We all have our favourite songs and we can love them for various reasons (a great instrumental solo, catchy arrangement, the singer’s performance and so on)… What’s a song you love first and foremost because of the lyrics?
The Nightmare Song:
When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo’d by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire and the bedclothes conspire of your usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles, you feel like mixed pickles so terribly sharp is the pricking,
And you’re hot, and you’re cross, and you tumble and toss till there’s nothing 'twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick 'em all up in a tangle;
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle!
Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eyeballs and head ever aching.
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you’d very much better be waking;For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich,
Which is something between a large bathing machine and a very small second-class carriage;
And you’re giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and relations,
They’re a ravenous horde, and they all came on board at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations.
And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon);
He’s a bit undersized, and you don’t feel surprised when he tells you he’s only eleven.
Well, you’re driving like mad with this singular lad (by the by, the ship’s now a four-wheeler),
And you’re playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that “ties pay the dealer”;
But this you can’t stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you’re as cold as an icicle,
In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks), crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle:
And he and the crew are on bicycles too, which they’ve somehow or other invested in,
And he’s telling the tars all the particulars of a company he’s interested in,
It’s a scheme of devices, to get at low prices all goods from cough mixtures to cables
(Which tickled the sailors), by treating retailers as though they were all vegetables:
You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off his boots with a boot-tree),
And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot, and they’ll blossom and bud like a fruit-tree,
From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries,
While the pastrycook plant cherry brandy will grant, apple puffs, and three corners, and Banburys,
The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by Rothschild and Baring,
And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder despairing…You’re a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head’s on the floor,
and you’ve needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg’s asleep,
and you’ve cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue,
and a thirst that’s intense, and a general sense that you haven’t been sleeping in clover;But the darkness has passed, and it’s daylight at last, and the night has been long
ditto my song
and thank goodness they’re both of them over!
Dylan’s Visions of Johanna and Desolation Row. Both epics that would stand on their own as poetry.
Voyager by Gamma. A man comes home after a year at sea and hopes his family will remember him.
The tune is great, but the lyrics are amazing. No matter how often I hear them, it’s still a surprise.
I promise I’m not being snotty, but if the lyrics don’t tell me something (meaningful) I couldn’t care less what the music does. So I’m here thinking anything by Dead Kennedys, Cyndi Lauper, Siouxsie (Kiss Them for Me gets me misty if I’m not careful) … Is there another way of phrasing the question so a dipshit like me can understand?
Statue of Liberty by XTC
Full of wonderful imagery.
The Rose by Amanda McBroom, made famous by Bette Midler, covered by many.
And here I am, ready to suggest DMX - ‘X is Coming’ - (sniff) bravo, sir - bravo
Folk-songs are often more interesting lyrically than musically.
Everybody Loves Me, Baby by Don McLean
Barrett’s Privateers by Stan Rogers
The Orange and the Green by Anthony Murphy, famously covered by the Irish Rovers
The Unicorn by Shel Silverstein, famously covered by the Irish Rovers.
Oh, more Dylan. Tangled Up In Blue. Subterranean Homesick Blues. I could go on.
j
Also “Mr. Tambourine Man”, wonderful poetry. (of course I also could go on and on)
All of them. I listen to lyrics, my wife never has.
Which is my defense when she asks “How can you take this?” when I’m cuing up my fourth Dylan album in a row on the turntable…
Actually, it explains my ability to listen to early Jimmy Buffett (hate his voice, love those lyrics).
When I’m being a hermit and drawing, I think of the last verse of "If I could just get it on paper":
All alone at the edge of the water
Hidin’ out by the Sea of Cortez
With my sketch pads and Flairs
Tapes and battery spares
It’s just no comprehendo to what everyone says
Time alone seemed to work well for Faulkner
Time away seems to work for the kid
Life and ink they run out at the same time
Or so said my old friend the squid
Yes if i could just get it on paper tonight
I could tell you what i think i did.
Hook by Blues Traveler. It’s too clever/cute by half, but it’s still quite amusing. I didn’t cotton on to the lyrics until it was pointed out on this board, which is exactly the point of the song. The song itself doesn’t do much for me, but now I listen every time it pops up.
More Dylan-
It’s Alright Ma and Idiot Wind.
And most anything written by Bob. (Cold Irons Bound has a single line: The walls of pride/ they’re high and they’re wide/ you can’t see over/ to the other side) Most bands would build a song around that line, and repeat it many times. Bob uses it just once, and if you miss it, you missed it.
Golly, Robert Hunter has got a lot of them, too. Warf Rat for now. And Terrapin.
Dylan and Hunter even wrote songs together from time to time.
I edited my post, so your quote looks like you butchered it, so for the record, you have not. 
REM, It’s The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). Once in a very great while I can sing it all the way through without a bobble. Always fun to try.
