Lyrics that make you grin (or frown...)

[Littlesox]

John Ottaway and Wild Willy Barret.

"Walking along a beach in force 10 gale I saw some hippies, saving a whale"

[Littlesox]

Oh, and you still can't beat Joe Jackson's

Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street

"They say that looks don't count for much well there goes your proof"

Makes me grin every time I hear it.

[gene hunt]

The opening few lines from Any Dream Will Do and no matter how many tmes I hear it, I still think it is daft.

I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain
To see for certain what I thought I knew

Like it makes sense 

[rogerzilla]

The version at our school replaced "the curtain" with "my foreskin".

[Ham]

NWA, Express yourself
"You ain't swift, movin' like a tortoise.
Full of rigor mortis."

[LindaG]

Madam Butterfly,
she loved me to sleep,
in a town without pity,
where the water runs deep.
She said be easy baby.
There ain't nothing worth stealing in here.

That Bob Dylan, Tight Connection To My Heart.

[citoyen]

The Group Who Couldn't Say - Grandaddy

The tale I'm gonna tell
Is about the group who couldn't say
Together they discovered with each other the perfection of an outdoor day

They'd won some kinda prize
For selling way more stuff than the other guys
They were the shrewdest unit-movers
So their bosses got 'em tours of the countryside

Holly saw a certain bird
But she couldn't work up any words
She kinda lost her shoes and lost her mind
And smashed her phone upon a fallen pine

And Darryl couldn't talk at all
He wondered how the trees had grown to be so tall
He calculated all the heights and widths and density
For insurance purposes

And at the desktop there's crying sounds
For all the projects due
And no one else is around
And the sprinklers that come on at 3am
Sound like crowds of people asking
"Are you happy what you're doing?"

Becky wondered why
She'd never noticed dragonflies
Her drag and click had never yielded
Anything as perfect as a dragonfly

And then the supervisor stood
Right in the creek and it felt really good
And that's about the time he finally had realised the importance of this day
And that's about the time he realised
That he was with the group who couldn't say
And they felt so good it hurt forget the words
They were the group who couldn't say

[Ham]

Whole songs now, eh?

Pete Atkin/Clive James, Perfect Moments

Perfect moments have a clean design
Scoring edges that arrest the flow
Skis cut diamonds in the plump of snow
Times my life feels like a friend of mine

Perfect moments wear a single face
Variations on each other's theme
Renoir's mistresses in peach and cream
Rembrandt's mother in a ruff of lace

Perfect moments bear a single name
They're placed together though they never meet
Charlie Chaplin policing Easy Street
Charlie Parker playing My Old Flame

Perfect moments should redeem the day
Their teeming richness ought to be enough
To take the sting out of the other stuff
A perfect bitch it doesn't work that way

[LindaG]

Must you tell me all your secrets
When it's hard enough to love you knowing nothing?

[citoyen]

Whole songs now, eh?

I wouldn't normally quote a whole song but I think that Grandaddy song needs the context.

[Illegal Combat Ant]

Don't get smart or sarcastic
He snaps back just like elastic
Spare us the theatrics and the verbal gymnastics
We break wise guys just like matchsticks

'The Loved Ones' by the wonderful (or smart-aleck, YMMV) Elvis Costello.

Due to excellent contacts, me and Mrs Ant have laminates for his gig at Brisl Colston Hall next month.
We're going to a lot of excellent gigs in Brisl over the next couple of months.

edit:
Also Flo and Eddies excellent chorus to Elenore, reputedly after The Turtles' record company demanded more songs with "y'know, more 'Pride and Joy' etc."

Elenore, gee I think you're swell
And you really do me well
You're my pride and joy, et cetera
Elenore, can I take the time
To ask you to speak your mind
Tell me that you love me better

[Deano]

Another HMHB line, but I was just listening to some Lou Barlow, which reminded me of:

"I could have been Lou Barlow, but I'm more like Ken Barlow".

[Bluebottle]

There are two lots of CDs I reach for in times of grumpiness. Those of HMHB (Singing Sealed Knot Society, let’s see you try and do this one: Luton Town – Millwall, nineteen eighty-five) and those of the late Michael Marra.

For those not in the know, Tom Waits wants to be Michael Marra, they have just never met.

