Author Topic: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)  (Read 19785 times)

iddu

  • Are we there yet?
Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« on: 04 February, 2013, 09:24:49 am »
"Can't swim so I took a boat, to an island so remote
Only Johnny Depp has ever been to it before"

 ;D
I'd offer you some moral support - but I have questionable morals.

tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #1 on: 04 February, 2013, 09:31:23 am »
One from a recent album purchase:

"...I like driving backwards, in the fog,
'Cos it doesn't remind me of anything..."

From Chris Cornell - Songbook (the song is Doesn't Remind Me)

And, though not lyrics, one track that ALWAYS makes me grin like a loon, with just the opening notes, is "Jump Around" by House of Pain, it's one of those songs that you can't help but smile and jump around to...
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #2 on: 04 February, 2013, 09:40:05 am »
"There's a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets!"
National Shite Day by Half Man Half Biscuit. A funny line from a very intense song.
Haggerty F, Haggerty R, Tomkins, Noble, Carrick, Robson, Crapper, Dewhurst, Macintyre, Treadmore, Davitt.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #3 on: 04 February, 2013, 10:47:05 am »
One from a recent album purchase:

"...I like driving backwards, in the fog,
'Cos it doesn't remind me of anything..."

From Chris Cornell - Songbook (the song is Doesn't Remind Me)

A Tune of Splendid :thumbsup:  Well I remember the entire Brixton Academy leaping up and down to that...
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #4 on: 04 February, 2013, 10:57:43 am »
"...I like driving backwards, in the fog,
'Cos it doesn't remind me of anything..."

From Chris Cornell - Songbook (the song is Doesn't Remind Me)

It's "Travelling backwards" isn't it?
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #5 on: 04 February, 2013, 11:06:22 am »
"...I like driving backwards, in the fog,
'Cos it doesn't remind me of anything..."

From Chris Cornell - Songbook (the song is Doesn't Remind Me)

It's "Travelling backwards" isn't it?

Nope, just checked it and it's definitely "Driving backwards"

ETA, on "Songbook" he does sort of mumble it a bit.
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #6 on: 04 February, 2013, 11:08:24 am »
, one track that ALWAYS makes me grin like a loon, with just the opening notes, is "Jump Around" by House of Pain, it's one of those songs that you can't help but smile and jump around to...

One of my colleagues has that as his ring tone. Excellent.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #7 on: 04 February, 2013, 11:10:03 am »
"I get up around 7, get out of bed around 9"
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #8 on: 04 February, 2013, 11:11:52 am »
"...I like driving backwards, in the fog,
'Cos it doesn't remind me of anything..."

From Chris Cornell - Songbook (the song is Doesn't Remind Me)

It's "Travelling backwards" isn't it?

Nope, just checked it and it's definitely "Driving backwards"

ETA, on "Songbook" he does sort of mumble it a bit.

He definitely says travelling in a live version I've got. Maybe he doesn't want to encourage kids to drive backwards  :P

Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #9 on: 04 February, 2013, 11:14:25 am »
Odd.

Maybe he just makes it up as he goes along? :D
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #10 on: 04 February, 2013, 11:19:09 am »
Well, there are an awful lot of things that don't remind him of anything  :P
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

tiermat

  • According to Jane, I'm a Unisex SpaceAdmin
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #11 on: 04 February, 2013, 11:22:05 am »
Going completely off at a tangent to the OP, I wonder, if he does the things that don't remind him of anything enough, will they eventually remind him of things that remind him of nothing, at which point his brain disappears up it's own orifice?
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #12 on: 04 February, 2013, 11:30:28 am »
There's a great lyric in the Mountain Goats' New Chevrolet in Flames:

"O would that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth, cos your mouth is sweeter than wine and has a more complicated history than the American South".

And, obviously, the way John Lydon makes "anarchist" and "antichrist" rhyme when he sings Anarchy in the UK.

Andrew

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #13 on: 04 February, 2013, 02:13:27 pm »
I hope my legs don't break
walking on the moon

A very rational fear methinks.

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #14 on: 04 February, 2013, 02:21:38 pm »
Lots of bands get pissed off with their record companies, so write inappropriate or rubbish songs just to fulfil contractual agreements. I think the best example of this is Schoolboy Blues by The Stones.

