The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

You are here: Home / Blog / best lyric ever

best lyric ever

by 42 Comments

ok.. best lyric in a hit song ever.. I’ ll start with Jerry Lee Lewis if I may?… “Ccme on over baby.. we got chicken in the barn/Whose barn?/What barn?/..my barn

0

Comments

  1. “You and me baby we ain’t nothing but mammals
    So let’s do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel”

    Lovely stuff from The Bloodhound Gang there with their 1999 hit ” The Bad Touch”.
    It reached number 4 in the singles chart and 1 (1!!) in the Dance (Dance!!) chart.

  3. “Dearly beloved
    We are gathered here today
    To get through this thing called life
    Electric word life
    It means forever and that’s a mighty long time”

    Prince – Let’s Go Crazy

    “You are not what you own”

    Fugazi – Merchandise

    “I may be younger but I’ll look after you
    We’re not in love, but I’ll make love to you
    When you’re not here I’ll save some for you
    I’m not him but I’ll mean something to you
    I’ll mean something to you
    I’ll mean something to you”

    Frank Ocean – Nikes

    “My name is Dr. Worm.
    Good morning. How are you? I’m Dr. Worm.
    I’m interested in things.
    I’m not a real doctor,
    But I am a real worm;
    I am an actual worm.
    I live like a worm.
    I like to play the drums.
    I think I’m getting good,
    But I can handle criticism.”

    They Might Be Giants – Dr Worm

    “Where all the girls with the book in the club?
    With the readin’ glasses on, gettin’ shook in the club
    Readin’ Ta-Nehisi Coates, hummin’ SpottieOttieDope
    With the “why I let ’em drag me here?” look in the club
    I need a ride home and I need an iPhone
    Charger and your number, can you put your shit in my phone?
    Damn my phone died, can you put it in my man’s phone?
    Damn his car died too, can you drive my mans home?”

    Joey Purp – Girls@

    “All I want is brick house with a porch that wraps around
    All I want is land enough for my children to run
    In the highest pitch of grace, the end of trial and gratitude
    It was for you that all others I did forsake
    For you all others I would forsake”

    Marmalade – Julie Byrne

    “First rule is “obey the laws of Germany”
    Second rule is “be nice to mommy”
    Third rule is “don’t talk to Commies”
    Fourth rule is “eat kosher salamis””

    The Ramones – Commando

    “How many people rise and think
    “Oh good, the stranger’s body’s still here
    Our arrangement hasn’t changed?””

    Father John Misty – Bored In The USA

  4. Wilco (Jeff Tweedy) – Impossible Germany

    “This is what love is for
    To be out of place
    Gorgeous and alone
    Face to face

    With no larger problems
    That need to be erased
    Nothing more important
    Than to know someone’s listening
    Now I know you’ll be listening”

  5. “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”

    That’s philosophy, that is

    And in a similar philosophical vein:
    “There is surely nothing worse than washing sieves, with the possible exception of being Garth Crooks”

  7. You chased the sun around the Cote D’Azur
    Until the light of youth became obscured
    And left you on your own and in the shade
    An English lady of a certain age.

    Divine Comedy A lady of a certain age

  8. At night only crickets, no prowlers, no sirens,
    No pinky-ring hustlers, no Angel Dust Byrons,
    No bars on the windows, no sabre-toothed neighbours,
    Just good simple folks in a rainbow of flavours.

    Somewhere in America there’s a street named after my dad
    And the home we never had.

    I’ll work for Mr. Fowler making fifty cents an hour
    And I’ll save what I can so I can get a piece of land.
    I’ll raise some cows and carrots, get ahead on my own merits
    And if I fall I’ll take it like a man.

    Somewhere in America there’s a street named after my dad
    And the home we never had.

    No more bland TV dinners, no ten car collisions,
    No showbiz beginners making global decisions,
    No daycare Fellinis, no fast food assassins,
    No billboard bikinis just truth and compassion.

    Somewhere in America there’s a street named after my dad
    And the home we never had.

    [Was (Not Was)]

  10. This is where we go to – to the blue of the ocean
    On the 30 westbound to the diamond water
    Lost out in the white waves – salt purification
    Bright eyes and breathless – this is how Love feels
    Wash away the black stuff, wash away the road-dirt
    In the thrill of the wipe-out, feel it pulling you under
    This is where it saved your life in the days of the new beginning
    All the sweet redemption lines that you wrote and told a thousand times
    This is where we go to – to the blue of the ocean
    On the 30 westbound to the diamond water
    On the back-lanes down to the sea we pulled to the side of the road
    Danced together in the headlights beam to the songs on the radio
    Cheek to cheek . . .
    – Wipeout, New Model Army

    I was travelling with Laurel way up on the north coast
    She’s got family living up here in a nearby town
    We found a piece of land that looks out towards
    the north sea islands across the bay
    And the sun is shining on the water today as I look out of our front door
    I’m never going back there
    I’m never going back to the bad old world
    – Bad Old World, New Model Army

