Songs that contain words not commonly found in song lyrics

I admire anyone who can work Zombies and Singapore Slings into a single line. (Bar and Grill)

Biffy, I missed the link in post #5, but you did devastate my synaesthesia in post #29. :wink:

One of my favorites is Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen”:

“Remember when you win the game
You lose the love you sought to gain
In **debentures **of quality
And dubious integrity
The small-town eyes will gape at you
In dull surprise, when payment due
Exceeds accounts received
At seventeen…”

I love that verse. They don’t write 'em like that anymore.

That song also mentions “Mephistopholes”, who doesn’t make frequent lyric appearances.

And it’s from an album called “Synchronicity”, with not one but TWO songs by that title.

Happy to be of service, my dear. :wink:

As goofy, crude, and juvenile as Bloodhound Gang is, they have a surprisingly high number of really off-beat references in songs like:

Have you ever read Voltaire’s Candide?
It says, “Live Life at Benny Hill Freak-Out Speed.”

or

You and me baby ain’t nothin but mammals
So let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.
The latter quote comes from the song “The Bad Touch,” which includes the phrases, “Two-Hand Touch,” “Waffle House Hash Browns,” “Daylight Savings Time,” “Mr. Coffee,” and “The X-Files.”

Barring the TV reference, that sounds an awful lot like reworked Cole Porter:

They say that bears have love affairs, and even camels!
We’re merely mammals,
Let’s misbehave.

As does Billy “Crash” Craddock’s Rub It In.

I can’t remember the name of the song by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, (probably because they all sound the same to me), but they did manage to squeeze the word “Pleides” in a song somewhere.

Def Leppard used the word saccharine a couple times in Pour Some Sugar on Me.

That really surprised me when I figured out what they were saying.

Also, someone mentioned Phish on the first page, but didn’t mention the song Golgi Apparatus.

They sing about Lysosomes later in the song.

The King Missile song ‘Dick’ manages to sneak in a ‘Raison de Etre’. Or did I see an OP prohibition on mentioning foreign phrases? Preview only goes to the top of the current page. Que sera.

Magnetic Fields. Song: Reno Dakota. Word: Pantone (292)

The Books. Song: An Animated Description of Mr Maps. Word: Synaesthesia

When I was a freshman in high school, we had a teacher named Tony Xenos who played music and sang a lot at bars in a nearby college town. He still does - actually he has a decent regional following and gets some local radio play on the college stations and such. He had a song that used the word schenectady in a song called “Green Rubber Boots”. I don’t know if it counts, since he isn’t famous, but he is pretty well known in this area.

plus, this gives me a chance to plug one of my favorite teachers/musicians! :smiley:

Brendon

Bad Religion has been mentioned a few times in this thread, and they were definitely the first band that came to mind for me as well. There is even a website dedicated to words used in their songs.

Let’s take a trip back to 1979.

Ray Stevens had a novelty hit with I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow in which the ending is:

Show me another song that uses yucky!

diseases

The version of “Bella Ciao” that Chumbawamba sings includes the line “our sunlight is not for franchise.” http://www.chumba.com/media/Chumbawamba-Bella_Ciao.mp3

Michigan & Smiley’s “Diseases”:
Mind Jah Jah lick you with diseases
The most dangerous diseases
I talking like the elephantisis
The other one is the polomylitis
Arthritis and the one diabetes

Elton’s Amoreena. The chorus:

And when it rains the rain falls down
Washing out the cattle town
And she’s far away somewhere in her eiderdown
And she dreams of crystal streams
Of days gone by when we would lean
Laughing fit to burst upon each other

Don McLean’s On The Amazon contains ALL the weird words–or perhaps just all weird words, but it’s funny nonetheless.

Robert Plant’s “Heaven Knows” features the line “with all the romance of the Tonton Macoute,” probably not too many songs sport that reference.

Steely Dan’s “Cousin Dupree” has the fabulous line “the dreary architecture of your soul” which never fails to make me grin.

In the classic Mothers of Invention cut “Call Any Vegetable,” there is a lofty salute to a lyrics-neglected root vegetable:
Rutabaga, Rutabaga,
Rutabaga, Rutabaga,
Rutabay-y-y-y…

Followed by this helpful advice:

(A prune isn’t really a vegetable…
CABBAGE is a vegetable…)

Ah, Frank - you’re missed.

Yes — one of the songs in My Fair Lady is the “Ascot Gavotte,” sung by the ensemble.

Warren Zevon was the master of big vocabulary music. In 'Play it all night long" he mentions that the cattle have Brucelosis. One of his songs has a guy selling a Naugahyde Divan. But this one’s gotta win something for the most obscure use of chemical names in a song. This is the first stanza:

4-Aminobiphenyl, hexachlorobenzeneDimethyl sulfate, chloromethyl methylether
2, 3, 7, 8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin, carbon disulfide
Dibromochloropane, chlorinatedbenzenes, 2-Nitropropane,
pentachlorophenol, Benzotrichloride, strontium chromate
1, 2-Dibromo-3-chloropropane

The song is a lot cooler than it sounds.