Some more Zevon:
I went home with a waitress the way I always do
How was I to know she was with the Russians, too?
One could debate as to whether “If I Had A Million Dollars” by Barenaked Ladies is non-comical, but…
If I had a million dollars (if I had a million dollars)
I’d buy you a fur coat (but not a real fur coat that’s cruel)
Followed later in the song by…
If I had a million dollars (if I had a million dollars)
Well I’d buy you a green dress (but not a real green dress, that’s cruel)
David Allen Coe’s. 'You never even call me by my Name"
He adds a verse at the end to make it the ‘perfect’ country song.
Don’t leave ‘em hangin’, Beck!
Well, a friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song
And he told me it was the perfect country & western song
I wrote him back a letter and I told him it was not the perfect country & western song
Because he hadn’t said anything at all about mama
Or trains, or trucks, or prison, or getting’ drunk
Well, he sat down and wrote another verse to the song and he sent it to me
And after reading it I realized that my friend had written the perfect country & western song
And I felt obliged to include it on this album
The last verse goes like this here
Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got run over by a damned old train
^^Thx
For anyone who hasn’t heard it, you have *to.
Here it is live, cued up to his explanation…
You may never have encountered a Mandatory Obligatory Verse in your life, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is.
And this has been running through my head since I read the thread title:
She heard about a family living in the USA,
Y’know they traded in their baby on a Chevrolet.*
-More Elvis C.
“I’m sick of elephants and clowns.
I want to run away and join the office.”
-Mike Doughty, “American Car”
Can I add Tangled Up In Blue?
I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the axe just fell
j
Happy Mondays Kinky Afro starts off with
Springsteen’s Does this bus stop at 82nd street?
I’ve always liked this one from Mark Chesnutt’s country song “Bubba Shot the Jukebox”:
Reckless discharge of a gun
That’s what the officers are claimin’
Bubba hollered out, “Reckless, hell!
I hit just where I was aimin’!”
I always took that as “I don’t want to fight”.
More John Prine:
She said “Carl, take all the money”
She called everybody Carl
Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
And more Dylan:
Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches
I’ll recruit my army from the orphanages
And I say, “Aw come on now
You know, you know about my debutante”
And she says, “Your debutante just knows what you need
But I know what you want”
This stanza from Leonard Cohen’s *Everybody Knows *always struck me as funny, or at least wry:
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful
Ah, give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you’ve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
Too true. Just one of many:
‘* … she’s last year’s model,
They call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie. I don’t want go to Chelsea*.’
(I don’t want to go to) Chelsea.
Not from any cite I can find.
Two more from Elvis Costello:
Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired
And you can have anyone that you have ever desired
All you gotta tell me now is why, why, why, why?
The first lines from the first song of his first album.
She said that she was working for the ABC News
It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use
And one from Richard Thompson:
I’m old enough to sin but I’m too young to vote
Society’s been dragging on the tail of my coat
Now I’ve got a suitcase full of fifty pound notes
And a half-naked woman
With her tongue down my throat
That’s because it’s a one of those common misheard lyrics, although **xizor **has the details a little wrong.
The album is actually Records(1982) which was a compilation of hits from their first four albums which included a live cut of “Hot-Blooded” from a 1978 performance at the Rainbow.
Amazingly, this live concert was just released on DVD in 2019 and the version cited is posted here The lyric in question does not occur during the song’s fade out (in fact, there is no fade-out) but at 4:25 you can hear Lou Gramm sing “I’ll make you famous…” and pause until he sings the next line… “I’m far underrated” It’s a little hard to hear, but if you turn the volume up it’s clear he’s not saying “I’ll start with your anus” or " a star on Uranus"
Huey Lewis and the News, “Bad Is Bad”:
Across the street, a neon sign
“All you can eat for a dollar ninety-nine
Our soul stew is the baddest in the land”
But, uh, one dollar’s worth was all that I could stand
Another Barenaked Ladies song. Pinch Me
I could hide out under there
I just made you say ‘Underwear’