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"Favourite Song Lyrics"

Everyone has their favourite songs that mean something to them or just resonate with a simple truth through interesting lyrics.

Song writers like Bob Dylan relied on their lyrics to make important points and everyone from John Lennon to Jedward has something to say....well, maybe not Jedward.

I digress, do you have any favourite song lyrics and why?

I love The Police's Every Breath You Take. On the surface it seems like a simple love song, but look deeper and there are dark undertones of obsession.

The Flaming Lips Do You Realise? is also an example of double edged lyrics, playing with mortality and using it as an example of why everyone is special.

Off the top of my head:

John Lennon - Imagine
Savage Garden - Crash & Burn, Affirmation
Guns 'N' Roses - November Rain

I love pretty much all of Nick Drakes lyrics.
Also, Sufjan Stevens.

There are probably hundreds of examples I could come up with but I particularly love Goodbye and Hello by Tim Buckley.
Beautiful song but most incredible is that it's actually 2 songs intertwined, 2 sets of lyrics switching seamlessly between the glorification and potential of youth and Buckley himself preparing to leave an America in disarray to the newer generation, in between savaging the older generation who were responsible for Vietnam.

"The vaudeville generals cavort on the stage
And shatter their audience with submachine guns
And Freedom and Violence the acrobat clowns
Do a balancing act on the graves of our sons
While the tapdancing Emperor sings "War is peace"
And Love the Magician disappears in the fun
And I wave goodbye to murder
And smile hello to the rain

O the new children can't -- I am young
Tell a foe from a friend -- I will live
Quick to enchant -- I am strong
And so glad to extend -- I can give
Handfuls of dawn -- You the strange
To kaleidoscope men -- Seed of day
Come from beyond -- Feel the change
The Great Wall of Skin -- Know the Way"

At over 8 minutes long, progressive, lyrically abstract and with references to politics, homosexuality, amphetamines and teenage sex, it's largely accepted as the song that finally killed folk music as an artform or as having anything left to say.

Ineedsleep wrote:
Steinman - Bat out of Hell and I'm talking about the whole album not just the single. Especially love Paradise by the Dashboard Light. So funny, so true and brilliantly put together with the commentary from the Baseball game.

As for the why? Brilliant song to belt out around 1.00 am with the girls after (more than) a few beers. Good memories :)

Very true (well, not sure about the girls bit personally). You can see the dip in quality for Midnight at the Lost and Found after Steinman left, though I do still love the title track of that album.

Plus Bat Out Of Hell is an excellent track for the piano.

Steinman - Bat out of Hell and I'm talking about the whole album not just the single. Especially love Paradise by the Dashboard Light. So funny, so true and brilliantly put together with the commentary from the Baseball game.

As for the why? Brilliant song to belt out around 1.00 am with the girls after (more than) a few beers. Good memories :)

My favorite lyrics song is Someone like you by Adele.

It's another KLF reference.

I'll be honest pb, Scooter are a band that I never had the slightest idea what the hell they were rattling on about. I accept that some music is designed to be a bit of fun and doesn't necessarily need to make a whole load of sense but they seem to take incomprehensible waffling to a whole new level to me. I recall a line from another one of their hits 'Weekend' ''respect to the man in the ice cream van'', alright it rhymes but what the hell does it mean? Why should be respect him?, OK he must have to work long hours and have a fairly substantial knowledge of his carried range of frozen dairy based products but does this really mean that he should demand our respect? As for another of their songs 'How much is the fish?', yep no idea what the hell that one was about either. Perhaps they are misunderstood modern day Wordsworth's and just not some German blokes who shout out utter b******s to techno tunes?

Scooter are basically referencing KLF though (who are actually one of the more interesting and unconventional lyricists out there).

Unfortunately, they seem to miss the point that KLF were always deliberately tongue-in-cheek artists.

Epic :¬D You've only got to look at the name of the 'band'!