Without listing song titles to prove it, I suggest looking through the lyrics of Cole Porter and Lorenz Hart. They, along with others of the Tin Pan Alley era, made their names by way of odd phrasings, puns, double entendres, etc. Ira Gershwin, too.
I was always a little tickled at the line in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when Joseph sings: “I shall now take them all for a ride; After all they have tried fratricide”
Fratricide. Not a word used in everyday conversation, eh?
OK, now that you’ve gotten the geekiest response possible to this thread, let’s commence with the non-Broadway examples.
Too late…my example is from a musical, as well…actually, a couple of musicals. Tim Rice uses the word “tinpot” in Evita as well as one other show, which I can’t think of right now. He is, as far as I have ever heard, the only person who uses this word ever, much less in song lyrics.
The band They Might Be Giants probably wins this one in all categories, with words like “obsequious” (“Turn Around”), “argonauts” (“Birdhouse in Your Soul”), “monotreme” (“Mammal”) and so forth strewn all over their work.
One of the unreleased B-sides from the Decemberists album The Crane Wife (“Hurdles Even Here”) begins with the line, “It started in your ovaries.” I really wasn’t expecting to hear the word “ovaries” in a song, even one by the Decemberists.
“Warm smell of colitas…” from “Hotel California.” That last word has not turned up in any other song.
There was a song by Live that contained the word “placenta”…the line was “Her placenta falls to the floor.” :eek: Thank goodness most stations didn’t air that part, which was the first part of the song. I find the word inexcusable in a song lyric anyway.
Public Enemy’s* By The Time I Get To Arizona* has the word “infrastructure” in it. For some reason, they are the only guys I could ever imagine using that word in a song.
I have never heard the words “tourniquet”* and “auto-da-fe” in any recorded song other than Tent, by the Bonzo Dog Band.
*I’ll be laughing like a lunatic
That just got away
I’ll be howling like a heretic
At an auto-da-fe
I’m gonna get you in my tent (tent…tent…tent…tent)
Where we can both experiment (ment…ment…ment…ment)
I hope that you won’t mind the stench (stench…stench)
People who are into Baroque music have. A Gavotte, spelled in several similar ways, was a dance in 2/4 or 4/4 time. Oddly enough, the lyric is strangely appropriate–the rhythm of a gavotte sometimes does make me think of someone who is too pleased with himself or herself.
Of course, it’s a bit of a stretch to call “You’re So Vain” a love song, IMO.