Best lines in a song


There has been a long-running thread here of 'Best quotes' but maybe it would be interesting to find out folks' favorite lines from songs. To keep it on some sort of track, let's have a few ground rules.

- Attribution is required, who sang it (or wrote it) and where can we hear it?
- Shorter is better, four lines maximum, a verse. These should be words of wisdom that can be summoned for inspiration in social emergencies.
- If you're an opera fan, you're welcome to post in Italian, just don't expect many high fives from the monolingual among us.

I'll throw out a couple for starters:

When you're rockin' and a rollin' you can't hear your momma call.
Little Richard - Good Golly, Miss Molly

All I want in this life of mine is some good clean fun.
All I want in this life and time is some hit and run.
Little Feat - Fat Man in the Bathtub
128x128sfar
"Sitting in the back of a car,
music so loud, can't hear a thing,
thinking 'bout what to say"

Alex Chilton
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" - John Lennon
Always a very current statement-
"and the people bowed and prayed to the neon gods they made"
S&G
this sort of summarizes a great day:

....looked for my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt...had a beer for breakfast and then another for desert...then stumbled out the door way to greet the day..

kris kristofferson......"sunday morning coming down"
"I’ll learn to work the saxophone
I’ll play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues "
"The Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian, make tonight a wonderful thing"

Hey Nineteen, Steely Dan
'Cos if they catch you in the back seat
Trying to pick her locks
They're gonna send you back to mother
In a cardboard box

Run Like Hell, Pink Floyd, The Wall 1979

Fav of a father of two girls
Here goes for all of us audio junkies.You can't always get what you want,but if you try sometimes you get what you need.Rolling stones.
05-27-08: Rsbeck
I was drunk
the day my Mom
got outta prison.
And I went
to pick her up
in the rain.
But, before I
could get to the station
in my pickup truck
She got runned over
by a damned old train.

-- David Allen Coe
Rsbeck

Just to keep the record straight, it was written by the late, great, Steve Goodman...
"I've proven who I am so many times/the magnetic strip's worn thin/and each time I was someone else/and everyone was taken in."

Bruce Cockburn "Pacing the Cage"

"Forever's a promise no love can survive."

She said, "You once cried my name," I said, "Well, baby, things change,"

Dwight Yoakam, "Things change"
Bye buckaroos it's the end of another go round......

I'm headed for the O.D. Corral
Just a little further down the trail
I'm headed for the O.D. Corral
If you see the bear tell him to wait there.

Jerry Jeff Walker and The Lost Gonzo Band - O.D Corral
The Magnetic Fields...from "You must Be Out Of Your Mind"

"I want you crawling back to me, down on your knees yeah,
like an appendectomy, sans anaesthesia."

Ouch.
"Oh my God...."

Sufjan Stevens
John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
Come on Feel the Illinoise

It's as much how he sings it...
There are about 50 other lines from his songs I could list but this certainly warrants first mention.
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind
That I've put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world

-- "Your Song," Elton John, 1970
Peter Gabriel -- Biko---

You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
From "In Every Dream Home a Heartache" by Roxy Music, there is a poignant description of a man's love for his inflatable doll:

I bought you mail order
My plain wrapper baby
Your skin is like vinyl
The perfect companion
You float in my new pool
Deluxe and delightful
Inflatable doll
My role is to serve you

Disposable darling
Can't throw you away now
Immortal and life size
My breath is inside you
I'll dress you up daily
And keep you till death sighs

Inflatable doll
Lover ungrateful
I blew up your body...
But you blew my mind
Gunter Gleeten Gloten Globen...Alright!...c'mn, Rise up gather round rock this place to the ground burn it up let's go for broke watch the night go up in smoke
"Our love is easy, like water rushing over stones".
Melody Gardot...gosh, what an album.

Larry
Axl Rose, Guns N' Roses, has written some great lines. For me it's not just about a great line or two, but following an idea through an entire verse.

A few verses from two songs...

