anyone speak French? sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble
I konw he loves her. 
What’s the French bit saying? Michelle, ma belle – my lover?
This is my **favorite **Beatles song.
Michelle
Touch me was originally entitled Punch Me, but was thought to be too violent. He was not afraid of being punched by his girlfriend. I have no idea what the promise was or what the other she actually said.
Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble, means, get ready for it…
These are words that go together well.
Heh. S M Stirling explained what it meant in 2008, when he published In The Court of the Crimson Kings. It’s the second novel in the Lords of Creation series, set in an alternate solar system quite familiar to those raised on classic SF. The Sky People was set on Venus–a lush jungle populated by dinosaurs, saber tooth cats, oafish ape men & bee-yoo-ti-ful warrior princesses. From the acknowledgements:
In The Court of the Crimson Kings is set, of course, on Mars. I’m sure Stirling used the title as a bit of a joke–there’s a touch of parody in these ripping yarns. Which makes them even better. A third book is apparently planned, if he can ever finish slogging through the turgid alt-history of his current series…
Oh, this is a music thread. Interpret this…
Thanks, I thought Paul McCartney sang the phrase in English but wasn’t sure which bit it was. 
I wonder if his body was ever recovered because he may possibly have faked his death and is living in West Hollywood.
I know, but I do pay attention to song lyrics. More than the melody, probably…
The most recent lyrics that I really gave some thought to were from Rod Stewart’s Maggie May. I pretty much can’t stand this song because I’ve heard it so many times, but I was forced to hear it again the other day and decided to really concentrate on the lyrics. At the end of the song, I really don’t know how Rod feels about Maggie. In his eyes, she’s everything; on the other hand, he wishes he’d never seen her face.
I’ve decided it’s actually a pretty good song, and I hope I don’t hear it again for a long time. 
I had the exact same experience with Maggie May and was tempted to open a thread about it. The lyrics are contradictory and confusing. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the contradictions and confusion were the whole point. At which point I also gave it my begrudging respect.
I heard the Beatles’ “Come Together” today and was reminded how I have no idea what that song is supposed to be about, other than random put-downs of some skeezy dude.
Ambiguity and contradiction are precisely what the song is about, as I see it.
The vocalist in that song is a young guy who fell in love with a much older woman, then dropped out of college and abandoned all his future plans to be with her.
And now, some time later? Well, he still loves her, but he’s starting to ask himself, “What the hell am I doing with my life? Do I really have a future with her? Maybe it’s time to call it quits and get back to college. But wait, I love her! On the other hand, look at her, she really IS getting old, isn’t she? Maybe this just isn’t going to work. She’s wonderful, but… jeez,maybe it was just a big mistake getting involved with her."
I think it was about him and the way he perceived the press treated him.
This makes me giggle 
Unless you’re taking a piss, because, stupid and cliched or not ,that *is *what happened in the movie (the homosexuality, not cosmetology).
One Night in Bangkok by Murray Head written for the musical Chess is obviously supposed to make more sense if you’ve seen the play…I’ve never met anyone who has.
I’ll have to listen to that song again. I’ve always heard the first line as “Look upon my garden gate, a snail, that’s what it is” (i.e., “Oh look, there’s a snail on my garden gate”), but Googling it comes up with the lyrics you quoted.
Then again, I always heard the lyric from “Third Stone from the Sun” as “With your majestic and superior Catholic hymn”…
My personal entry here would be Steely Dan, who write a lot of hard-to-figure-out lyrics… I believe many are cryptic references to their time at Bard College, but they love to throw in all kinds of other obscure things. Here’s one example – from “Your Gold Teeth”:
Tobacco they grow in Peking
In the Year of the Locust
You’ll see a sad thing
Even Cathy Berberian knows
There’s one roulade she can’t sing
Dumb luck my friend
Won’t suck me in this time
(Cathy Berberian was an avant-garde singer. No idea about the rest of it.)
It started out as a campaign song for Timothy Leary when he ran for Governor of California.
The lyrics to Second Chance by Shinedown. What does Halley’s comet have to do with anything? I like the song, but huh?
OK I’ll take a crack at this, though I, too, have never seen it. But PBS aired a concert performance of it this summer on Great Performances and I, as a veteran public television professional, have at my fingertips the description of ‘Chess’ in Concert —
“High Fashion Queen” by the Flying Burrito Brothers.
I get the general vibe: a comment on the hedonistic L.A. lifestyle of the late 60’s/early 70’s. Lots of beautiful people with too much money, booze and drugs.
The song is being sung TO a person, and that person is addressed as YOU throughout. Apparently YOU keep going to the same nightclub every night looking for a woman (“your eyes keep searching for her constantly”).
Whover she is, she hurt you bad!
And then there’s this last verse:
“There’s nothing new that can be said about dirt
And there’s nothing left inside your heart but the same old hurt
Of an old love’s fancy life that left you stranded in a dream
Ain’t you glad you’re a high fashion queen”
So your being a high fashion queen allows you to return to the same place every night looking for this lost love, but what’s a high fashion QUEEN???
Is a high fashion queen male or female?
Is it a homosexual reference (In 1970, gay men were called Queens - that was one of the milder named they were called)? Or is it simply a female fashion model who is at the pinnacle of the profession, a la Jerry Hall?
If it’s the latter, is it about a failed lesbian relationship?
This song was written in 1970, for cryin’ out loud. Songs about gay lifestyle weren’t exactly commonplace then.
It’s one of my favorite Gram Parsons tunes, but I don’t have a clue what it’s about!
I always dismissed this as a mystery for the ages, but you people are doing such a good job.
Anyone want to take a crack at my favourite total nonsense song? Manfred Mann’s version of ‘The Mighty Quinn’.
Actually, I have to un-clarify this for you: I realised last night in bed that I was thinking of “Spirits in the Night”, not “Blinded by the Light” - both being Springsteen songs covered by Manfred Mann. Looking over it, probably still a drug song though.