I think the message of the song is “Why are you complaining about immigrants from Africa and Asia? The ones from northern Europe were a lot worse.”
Anything by America is easy pickin’s!
I love song lyrics. I’d nominate practically anything off Hozier’s debut album, but try
“Work Song.”
Boys, workin’ on empty
Is that the kinda way to face the burning heat?
I just think about my baby
I’m so full of love I could barely eat
There’s nothing sweeter than my baby
I’d never want once from the cherry tree
'Cause my baby’s sweet as can be
She give me toothaches just from kissin’ me
When my time comes around
Lay me gently in the cold, dark earth
No grave can hold my body down
I’ll crawl home to her
Or “Jackie and Wilson”
She blows outta nowhere, roman candle of the wild
Laughing away through my feeble disguise
No other version of me I would rather be tonight.
And, Lord, she found me just in time
'Cause with my mid-youth crisis all said and done
I need to be youthfully felt 'cause, God, I never felt young
Boy do I feel that last line!
I’m also a big fan of Eve 6 lyrics:
“Girl Eyes”
Vodkareenin’ through the hotel door
Promise
I spit & stutter
Stuff and clutter
Worries in my worried corner
Maladjusted, just, untrusted, rusted
Sometimes brilliant busted thoughts
Think I’ll stay for a while
I’m intrigued and I’m
Red as a newborn white as a corpse
Bad lyrics?
The entirety of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”
I love Rush and would nominate them for many great lyrics, but this “rapped” verse in an otherwise great song, “Roll the Bones,” always makes me cringe:
Jack, relax
Get busy with the facts
No zodiacs or almanacs
No maniacs in polyester slacks
Just the facts
Gonna kick some gluteus max
It’s a parallax, you dig?
You move around
The small gets big, it’s a rig
It’s action, reaction
Random interaction
So who’s afraid
Of a little abstraction?
Can’t get no satisfaction
From the facts?
You better run, homeboy
A fact’s a fact
From Nome to Rome, boy
What’s the deal? Spin the wheel
If the dice are hot, take a shot
Play your cards, show us what you got
I’ll certainly think of more later. I was listening to Shakira’s Spanish language album Dónde Están los Ladrones? on the way to work today and man, that album is pure poetry. I’ll try to translate some later.
Don’t you know about the bird?
A well a everybody’s heard about the bird
B-b-b bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word
A well a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word
A well a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A well a bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word
A well a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A well a bird, bird, b-bird’s the word
A well a bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word
A well a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A well a bird, bird, b-bird’s the word
Greatest lyrics ever. All hail The Trashmen.
Good
From Reverend Black Grape by Black Grape (no fans of organized religion, I would hazard):
We are the tea-time tribe and we are over-friendly
From Kid Charlemagne by Steely Dan (I’ve been slightly obsessed with the song recently):
You are obsolete
Look at all the white men on the street
Meaning, dear acid chemist, they’re all using (and selling?) coke these days.
Bad
Five Years and Suffragette City - every part of them. I used to think Ziggy Stardust was a bad album, but really it isn’t - it’s a good album but with those two songs included. As a taster:
Pushing through the market square
So many mothers sighing (sighing)
News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in (cry in)
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying (dying)
Cried so much his face was wet
Then I knew he was not lying (lying)
Trite, maudlin crap.
Ugly
Dylan’s Tangled Up In Blue. Man, I love Dylan, and I love that song, but this is a shocker:
I must admit I felt a little uneasy
When she bent down to tie the laces of my shoe
Tangled up in blue
j
Simon does like his multisyllabic words. On Graceland alone you’ve got “architecture,” “supernatural,” “cinematographer”….
You forgot the bad. From Shakira’s English debut hit “Whenever, Wherever”:
Lucky that my lips not only mumble
They spill kisses like a fountain
Lucky that my breasts are small and humble
So you don’t confuse 'em with mountains
Yeah, her English stuff can’t compare.
