Evita also has “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” and the delightful “Buenos Aires”:
And if ever I go too far it’s because of the things you are
Beautiful town, I love you.
And if I need a moment’s rest, give your lover the very best
Real eiderdown and silence.
How many songs rhyme anything with “eiderdown”?
Voltaire’s “Snakes” from The Devil’s Bris refers to the “endocrine lining.” (I’d include the specific lyric, but lyrics websites seem to be uniformly shady and I don’t have the album handy ATM.)
Off the top of my head, “A Pillow of Winds” by Pink Floyd and “Mother of Pearl” by Roxy Music.
Not to mention…
belladonna
drainpipe
alsatian
Mallarme
equestrian
rhino house
Did everybody forget ‘Supercalafragilisticexpialadocious’?
Were you trying to?
My long time favorite, from Eve of Destruction recorded by The Grass Roots
“Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’”
was deposed by Bruce Hornsby singing
“Its just a little hand trick
A little prestidigitation” in Spider Fingers
Other than the Beatles in The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill, you mean. . .
Polaroids by Shawn Colvin:
“Wrap me in eiderdown
Lace from your wedding gown”
We’re three pages into this thread and no one’s mentioned the former Mr. Robert Zimmerman yet?
“Ballad of a Thin Man” has:
*“Anyway they already expect you
To just give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations” *
and
“You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books”
“Desolution Row” has:
“And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers”
Those are just a few samples. This thread could probably go several more pages on Dylan’s songs alone.
More Kinky–The Ballad of Charles “Texas Tower” Whitman
He didn’t choke or stab or slit them
Not our Charles Joseph Whitman…
Sitting up there with his 34 Magnum
Laughing wildly while he bagged 'em.
In a thread where They Might Be Giants has already been mentioned, I am surprised and pleased to be the first to mention The Decemberists, who have far too many lovingly verbose lyrics to quote, except for this one which has been stuck in my head all morning, from The Legionnaire’s Lament:
“Medicating in the sun
pinch-doses of laudanum
longing for the old fecundity of my homeland”
Laudanum and fecundity in the same stanza!
My other suggestion is The Ramones, who invented the word “questioningly” for their song of the same name.
MC Frontalot is renowned for this kind of thing.
Braggadocio:
I stand 77 feet tall, I got eight balls
and all’a’y’all are subject to my thrall
I act appalled when in receipt of less than the highest honor
some day I’ll be both revered & passe like Madonna
I’m all in effect, people tend to genuflect
when I enter rooms, 'cause all dopeness is subsumed
I spell the doom of the hip-hop subgenre you used to prefer
the geekish rhythm intersection
with the predilections that I’ve incurred
you say “word?” With a surfeit of beats I’m unlikely to run out
plus I’m so bright it’s like redundant to have the sun out
one out of each ten brags is hyperbolic
it’s all inconsequential, you’re just here to hear my tongue frolic
“We could entertain each one with our theosophies”
Blondie – *(I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear *
NailBunny, I believe The Decemberists were mentioned before in this thread. They do have lots of great words.
Absolutely true, but my point was that the sheer number of interesting/unusual (even if not remarkable) words made her a fascinating case. Ok, to me only, I guess. slinks away
My brother used to say it a lot. But not anymore.
Then there’s Tom Lehrer’s The Element Song in which he rattles them all off, including Curium, Cesium, Beryllium, Scandium, Manganese, Molybdenum. Dysprosium, Ytterbium, etc.
Sure it’s not a rock song, per the OP, but since musicals and other Lehrer lyrics have been cited, I thought I’d drop one in, and guess that probably for most of those elements, it is their only song appearance.
For real rock charting artists, there’s Al Stewart, from “Year of the Cat”
On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
He has a song about Josephine Baker, and another about Nostradamus
Then there’s this verse from “Road to Moscow”
All summer they drove us back through the Ukraine
Smolensk and Viasma soon fell
By autumn we stood with our backs to the town of Orel
Closer and closer to Moscow they came - riding the wind like a bell
General Guderian stands at the crest of the hill
you look like
a perfect fit
for a girl in need
of a tourniquet
but can you save me Aimee Mann soundtrack magnolia
Before the Deluge Jackson Browne
Nobody ever wrote 'em again like Loesser…
“South America, Take It Away” by Bing Crosby also contains “sacroiliac”.
Tom Waits should qualify for something. Tarantella. Ticonderoga, skinnybone, grazier, canebrake…
Do proper names count?
“Left to My Own Devices” by Pet Shop Boys
Che Guevara and Débussy to a disco beat
Just heard one- Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man In Paris” has unfettered.
Joni was also the answer to one of my entries in the Rock Lyrics Game thread I linked to in post #5 (no one guessed). The words were keyloids, sterilized, broadcasting, and hot-wire.