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Greatest lyric

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If there’s a more powerful line in rock music than “I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard”, I’d like to know it.

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    • pick any one from…

      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

      In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain

      And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train

      We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
      Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s insane

      Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near

      She’s delicate and seems like Vermeer

      But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
      That Johanna’s not here

      The ghost of ‘lectricity howls in the bones of her face

      Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

      Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously

      He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously

      And when bringing her name up
      He speaks of a farewell kiss to me

      He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all

      Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall

      How can I explain?

      It’s so hard to get on and these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn

      Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial

      Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while

      But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
      You can tell by the way she smiles

      See the primitive wallflower freeze
      When the jelly-faced women all sneeze

      Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeez, I can’t find my knees”

      The jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule

      But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

      The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him

      Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”

      But like Louise always says
      “Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”
      As she, herself, prepares for him

      And Madonna, she still has not showed
      We see this empty cage now corrode

      Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
      The fiddler, he now steps to the road

      He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
      On the back of the fish truck that loads
      While my conscience explodes

      The harmonicas play the skeleton keys in the rain
      And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

  2. “We come from the land of the ice and slow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow”, obvs.

    Trying to sidestep some of the more obvious answers/artists, a lyric that always gets me is from US rockmeister Bob Seger’s power ballad “We’ve Got Tonight”: “I know it’s late, I know you’re weary, I know your plans don’t include me”. We’ve all been there, in the small hours of the morning looking longingly at someone who’s looking at someone else.

      • Bruce has hundreds of gems like this. Hundreds.

        “Moonlight Motel”

        There’s a place on a blank stretch of road where
        Nobody travels and nobody goes and the
        Deskman says these days ’round here
        Where two young folks could probably up and disappear into
        Rustlin’ sheets, a sleepy corner room
        Into the musty smell
        Of wilted flowers and lazy afternoon hours
        At the Moonlight Motel

        Now the pool’s filled with empty, eight foot deep
        Got dandelions growin’ up through the cracks in the concrete
        Chain-link fence half-rusted away
        Got a sign, says, “Children, be careful how you play”
        Your lipstick taste and your whispered secret
        I promised I’d never tell
        A half-drunk beer and your breath in my ear
        At the Moonlight Motel

        Well then, it’s bills and kids and kids and bills
        And the ringing of the bell
        Across the valley floor through the dusty screen door
        Of the Moonlight Motel

        Last night I dreamed of you, my lover
        And the wind blew through the window and blew off the covers
        Of my lonely bed, I woke to something you said
        That it’s better to have loved, yeah, it’s better to have loved
        As I drove, there was a chill in the breeze
        And leaves tumbled from the sky and fell
        On a road so black as I backtracked
        To the Moonlight Motel

        She was boarded up and gone like an old summer song
        Nothing but an empty shell
        I pulled in and stopped into my old spot

        I pulled a bottle of Jack out of a paper bag
        Poured one for me and one for you as well
        Then it was one more shot poured out onto the parking lot
        To the Moonlight Motel

  9. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but the entire lyrics to Motörhead’s Orgasmatron are somewhat atypical of the artist in general.
    Takedowns of politics, religion and war, they pull no punches.

  11. Of all the songs that I have learnt as a full on folkie, right now, this is my favourite:
    “Out where the dawn comes singing down to see herself so fair”
    The Hills of Longdendale from songs of the Pennine Hills by Ammon Wrigley

    • That whole song is just brilliant one line lyric after brilliant one line lyric.

      My favourite is “I’m a soldier who’s returning half her weight”, but you could pick pretty much every other line:

      “And you were tossing me the car keys: fuck the patriarchy”
      “A never needy, ever-lovely jewel, whose shine reflects on you”
      “I’ll get older but your lovers stay my age”
      “And did the twin flame bruise paint you blue”
      “You kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath”

      etc, etc.

  20. From the top of the bus she thought she saw him wave.

    The subject of the lyric is now a teacher at the secondary school where Offspring The Younger attends sixth form. Small world, and all that.

  23. Today it’s…

    Silver shone the rooftops, I heard the words “You will”, and realised that in your eyes the force of love could kill

    Release – written by the Boy Wonder Roddy Frame when he wasn’t even old enough to vote.

    (by the way fellow pedants I’ve checked the lyrics and it’s all one sentence)

    • Yes!
      I also like “[There’s] a devil in the closet and a feeling I prefer to hide” in Only Talking Sense.
      It’s the ‘prefer’ that shows Neil’s deft touch there.

  27. – Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone

    On a different day, perhaps this:

    – Dawn, your guise has filled my nights with fear at each closing of my eyes

    Or even this:

    – Even now we are not lost: if you look out at the night, you’ll see the colours and the lights seem to say that people are not far away

  40. More seriously:

    And you may ask yourself, “How do I work this?”
    And you may ask yourself, “Where is that large automobile?”
    And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful house”
    And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful wife”

  41. Perhaps not the most powerful in rock but here are some lines I like:

    I used to be so careless. As if I couldn’t care less.

    Right on the target but wide of the mark, what I thought was fire was only the start.

    Young bones groan and the rocks below say “throw your skinny body down, son.”

    He’s a man of constant sorrow with a garage in constant use.

    I’m kind of over being told to put my hands in the air. So there.

  47. Did I dream, you dreamed about me? Were you here when I was full sail?
    Now my foolish boat is leaning, broken lovelorn on your rocks

    I’m as puzzled as the oyster, I’m as riddled as the tide – should I stand amid the breakers or should I lie with death my bride?

    Cheating a bit, maybe – but at least I didn’t post a complete song…

  57. I said, babe you look delicious and you’re standing very close.
    But like this is Lower Broadway and you’re talking to a ghost.
    Take a good look, it’s easy to see. What a shame about me.

  63. Tommy Hall’s lyrics to Slip Inside This House. Supernatural? Perhaps. Baloney? Perhaps not.

    Bedouin in tribes ascending
    From the egg into the flower
    Alpha information sending
    States within the heaven shower
    From disciples the unending
    Subtleties of river power
    They slip inside this house as they pass by

    If your limbs begin dissolving
    In the water that you tread
    All surroundings are evolving
    In the stream that clears your head
    Find yourself a caravan
    Like Noah must have led
    And slip inside this house as you pass by

    Slip inside this house as you pass by
    True conception, knowing why
    Brings even more than meets the eye
    Slip inside this house as you pass by

    In this dark we call creation
    We can be and feel and know
    From an effort – comfort station
    That’s surviving on the go
    There’s infinite survival in
    The high baptismal glow
    Slip inside this house as you pass by

    There is no season when you are grown
    You are always risen from the seeds you’ve sown
    There is no reason to rise alone
    Other stories given have sages of their own

    Live where your heart can be given
    And your life starts to unfold
    In the forms you envision
    In this dream that’s ages old
    On the river layer is the only sayer
    You receive all you can hold
    Like you’ve been told

    Every day’s another dawning
    Give the morning winds a chance
    Always catch your thunder yawning
    Lift your mind into the dance
    Sweep the shadows from your awning
    Shrink the fourfold circumstance
    That lies outside this house don’t pass it by

    Higher worlds that you uncover
    Light the path you want to roam
    You compare there and discover
    You won’t need a shell of foam
    Twice born gypsies care and keep
    The nowhere of their former home
    They slip inside this house as they pass by

    Slip inside this house as you pass by
    You think you can’t, you wish you could
    I know you can, I wish you would
    Slip inside this house as you pass by

    Four and twenty birds of Maya
    Baked into an atom you
    Polarized into existence
    Magnet heart from red to blue
    To such extent the realm of dark
    Within the picture it seems true
    But slip inside this house and then decide

    All your lightning waits inside you
    Travel it along your spine
    Seven stars receive your visit
    Seven seals remain divine
    Seven churches filled with spirit
    Treasure from the angels’ mine
    Slip inside this house as you pass by

    Slip inside this house as you pass by
    The space you make has your own laws
    No longer human, Gods are cause
    The center of this House will never die

    There is no season when you are grown
    You are always risen from the seeds you’ve sown
    There is no reason to rise alone
    Other stories given have sages of their own

    Draw from the well of unchanging
    And its union nourishes on
    In the right rearranging
    Till the last confusion is gone
    Water brothers trust in the ultimust
    Of the always singing song
    They pass along

    One-eyed men aren’t really reigning
    They just march in place until
    Two-eyed men with mystery training
    Finally feel the power fill
    Three-eyed men are not complaining
    They can yo-yo where they will
    They slip inside this house as they pass by
    Don’t pass it by

    • I give a flower to the garbage man,
      he stuffs my girl in the garbage can.
      And I give it to the landlord, when the rent comes ’round.
      He throws it in the toilet and he flush it down.
      It goes into the sewer with the yuck running through her,
      And it runs into the river that we drink.
      Hey world, you stink!
      Ah, man it’s later than you think!

  64. This came up on shuffle this morning and it took me a minute or two to realise there was a pun in the line (and it’s the title of the song)
    “Am I alone or is it only me?” – by Roger Miller as sung by Glen Campbell

    No the greatest lyric, but reasonably clever…

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