#1
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Favorite lyrics.
What are your favorite songs lyricly? Not neccessarily acoustic songs.
I've always like alot of Gord Downie's lyrics if I had to pick a favorite song it would be this one. While typicaly vague, it sort of seems to tell the story of a minor event at a strip joint, but with lots of these random tangents thrown in. It just pulls me into the scene of sitting in some 3rd rate dive, listening to snatches of the various conversations going on around you. https://youtu.be/Dy-KGZzJTrI I think Leonard Cohen wrote this one, but I've always been familiar with the Niel Diamond version. https://youtu.be/Ub1XtFwU9CA And lastly, Tony Sly has a whole pile of songs with stand out lyrics, so bloody hard to choose just one, the guy was brilliant. I guess I'll go with this one... Scathingly dark lyrics and fuzzed out guitars to a bouncy show tune beat... pure genious. https://youtu.be/xlJl0bGQXbo Last edited by Bushleague; 11-03-2021 at 01:09 PM. |
#2
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This is more of a treatise than a song. It’s absolutely ingenious and it astounds me that a 24 year old had the audacity and intellect to write it.
It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) Darkness at the break of noon Shadows even the silver spoon The handmade blade, the child’s balloon Eclipses both the sun and moon To understand you know too soon There is no sense in trying Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn Suicide remarks are torn From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn Plays wasted words, proves to warn That he not busy being born is busy dying Temptation’s page flies out the door You follow, find yourself at war Watch waterfalls of pity roar You feel to moan but unlike before You discover that you’d just be one more Person crying So don’t fear if you hear A foreign sound to your ear It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing As some warn victory, some downfall Private reasons great or small Can be seen in the eyes of those that call To make all that should be killed to crawl While others say don’t hate nothing at all Except hatred Disillusioned words like bullets bark As human gods aim for their mark Make everything from toy guns that spark To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It’s easy to see without looking too far That not much is really sacred While preachers preach of evil fates Teachers teach that knowledge waits Can lead to hundred-dollar plates Goodness hides behind its gates But even the president of the United States Sometimes must have to stand naked An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it Advertising signs they con You into thinking you’re the one That can do what’s never been done That can win what’s never been won Meantime life outside goes on All around you You lose yourself, you reappear You suddenly find you got nothing to fear Alone you stand with nobody near When a trembling distant voice, unclear Startles your sleeping ears to hear That somebody thinks they really found you A question in your nerves is lit Yet you know there is no answer fit To satisfy, insure you not to quit To keep it in your mind and not forget That it is not he or she or them or it That you belong to Although the masters make the rules For the wise men and the fools I got nothing, Ma, to live up to For them that must obey authority That they do not respect in any degree Who despise their jobs, their destinies Speak jealously of them that are free Cultivate their flowers to be Nothing more than something they invest in While some on principles baptized To strict party platform ties Social clubs in drag disguise Outsiders they can freely criticize Tell nothing except who to idolize And then say God bless him While one who sings with his tongue on fire Gargles in the rat race choir Bent out of shape from society’s pliers Cares not to come up any higher But rather get you down in the hole That he’s in But I mean no harm nor put fault On anyone that lives in a vault But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him Old lady judges watch people in pairs Limited in sex, they dare To push fake morals, insult and stare While money doesn’t talk, it swears Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony While them that defend what they cannot see With a killer’s pride, security It blows the minds most bitterly For them that think death’s honesty Won’t fall upon them naturally Life sometimes must get lonely My eyes collide head-on with stuffed Graveyards, false gods, I scuff At pettiness which plays so rough Walk upside-down inside handcuffs Kick my legs to crash it off Say okay, I have had enough what else can you show me? And if my thought-dreams could be seen They’d probably put my head in a guillotine But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only |
#3
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Ripple
Great song and great lyrics. Hunter/Garcia work of art.
