What are your favourite song lyrics?
This is the opening salvo from me:
The greatest lyric of all time (and utterly postmodern for those interested in such things)
"Tramps like us,
And we like tramps"
Charlemagne in Sweat Pants
The Hold Steady
"They were married in June
She was gone before the leaves were even turning
She said "Well, I knew he was a fool, but I
somehow thought my welfare concerned him"
Unhappy Song
Lloyd Cole
"They smelt of pubs
And Wormwood Scrubs
And too many right-wing meetings"
Down in the Tube Station
The Jam
"A freshly fallen, silent shroud of snow"
I am a Rock
Simon & Garfunkel
"There's a crowd says I'm alright
Say they like my turn of phrase
Take me round to their parties
Like some dressed up monkey in a cage.
And I play my accordion
Oh! but when the wine seeps through the facade
It's nothing but the same old story
Nothing but the same old story"
Nothing but the Same Old Story
Paul Brady
"From the time I could walk he’d take me with him
To a bar called the Green Frog Café
Where old men with beer guts and dominoes
Lied about their lives as they played
I was a kid and they all called me sidekick
Like Desperados waiting for a train"
Desperados Waiting for a Train
Guy Clark
"88 you wait the S-One's will
Put the left in effect and I still will
Rock the hard jams, treat it like a seminar
Teach the bourgeois, and rock the boulevard
Some say I'm negative
But they're not positive
But what I got to give
The media says this
Red black and green
Know what I mean
Yo, don't believe the hype"
Don’t Believe the Hype
Public Enemy
"Everything dies baby, that’s a fact
Maybe everything that dies someday comes back"
Atlantic City
Bruce Springsteen
"We just sit in this hazy bubble with our quarters
Discussing how beautiful Gail Porter is"
The Irony of It All
The Streets
You can see it by satellite but baby that's cheatin'. The President's callin' an emergency meetin'. The King of Siam sent a telegram sayin' "Wop bop a loop a lop a lop boom bam. Wooeee.
ReplyDeleteThe Cramps. What's Inside a Girl.
Ridiculous but sublime.
What a shout
ReplyDeleteOur lives are just a point along a line, that runs forever with no end.
ReplyDeleteAl Stewart (Lord Grenville)
and on a lighter note..
I push it in, she pulls it out
I push it back, she starts to shout:
"Dr. Kitch, you are terrible,
I can't stand the sight of your needle
Lord Kitchener
"Back then it was unified
ReplyDeleteThe punks, the skins, the greaser guys
Then one summer, two kids died
And one of them was crucified
Now it's so competitive
The sleeplessness and sedatives
I know it sounds repetitive"
The Hold Steady
"And I was always so impulsive,
I guess that I still am,
And all that really mattered then
Was that I was a man.
I guess that our being together
Was never meant to be.
And martha, martha,
I love you cant you see? "
Tom Waits
"The Grand Canary Islands first land to which they came
they slaughtered all the canaries there which gave the land its name
there were natives there called guanches, guanches by the score
bullet's, disease the portugese, they weren't there any more"
Randy Newman
Where eer we go, we celebrate
ReplyDeleteThe land that makes us refugees
From fear of priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies
And we dance
Thousands are sailing, The Pogues
They took you up to midnight mass
ReplyDeleteAnd left you in the lurch
So you threw a button in the plate
And spewed up in the church
Sick Bed of Cuchullain
The Pogues
Top shout from Dan
ReplyDelete"Those were days of roses,
Poetry and prose and
Martha all I had was you
And all you had was me"
Martha
Tom Waits
"And I will stroll the merry way
ReplyDeleteAnd jump the hedges first
And I will drink the clear
Clean water for to quench my thirst
And I shall watch the ferry-boats
And they'll get high
On a bluer ocean
Against tomorrow's sky
And I will never grow so old again
And I will walk and talk
In gardens all wet with rain"