    Doctor Who’s got a Tardis and it is fucking ace
    It takes its name from the acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space
    He uses it for getting about to do battle with cosmic crime
    It’s powered by a big round bumpy thing that propels it through space and time
    It goes [VWOORP] when it starts
    and [VWOORP] when it stops
    These sounds bought to you courtesy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
    -Observations On Time Travel, Doghorse

  11. Punk rockers in the UK
    They won’t notice anyway
    They’re all too busy fighting
    For a good place under the lighting

    The new groups are not concerned
    With what there is to be learned
    They got Burton suits, ha you think it’s funny
    Turning rebellion into money

    All over people changing their votes
    Along with their overcoats
    If Adolf Hitler flew in today
    They’d send a limousine anyway

    The Clash – (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais

  12. i live my life like there’s no tomorrow,
    all I got, I had to steal,
    least I I don’t need to beg or borrow,
    yes i’m living on a…preset fuse.

    running with the devil…VAN HALEN.

    a pretty accurate statement of intent, and how I choose to remember my fave band from my youth.

    FISH.

  15. I sometimes think that “I am the light, I am the fire that burns around the sun / And I’ll set you free, so free / I am the black gold of the sun” is just the greatest lyric ever.

    Other times pretty much anything from the song “The Queen Is Dead” is the greatest.

    But the actual answer is, as with most questions of “best” and “song” The Beach Boys and “God only knows what I’d be without you.” It’s the single most perfect line in a song by anyone, sung by perfect singers to perfect music.

  16. She drew out all her money out the Southern Trust
    And put her little boy upon a Greyhound bus
    Leaving Louisiana for the Golden West
    Down came the tears from her happiness
    Her own little son named Johnny B Goode
    Gonna make a motion picture out in Hollywood…

  18. A-tisket, a-tasket, a Pashley with a basket
    Behold Hermione, Little Miss Poundbury
    I used to hanker after her when days were merrier
    Before the ground floor flat West Highland Terrier
    Kathleen Ferrier tickets in the post
    All them Lib Dems done gone to Cropredy
    Tories to Cornbury
    As for me, I’ll take the TGV to Zurich and jump off the roof of Dignitas
    And leave a note saying:
    “Here lies the bloke, the only bloke in Harpurhey
    Who wasn’t at the Lesser Free Trade Hall”
    Y’all, think on
    While you’re capturing the zeitgeist
    They’re widening the motorway

    Or:

    Mama mama
    You’re a whiz and a scholar too
    Mama open up the room lock
    Sip sip
    I’m going to the moon dock
    He gives to me
    Buckles off shingles
    Off a cockleshell on norway basin
    Coke and tuna
    Boots and roses from russia
    Now I’ll live and die and rise
    With my captain
    Mama say go
    Meet me captain saint Lucifer

    Neither exactly hits, but this was:

    What do you get when you kiss a girl
    You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
    After you do, she’ll never phone you

  19. Personally, I think that the question of a “best lyric” (what an impossible proposition that is) can only be reduced to what you relate to, what speaks to you, or a lyric that articulates an emotion or experience you might struggle otherwise to express yourself.
    For me, tonight, I’ll go for: “A good day ain’t got no rain. A bad day is when I lie in bed and think of things that might have been……slip sliding away”

  20. This is my favourite lyric. It is utterly exquisite.

    I was driving across the burning desert
    When I spotted six jet planes
    Leaving six white vapour trails across the bleak terrain
    It was the hexagram of the heavens
    it was the strings of my guitar
    Amelia, it was just a false alarm

    The drone of flying engines
    Is a song so wild and blue
    It scrambles time and seasons if it gets through to you
    Then your life becomes a travelogue
    Of picture-post-card-charms
    Amelia, it was just a false alarm

    People will tell you where they’ve gone
    They’ll tell you where to go
    But till you get there yourself you never really know
    Where some have found their paradise
    Others just come to harm
    Oh Amelia, it was just a false alarm

    I wish that he was here tonight
    It’s so hard to obey
    His sad request of me to kindly stay away
    So this is how I hide the hurt
    As the road leads cursed and charmed
    I tell Amelia, it was just a false alarm

    A ghost of aviation
    She was swallowed by the sky
    Or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly
    Like Icarus ascending
    On beautiful foolish arms
    Amelia, it was just a false alarm

    Maybe I’ve never really loved
    I guess that is the truth
    I’ve spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude
    And looking down on everything
    I crashed into his arms
    Amelia, it was just a false alarm

    I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
    To shower off the dust
    And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
    I dreamed of 747s
    Over geometric farms
    Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms

    • Another vote for Amelia, spent many an hour flying over geometric farms listening to that, but for a single verse I’d have to go for:

      Well I was pacing myself trying to make it all last
      squeezing all the life out of a lousy two day pass
      and I had a cold one at the Dragon with some Filipino floor show
      and talked baseball with a lieutenant over a Singapore sling
      and I wondered how the same moon outside over this Chinatown fair
      could look down on Illinois and find you there

      the last 2 lines especially always make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck (sometimes even when sober)

    • Amelia is hampered for me by the bathetic last but one verse, with its cartoon image of zooming down from altitude, wings outstretched, to crash into a man on the ground.

