Share your favorite CRYPTIC LYRICS

Cafe Society
1

Here are the lyrics to “Jemima Surrender,” by The Band:

Jemima Surrender, I’m gonna give it to you,
Ain’t no pretender, gonna ride in my canoe.
If I were a barker in a girly show,
Tell ya what I’d do, I’d lock the door, tear my shirt and let my river flow.
Oh, oh, Sweet Jemima wont’cha come out tonight?
The ground is so warm and the moon is so bright!

Jemima Surrender, I’m gonna give it to you,
I’ll bring over my Fender
And I’ll play all night for you.
There’s a bird on my head
And his mouth won’t talk,
You know he laughs just like a goose,
But looks like a hawk
Jemima, you know what I’m try’n to say,
Meet me in front and we’ll fly away.

You can change your name
You can find a new walk
You can change a lock, its all the same
You don’t have to give out
If you’ll only give in
You can jump and shout
But can’t you see girl, that I’m bound to win

Jemima Surrender, I’m gonna give it to you,
Ain’t no pretender, gonna see my tattoo;
I hand you my rod and you hand me that line,
That’s what you do, now, we ain’t doing much fishin’
Or drinkin’ any wine.

ETC ETC

Alright, the whole song is a series of suggestive, innuendo-laden metaphors from the singer towards his girl Jemima. Except that bolded portion. What in the HELL is going on there? It has NO connection to anything else in the body of the song; it’s completely cryptic.

There’s plenty other cryptic lyrics out therebut I don’t have the patience to think of any others right now. Who else has some good ones?

2

Merl, I think you’ve violated the copyright infringement section of the SDMB charter. We can quote excerpts, but not full-length reproductions.

That said, I could pick any song by Marc Bolan (T. Rex). How 'bout The Slider?

I could never understand the wind at all
Was like a ball of love
I could never see the cosmic sea
Was like a bumblebee

And when I’m sad
I slide

I have never never kissed a car before
It’s like a door
I have always always grown my own before
All schools are strange

And when I’m sad
I slide

You want cryptic? Bolan is your guy.

3

Wasn’t a full-legnth reproduction. There’s a two-line verse after the last line of what I posted, which was not there.

Damn that song that you posted is cryptic as hell. More of the surreal-drug-inspired variety.

4

Yes - Hold On

Talk the simple smile
Such platonic eye
How they drown in incomplete capacity
Strangest of them all
When the feeling calls
How we drown in stylistic audacity
Charge the common ground
Round and round and round
We living in gravity

Shake - We shake so hard
How we laugh so loud
When we reach
We believe in eternity

I believe in eternity

I grabbed these from a website; hope they’re accurate. Anyway, it’s a complex meter at that point in the song, and I always figured they just used a bunch of relatively random words that happened to rhyme and fit the rhythm.

5

p.s. - I’m probably showing my age. :wink:

6

I’m not sure if you guys’ songs really qualify as “cryptic.” Those lyrics, especially the ‘Yes’ ones, are really more like abstract poetry.

What I mean are lyrics that feature logically-sound sentences describing illogical scenarios.

Here is an abstract, but NOT cryptic, selection from Silver Jews’ “The Wild Kindness”:

Oil paintings of x-rated picnics.
Behind the walls of medication I’m free.
Every falling leaf in a compact mirror
hits a target that we can’t see.

Grass grows in the icebox.
The year ends in the next room
It is autumn and my camouflage is dying
instead of time there will be lateness
and let forever be delayed.

See, it doesn’t mean anything anything at all, so we don’t need to struggle to imagine what they’re trying to describe because they’re not trying to describe anything. They’re just stringing together words that they think sound cool together.

Here’s a cryptic lyrical selection, from The Beatles’ “Bungalow Bil:”

Deep in the jungle where the mighty tiger rides
Bill and his elephants where taken by suprise
So captain marvel zaped him right between the eyes

Excuse me? What the hell are they talking about? It’s a logical situation, but wait…what does Captain Marvel have to do with anything? And WHO is he zapping between the eyes? It’s a mystery…some kind of actual scenario plays out in your mind, but there are pieces missing in the equation. That’s cryptic!

7

The entirety of American Pie.

8

I skipped the light fandango . . .

9

“Captain Marvel” is a sarcastic nickname for Bungalo Bill; “Zapped” means shot, with his gun; what he shot was the aformentioned Tiger.

10

Clue to this verse: before they were called the Band, they were the Hawks.

11

Yeah, have fun with your thread. :rolleyes:

12

What I want to know is, how the hell can something be “wrapped up like a douche?”

13

Wow, this is coming up with alarming regularity in this forum! I mean, weekly!

The singer’s speech impediment or whatever notwithstanding, the lyrics as written are:

revved up like a deuce.

Maybe this should be a sticky.

14

The Stone Temple Pilots had a song called “Plush”, and it featured this gem:

Where ya going to tomorrow?
Where ya going with that mask I found?
And I feel, and I feel
When the dogs begin to smell her
Will she smell alone?

When the dogs do find her
Got time, time, to wait for tomorrow

15

For truly cryptic lyrics, you just can’t get any better than Blue Oyster Cult.

From a song called Before the Kiss, a Redcap:
Doors like flint and windowpanes, an endless shadow bar,
The owner’s boys have gone to work,
We’ll stop big deals behind that bar.
While outside on the turnpike, they got this new hit tune,
Thrills become as cheap as gas, and gas as cheap as thrills.

One threat and mundane here at last, expect to cross one more.
Lecherous, invisible, beware the limping cat.
Whose black teeth grip, between loose jaws,
Still ripe and fully bloomed,
A rose and not from anywhere that you would know or I would care.

Does that fit Merl Minnozza’s definition of lyrics “that feature logically-sound sentences describing illogical scenarios”? What’s a “shadow bar”? What deals are the owner’s boys stopping? Who are these boys? What do these deals have to do with the hit songs on the turnpike? What’s this threat, and why is it mundane? Why is the cat limping (and how can you tell it’s limping if it’s invisible?) and carrying a rose in its mouth? And just where is that rose from, anyway?

16

More BOC, this is Wings Wetted Down from Tyranny and Mutation:

Flights of black horsemen
Soar over churches
Pursued by an army
Of birds in the rain

None of them can see the clouds
The polished wings don’t care
Animal ways, through the hazy
Dreams full of pain.

Wings wetted down
Stumbling on the ground
It all turns around
In the end
In the end
In the end

The voices sound deadly
Sometimes I hear
Echoes of empires
Spread throughout the sky

and so on. What’s tragic is I typed that from memory, and got exactly one word wrong.

17

I thought of this: I Zimbra by Talking Heads (lyrics by Kurt Schwitters)

*Gadji beri bimba clandridi
Lauli lonni cadori gadjam
A bim beri glassala glandride
E glassala tuffm I zimbra

Bim blassa galassasa zimbrabim
Blassa glallassasa zimbrabim

A bim beri glassala grandrid
E glassala tuffm I zimbra*

It may not be cryptic by the OP’s standards, but it’s cryptic as hell to me.