This Monkees tune “Here Comes Tomorrow” is my current ear worm, in particular the line “lips like strawberry pie”. It is the sickly sweet Davy way of singing it that is so stuck in my head but what a pop tune and a typically fantastic Monkees clip. Having said that there must be better or if you prefer worse (but good luck with that). From what I’ve read about Leonard Cohen today he must have been a master. Anyway please share with us your favourite lyrical simile
Your favourite lyrical simile
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Swingin’ through your town like your neighbourhood Spiiiiiiderman….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpQmFfdYFzY
Like an eighteen wheeler with a drunk driver driving, there’s no surviving
We may need a sub-section for the Wu here:
Rough like Timbaland wear, yeah!
Raw, I’mma give it to ya, with no trivia, just like cocaine straight from Bolivia.
Been doing artists in, like Cain did Abel.
Blown out the frame, like Pan Am Flight 103.
Call me the rap assassinator, rhymes rugged and built like Schwarzenegger.
First things first, man, you’re fuckin with the worst, I’ll be stickin pins in your head like a fuckin nurse.
Arctic Monkeys: “I see your frown and it’s like looking down the barrel of a gun”
Not that clever in itself but then the next line is, “And it goes off” – genius.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsAfg-q7-MM
Neil Young – Like a Hurricane
You are like a hurricane
There’s calm in your eye
You destroy everything in your path and cause widespread terror and suffering
But your eyes are okay
I want to love you, but I just get blown away (been there)
hur
(ricane)
“To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal
Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle.”
Quick to the point, to the point no faking
I’m cooking MC’s like a pound of bacon
I’m killin your brain like a poisonous mushroom.
That’s not a simile, by the way. I really am.
Oooh heck.
From Radiohead’s “Fitter, Happier”.
Like a cat, tied to a stick
That’s driven into frozen wintersh*t.
I have no idea what it means but it makes me laugh.
Pretty much all of The Way You Do The Things You Do by The Temptations. Whenever they sing the first line I have to sing along with next..
You’ve got a smile so bright
You know, you could’ve been a candle
I’m holding you so tight
You know, you could’ve been a handle
The way you swept me off my feet
You know, you could’ve been a broom
The way you smell so sweet
You know, you could’ve been some perfume
Well, you could’ve been anything that ya wanted to
And I can tell, the way you do the things you do
(The way you do the things do, the way you do the things you do)
As pretty as you are
You know, you could’ve been a flower
If good looks was a minute
You know, that you could be an hour
The way you stole my heart
You know, you could’ve been a cool crook
And, baby, you’re so smart
You know, you could’ve been a schoolbook
Well, you could’ve been anything that ya wanted to
And I can tell, the way you do the things you do
(The way you do) Ah, baby
(The way you do, the way you do, the way you do)
Yeah
You made my life so rich
You know, you could’ve been some money
And, baby, you’re so sweet
You know, you could’ve been some honey
Well, you could’ve been anything that ya wanted to
And I can tell, the way you do the things you do
(The way you do the things you do)
Discuss: Like A Prayer is a simile but Like A Virgin isn’t
nope, it’s about some cooze…
My all time favourite is:
‘His Glock clicks like high heels on parquet floors.’
Pretty much all of Mr Blue Sky.
Hey you with the pretty face, welcome to the human race
A celebration
Mr Blue Sky up there waiting
And today is the day we’ve waited for
This rhyming ditty never fails to make me smile.
He goes to the Regatta,
And he adores the girl next door,
“Cos he’s dying to get at her.
Bowie was no slouch in this area.
“we move like tigers on vaseline” Hang on to yourself
Not my favourite but the first one that sprung to mind
“There’s a killer on the road.
His brain is squirming like a toad”
Not exactly a simile, but…..”looking like a friend of Truman Capote” – one of LC’s finest.
https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/at-capotes-ball/
Whenever anyone offers me a glass of Chateau Neufs Du Pape (happens all the time, and anyone who pulls me up on my spelling is going to get papped up their chateau neuf), I have to bite my tongue to stop myself going full Beastie Boys:
“Like a bottle of Chateau Neufs Du Pape,
I’m fine like wine when I start to rap.”
(Body Movin’)
Why has this thread reappeared?? It’s messing with my head. As soon as I saw the title I thought of the Beastie Boys’ ‘Body Movin’, then as I scrolled down I thought, ‘oh no someone’ s already said that one’…. Hang on… It’s me??!