I also think there is a Spanish/English translation issue. In trying to translate her brilliance, I get pretty stumped trying to figure out how to make it sound good in English.
Here’s an example of a poetic line that badly translates:
Basura en el suelo
Moscas en la casa
(My days without you are)
Garbage on the floor
Flies in the house)
It just sounds clunky in English.
Heh, reminds me of possibly the worst lyrics of all time, ‘My Humps’ by the Black Eyed Peas:
'Cause of my hump (hump), my hump, my hump, my hump (what?)
My hump, my hump, my hump (hump), my lovely lady lumps
“Hump” or “lump” should never, ever be used to describe the naturally curvy parts of a woman.
I hate TUiB, mostly for the shifting perspective and confusing story line, but that line…doesn’t bother me as much. It follows “She was working in a topless place”, so I figure she’s still topless or nearly so, and she’s only tying the laces of his shoes so she can let him look down at her bod. She’s teasing him.
The rest? Meh. “If I write stuff that sounds artsy but really makes no sense, they’ll be trying to decipher it for years.”
Shows how tastes differs. IMHO, “Tangled Up In Blue” is one the best five songs Dylan ever wrote, and it’s exactly the uncertainty, changing pronouns und vagueness of the story that fascinates me (Dylan added to that by changing the lyrics live for decades after, again and again). And I’m not sure what @Treppenwitz meant when he wrote that that line was a “shocker”, if it was praise or condemnation, but yeah, it’s really a shocker and evokes multiple levels of interpretation, and for me it’s one of the greatest lines in the song.
Couldn’t agree more. But in the middle of a masterpiece, Lordy that rhyme is contrived and clunky.
j
Good
She was working in a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens,
Til her boyfriend kicked her out in one of those crushing scenes.
Bad
I’m serious as cancer
When I say rhythm is a dancer
I offer the two associations I’ve always had about this line. It could be a code for giving a blow-job (remember we’re in a topless place), or it’s an allusion to Jesus washing the feet of the prostitute. Or both.
Interesting - I was just taking it more or less literally, as is intended (I think) for parts (but obviously not all) of the lyric. To my ear, at least, it clunks.
Was that line ever changed, do you know?
j
Funny, I’ve wondered about the underlying meaning of those lines over the years as well. I’ve considered the sexy meaning, the biblical allusion, and also maybe it’s a bit of a mothering, nurturing thing: “you still can’t even tie your shoes properly? How’d you get along without me all this time?”. Maybe a little of all the above.
I had to look it up, and found the lyrics to two alternative versions. The first is from the 1984 live album “Real Live”, and in it he changes the line slightly. Here’s the whole verse:
she was working in the blinding light
and i stopped in for a drink
i just kept looking at her face so white
i didn’t know what to think
later on as the crowd thinned out
i was getting ready to leave
she was standing there, beside my chair
saying “what’s that you got up your sleeve?”
i said “nothing baby, and that’s for sure”
she leaned down into my face
i could feel the heat and the pulse of her
as she bent down to tie the laces
of my shoe
tangled up in blue
Then there’s the earlier New York version (released on “More Blood, More Tracks, The Bootleg Series Vol. 14”) he recorded for “Blood On The Tracks” that later got re-recorded for the track that made the album, and this version omits the bar scene completely.
Looks like Bob was happy with it, then.
j
My instinctive interpretation has been the take-charge mothering “let’s get you fixed up” one, and that the sudden switch from an erotic dancer was the source of the singer’s unease.
However, the alternate lyric from EinsteinsHund shows that Bob wanted to include, and enhance, the erotic angle.
There’s often sadness when you’ve got to change your understanding of a favorite lyric. 
Both interpretations can be true. Bob could have been going for both an erotic and mothering angle at the same time (or like you say, a quick-cut juxtaposition from erotic to mothering), setting up an Oedipal vibe that could certainly make the main character in the song uneasy. That kind of layering of meanings seems like it would be very much in Dylan’s wheelhouse.