Your slam on country music aside, you’ll have to ask The Bee Gees this question, since they wrote the song.
You’re obviously a city boy. The scene Bob Nolan was trying to evoke is vast expanses of golden west, where music (or sound of any kind, for that matter) was hard to come by.
Tumbleweeds, I would imagine, make a not unpleasant wooshing sound as they blow about the prairie. Given that, I don’t think this line is all that outlandish.
Keep On Lovin’ You
*"You played dead
But you never bled
Instead you lay still in the grass
All coiled up and hissin
And I’m gonna keep on lovin you
Cause it’s the only thing I wanna do
I don’t wanna sleep
I just wanna keep on lovin you"*
REO Speedwagon
Worst name for a band too.
I Belong To You
*"I belong to you
And you
You belong to me too
You make my life complete
You make me feel so sweet
You make me feel so divine
Your soul and mine are entwined
Before you I was blind
But since I’ve opened my eyes
And with you there’s no disguise
So I could open up my mind"*
Lenny Kravitz
Just about any song by him qualifies.
Like A Rock
“Twenty years, where’d they go?
Twenty years, I don’t know”
You’ll Accomp’ny Me
“It’s written down somewhere, it’s got to be,
someday lady you’ll accomp’ny me”*
Bob Seger
IMHO one of the most overrated songwriters ever.
Hmm… never heard that usage before. I suppose that could be it.
I’m aware that the Bee Gees wrote this song. :rolleyes:
And I wasn’t slamming country music; I’m a huge Hank Williams (Sr., please), Jimmie Rodgers, Al Dexter, Ernest Tubb, and Patsy Cline fan. Among many, many others. I even like the Sons of the Pioneers, although I wouldn’t count them in my top 20.
I suppose you could call me a city boy, if growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and living in Missoula, Montana makes me a city boy. Sheesh. This is MPSIMS, for God’s sake; it’s a light-hearted exchange of semi-random thoughts. Come on, singing tumbleweeds? It’s funny; makes me think of some sort of Disney or Warner Brothers adaptation with little animated, singing tumbleweeds.
And in my experience, tumbleweeds make little sound audible above that of the wind that pushes them along.
Crazzle, that was Live??? Damn, I used to kinda like them. That song really gets on my nerves, though (when I think about it, some of their older songs I liked had pretty bad lyrics too).
As much as I enjoy Jethro Tull, what is this line in “Aqualung” about:
"He goes down to the bog to warm his feet."
Something nasty, I'm sure.
There was a disco horror by the Silver Convention which had two lines repeated for four minutes:
"Fly Robin Fly...Up up to the sky..." (Maybe a lot of coke would help)
And did anyone listen to the words Chuck Berry was singing? How did he get away with it in the late 1950s when censorship was so unforgiving:
"Good Golly, Miss Molly, you sure like to ball...
"From the early early morning to the early early night, Miss Molly is rocking in the house of delight." Yike.From the Dave Barry book of Bad Songs, theres one called He Hit Me and It Felt Like A Kiss.
Sad…
re: fine tooth comb: I thought it meant that he was going to find her by searching reallly well, witha fine tooth comb, not missing a spot.
re: Good golly, anyone remember the funnylyrics Eddie Murphy changed some of the songs to on SNL?
That’s Little Richard, not Chuck Berry!
He got away with the line you cite because at the time of the song, “to ball” was slang for “to dance.” (This goes back quite a ways, actually – cf. the 20s dance song “Ballin’ the Jack.”) Not sure when this acquired its “other” meaning. I don’t ever recall hearing it used in this way until my hippie days in the late 60s.
Finally, the correct couplet is:
“From the early early morning to the early early night
When you see Miss Molly rockin’ at the House of Blue Lights”
…the House of Blue Lights being a reference to an earlier song about a nightclub of that name.
Then we have much in common (especially Hank Sr. and ET)! Sorry for being sensitive about this, but uninformed criticism of country music has always bugged me, and I took your original post that way – although I will have to agree in the end that there is certainly a lot of BAD country music that could easily be mined for this topic.
Whatever…the line just never bothered me the way it bothers you. And lyrics aside, it is a classic song. I wasn’t aware of the Sons of the Pioneers’ work (beyond “Tumbleweeds” and “Cool, Cool Water”) until recently when I found a comp of the original 30s group’s stuff. It’s really quite good.
Agreed. Peace. And your last sentence in this quote is what I was referring to in my parenthetical note. Sorry if I came off as snotty. The line about singing tumbleweeds doesn’t bother me at all; I think it’s cute.
Oh, and I DO know what formum I’m in. 
o:o:o:o
This is IMHO, not MPSIMS. Ya know, it’s bad enough when you do something stupid and realize it right away; it’s worse when it doesn’t occur to you until after you get out of the shower the next morning. I blame the Pop-Tarts.
You mean like:
And to love a God
And to fear a flame
And to burn
The crowd that has a name
or:
our love is like water
pinned down and abused for being strange
or even:
I rushed the lady’s room
took the water from the toilet
watched her feet and blessed her name
more peace
is such a dirty habit
Live might have good tunes, but their words are certainly… strange…
::bows in awe before BigStar303::
Right, indeed. For the record, “I See the Light” peaked at #26 in Feburary of 1966, over a year before “Western Union.”
