There is a reason I've been avoiding doing a favorite lyrics list for so long. I am horrible at choosing lyrics. There are so many songs that I just love as a whole. I have picked out a batch of ones I know I love, to share with you but there are certainly others. They aren't in any particular order by favorite (actually they are chronological). There are songs I adore that don't have a lyric on here because there wasn't one line that stood out over the others. And I will most likely think of 20 more lines I love as soon as I post this.
"The words I'm singing now mean nothing more than "meow" to an animal." - Don't Let's Start
"D, world destruction, Over an overture, N, do I need apostrophe, T, need this torture? - Don't Let's Start
"And the truth is we don't know anything" - Ana Ng
"If it wasn't for disappointment, I wouldn't have any appointments" - Snowball in Hell
"I could never sleep my way to the top 'cause me alarm clock always wakes me right up." - Hey Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal
"Bluebird of friendliness, like guardian angels it's always near" - Birdhouse in Your Soul
"Too late or soon to make noise about love and there's no time for sorrow. Run around in the rain with a hole in the brain till tomorrow." - Letterbox
"There's only one thing that I know how to do well and I've often been told that you only can do what you know how to do well, and that's be you. Be what you're like. Be like yourself." - Whistling in the Dark
"He drops his car keys, and crawls on the ground. Finds her old hair comb she'd wear into town. Can't bear to keep it or throw it away. Gets back down on his knees, puts it back where it lay. Back where it lay." - I Blame You
"The bells are ringing, the song they're singing, the sound is bringing the people round. They hear the instructions. They follow directions. They travel great distances to the sound." - The Bells Are Ringing
"They revamped the airport completely. Now it looks just like a nightclub. Everyone's excited and confused." - Man, It's So Loud In Here
"You could be a float for the Fourth of July based on your theme of "Wildflowers Grown Wild." - Drink!
"Hungary isn't hungry and french fries aren't from France. Turkeys aren't from Turkey. They can't fly but they can dance." - Where Do They Make Balloons?
"Is it that time again? Wasn't it already then? So does it have to be the time it was again?" - Am I Awake?
"If you and I had any brains we wouldn't be in this place." - Museum of Idiots
"I'm not much of a natural dancer but I know a girl who's a natural dancer. You could call her a jumping bean. She's got ants in her pants and she's gonna dance." - Damn Good Times
"I was all out of juice, like a moose, like a moose denied." - Stalk of Wheat
"Missing vowels to the left, please. I-N-G, anybody lose an ING? More than two syllables to the emergency room." - Alphabet Lost and Found
"The deep end, the deep end. People talk a lot but they don't know. They pretend. They pretend. They don't really know how deep it goes." - Climbing the Walls
"Hey man, I thought that you were dead. I thought you crashed your car. No, man, I've been right here this whole time playing bass guitar." - The Mesopotamians
"A cell knows what it has to do, to grow into a moss or a shrew, algae or a kangaroo, bug or a sunflower, Dwight David Eisenhower, a frog, a fish or you." - Cells
Also, every single last solitary word of Nine Bowls of Soup. I decided not to pick a line because I'd just end up typing the whole song.
EDIT: I can't believe I forgot the lyric that I probably mention loving most often.
"Remember love's a verb" from Love is Eternity. That's a piece of advice we should all heed.
I think when it comes down to it Nine Bowls of Soup, Birdhouse, Don't Let's Start and Man, It's So Loud in Here contain my highest percentage of favorite lyrics. Guess that makes sense since they are all in my top 10.
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+1 to most of these! It seems pretty daunting to have to pick out a few favourite lines when you're faced with such a huge number of them. Also, it's really interesting how your preference for the less abstract lyrics kind of comes through even in this post... or am I imagining that?
ReplyDeleteMy favourite song lyrically is definitely Ana Ng - it's just so evocative! - but if I quoted all of the lines I love from it, I would type the entire song (including backing vocals), so I'll refrain. ;P Same goes for End of the Tour, Careful What You Pack and It's Not My Birthday. On the whole I think I prefer that sort of abstractness, but I'll list some of my other favourites and then see:
"Time is flying like an arrow / And the clock hands go so fast they make the wind blow / And it makes the pages of the calendar go / flying out the window / one by one." - Hovering Sombrero
"Every seashell has a story to tell if you're listening / But underneath every shell, there's a story as well, if you've heard enough of the sea." - Metal Detector
"Was it the voice of somebody who decided not to begin? / And under the sound of the car horns, can't you hear a small voice asking: / What's it like to be alive?" - No Answer
"There's a place for those who love their poetry / It's just across from the sign that says 'pros only'." - Rhythm Section Want Ad
"I lay my head / on the railroad track / Stare at the sky / all painted up / Your train is gone, won't be coming back." - See the Constellation
"When you're following an angel, / does it mean you have to throw your body off a building?" - She's an Angel
"Perhaps when they awake, they'll remember everything / They'll think it was a dream / It will be forgotten then." - Sleepwalkers
"Call off the wedding band / Nobody wants to hear that one again. / Play that again." - They'll Need a Crane
"Blew out your pilot light / and made a wish." - Twisting
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part / that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of." - Where Your Eyes Don't Go
Blitzente, I think Ana Ng is my favorite lyrically too. Sometimes if I haven't listened to it in a while, I go back and just marvel at how excellent it is. And Kelly, that's my favorite line of The Mesopotamians. I love the background part.
ReplyDelete"I heard they have a space program, when you sing you can't hear, there's no air. Sometimes I think I kind of like that and other times I think I'm already there."
"I'll be in the back, and I don't need the help. I'm good here in the back. I'm good all by myself."
"So the room must listen to me, filibuster vigilantly. My name is blue canary, one note spelled L-I-T-E."
"Wake me when it's over, touch my face, tell me every word has been erased."
"Chop me up into pieces if it pleases, if it pleases, and when the chopping is through, every piece will say I love you."
"When you are alone you are the cat, you are the phone, you are an animal."
"I will date the girl from Venus. Flowers die and so will I. Yes I will kiss the girl from Venus, for science!"
"There's a girl with a crown and a scepter who's on WLSD, and she says that the scene isn't what it's been, and she's thinking of going home."
"I found my mind on the ground below. I was looking down, it was looking back. I was in the sky all dressed in black."
"They might be fake, they might be lies, they might be big big fake fake lies."
"She set your goldfish free and now she's sighing. Blew out your pilot light and made a wish."
"As you navigate the rotary on the way to park your car by the theater, I'll hold your sweater, my leg is in a bear trap, I'm unable to attend. But I applaud you and I'll jealously read your blog after the show."
"Now let's toast the sad cold fact, our love's never coming back, and we'll race to the bottom of a glass, so narrow your eyes."
"In my prison cell I bide my time, always thinking, always busy cooking up an angle, making up the tiny blueprint of the angle, sketching out the burning autumn leaves."
Also every single line of Pet Name.
blitzente, I think you are absolutely right about me preferring less abstract lyrics. There are of course a few more oblique ones that I favor, but for the most part. I also like the silly ones that make me laugh every time I listen to the song.
ReplyDeleteI should have included Ana Ng on my list of favorite lyrical songs as well, because it is beautiful and almost perfect. And End of the Tour falls under my list of songs I love but I couldn't separate a single lyric for the list.
I find it amusing how many of the lyrics I had originally included and then deleted because my list was too long, popped up on both of your lists. And not just the song but the exact lines. Metal Detector, Where Your Eyes Don't Go, Towson.
I think it would take me several hours to create this list! I love reading everyone's choices, though. :]
ReplyDelete