From Breakdown:

Just like children hiding in a closet
Can't tell what's going on outside
Sometimes we're so far off the beaten track
We get taken for a ride
By a parlour trick or some words of wit
A hidden hand up a sleeve
To think that the one you love
Could hurt you now
Is a little hard to believe
But everybody darling sometimes
Bites the hand that feeds

I've come to know the cold
I think of it as home
When there ain't enough of me
To go around
I'd rather be left alone
But if I call you out of habit
I'm out of love and I gotta have it
Would you give it to me
If I fit your needs
Like when we both knew we had it
But now the damage's done
And we're back out on the run
Funny how everything was roses
When we held on to the guns
Just because you're winning
Don't mean you're the lucky one

From Don't Damn Me

Be it a song or a casual conversation
To hold my tongue speaks of quiet reservations
Your words once heard
They can place you in a faction
My words may disturb
But at least there's a reaction

Sometimes I want to kill
Sometimes I want to die
Sometimes I want to destroy
Sometimes I want to cry
Sometimes I could get even
Sometimes I could give up
Sometimes I could give
Sometimes I never give a f**k

It's only for a while
I hope you understand
I never wanted this to happen
Didn't want to be a man
So I hid inside my world
I took what I could find
I cried when I was lonely
I fell down when I was blind

But now I've got to smile
I hope you comprehend
For this man can say it happened
'Cause this child has been condemned
So I stepped into your world
I kicked you in the mind
And I'm the only witness
To the nature of my crime

Don't hail me
And don't idolize the ink
Or I've failed in my intentions
Can you find the missing link
Your only validation is living your own life
Vicarious existence is a f**king waste of time

So I send this song to the offended
I said what I meant and I've never pretended
As so many others do intending just to please
If I damned your point of view
Could you turn the other cheek
I smoke 2 joints in peacetime, Ismoke 2 joints in war, I smoke 2 joints before I smoke 2 joints and then I smoke 2 more. Or something like that.
If the music makes ya move, cause you can dig the groove, then groove on, groove on... Isaac Hayes
"I can’t remember the reason I woke up this morning;
Maybe awake is what’s left at the end of a dream.
Not enough coffee anywhere to open the blinds
on Babylon"

from "On the Blank Generation"
by Little Jack Melody
"I've been downhearted, baby--ever since the day we met"--B.B. King, "How Blue Can You Get"
...and i said let grief be a falling leaf at the dawning of the day - Van Morrison & chieftains Raglan Rd (traditional)...
06-09-08: Somec59
Well I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer
Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel
Jim Morrison

Somec59...from "Roadhouse Blue", the lines I love are..
"A keep you eyes on the road, you hands upon the wheel;
Keep you eyes on the road, you hands upon the wheel.
Yea - we're goin' to the roadhouse; gonna have a real good time.
[ ]...
"Well, I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer.
Well, I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer.
The future's uncertain and the end is always near."
[ ]...

"Yikes!"

The Doors on "Morrison Hotel"
believe that (D) cold cold beer
Tastes better on a barstool than it does anywhere
I believe hard (D) work really makes the man
But everyone should wet a line every now and then
I believe it''s (G) best to pay with cash
And I believe that (C) Jesus is coming (G) back
Before she does (D)

Repeat Chorus

I believe she (D) was a real good thing
Can you believe I let a girl like that get away
I believe (G) she meant it the night she packed
And said that (C) Jesus is coming (G) back
Before she (D) does
Before she does (D)
"Hello Mr. Soul I dropped by to pick up a reason" Neil Young/Buffalo Springfield
"Those jobs are goin' boys, and they ain't comin' back" Bruce Springsteen
" 'Cuse me while I kiss the sky" Jimi Hendrix
Ah but are they happy?
You’d be surprised:
Between the bed and the booze and the shoes
They suffer least who suffer what they choose.
David Ackles American Gothic
All my words are secondhand and
Useless in the face of this
Rationale and rhyme and reason
Pale beside a single kiss
And I've heard so many things I
Fail to understand at all
I'd settle anytime for
Unknown footsteps in the hall outside
"If silence was golden you wouldn't have a dime, because your mind is on vacation, but your mouth is workin' overtime!" - Mose Allison
Mwheelerk- It's a great song, but the actual lyric is:
"I'm just one or two years and a couple of changes behind you
In my lessons at love's pain and heartache school"

And from the same songwriter, one of my other favorites (that always breaks my heart):
Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge
Well...guess depends what you mean by the "best".
Nick Cave with his Murder Ballads takes a cake for some of most disturbing...
Peter Hammill from the times with VDGG was most philosophical; Just the title of one of thier recording: "H to He who, Am the Only One"
I shouted out, Who killed the Kennedys? When after all, it was you and me...

Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling F&$)ing Stones
"...give it to me any way you can, any way you want to do it, I'll take it like a man..." Toni Basil, "Mickey". Think about it. The first woman to ever offer this on top-40 radio!