Not-So-Good Lines in Songs

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Cluin
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 10:16 PM

"Abra, Abra Cadabra... I wanna reach out an' grab ya"

Whoops, that's not an otherwise good song. The whole thing was shite.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: LadyJean
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:32 AM

My prep school's alma mater included the line "We vere the glory of thy name." I don't think vere is even a word.

There is a beautiful, tragic song about a man killed working in a steel mill. It was written by a Slavic immigrant, who didn't understand that "East McKeesport! This valley of fire!" is hard to sing with a straight face. Though I have heard Pete Seegar do so.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: sixtieschick
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 02:07 AM

When it's apple blossom time in Orange, New Jersey we'll be a peach of a pair.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Wrinkles
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 07:22 AM

I half remember a song where "Garden of Eden" was ryhmed with "weeding", and a Frank Sinatra gaff were "pleasure" and "leasure" would have ryhmed in the English accent of the composer but not in Frank's American accent.

Oh, and the Manfred Man "Blinded by the Light" lyric is "revved up like a duce, another runner in the night" not "racked". A good site for contemporary lyrics and tabs is

http://www.thetabworld.com/

It's got loads of links to other similar sites too ;-)

Wrinkles

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 07:39 AM

Vere is the original - Re-vere is the repeat.... hence the Ritual...

The Fooles....   ;-P

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:23 PM

I have always felt uneasy about the line

"I learned about life and I found a wife"

in Phil Coulter's otherwise superb song, "The Town I Loved So Well".

IMHO he should either have devoted the best part of a verse to his good lady, or else left her out of the equation completely. A throwaway half line just seems bizarre, to me.

Better by far to have written

"I learned about life, 'midst the trouble and the strife"

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Michael
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 04:58 PM

'And Joseph stood a round' makes perfect sense in the UK, it means he bought everyone a drink in the pub - whilst Mary did the work. Very traditional.
Mike

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 06:16 PM

Come to your life like a warrior/Nothing will bore ya is from Cris Williamson's "Song of the Soul". And I have to agree, it is a jarring couplet in an otherwise glorious song. But it can (with the right delivery) add a bit of humor to a song about (IMHO) getting the most out of life by not always playing it safe...

Come to think of it, Cris Williams was certainly not "playing it safe" by using those lines, so in a strange way, I guess it's appropriate (whether or not that was her conscious intention).

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Midchuck
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 06:39 PM

I like the line in "The Grave of Bonaparte," a Victorian chestnut revived by Norman Blake:

He eats not, he hears not, he's free from all pain.

Perfectly good line in print, but when you sing it...

Peter.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 08:02 PM

LadyJean says:

> My prep school's alma mater included the line "We vere the glory of thy name." I don't think vere is even a word.

It takes pioneering spirit to vere things so that the rest of us can revere them.

> There is a beautiful, tragic song about a man killed working in a steel mill. It was written by a Slavic immigrant, who didn't understand that "East McKeesport! This valley of fire!" is hard to sing with a straight face. Though I have heard Pete Seegar do so.                                          

It is an embarrassing fact about English that some of its proper names are poetic diction and some, thru no fault of their bearers, are not. Wyndham Lewis & Lee, in their preface to _The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse_, remark: "The dragging of the average middle-class surname into serious verse is at all times fatal," and gives among a number of examples

Methinks of friendship's frequent fate

I hear my Frogley's voice complain.

Likewise, if East McKeesport had been Chicago, or even Wilkes-Barre, there would have been no trouble.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Some difficulties present valuable opportunities, and the rest present valuable excuses. :||

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: JWB
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 09:54 PM

Paul Simon's "Wednesday Morning, 3:00 AM" is a lovely song (the slow version, that is -- I hate the later rock and roll version). However, the line

I held up and robbed a hard liquor store

just doesn't make the grade. What was the protagonist expecting, a building made of sponge rubber?

Jerry

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 10:55 PM

I'm no expert, but I'd guess he meant "hard liquor" (like vodka, whisky, gin) as opposed to things like beer and wine, although I have to admit I've never heard them referred to as "soft liquor". But I *have* heard the phrase "hard liquor" before now...

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: coldjam
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 11:13 PM

I immediately thought of Darcy Farrow's "bullet in the brain" line, but alas it had already been laid bare.So how about,"I have a love so deep in the PIT of my heart"? Can't remember the song title at this exact moment...got lost in the pit of my brain I think.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: coldjam
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 11:15 PM

Wait! Ain't too proud to beg, The Temptations.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 11:18 PM

You better love me all the time now
You better shove me like it's alive now

"You Better, You Bet"
The Who / Pete Townsend

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: emjay
Date: 06 Feb 05 - 05:58 PM

"You fill up my senses..."
John Denver
Always sounded to me like a stuffy nose and an unfortunate line in a lovely song.
mj

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 06 Feb 05 - 08:03 PM

Guest wrote,

    I once saw on Country music tv a guy who was quite good and i was enjoying the song
    till he took it too far and sang;

    "I've a burning, yearning, churning, deep inside o'me"

Sounds like someone was channelling Tom Lehrer spoofing Cole Porter.
This is from Lehrer's version of Clementine:

    ...imagine what might have happened if, for example, Cole Porter had tried writing this
    song. The first verse might have come out like this:

    In a cavern, in a canyon,
    Excava-ha-ha-hating for a mine,
    Far away from the boom-boom-boom of the city
    She was so pretty -- what a pity, Clementine.

