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
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I heard this by chance earlier this week and it stuck with me. The song is For These Times, Martina Mcbride:

And freedom is a word
Some cry out and some whisper
"See me, feel me, touch me, heal me"
THE WHO / WE'RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT

"A little indian brave before he was ten,
Played wargames in the woods with his indian friends
And he built up a dream that when he grew up
He would be a fearless warrior indian chief
Many moons past and more the dream grew strong until
Tomorrow he would sing his first warsong and fight his first battle
But something went wrong, surprise attack killed him in his sleep that night

And so castles made of sand melts into the sea, eventually"
JIMI HENDRIX / CASTLES MADE OF SAND



-
Pull into the driveway, toss it in park
Stare out of the windshield, out into the world
It was all for the love of a wayward girl
Who left you with a second-place smile and a broken heart

There’s nothing, really, that you can do
Put your hands in your pockets and try to get through
the distance between the daylight and the dark

Mary Gauthier - Between Daylight and the Dark
-
"So I open my door to my enemies
And I ask could we wipe the slate clean
But they tell me to please go fuck myself
You know you just can't win"

Pink Floyd - Lost For Words

"I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,
I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky,
But why, why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?"

Pearl Jam - Black

"Your daddy works in porno
Now that mommy's not around
She used to love her heroin
But now she's underground
So you stay out late at night
And you do your coke for free
Drivin' your friends crazy
With your life's insanity"

GnR - My Michelle
-
"But listen baby, I’m sticking with you ’til the money runs out."

Tom Waits
Led Zep: no one heard a single word you said, but you keep on talking to your dying day!
Michael Stanley " Thank god for the man who put the white line on the highway "
You are the promised kiss of springtime
That makes the lonely winter seem long
You are the breathless hush of evening
That trembles on the brink of a lovely song.

You are the angel glow that lights a star
The dearest things I know are what you are
Some day my happy arms will hold you
And some day I'll know that moment divine
When all the things you are, are mine.

"All The Things You Are" Song composed by Jerome Kern; lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.

Regards,
-- Al
Well I was bled, I was dried, all wrapped up in my pride
This is the way it is when you're on the wrong side

This is the way love is. (77's - Sticks and Stones)
T Bone Burnett, Hefner and Disney 1983

Somewhere between Never Neverland and Wonderland
In a land called Never Wonderland
There lived a beautiful wealthy young divorcee'
With a checkered past and a bad memory
Who should probably remain nameless

And men traveled from far and wide and try to win her hand
And she took in stragglers from all over the known world
Her newest guests were as her mother called them
"The latest Russians to defect"
One's name was Hefner the other's name was Disney

Disney smoked a pipe and was very philosophical
He was constantly surrounded by go go girls
He used to take pictures of them without any clothes on
And sell them to the neighborhood children

Hefner on the other hand was not so introspective
He loved a good story just like anybody else
In fact he loved the myths of Never Wonderland so much
That he made elaborate molded plastic sculptures
Of the characters in the myths

And then he'd set them out in the garden
Until he had built a whole 'nother land in Never Wonderland
Which he called Hefnerland

The neighborhood children loved them
They had lots of fun playing in Hefnerland
And looking at all Disney's go go pictures
Because they didn't know any better
And they didn't know any worse

But the beautiful, wealthy, young divorce thought
That they were only after her money
Sometimes she even wished they would go back to Russia
But between you and me they were really dupes of the Wicked King
Who wanted to rob the children of their dreams

Read more: T Bone Burnett - Hefner And Disney Lyrics | MetroLyrics
DIRE STRAITS - Money For Nothing

Now look at them yo-yos thats the way you do it
You play the guitar on the mtv
That ain't workin thats the way you do it
".... Money for nothin and chicks for free ...."
"I was born when I met you
Now I'm dying to forget you"

Brandi Carlile - Cannonball
"Isis"- Bob Dylan. This song has a lot of great lines but as a cyclist this one comes to me often.
" I came in from the east with the sun in my eyes. I cursed it one time and I rode on ahead."
Professor Longhair - "Hey Now Baby"

Tell me pretty baby where did you stay last night
Tell me pretty baby where did you stay last night
When you come home this morning honey, your clothes didn't fit your right
Welcome to truth custom made, come in and have some lemonade
Reality will re-adjust while we evade (77's - Ba Ba Ba Ba)
Father, I want to kill you.
Mother, I want to... AAAAYYYEEEEEAAAAAAIIIII

This is the end/ my only friend, the end.

Doors: The End

She left a lipstick letter on the mirror, shattered on the bathroom floor.
All I could put back together was '...never see me no more".

Delbert McClinton: When Rita Leaves
Billy Joel-Only the Good Die Young

"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints"
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
"...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!
I shouted out, Who killed the Kennedys? When after all, it was you and me...

Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling F&$)ing Stones
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"
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
"If silence was golden you wouldn't have a dime, because your mind is on vacation, but your mouth is workin' overtime!" - Mose Allison
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
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
"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
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)
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"
...and i said let grief be a falling leaf at the dawning of the day - Van Morrison & chieftains Raglan Rd (traditional)...
"I've been downhearted, baby--ever since the day we met"--B.B. King, "How Blue Can You Get"
"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
If the music makes ya move, cause you can dig the groove, then groove on, groove on... Isaac Hayes
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.
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
"Our love is easy, like water rushing over stones".
Melody Gardot...gosh, what an album.

Larry
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
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