Lyrics that speak to you.

[ptg]

Big Joe Jackson fan...On the Heaven and Hell album there is one song for each of the 7 deadly sins. In Sloth the narrator (sung by Brad Roberts from Crash Test Dummies) talks about not wanting to get up or do anything and professes that he's "waiting for Worlds to Collide in the comfort of home."
Damn I love that line!

 

[cdef]

This verse, from Particle Man by They Might Be Giants:

Person Man, Person Man
Hit on the head with a frying pan
Lives his life in a garbage can
Person Man...
Is he depressed, or is he a mess?
Does he feel totally worthless?
Who came up with Person Man?
Degraded man - Person Man

 

[Gorn]

Whenever I get to feel this way,
try to find new words to say,
I think about the bad old days
we used to know.
Nights of winter turn me cold --
fears of dying, getting old.
We ran the race and the race was won by running slowly.
Could be soon we'll cease to sound, slowly upstairs, faster down.
Then to revisit stony grounds,
we used to know.
Remembering mornings, shillings spent, made no sense to leave the bed.
The bad old days they came and went giving way to fruitful years.
Saving up the birds in hand
while in the bush the others land.
Take what we can before the man says it's time to go.
Each to his own way I'll go mine.
Best of luck with what you find.
But for your own sake remember times we used to know.

 

[ianuaditis]

More Funkadelic: March to the Witch's Castle

...Father, bless the soldier who has returned home from the war
He has fought with all his might
Yet he knew not for what or who he was fighting for
Death waited in the shadows as he crawled by night for his country
His enemies were many, including the habit he still cannot break
Father, we pray that we might understand what has happened to his mind
And help us understand his reaction
To the changes that has taken place here at home
And father, smile upon us, with your grace, for we will need you more than ever

Help him understand, that when his loved one remarried
They were truly under the impression that he was dead
And never would return
Oh lord, we pray
And father, why must wars be fought?
Someone said this war ended with "Peace with honor"
But can there truly be?
Is there such a thing?

Thousands of boys gave their life, and for what?
Do anybody know?
Oh lord, give us the strength to understand ourselves
For we are mysterious animals, man
And as the boys march home to the witch's castle
They will all need your help
I can hear them calling, calling out for you, father
For there is no one else that can help
Smile upon us, oh lord
For we are very weak
Very weak

 

[cdef]

Baltimore, by Randy Newman, speaks to me, especially in Nina Simone's version.

Beat-up little seagull on a marble stair
Trying to find the ocean, looking everywhere

Hard times in the city, in a hard town by the sea
Ain't nowhere to run to - there ain't nothing here for free

Hooker on the corner, waiting for a train
Drunk lying on the sidewalk, sleeping in the rain

And the people hide their faces, and they hide their eyes
'Cause the city's dying, and they don't know why

Oh, Baltimore, ain't it hard just to live...

Get my sister Sandy and my little brother Ray
Buy a big old wagon to haul us all away

Live out in the country where the mountain's high
Never gonna come back here till the day I die

Oh, Baltimore... Oh Baltimore...

 

[tmdazed]

just part of a line from sissyneck by beck , its part of the chorus and its: I'm writing my will on a three dollar bill in the evening time" I dunno why but that line intrigues me

 

[ed morgan]

I really like Anybody Listening from Queensryche

 

[Matthew Fisher]

Dick Dale sang this "modern spiritual" on the Lawrence Welk show with Gail Farrell in 1971. Not that Dick Dale!



Forgive me; that was just awful. These lyrics (with English subtitles) are much better:

 

[Killed_by_Death]

One of these days,
I'm gonna change my evil ways!
One of these days...

 

[anavar]

Die for Christ
Die for Allah
Die for Jerusalem
Die for Torah
Father and son marching in rhythm
Firing bullets through the skulls of the children

Holy war
Mortars and martyrs
Holy war
Unholy followers
Holy war
Brainwashed with death
Holy war
Unholy mess

I reject the laws of the misguided
False prophets imprison nations fueling self annihilation
I reject pocket lined political demons
Who arm the ignorant for election season

Empires buried in sand a history of the failures in man

Armies of guardians
Servants of Bibles
Reciting verses as they stand before rifles
Millions of lives erased
Hatred marked as madness
Violence in leaves of scripture
A world aflame with malice

We will all die for nothing
There is silence in the house of god
There is only the cry of hell
There is silence in the house of god
There is only the cry of hell

Holy war
Mortars and martyrs
Holy war
Unholy followers
Holy war
Brainwashed with death
Holy war
Unholy mess

Die for Christ
Die for Allah
Die for Jerusalem
Die for Torah
Father and son marching in rhythm
Firing bullets through the skulls of the children

Holy war
Holy war

We will all die for nothing
We will all die for nothing

Cliffs: Religion is poison, don't double park, recycle etc etc...

 

[pcake]

How many of YOU folks write lyrics? Do you tend to write in a literal fashion, or more obliquely?

some of each and many that fall in between... which does a song about a serial killer committing suicide count as? on the other hand, i've written a straight up love song, a song about my junkie ex-roommate and her life, a song that some people mistake as satanic that is actually addressing hypocrisy, a blues number about lying in bed not wanting to get up,

i guess more often literal or telling a story, but sometimes far from obvious...

 

[Tom Bomb]

​

World Citizen (I Won't Be Disappointed)

David Sylvian & Ryuichi Sakamoto

What happened here?
The butterfly has lost its wings
The air's too thick to breathe
And there's something in the drinking water.