See down below.
@fitterstoke
Not guilty, @hubert-rawlinson
See up above and note timestamps – there are two new additions before mine…and one of them is Arthur’s!
Sorry @fitterstoke I hadn’t noticed the times, it was of course Alanis Moosette who is the guilty parteé
The Moose: arch-reviver of old threads…my word, he is a card…
Time for some Jackie Leven
The opening line of Call mother a lonely field
Like young Irish men in English bars
the song of home betrays us
Call Mother a Lonely Field
Call Mother a Lonely Field
The magnificent Exit Wound is one long simile.
‘Shake it like a Polaroid picture’.
From Hey Ya. I thought that very impressive. A lovely image. Ironically. And brave given that a good number of the young ‘uns swinging to it would have no idea what one was.
.
I’m not sure if it counts as a simile, but I always liked “You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht”:
I like the song but the pronnounciation of “Apricot” always grates. Do Americans really say Appreecott?
Probably. After all, they do pronounce niche as “nitch”.
“She’s here now, perfume coiled like a thuggee scarf,
such a powerful drug to make you so naked and clean”
“I’ve got a picture in my mind
fighting like a mad fish on the wrong end of a line
just beneath the surface silver lightning flashes shine
I’ve got a picture in my mind”
I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat
I’m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet,
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second-hand physique –
With all he is, and all he was
A thousand kisses deep
Nelly Futado said:
I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away
I don’t know where my soul is
I don’t know where my home is
The Amateur Transplants revised this to:
I’m like a bird in every single way
I don’t know where my car is
I don’t know where my phone is
And everyone tells me that I’m like a bird in every single way
I don’t know where my bag is
I don’t know where my flat is
Amusing? Yes
Misogynistic? Probably
Should I be posting this? Maybe not, but it’s Friday and I’m on Beer number 2
Like a Virgin? No thanks, I’ve just put one out.
Hoi-hup-la!
How does it feel?
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a Rolling Stone
Syd Barrett: “She’s as cute as a squirrel’s nut”.
“I’m a shooting star leaping through the sky like a tiger defying the laws of gravity”
Sure, ok…
Momus is great for this sort of thing…
Lucky like St. Sebastian,
Preferring the ache to the aspirin,
Swooning as they shoot the arrows
Through your narrow chest.
“I’m as serious as cancer – when I say rhythm is a dancer”
“Don’t say you’re easy on me
You’re about as easy as a nuclear war”
Hard to beat those two classics. It really doesn’t get much worse…
Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I knew
There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too
And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses
Oh, won’t you stay
We’ll put on the day
And we’ll talk in present tenses
Joni Mitchell
“Your love letters are like confetti, I ripped them up; my hands were sweaty’
Vintage Graham Parker
“I’m like a one-eyed cat, peeping in a seafood store”.
Filth from rock’n’roll days.
Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old-fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee
If I, if I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you
For like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, “you must not ask for so much”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, “hey, why not ask for more?”
Oh, like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Or – a little more from the Master:
“Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died”
‘Like lions after slumber,
In unvanquishable number,
Oh yeah.’
Mmm, yes, that’s a nice one – originally from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Masque of Anarchy” (1819), of course.
Yes. Took me a while to find where it came from, back in pre-internet days. I bought the album off the back of The “Sweetest Girl”, which I absolutely adored. Didn’t disappoint. Still love it to this day.
In the end, I found out where it came from when I got into conversation with an English lecturer at college. It was easy enough to find out who Jacques Derrida was, though.
“You walked into the party like you were walking on to a yacht”.
I’ve staggered in to some gaffs well after hours needing to hang on to a handrail like that too.
John Cooper Clarke
Like a sucked and spat out Smartie
You’re no use to anyone.
Like the shadow of the guillotine
On a dead consumptive’s face
Speaking as an outsider
What do you think of the human race?
Not a lyric, but Bertie Wooster describes someone’s voice as “cold and hard like a picnic egg”.
Some minds are like soup in a poor restaurant—better left unstirred…
We never seen the van- leave it to the roadies, never met the roadies, leave ’em in the van…10cc were masters of clever dickie-ness !!
Seems a shame to miss out Toto’s classic “mountain compared to other mountain” simile…
“As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti…”
Like a black van parked on a dark curve (title of Sharks album)