There is a dry, dark humour running through much of Marra's work. Opening lines: "Now and then a policeman is born...a silence fills the air."

You probably have to be from Dundee to appreciate but "If Dundee Was Africa" is pure joy, viz:

If Dundee was Africa
And Fife was Antarctica
If Arbroath was India
And Perth was Peru
In that darkest of continents
How happy I'd be
Cause that would mean Aberdeen
Was deep in the Mediterranean Sea
And a'body would agree
That's a no bad place for Aberdeen tae be

[citoyen]

I've been to Aberdeen so... 

[pcolbeck]

"Marry Me"

Well, my daddy didn't pull out, but he never apologized
Rock and Roll means well, but it can't help tellin' young boys lies.
A baby on the way's a good enough reason to get you out alive
Get you out without having to swallow any pride.

All my friends are restless, all they do is talk it down,
Two or eight lanes, it don't matter, it's just another town.
There's a fool on every corner, on every street, in every one
And I'd rather be your fool nowhere than go somewhere and be no one's

So Marry Me, Sweet Thing won't you Marry Me
Your Mama thinks I beat anything she's ever seen.
This old town's alright with me, there's nowhere I'd rather be.
Long as they stay mad at one another, they can't get mad at me

Every time I leave here something bad happens to me
Like a busted hand or finding some man laying where I sleep
She don't mean nothing to me, that's just how it goes round here
It's a cartoon town, I play my part, and I ain't spoke her name in years

So Marry Me.........

I don't want anything I done to be nobody's fault
Even if they got more money and mouth than they got balls.
That's just how it went down, right or wrong, it's just that way.
Just cause I don't run my mouth don't mean I got nothing to say....

Marry Me.........

The Drive by Truckers

One of favourite driving songs. Makes me grin and bounce my head like a loon.

[T42]

I've been to Aberdeen so... 

Standing waiting by the trains
Keeking at a rat's remains
Smells of fishmeal, puke and drains
That's Aberdeen, my Aberdeen.

Composed in the distant (pre-oil) past while awaiting the train down to Edinburgh at godawful o'clock on a Monday morning, with a hangover. Gorge still twitches at the memory.

[Legs]

Well we've got no class
And we've got no principles / principals

always makes me smile. 
I don't really like Alice Cooper, but I think these lines are very clever.

[clarion]

Well we've got no class
And we've got no principles / principals

always makes me smile. 
I don't really like Alice Cooper, but I think these lines are very clever.

You might find a lot of Cooper's lyrics would amuse you.  He's an astonishingly witty wordsmith.

[tiermat]

Low - What Part of Me

Sometimes it scares to death
Sometimes it takes all my breath
Talking, talking and pleading all night
It must be somewhere to reach the other side

What part of me don't you know?
What part of me don't you want?
What part of me don't you know?
What part of me don't you want?

Partly because it is lovely song and partly because, to me, it is one of those songs that appears, on the surface, to be really sad, but is actually totally different.

To me, the chorus is not "Why don't you like X" but how do I change X, for you?"

[Legs]

There's Basie, Miller, Satchmo, and the king of all, Sir Duke / And with a voice like Ella's ringing out, there's no way the band can lose.

Irks.

[Legs]

John Ottaway and Wild Willy Barret.

"Walking along a beach in force 10 gale I saw some hippies, saving a whale"

And John Otway on his own (with a bit of help from The Trammps):

Science tells you love's just a chemical reaction in the brain
So let me be your Bunsen burner let me be your naked flame!

One of my university housemates bought me this as a joke.  Profoundly silly.

[Tigerrr]

Had a love affair with Nina
In the back of my Cortina
A seasoned up hyena could not have been more obscener
She took me to the cleaners
And other misdemeanours
But I got right up between her
Rum and her Ribena

and much else. His lyrics were always funny.

[Steph]

"Sugar turns to alcohol"

Feelgoods.

[T42]

Lyrics that make you wince?

Some bunch of illiterate 60's wankers perpetrated a dirge called Juliette which contained the execrable line

"the things you do reminiscent of you".

[Legs]

The world is just a great big onion
 And pain and fear are the spices that make you cry
 Oh, baby, and the only way to get rid of this great big onion
 Is to plant love seeds until it dies, uh-huh

Okay, Marvin, tell me again why you want to get rid of the world...