has a thousand eyes
And a thousand eyes can’t help but see if you are true to me
So remember when you tell those little white lies
That the night has a thousand eyes*
And then there’s Delilah by Tom Jones:
I could see that girl was no good for me
But I was lost like a slave that no man could free
At break of day when that man drove away, I was waiting
I cross the street to her house and she opened the door
She stood there laughing
I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more.
The message there clearly being - don’t piss Tom off or you’ll be sorry.
I always thought that Maxwell’s hammer was some sort of drug reference. I guess as a kid I just figured that if I didn’t know what Beatles lyrics meant they must be some sort of drug reference. Could be, maybe?
Norwegian Wood as well - Basically he goes to a girls house and she talks all night instead of having sex with him – so he burns her house down the next day. All you need is love.
After their early hit Psycho Killer, about a psychopathic murderer, I guess it should come as no surprise that the Talking Heads wrote about a baby torturer later on in Stay Up Late. This is the chorus:
Here we go (all night long)
Sister, sister (all night long)
In the playpen…woo…(all night long)
Little baby goes, ha! (all night long)
I know you want to leave me…
Why don’t we pretend.
There you go, little man.
Cute, cute, why not?
Late at night, wake him up.
Here we go (all night long)
Sister, sister…woo…
(with the television on)
Little baby goes…woo! (all night long)
Hey, hey, baby! (all night long)
And he looks so cute (all night long)
In his little red suit (all night long)
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned *Art Lover * by the Kinks:
[snip]
**Once…again.
DO NOT post complete song lyrics.
– Uke, Increasingly Cranky Moderator**
That you automatically turned “So I lit a fire” into “So I burned down her house” worries me in the extreme.
BTW, guys, can we actually listen to the mods for once and stop posting complete lyrics?
Has anyone mentioned Supertramp’s Casual Conversations?
Or how about James Taylor’s Mexico “Baby’s hungry and the money’s all gone.”
Lou Reed’s “Pefect Day” was covered with various artists (and Reed) for a BBC Children’s charity record a few years back, it’s not really explicit from the lyrics but there were reports that the “inspriration” for the song was Reed’ s fondness for Herion at the time, which was kinda ironic.
The Beatles “Sexy Sadie” is about the Majharishi’s less than spirtual attraction to Mia Farrow, apparently one of the main reasons they fell out with him.
InkSpots’ - “Poison Ivy” is about venereal disease.
“You’re gonna need an ocean of calamine lotion”
Purd Worfect stole mine; it’s Allison by Elvis Costello.
I’d actually never heard (or heard of the song) until a male friend developed a huge crush on me and told me that the song made him think of me (Allison and my first name, Emily, have 3 syllables, he said). I googled the lyrics and it freaked me out: I had a boyfriend (still do) and he knew it, and basically he was putting himself into the position of the narrator in the song:
*Alison, I know this world is killing you
Oh, Alison, my aim is true *
Basically, the lyrics say, if I can’t have you, nobody should be able to.
I was no longer friends with the guy after this incident.
A few years ago there was a cheezy commercial for orange juice featuring kids on the farm, grandpa plowing the fields and the narrator talking about how great things were back in the good old days, like their orange juice. Just as the commercial fades out, the quiet guitar track swells and a sound-alike singer pipes up:
“Those were the good old days,
those were the good old days,
The years go by and the memory fades,
but those were the good old days…”
The chorus to Weird Al’s ode to torturing rats and leaving Sweet Michelle stranded in the desert shaved bald and tied to a chair.
Creepy. I laughed my ass off the first time I saw the commercial.
KISS’s “Nothin’ to Lose” (or was it “Nuthin’ to Lose”?). Gene is telling his lover she has nothing to lose by having anal sex with him:
*I thought about the back door
I didn’t know what to say
…
Now once I had a baby
We tried every way
She didn’t want to do it
But she did anyway
My baby please don’t refuse
You know you got nothin’s to lose…*
And has anybody heard “Rollerskating Child” by the Beach Boys? I think this on their Love You album.
Well she’s a rollerskating child with a ribbon in her hair
My heart gets to beating when she’s there
…
And we’ll make sweet love until the sun goes down
We’ll even do more when your momma’s not around
Well oh my oh gosh oh gee
She really sets chills inside of me…
Making love to a child, followed by “more” when momma’s not around?? I wonder what “more” he had in mind.
Another dodgy Beach Boys track is “Hey Little Tomboy”. Again, its Mike Love singing. He’s on about helping a little tomboy “turning right into a girl”, including teaching her to kiss and putting make-up on her. I’ve heard an earlier version of this song (before it got watered down at the insistence of record company execs) which has an instrumental break where all of the band members are talking about the things they’re doing to the girl. Dennis Wilson can be heard saying “OK, now lets shave your legs for the very first time…”.
Hope this hasn’t been posted already (hey, it’s a long thread): Steely Dan’s Deacon Blue. It’s a nice, easy-going tune but the lyrics are:
“Drink scotch whiskey all night long
and die behind the wheel.
They gotta name for the winners in the world
I wanna name when I lose.
They call our family the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blue.”
I think it might be a bit less disturbing when you realize it’s “they call Alabama the Crimson Tide.”