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Acoustics: Yamaha FG800 Vintage; Epi PR-150 Natural, Martin Backpacker, Electrics: Epi Les Paul PlusTop Pro Heritage Cherry Burst; Epi ES-335 Cherry Amps: Vox AC10C1, Vox Pathfinder, PG Spark 40 Pedalboard: EB Volume->Tuner->Gate->Soul Food->HoF->Looper "Let there be songs, to fill the air" |
#4
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“Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues” -Ringo Starr
“You got to strike when the moment is right, without thinking” - Pink Floyd
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1980 Guild D25 1982 Guild D46 BLD 1996 Martin DM 1998 Guild F4ce 2005 Guild D55 |
#5
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I was thinking Animals; the whole album.
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Acoustics: Yamaha FG800 Vintage; Epi PR-150 Natural, Martin Backpacker, Electrics: Epi Les Paul PlusTop Pro Heritage Cherry Burst; Epi ES-335 Cherry Amps: Vox AC10C1, Vox Pathfinder, PG Spark 40 Pedalboard: EB Volume->Tuner->Gate->Soul Food->HoF->Looper "Let there be songs, to fill the air" |
#6
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For me it has to be Leonard Cohen, with Joni Mitchell fighting it out with Dylan for second place.
Dylan has certainly produced some truly magical lyrics, but IMO his genius is the triple combination of lyric, melody and delivery. Certainly in the early days, no one sang Dylan like Dylan. People covering his songs proved how great they were (because of their strength in adaptability), but no one delivered them like him. All those idiots who complained that he "can't sing".... they were either deaf or had tiny brains, or both. IMO, in his day, he was the greatest white vocalist in popular music. (There were quite a few black singers who were greater. No white ones.) His words don't always sit well on the page (like Cohen's, who was a true poet), they need to be sung, and I'm sure that's how he designed them. Anyway... along with works of genius, Dylan was capable of occasional clunkers. Rhymes that were uncomfortably forced. That line in Sara "the beach was deserted except for some kelp" is toe-curlingly ridiculous. It's only there so he has a rhyme for "help", and "deserted" refers to people, so kelp doesn't count; the right word is "empty", except it doesn't scan as well as "deserted". But then, as he once said, his pride in his craft amounted to, essentially, "making the words fit" - and that line is a perfect example of the kind of desperate hammering, sawing and chiseling that is occasionally necessary to get things to "fit". It's ugly, but OK it hangs together... And in Sad Eye Lady of the Lowlands, I love a lot of the Dylan-Thomas-esque metaphors, for their evocative surrealism - "mercury mouth", "eyes like smoke", "my warehouse eyes"; but what, pray, are "curfew plugs"? I'm not getting anything from that at all. (Another random rhyme for "drugs", I guess...) There are too many genius lines of Leonard Cohen's to quote here, but here's some examples of my favourite Joni Mitchell lyrics: In Amelia: "six jet plane Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain Like the hexagram of the heavens Like the strings of my guitar" "I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitudes And looking down on everything I crashed into his arms" Cactus tree: "her heart is full and hollow / Like a cactus tree" Case of You: "I could drink a case of you, darling / And I would still be on my feet" OK, I can't resist, here's a selection of my favourite Lenny's lines: "It's coming from the sorrow in the street The holy places where the races meet From the homicidal *****in' * That goes down in every kitchen To determine who will serve and who will eat" "I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet Democracy is coming to the USA" (I wonder if - just before he died - he felt he'd predicted Trump's success... ) And almost every line of Tower of Song is a jewel - although you maybe have to have reached a certain age (and be a songwriter) for it all to hit home!: "My friends are gone and my hair is grey I ache in the places where I used to play And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on I'm just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song I said to Hank Williams, how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn't answered yet But I hear him coughing all night long Oh, a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song I was born like this, I had no choice I was born with the gift of a golden voice And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond They tied me to this table right here in the Tower of Song Now, you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor And there's a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong You see, you hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song I see you standing on the other side I don't know how the river got so wide I loved you baby, way back when And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed But I feel so close to everything that we lost We'll never, we'll never have to lose it again" *Edit: I do love it when this site automatically removes relatively harmless words it seems to consider dangerously offensive. (I've even been banned temporarily for some normal figure of speech that it never occurred to me might be offensive.) Still, I'm sure you mature folks will know very well what's been censored here.
