The lyric “For there ain’t no one for to give you no pain,” from the song “Horse with No Name” by America. I haven’t been able to work out if someone or no one is or is not giving / about to give someone pain.
I’ve heard it was a reference to Brian Jones who had recently kicked the bucket.
Well, damn…I looked up my favorite “can’t figure 'em” lyrics to make sure I had the artist right, and found the words that I never understood.
Back in the day, it was a hit song. Lately, I hear it on the informercial “'70’s Music Explosion” with Greg Brady and somebody else. The song was evidently written by someone named Alicia Bridges…
I always heard it as:
“I love the nightlife, I love to boogie, out on the disco and owowougghrelyeahh…” which (needless to say) didn’t make any sense.
By researching this song to post to this thread, I’ve found that the true lyrics are:
This, unfortunately, doesn’t make much more sense than how I heard it. The “disco 'round”?
Greg Lake (w/Sinfield sometimes) could write some pretty nonsensical lyrics during his ELP days, but I mostly didn’t pay attention to them. It was like he just pulled random expressions out of a phrasebook that rhymed:
Maybe I’m just insufficiently sophisticated, but I do love some of his lyrics. “Lucky Man” (for example) is a brilliant and beautiful song, IMO.
[Millhous]
It started like Romeo and Juliet but then it ended in tragedy.
[/Millhous]
In the '70s Yes was famous for lyrics in which the phrases had no discernable linear meaning, and the syntax of the English language was thrown out the window to boot.
Linguists like to quote the sentence “Green ideas sleep furiously” as an example of a sentence that makes no sense, but in which the syntax is perfectly arranged. A lot of puzzling lyrics are like that. But Jon Anderson went further and deconstructed English syntax itself, so that you no longer have any idea what relation any word has to any other word. I think this takes the lyrics to a depth of obscurity most songwriters only dream of attaining.
I have a personal rule: Deduct 100 points anytime someone rhymes “love” with “above.” It’s been overdone. It was overdone before Jon Anderson was born.
That isn’t English!
He rhymed it again :smack: twice in the same song, while fracturing the syntax even further.
It’s like slips of paper were cut up with sequences of words from unrelated sentences, jumbled in a hat, and randomly pulled out while writing the song. Except that he rhymes the jumbled lines. The rhyming is the only remaining semblance of ordered language and seems oddly out of place here.
Yeah, I remember how psychedelics were everywhere in those days…
I could go on citing incoherent Yes lyrics all day, but I’ll finish with the possibly the most discombobulated English of any Yes song, “Heart of the Sunrise”
The music swells to this emotional, dramatic intensity. Musically, it’s a great song. And you listen for meaningful lyrics to go with this sweeping symphony of emotion only to hear a puzzling word salad.
Brian Jones died in July, 1969. Sympathy for the Devil was the first cut on the album “Beggar’s Banquet”, released 5 December, 1968.
Not to mention the scansion. I dont mind “temp’rance” so much, but he has “knowledge” accented on the wrong syllable. What’s the point of using nonsense lyrics when they don’t even scan?
Perhaps the idea is not to make sense of them at all. From the Wikipedia entry for “Supper’s Ready”:
So, perhaps it’s simply meant to be absurd, to be word play, without any deeper meaning.
‘=“http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_065.html”]Pompitous of love’ used to puzzle me.
Crap.
‘Pompitous of love’ used to puzzle me.
Hmmm…fair enough. Maybe they were hoping. Or expecting. Poor Mister Jones. Whereras you can’t kill Mister Richards with a stick.
Although there have been many covers of the Velvet Underground song, I’ll never understand the meaning of Sweet Jane
Sgt Schwartz
Also, I just thought of Sara Evans’ “Always be my Baby”
What did she do? Lose her virginity AT 21?, have an abortion? Freaky sex act? What could she do on a back country road that would make a religious person fear God?
Sgt Schwartz
My favorite REM song is What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? ; at least musically.
But I’ll be damned if I know what any of the lyrics mean!
“Butterfly decal, rear view mirror, dogging the scene”
“You said that irony was the shackles of youth”
“You wore a shirt of violent green”
First off, R. Kelly is an idiot. The songs don’t make sense because he’s just that idiotic. This is the man who released a series of songs titled trapped in the closet, that aren’t about being gay. The man who videotaped himself peeing on an underage girl as a practice of sexual degradation. Many of his songs are ridiculous, especially many of his love songs, which completely fail to express anything even slightly romantic.
Blackeyed Peas are equally unsuited to writing lyrics. All I need point out is that there 3 recent “hits” consist of: Let’s get retarded in here (cleaned up as let’s get is started in here for the radio version), My bump (an entire song about a girl using her, presumably impressive, ass to manipulate a guy), and don’t fuck with my heart (radio-edited to don’t funk with my heart; this is the one referenced earlier in the thread).
As for Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl, I don’t get what’s so hard to understand about this. The lyrics are a disjointed mess, but this is typical of the kind of song it’s meant to be- rapper braggadocio. When guys wolfwhistle and catcall a passing girl, this is considered giving a “holla,” and hollaback girls are the floozies who will respond to this. The song is her asserting that she’s strong, independent, no fool, and don’t mess with her (because “this my shit;” this music is her stuff --> look at how cool she is --> she’s a bad-ass). This shit’s bananas is refering to the situation of someone disrespecting her is crazy.
I can’t really explain specific lyrics, but I would like to ask if you’re aware of the song’s genesis? “What’s the frequency Kenneth?” was shouted at TV news reporter Dan Rather by one of two assailants as they beat him 1986. It’s possible that the lyrics are meant to sound like the nonsensical ravings of a madman. Or just the usual REM disestablishment wistful youth bullshit.
I’m sorry… REM writes great music, but Michael Stipe is a self-absorbed psuedo-intellectual moron. There, I said it.
- From “Hands Away”
It’s the ham part that really gets me. Was he just thinking about having lunch when he wrote that song? Paul, what happened?
That’s what puzzles me about the song “Inside of You” by Hoobastank:
So can I ask you this?
Not to be forward, miss,
But I think I’ll kill myself
If I never know…
What do I have to do
To get inside of you?
To get inside of you?
Cuz I love the way you move,
When I’m inside of you.
When I’m inside of you…
Um, what? If he’ll kill himself if he doesn’t get to sleep with her, how can he love the way… we shifted time part way through the chorus, or he means he’s imagined how it would be?
Like Billy Pilgrim… unstuck in time.