  22. I am thinking it’s a sign
    That the freckles in our eyes
    Are mirror images and when
    We kiss they’re perfectly aligned
    And I have to speculate
    That God himself did make
    Us into corresponding shapes
    Like puzzle pieces from the clay
    (“Such Great Heights” – The Postal Service)

    And when you’ve given all you had
    And everything still turns out bad
    (“Andmoreagain” – Love)

    Zoo time is she and you time
    The mammals are your favourite type, and you want her tonight
    Heartbeat, increasing heartbeat
    You hear the thunder of stampeding rhinos, elephants and tacky tigers,
    This town ain’t big enough for both of us
    And it ain’t me who’s gonna leave
    (“This town ain’t big enough for both of us” – Sparks

    Plus the ever-relevant…

    Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
    Why you never see bright colors on my back,
    And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
    Well, there’s a reason for the things that I have on.

    I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
    Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
    I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
    But is there because he’s a victim of the times.

    I wear the black for those who never read,
    Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
    About the road to happiness through love and charity,
    Why, you’d think He’s talking straight to you and me.

    Well, we’re doin’ mighty fine, I do suppose,
    In our streak of lightnin’ cars and fancy clothes,
    But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back,
    Up front there ought ‘a be a Man In Black.

    I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
    For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
    I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been,
    Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

    And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
    Believen’ that the Lord was on their side,
    I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
    Believen’ that we all were on their side.

    Well, there’s things that never will be right I know,
    And things need changin’ everywhere you go,
    But ’til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
    You’ll never see me wear a suit of white.

    Ah, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day,
    And tell the world that everything’s OK,
    But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
    ‘Till things are brighter, I’m the Man In Black.
    (“Man In Black” – Johnny Cash)

  24. If you want something polemical, this is the best musical take-down of organized religion, ever. Okay, most of its in pidgin, but it is very easy to understand:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y–5IlljO78

    I love the bit when Fela gets all righteous, starting from

    I want you all to please take your minds
    Out of this musical contraption
    And put your minds into any goddamn church
    Any goddamn mosque
    Any goddamn Celestical
    Including Seraphoom and Cheruboom

  25. How dare the premier ignore my invitations?
    He’ll have to go
    So too the bunch he luncheons with
    It’s second on my list of things to do

    At the top I’m stopping by
    Your place of work and acting like
    I haven’t dreamed of you and I
    And marriage in an orange grove

    You are the only thing
    In any room you’re ever in
    I’m stubborn, selfish and too old

    I sat you down and told you how
    The truest love that’s ever found is for oneself
    You pulled apart my theory
    With a weary and disinterested sigh

    So yes, I guess I’m asking you
    To back a horse that’s good for glue and nothing else
    But find a man that’s truer than
    Find a man that needs you more than I

    Sit with me a while
    And let me listen to you talk about
    Your dreams and your obsessions
    I’ll be quiet and confessional

    The violets explode inside me
    When I meet your eyes
    Then I’m spinning and I’m diving
    Like a cloud of starlings
    Darling, is this love?

    Starlings by Elbow

  26. If you want a lover
    I’ll do anything you ask me to
    And if you want another kind of love
    I’ll wear a mask for you
    If you want a partner
    Take my hand
    Or if you want to strike me down in anger
    Here I stand
    I’m your man
    If you want a boxer
    I will step into the ring for you
    And if you want a doctor
    I’ll examine every inch of you
    If you want a driver
    Climb inside
    Or if you want to take me for a ride
    You know you can
    I’m your man

    Ah, the moon’s too bright
    The chain’s too tight
    The beast won’t go to sleep
    I’ve been running through these promises to you
    That I made and I could not keep
    Ah but a man never got a woman back
    Not by begging on his knees
    Or I’d crawl to you baby
    And I’d fall at your feet
    And I’d howl at your beauty
    Like a dog in heat
    And I’d claw at your heart
    And I’d tear at your sheet
    I’d say please, please
    I’m your man

    And if you’ve got to sleep
    A moment on the road
    I will steer for you
    And if you want to work the street alone
    I’ll disappear for you
    If you want a father for your child
    Or only want to walk with me a while
    Across the sand
    I’m your man

    If you want a lover
    I’ll do anything you ask me to
    And if you want another kind of love
    I’ll wear a mask for you.

  27. A really obvious one, but it would probably be this:

    Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks
    When you’re tryin’ to be so quiet
    We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
    And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
    Lights flicker from the opposite loft
    In this room the heat pipes just cough
    The country music station plays soft
    But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
    Just Louise and her lover so entwined
    And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

Leave a Reply