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. Last edited by JonPR; 11-04-2021 at 04:51 AM. |
#7
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Molly Tuttles version of “Gentle on my mind”.
Bob Dylan’s “Tangled up in blue”. Meat Loafs “Two out of three ain’t bad”. |
#8
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I really like the couplet from My Back Pages:
“Oh but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now.” That someone so young could write that is, as foxo said, astounding. For letting his guitar be part of the conversation, Jimi: “I have a hummingbird and it hums so loud (Muddy Waters riff descends from the stratosphere straight at your head) You’d think you were, uhh, losing your mind.”
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Guitars: Waterloo WL-K Iris AB 1990 Guild GF30 Bld Maple Archback Alvarez AP66 Baby Taylor G&L ASAT Tribute T-style |
#9
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This whole song, but the last line guts me...
"I'm afriad I got more in common/ with who I was, than who I am becoming." |
#10
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“…I walked a mile in your shoes. Now I’m a mile away, and I’ve got your shoes.”
Kings of Leon “comeback story” |
#11
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Didn't they steal that line from Mitch Hedberg?
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#12
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I don’t think John Prine ever wrote a song with lyrics that didn’t floor me….
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...Grasshopper...high is high...low is low....but the middle...lies in between...Master Po |
#13
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I was not going to answer, because as a lyricist-aficionado there'd be too many to pick from. Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell have already been mentioned early in the thread. Like young Dylan, I'm a resident of "Baja Canada" and wonder if how far up into the 40s latitude-wise one has to be to write great lyrics!
Any such discussion, even if it's about favorites, has to tip their hat to Bob Dylan. Song lyrics pre-Dylan and song lyrics post-Dylan are operating in two different worlds. Cohen (who always praised Dylan) and Mitchell (who liked to tweak Dylan's reputation and boost her own sometimes) both have acknowledged that. What Dylan did is take some things that poets had already been doing and brought them back to musical contexts. In doing so he totally expanded things that songwriters could do. Then I figured it's an excuse to toot my own, and my Parlando Project's horn. The Project takes other people's words and performs them with music. Here's a lyric Dylan could have written, but didn't because a non-songwriter Jean Toomer wrote it in the 1920s. I set it to music and performed that combination. See if you don't think of Dylan's "Visions of Johanna" when you hear this lyric. The following link will open up a new tab and play my perfromance. Her Lips are Copper Wire For me, coming upon Toomer's poem in the middle of his book Cane was a jaw-dropping moment. A great lyric. As to the performance, Greil Marcus seemed to like it a bit.
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----------------------------------- Creator of The Parlando Project Guitars: 20th Century Seagull S6-12, S6 Folk, Seagull M6; '00 Guild JF30-12, '01 Martin 00-15, '16 Martin 000-17, '07 Parkwood PW510, Epiphone Biscuit resonator, Merlin Dulcimer, and various electric guitars, basses.... |
#14
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Starry Starry Night (Vincent) by Don McLean.
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Martin Sc-13e 2020 |
#15
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Gentle on my Mind
It's knowing that your door is always open And your path is free to walk That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag Rolled up and stashed behind your couch And it's knowing I'm not shackled By forgotten words and bonds And the ink stains that are dried upon some line That keeps you in the backroads By the rivers of my memory That keeps you ever gentle on my mind It's not clinging to the rocks and ivy Planted on their columns now that bind me Or something that somebody said Because they thought we fit together walking It's just knowing that the world will not be cursing Or forgiving when I walk along some railroad track and find That you're moving on the backroads By the rivers of my memory And for hours you're just gentle on my mind Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines And the junkyards and the highways come between us And some other woman's cryin' to her mother 'Cause she turned and I was gone I still might run in silence tears of joy might stain my face And the summer sun might burn me 'til I'm blind But not to where I cannot see you walkin' on the backroads By the rivers flowing gentle on my mind I dip my cup of soup back from a gurglin' Cracklin' caldron in some train yard My beard a rustling, cold towel, and A dirty hat pulled low across my face Through cupped hands 'round the tin can I pretend to hold you to my breast and find That you're waiting from the backroads By the rivers of my memories Ever smilin' ever gentle on my mind |