Just imagine the record company execs outrage when they first heard the lines:

"Where can I get my cock sucked? Where can I get my arse fucked?"

Unsurprisingly, it didn't get released at the time, but they'd given Decca the one last single they owed them. Always makes me smile  :)
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #15 on: 04 February, 2013, 03:38:39 pm »
"There's a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets!"
National Shite Day by Half Man Half Biscuit. A funny line from a very intense song.

There are plenty of candidates from HMHB songs. That's a good'un. So's this...

"G is for the gnarled face of someone who's on 90,000 a week/ And reckoned he should have had a throw-in"

I'm always charmed by the winsome whimsy of Belle & Sebastian, among my favourite lines being this line from Another Sunny Day, in which a boy playing football is being watched by a girl he fancies:

"I saw you in the corner of my eye on the sidelines/ Your dark mascara bids me to historical deeds"

d.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #16 on: 05 February, 2013, 12:26:03 am »
Anything by Tom Lehrer, the Harvard Bard, is a marvellous antidote to a crap day:

http://iankitching.me.uk/humour/lehrer/

 ;D
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

ludwig

  • never eat a cyclists gloves
    • grown in wales
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #17 on: 05 February, 2013, 05:50:15 am »
I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #18 on: 05 February, 2013, 08:08:35 am »
"Little old lady got mutilated late last night..."
-Werewolves Of London by Warren Zevon
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #19 on: 05 February, 2013, 11:42:56 am »
Fuck you, Mr Smith
But fuck's too nice a word for it
Put a stick in there, and twist it

Mr Smith ~ The Dear Janes.

Mr Smith was an A&R man from Geffen Records...
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #20 on: 05 February, 2013, 12:30:40 pm »
"Quick, run, hide, here comes Dave Stewart / Walking up the drive, with that look in his eye / That 'Let's do a project' look, about third-rate Swiss agit-prop"

"Nero fiddles while Gordon Burns"

"A woman who described herself as 'A little bit Bridget, a little bit Ally, a little bit Sex And The City' and chose to call her baby boy Fred as a childishly rebellious attempt at a clever reaction to those who might have expected her to call him Julian or Rupert. Bit of advice: call him Rupert, it fits, and besides it’s a good name. Don’t be calling him Fred or Archie, with all its cheeky but lovable working class scamp connotations, unless you really do have plans for him to spend his life in William Hill’s waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbot."

"Not long now before lollipop men are called Darren"

"Your optimism strikes me like junk mail addressed to the dead"

"I tried to put everything into perspective, set it against the scale of human suffering. And I thought of the Mugabe government, and the children of the Calcutta Railways. This worked for a while, but then I encountered Primark FM."
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

rr

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #21 on: 05 February, 2013, 12:55:58 pm »
It's wrong to wish on space  hardware.

LindaG

Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #22 on: 05 February, 2013, 01:45:25 pm »
Does the photograph show the wrong man, cause there is no soul star holding your hand?
(which is a 'frown' one, obv)

Mr Pharmacist, won't you help me out today, in your usual lovely way? 
I get that as an earworm everytime I see the staff pharmacist and he must wonder why I always smirk like that when I see him.


Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #23 on: 05 February, 2013, 02:00:39 pm »
Yet more Half Man Half Biscuit:

"I'm off to see the Bootleg Beatles as the Bootleg Mark Chapman"

mattc

  • n.b. have grown beard since photo taken
    • Didcot Audaxes
Re: Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)
« Reply #24 on: 05 February, 2013, 02:15:59 pm »
How many lyrics 'work' as plain text?

Seeing this thread I thought of a few I like, but I hear them in the context of the tune and the backing.

I bought a "Book of Classic Lyrics" type book once (for about tuppence), and it left me completely cold (apart from about 5 from songs I already knew). Can't help thinking that if I quote some of my favourites, they'll come across the same way - just bad poetry, or pointless ramblings.
Often it's just cos you don't the right phrasing off the page. Lines look like they don't scan, but sung right, they do!

[sorry to be such a downer, man!]
Has never ridden RAAM
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No.11  Because of the great host of those who dislike the least appearance of "swank " when they travel the roads and lanes. - From Kuklos' 39 Articles