Greatest Song Lyrics: Whatcha Got?

Specific lines, or the whole shebang. Go!

My personal favorite, from The Carny, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds:

Their grizzled faces like dying moons
Still dirty from the digging done.

There’s so much to choose from! I’m not sure it’ll stand up to scrutiny as a lyric with particularly deep meaning, but it’s playful, oddly poignant and I just love the delivery of it (which has to count for something, in a song!).

“The paramedic thinks I’m clever 'cause I play guitar
I think she’s clever 'cause she stops people dying”

 - Avant Gardener, Courtney Barnett

(My favourite Nick Cave is More News From Nowhere, which contains some delightful turns of phrase.)

Life stinks
I’m seeing pink
I can’t wink
I can’t blink
I like the Kinks
I need a drink
I can’t think
I like the Kinks
Life stinks

-Peter Laughner, “Life Stinks”

I love many turns off phrases in Smiths songs with the one that amuses me the most being:

I want to live and I want to love; I want to catch something I might be ashamed of. From Frankly Mr Shankly.

Poets of the Fall have some great lyrics. My favourite of theirs is Skin, which beautifully expresses a classic post-breakup theme:

We made ourselves a home out of our dreams
Brought with us this love now bittersweet
And maybe I could say now that I always thought of you
How you’ve run to walk with me your whole life through

The rest

And I know we go deeper than skin
But what lies within
Is still deeper than we know

And for all this pantomime
You should see the state I’m in
I couldn’t heal myself with time alone
I have you tattooed on my skin

This house is full of stories we both told
These rooms, their very stage where they’d unfold
These walls, they whisper secrets and memories thereof
But this door no longer leads us to that love

Yeah, I know we go deeper than skin
But what lies within
Is still deeper than we know

And for all this pantomime
You should see the state I’m in
I couldn’t heal myself with time alone
I have you tattooed on my skin

All I ever wanted was to hold you
What can I do now to make things new
I ain’t trying to write you into a song
'Cause you’re too sacred and I would feel wrong
But what irony life holds
I was finally ready to meet you halfway
You turned and walked away

And for all this pantomime
You should see the state I’m in
I couldn’t heal myself with time alone
I have you tattooed on my skin

I couldn’t heal myself with time alone
I have you tattooed on my skin

There’s so many I hardly know where to start.

All my life I’ve been a travelin’ man
All my life I’ve been a travelin’ man
Stayin’ alone and doin’ the best I can

I shipped my trunk down to Tennessee
I shipped my trunk down to Tennessee
Hard to tell about a man like me

I met a gal, I couldn’t get her off my mind
I met a gal, I couldn’t get her off my mind
She passed me up, said she didn’t like my kind

I’m scared to bother around her house at night
I’m scared to bother around her house at night
She got a police dog cravin’ for a fight

His name is Rambler, when he gets a chance
His name is Rambler, when he gets a chance
He leaves his mark on everybody’s pants

Guess I’ll travel, I guess I’ll let her be
I guess I’ll travel, I guess I’ll let her be
Before she sicks her police dog on me

“Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot stumbled its way across my feed the other day. Good song, and it reminded me I hadn’t listened to the “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” in ages.

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin’
“Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya”
At seven PM, a main hatchway caved in, he said
“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

I want to be rich
I don’t want to work in a ditch

Rich in a Ditch by Klark Kent (aka Stewart Copeland)

Oh the girls are out to bingo
And the boys are gettin’ stinko
And we think no more of Inco
On a Subdbury Saturday night

Sudbury Saturday Night by Stompin’ Tom Connors

Perhaps an odd choice, but Take the Long Way Home by Supertramp has always resonated with me. Snip;

Does it feel that your life’s become a catastrophe?
Oh, it has to be
For you to grow, boy
When you look through the years and see what you could have been
Oh, what you might have been
If you would had more time

So when the day comes to settle down
Who’s to blame if you’re not around?
You took the long way home
You took the long way home

Vague sketch of a fantasy
Laughing at the sunrise like he’s been up all night
Ooh, slipping and sliding, what a good time
But now I have to find a bed that can take this weight

“Good Feeling” Gordon Gano/Violent Femmes

Really could have pulled so many examples from that album, but this track is the perfect coda to the record and this verse encapsulates the emotional rollercoaster that came before. It is amazing how a high school kid could have the insight to write some of these lyrics - and create such a thematically tight album (which seems to be a world so far from his upbringing). Not to mention the perfect vocal delivery, vibrant musical articulation…I could go on and on.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a brilliant song. Lightfoot has modified the lyrics as more information came to light about the sinking.

I run good but I’m hard to start
And my brakes are bad so I’m hard to stop
Found a woman who’s soft but she’s also hard
While I slept she nailed down my heart
– Morphine, All Your Way

I made a wish on a sliver of moonlight
A sly grin and a bowl full of stars
Like a kid who captures a firefly
And leaves it only to die in the jar
–Tom Waits, Lucinda

Sixty-minute man, sixty-minute man
Look a here girls I’m telling you now
They call me “Lovin’ Dan”
I rock 'em, roll 'em all night long
I’m a sixty-minute man
If you don’t believe I’m all that I say
Come up and take my hand
When I let you go you’ll cry “Oh yes”
“He’s a sixty-minute man”.
There’ll be 15 minutes of kissing
Then you’ll holler “Please don’t stop” (Don’t stop !)
There’ll be 15 minutes of teasing
And 15 minutes of squeezing
And 15 minutes of blowing my top…

I heard those lyrics played by an old rockabilly band and just guffawed!

"A boy’s not a boy and a man’s not a man
'Til he’s been with a girl like my Jo Ann.

"A boy’s not a boy and a man’s not a man
'Til he’s been with a girl like my Jo Ann.

"A boy’s not a boy and a man’s not a man
'Til he’s been with a girl like my Jo Ann.

"A boy’s not a boy and a man’s not a man
'Til he’s been with a girl like my Jo Ann.

Aaaah ahh ahhh
aaaah ahh ahhh"

“The Raver” by The Troggs

Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
'Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m getting older too

First time I heard that “even children get older, and I’m getting older too”, it hit like a truck.

That said, the most precious lyrics I know are in my native language (Portuguese), which makes it hard to share with a non-Portuguese-speaking audience, alas. :(

Also, I think this particular verse from John Mayer’s “Heartbreak Warfare” is just brilliant:

How come the only way to know how high you get me
Is to see how far I fall?

So, so many.

Really appreciate the quirky poetry from Modest Mouse. Here’s one from “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine”.

And the televisions gone
Go to the grocery store, buy some new friends
And find out the beginning, the end, and the best of it
Well, do you need a lot of what you’ve got to survive?
Here’s the man with teeth like God’s shoeshine
He sparkles shimmers shines
Let’s all have another Orange Julius
This syrup standing in lines
The malls are the soon to be ghost towns
So long, farewell, good-bye

Paul Simon is of course the King of Lyrics. Many examples, but among my favorites: (the bolded lines just slay me)

It’s a still life watercolor
Of a now-late afternoon
As the sun shines through the curtain lace
And shadows wash the room

And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference, like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar

In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
The borders of our lives

And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with book markers
That measure what we’ve lost

Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time (in syncopated time)

And the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives

Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
“Can analysis be worthwhile?”
“Is the theater really dead?”

And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow, I cannot feel your hand
You’re a stranger now unto me

Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives