The Simon and Garfunkel song Cecilia contains the line ‘I am down on my knees,I am begging you please’ I was listening to a reggae collection at the weekend and there was a song with the exact same line.
There must be several songs out there that repeat the same line that has appeared in another song either deliberately or accidentally.
Lyrical cliches
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I think we can assume accidental – Paul Simon would never claim credit for somebody else’s song.
Speaking of Paul Simon, I’m guessing the most notorious is “I was twenty-one years old when I wrote this song…”?
Other than that ‘Remember/November’ and ‘Beer/Fear’ are unforgiveable.
“I read the news today, oh boy”, Lennon then his mate Bowie
More a case of artistic homage/dues paying than cliched usage
“There must be several songs out there that repeat the same line that has appeared in another song either deliberately or accidentally.”
Even so, one artist’s referencing of a friend and contemporary’s work on a song on which he played and sang can hardly be classed as a cliche.
Oh go and bother someone else …. 😉
Are you the Forum monitor?
I preferred Omnibus to Monitor.
Horizon was good,too
Whither Everyman?
(that’ll be the heat, I suppose)
Lennon played on Fame and Across The Universe but not Young Americans itself, the song when Bowie does pay tribute to him.
Lennon also gets a writing credit on Fame.
One of the worst offenders for me is Mike Scott in his song She tried to hold me:
She lingered like Uranium
Like a demon in my cranium.
For someone who is usually a pretty decent lyricist I think he was having an off day with that one.
Atrociously bad rhyme structure, yes. Cliche, no – but an excellent idea for a thread in its own right
As Whole of the Moon has apparently just helped an amnesiac recover some of his memories, I think we can cut Mr Scott some slack
@Jaygee I realised after I posted that cliches wasn’t really appropriate to the point I was making.
The lyrics to Whole of the moon are excellent by the way and I am a big Waterboys fan.
Best heard in this rousing cover version.
Stingo has form here.
“Do I have to tell the story
Of a thousand rainy days
Since we first met
It’s a big enough umbrella
But it’s always me that ends up getting wet”
First appears as the last verse of Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, then again as the last verse of O My God from the next Pleece album, then again as the last verse of Seven Days from a solo album (the one with Fields of Gold on).
A criminal offence, shirely?
Stingo’s worst:
“I have only come here seeking knowledge
Things they would not teach me of in college”
Oh yes, that’s awful. Send him down and throw away the key, M’lud.
Yes, that’s pretty bad but what about “he starts to shake and cough, just like the old man in that book by Nabokov…” That’s even worse isn’t it??
It’s rubbish, but being devil’s advocate he clearly wanted to reference the book as it matched the theme of the song. Nowt wrong with that. So would he have been better served using “Lolita” and not “Nabakov”? So now he has to create a line that not only scans but rhymes. Perhaps…
“He knows he can’t meet her. Just like the old man in that book called Lolita”
More rubbish really. So what’s left if he sticks with the Nabakov line? Something that rhymes with “ov” that doesn’t get the song banned from Radio 1. “He starts to toss one off” was never going to fly. So maybe what we’ve discovered is the final choice was about as good as it could get. I’ve over thought this haven’t I?
. ““He starts to toss one off” was never going to fly. ” ….thank you, and creation itself, for this sentence.
Should you ever hear the song again I trust you’ll be inserting that line…
I’m not even hearing it, and the line’s there anyway.
Forever. 🙏
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”
Has got to be the most cliched sentiment
To quote a meme I recently saw of some social media app, What doesn’t kill you gives you lots of unhealthy coping mechanisms and a really dark sense of humour.
“Cuts like a knife” – and what else would it cut like. A banana?
“Backs against the wall” – is this the same wall with the writing on?
Scythe, saw, hatchet, razorblade, edge of a sheet of paper, guillotine, scissors, secateurs.
Think I’ll stop now.
@Rigid-Digit
Like a Conservative government’s public spending policy
Like a special laser-honed carborundum tipped banana, with an ergonomic non slip handle. And bits of broken glass stuck in it.
The dreaded ‘Down on my knees/Begging you please” crops up in:
Layla by Derek and the anti vaxxers (sorry, Dominos)
Take Me in Your Arms by Phil Collins
Unsurprisingly, Down on My Knees by Bread
On Bended Knees by Boyz 2 Men
Could I by Gary Puckett and Union Gap
How Come U Don’t Call Me Any More by Prince
And many, many more.
The tired old rhyme of “sorrow” with “tomorrow” is used in thousands of songs.
I always wince when I hear it.
Mind you, it’s not surprising that we hear that rhyme so often: not many other words rhyme with ‘sorrow’ or ‘tomorrow’.
The ol’ “school” with “fool” rhyme is the one that always makes me wince.
… and “school” and “golden rule.”
Only allowed when used by Chuck Berry.
Borrow, morrow and Zorro and that’s about it. Maybe El Toro.
The word “me” at the end of a line is inevitably followed by “Can’t you see?”
I’m sure there are quite a number of Beatles songs that resort to talking about “diamonds” and “diamond rings” to fill out the verses. Lennon and Macca were always very “instinctual” lyric writers rather than spending a lot of time crafting the lyrics properly, so lots of cliches pop up here and there.
Is this a thread about lyrical cllches or bad lyrics? If the former, then the walk/talk combination must be among the big hitters.
Chance, Dance, Romance (any combination of the three)
Or Hands in the air, Just don’t care.
Chris deBurgh used the first three without checking if they rhyme in his accent. Bad planning.
I bet he didn’t have enough money to pay the ferryman anyway, the hairy wazzock.
Lowell George managed the chance/dance/romance triplet in the song Romance Dance.
Paul Barrère wrote those lyrics.
Very democratic were the Feat. Despite this, they were still not much kop after they lost Lowell.
Just as well Lowell’s dead then, and he can’t sue me for libel.
There have been many variations (Elvis, Bill Haley to name but two) of ‘it feels so right/it can’t be wrong’ over the years – that sort of excuse will never convince a jury.
An “illusion” is always ( putting me back in all this) “confusion”, although the two are not necessarily the same.
Now I have Leeeeeeee John in my head. Thank you…
Could it be that you have a delusion?
….about fusion?
Are you sure it’s not an extrusion. This could lead to a blood transfusion
In all my disillusion, i slipped over and suffered a contusion
I prescribe a period of seclusion.
And cover up that protrusion.
I once bought a TV from Redifusion
On a day when the sun went into occlusion
Which had not been a foregone conclusion.
But its infusion of dark did cast a shadow over
This bad line profusion
I trust this post is no intrusion?
Slightly off theme but Boulevard of Broken Dreams is a cleverdick song or album title that many bands/artists seem to smugly assume that they were the first to think up .
In a similar fashion, since 2015 there have been three songs – by famous singers – called Ghost Town (Adam Lambert, Madonna, Kanye West). If memory serves, two of these were released at the same time.
Come Together has been used as a song title by Blur, Spiritualized, Primal Scream, and the MC5. Plus some other fellas.
And Rolling Stones – Living in a Ghost Town
This album is ace.
Nile Rogers says that on Good Times they deliberately used “happy days are here again” as a lyric to help point out that these were not actually good times
John Cake has a record of reusing others lyrics. I keep a close watch uses the first line of I walk the line and takes it somewhere else. Things builds a hook on “things to do in Denver when you’re dead”.
All quite clever rather than cliched so I’ll get my coat
If you’re waiting you always seem to be anticipating.
“Fussin’ and fightin’.” First heard (by me, at least) in ‘We Can Work It Out,’ but by the mid to late 70s was ubiquitous in reggae songs.
‘Rock of Ages’ is another overused cliche.
…although, to be fair, not since 1973.
Aha! Well, I think you’ll find Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack was released in November 1974, so there.
Brian Ferry had a Rock of Ages on his underrated In Your Mind album in 1977. When we hoped we’d go to heaven.
Bryan, not Brian.
I have dishonoured myself and my ancestors. I shall of course go to the library with my service revolver and do the decent thing.
Baby.
British people don’t call their partners “baby” in real life. Perhaps in the 60s they did if they were trying to be like Simon Dee.
I’m afraid and it pains me to say this my wife has recently taken to calling me baby in the last few months, I have no idea why.
I am 66.
That’s happened to me too – I assume its to do with my drooling, gurgling and vomiting. She’s not at work with me to see this so why etc.
Has any English-speaking human ever used the phrase “(I) don’t mean maybe” to indicate emphasis or certainty? No. And yet, it’s all over pop music. Usually when the lyricist in question needs to lay their hands on four or five syllables in short order.
There used to be a lot of observation/appreciation of “the things you do” (be they little or otherwise), without any elaboration of just what they were.
Filing? Scrubbing the sink? Doing a poo? “I LOVE the things you do.”
“The things you do endear you to me” – does that include flicking bogies?
My heart is oh so true.
Take that Oh and stick it up your Hey!
Folk song cliches.
Watery graves (conveniently rhymes with waves).
All protagonists are called Nancy or William.
But the one that has me scratching my head is the number of times ‘he kissed her cheek and chin’. a) unless the feller is shorter than his beau, this will involve one of them cricking their neck, b) isn’t it practice to kiss somewhere more interesting after you’ve done with the cheek?
When referring to the English capital, why is it so often called London Town?
Ooh, I think I know that one without having to look it up. It comes from a Paul McCartney song.
Doggone cold according to The Beginning of the End.
(given that they never had another hit, they should have been called The Beginning and the End)
Except here…..
I wince every time “nice” is rhymed with “spice”.
Guilty parties in this respect include:
Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston: “It Takes Two”
James Brow: “I Got You”