The sun comes up
The sun comes up and you're alone
Your sense of purpose come undone
The traffic tails back to the maze on 101

And the news from the sky
Is looking better for today
In every single way
But not for you

World citizen

World citizen

It's not safe
All the yellow birds are sleeping
Cos the air's not fit for breathing
It's not safe

Why can't we be
Without beginning, without end?
Why can't we be?

World citizen

World citizen

And if I stop
And talk with you awhile
I'm overwhelmed by the scale
Of everything you feel
The lonely inner state emergency

I want to feel
Until my heart can take no more
And there's nothing in this world I wouldn't give

I want to break
The indifference of the days
I want a conscience that will keep me wide awake

I won't be disappointed
I won't be disappointed
I won't be.

I saw a face
It was a face I didn't know
Her sadness told me everything about my own

Can't let it be
When least expected there she is
Gone the time and space that separates us

And I'm not safe
I think I need a second skin
No, I'm not safe

World citizen

World citizen

I want to travel by night
Across the steppes and over seas
I want to understand the cost
Of everything that's lost
I want to pronounce all their names correctly

World citizen

World citizen

I won't be disappointed
I won't be.

She doesn't laugh
We've gone from comedy to commerce
And she doesn't feel the ground she walks upon

I turn away
And I'm not sleeping well at night
And while I know this isn't right
What can you do?​

 

[kjones]

Dick Dale sang this "modern spiritual" on the Lawrence Welk show with Gail Farrell in 1971. Not that Dick Dale!



Forgive me; that was just awful. These lyrics (with English subtitles) are much better:

How in the world can you put the Lawrence Welk video here without noting that the song is introduced by the amazing Myron Floren, the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion?

 

[Matthew Fisher]

How in the world can you put the Lawrence Welk video here without noting that the song is introduced by the amazing Myron Floren, the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion?

You rock! I was just trying to stay on topic for once. But since you brought it up ...

One of Myron Floren's CDs (Polka Favorites) is in heavy rotation in my car CD player. This causes family strife. On the drive home today, one daughter kept asking me to play polka. The other daughter howled bloody murder whenever I pressed play. There's no accounting for taste.

Polka is a polarizing topic. The first video below shows off Floren's mad chops. Unfortunately, to some people it will look and sound exactly like Murph and the Magictones paying Quando, Quando Quando at the Holiday Inn.





I can't explain why I get the joke when listening to square music. It may be a side effect of listening to Esquivel. Once you've been down the rabbit hole with Alice, nothing sounds the same.

 

[kjones]

You rock! I was just trying to stay on topic for once. But since you brought it up ...

One of Myron Floren's CDs (Polka Favorites) is in heavy rotation in my car CD player. This causes family strife. On the drive home today, one daughter kept asking me to play polka. The other daughter howled bloody murder whenever I pressed play. There's no accounting for taste.

Polka is a polarizing topic. The first video below shows off Floren's mad chops. Unfortunately, to some people it will look and sound exactly like Murph and the Magictones paying Quando, Quando Quando at the Holiday Inn.





I can't explain why I get the joke when listening to square music. It may be a side effect of listening to Esquivel. Once you've been down the rabbit hole with Alice, nothing sounds the same.

I keep pressing the "Like" button but it won't give me more than one.

 

[ShallowBayXI]

"Farts stink like a mother ******" Pantera... Lol

 

[LowNloud1]

I am not big on lyrics. It's always been more about the melody and the groove. But, there was a lyric in a Tubes song that made me question mankind's existence.

They had this 20-something minute song called "Night People" that grabbed my ear. Neat song, blended transitions from one song to another, returning to the intro at the end.

There was a spoken verse that hit me right between the eyes. It was "We are things that make things.....". Totally bothered me for a couple months because it reduced humanity to insignificance in my mind. Finally, I heard the rest of the lyric that was slightly delayed and obscured in the music that gave me relief. The missing part of the verse was "happen". So the verse became "We are things that make things.....happen". Totally relieved, my faith in mankind restored. I felt better.

Anyone have a similar experience with a lyric? Maybe I have too much time on my hands?

 

[Jloch86]

Time by Pink Floyd. It scared the crap out of me because of how much I identified with it. It's like every word is exactly how I felt at 16. That album changed my life.

Love Minus Zero by Bob Dylan captures exactly how I feel about my wife. Made me weep like a little girl the first time I heard it.

My love, she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence
She doesn't have to say she's faithful
But she's true, like ice, or fire

People carry roses
Make promises by the hours
My love, she laughs like the flowers
Valentines can't buy her

In the dime stores and bus stations
People talk over situations
Read books, and repeat quotations
Draw conclusions on the wall

Some speak of the future
My love, she speaks softly
Knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all

Cloak and dagger dangles
Madams light the candles
In ceremonies of the horsemen
Even a pawn must hold a grudge

Statues made of matchsticks
Crumble into one another
My love winks, she doesn't bother
She knows too much to argue or to judge

The bridge at midnight trembles
The country doctor rambles
Bankers' nieces seek perfection
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring

The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and rainy
My love, she's like some raven
At my window with a broken wing

 

[Hamish MacCleod]

Simon and Garfunkle: Sound of Silence. When I'm really feeling blue this song helps me get through it, just knowing others are in the same place is somehow reassuring.
H

 

[fingerguy]

"Stacy's Mom"