I don’t want to be THAT guy – (well, maybe I do, just a little) – but, speaking as someone who had 8-plus years of piano lessons, these are actually phrases consisting of several measures (bars) of music, not a single bar…
Two points: a) sorry about misunderstanding the Mellencamp lyric but it still fits - that’s a lot of syllables. And b) sorry if I get the musical terminology wrong; what I don’t know about music could fill several libraries.
“Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like an empress above the Serengeti,” “Africa” by Toto.
“Toledo was just another stop along the good king’s highway” - “Our Song,” by Yes
“I like the sushi 'cause it’s never touched a frying pan” - “One Week”, Bare Naked Ladies
"Man says, “Freddy!” I say, “Freddy who?” He says, “Freddy or not here I come.” - “Po’ Boy”, by Bob Dylan
“Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television”, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel
“You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but neck, right? Right,” “t’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” - R.E.M.
“Maybe they had a ridiculous statement to make about something they hadn’t experienced” - “Sam” by The Meat Puppets
“Still hate the city enough to say, ‘look who’s in the big town’” - “Small Town” by John Mellencamp.
“More like ‘man tries to understand what the hell went wrong’” - " I’m an Adult Now” by The Pursuit of Happiness
“Oh they used to laugh at me when I refused to ride on one of those double-decker buses
all because there was no driver on the top” - “Twisted” by Joni Mitchell