“Sound of Love” and “Zip Code” reached #36 in June and September of 1967, respectively.
“Evol Not Love” hit #52 in May, 1966.
And something called “7:30 Guided Tour” squeezed out a #96 position in 2 whole weeks on the chart in January 1968.
The difference is that I had to use Joel Whitburn’s “Top Pop Artists & Singles 1955-1978” to dig all that out and you had it in your head. (Though I did know the Western Union quote right away)
from one of her appalling hits from last year:
“i can’t live without my phone
you don’t even have a home”
a true ballad that must have touched the homeless all over the planet. that a popstar can identify with their plight!
BigStar303,
>>head hanging down<<
My apologies to Little Richard. In fact, his cassette “Good Golly” was two feet away from me as I wrote that.
Another more embarassing song was "Zor and Zam" by the Monkees. It had no real melody, was almost recited by Mickey Dolenz and seems to have existed only to use as a last line a slogan from posters of that day-"Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?"
"One Tin Soldier" by Coven, the song from the movie BILLY JACK. Just **why** did the Mountain People write "Peace On Earth"on the underside of a stone?
In case of a war with the Valley People, so the enemy would feel chagrin when turning the stone over? WTF?LMAO.
As a flower child/peacenik born 3 decades too late, I feel I must defend the song as metaphorical. I.E. The treasure that the mountain people had was their peaceful ways. The valley people kill them with intent to steal their treasure, and find that they can never have it.
On the other hand that is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on the boards. As an interesting note, I find it impossible to sing this song correctly. I ALWAYS sing “Draw your horses, mount your swords”. That sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
The worst lyrics I can think of offhand are to Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” (Alarm bells already)
I hope you know I pack a chainsaw
(What)
I’ll skin your ass raw
(What)
And if my day keeps going like it’s goin’ I might break somethin tonight
I hope you know I pack a chainsaw
(What)
A motherfucking chainsaw
And if my day keeps going like it’s goin i might break your fucking face tonight
GIVE ME SOMETHING TO BREAK!
repeat over and over.
It’s something like that. Sounds like something a ten year old who had just watched a horror movie would write. I console myself with the knowledge that the rap-rock thing will burn itself out within a few months.
People, people people, did I miss it, or has no one mentioned the dreadful “Seasons in the Sun”? And close behind–“Billy, Don’t be a Hero”. I’m not putting the lyrics down–although they are creeping into the forepart of my consciousness even as I type the mere names–the lyrics are too awful to loose upon the world. Granted, the words to “Billy” make sense, more or less, but what they say is so, so, so insipid and sicky-sweet. And “Seasons”, well I would pay to have it surgically removed from my memory. I am so, so scarred.
ahaha, MarxBoy, you havn’t heard the new album, it’s so much more worse.
An example of a good band with bad lyrics is At The Drive In. I might just be missing something, but
must have read a thousand faces
must have robbed them of their cause
sickened thirst, sickened thirst
keeps it together
soft white glow in the cranium
a bulls eye made sedated
beware
must have read a thousand faces
and all these voices won’t give up
sickened thirst, sickened thirst
glues it together
a cataonic leisure
at 1000 miles per hour
beware
so who’s in charge here
barking out loud so clear
because i’d really like to meet him
uproar east strike west
(sheng tung, shi hsi)
have you ever tasted skin
sink your, sink your teeth in it
If anyone can piece something out of that, plase enlighten me.
I’m guessing: the homeless guy enters a public bathroom to warm up. Bog = toilet. The British have a way with words.
But why “Aqualung”?
They wrote my earlier pick too,
(Shadow Dancing. “In a world of people there is only you and I” ???)
I’m for giving them some sort of special award.
I’d be happy to present Barry his “special award.”
Sometimes bad lyrics have beautiful melodies. “Show Me the Meaning” is one example, IMO. "MacArthur’s Park is another.
But some songs are horrendous all the way around. “Seasons in the Sun” is such an animal. It has NO redeeming qualities. Ditto for “Feelings” by Morris Albert. Woe-woe-woe feelings. (Eunice’s version was pretty good, though.) A more recent example is “Don’t Take the Girl” by Faith Hill’s husband (his name escapes me). It is so maudlin and he sings it so mournfully that it’s downright embarrassing.
I’m going to support the person who said “One of Us” by Joan Osborne. I could not believe this song was getting the acclaim it was getting. Let’s look at some more lyrics:
“Hello, Ms. Osborne? The guy who wrote the Honeycombs jingle is here, and he’d like to talk to you about plagiarism…”
The worst part about this awful song was that, when it was popular, if you publicly stated that you thought it was inane, someone would invariably say, “Oh, does it challenge your beliefs?” Oh if ONLY it challenged my beliefs! No, I didn’t find it offensive, at least not in any sense other than any idiot song is offensive to me.
And yes, that “Except for the Pope maybe in Rome” is another one of those “go for the rhyme” lines that only Jonathan Richman can get away with.