    Oh Clementine, can't you tell from the howls of me
    This love of mine calls to you from the bowels of me.
    Are you discerning the returning
    Of this churning, burning, yearning for you...oo oo...ah ah...

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Peter T.
Date: 07 Feb 05 - 04:46 AM

In honor of the Super Bowl:

"And in this ever changing world in which we live in" (Paul, Paul, Paul)

and who could ever forget --

"The movement you need is on your shoulder" (John's favourite line).

The worst Beatle line ever? Hard to pick from so many.

"Nothing's going to change my world" is my pick for sheer wrongness.


yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Chris C
Date: 08 Feb 05 - 02:18 PM

Nice thread: There are sooo many examples of the bad or odd line mucking up a fine song.
Often it's a reach for a (bad) rhyme.
This one has been bugging me lately: on Ray Charles' last CD (Genius Loves Company), he & Bonnie Raitt do the beautiful "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind". The phrase "melancholy jailer" sticks out as kind of strange (to me).
Approx lyrics (BTW: These turn up differently, depending on the source):

Do you ever want to know
If all dreams go on endlessly
Or do they just run down
Somehow and gradually become
The custody of that melancholy jailer father time

Is it just me?
I can't think of other examples now, but there are lots!
~CC

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 08 Feb 05 - 05:32 PM

Sometimes I'll let a song go and not learn it---just because one line doesn't ring true or isn't what folks'd really say. Often it's a line that's obviously there just to make a rhyme with what came before.

I met Grandpa Jones back in '65 or '66 and he sang a song called "East Bound Freight Train" that I thought about learning. It was a half way passably o.k. song--not great though.---But one line in the chorus made the difference and nixed it for me. See if you know which line??!!

East bound freight train, East bound freight train,
Take me home again,
East bound freight train, East bound freight train,
Let me ride 'til the end.

Art

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Big Mick
Date: 08 Feb 05 - 05:37 PM

Let me ride 'til the end?

Mick

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 08 Feb 05 - 06:17 PM

He just wanted to go all the way......

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 08 Feb 05 - 06:23 PM

The line that makes it impossible for me to take the other "Freight Train" seriously is the one about it running down "by the end of Bleecker Street". Since when do freight trains run through Greenwich Village? (Or am I missing something?)

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 08 Feb 05 - 08:19 PM

I think you'll find that in its original form Freight Train went like this:

When I die please bury me deep
Down at the end of Chestnut Street
So I can hear old Number Nine
As she goes rolling by

Maybe Peter, Paul, and Mary changed Chestnut Street to Bleecker Street,
maybe it was someone else,
but you know,
the Number 9 subway line does go by Bleecker
(and I know that when PPM did the song there was no 9 train
in the New York subway system, but that just makes PPM prophetic).

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Bert
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 06:34 PM

Don't be too hard on the Beatles Peter T. After all they are only bleedin' scousers.

Another bad line of theirs.

"I do appreciate your being round" Sounds as if they like their judies on the chubby side.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: MAG
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 09:25 PM

I agree with Tersea above (way above) about that phrase in "The Rose."

I grow roses myself and I can tell you it is the rare fanatic (breeder)who grows them from seed.

Lies the root
Lies the life
Sleeps the bush/stalk

Lies the bud is currently my favorite change, since the flower itself actually comes from a bud.

And roses only die down to the ground with a VERY hard freeze.

ok, off my soapbox ...

folk process: incremental improvements by da folk over time ...

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: LadyJean
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 01:03 AM

In church we now and then sing a hymn that includes the lines, "Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me." and "Melt me, mold me, fill me, move me." Is it just me, or are those lines suggestive.

I have a terrible time keeping a straight face when I sing it.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Cluin
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 01:05 AM

And why are church choirs always singing about "Bringing in the Cheese"?

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 08:03 AM

I think it's the Steve Miller Band in a song called "Jack and Diane" who rhyme "Texas" and "facts is" in the same song where they rhyme "big hassle" with "El Paso".

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 09:11 AM

As a teenager I found it difficult to sing any hymn in church with a straight face after I learnt about putting "between the sheets" after every line....

Rock of Ages,
Cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee...

Trust me, it gets worse after that....

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 09:42 AM

Mention of Bob Dylan in another thread reminded me of the following spectacles of nonpoetry:

And some of us will grow up to be lawyers and things.

With sensitive instincts, she was the creative one.

and the ignorant & clumsy diction in

Trapped by no track of hours we hanged suspended.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Ten bums lay in the sun; a passer-by offered a dollar to whichever was laziest; nine jumped up to claim it. :||

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Chris Green
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 06:28 PM

When I was a kid we used to have to sing a hymn called "Let Us Break Bread Together On Our Knees". It always gave me a mental image of someone struggling with a stale French loaf.

However, the accolade for most buttock-clenchingly piss-poor lyrics ever to befoul the ears of the masses must surely go to the late Marc Bolan.

"She's my woman of gold
And she's not very old
Uh-huh-huh
She's faster than most
And she's lives on the coast
Uh-huh-huh
I don't want to be bold
But please my I hold your hand."

I hope he's up there amongst the angels. Who all have big sticks with nails in and and are saying "NOOO!!! THIS is how you wrote lyrics, you puling fop!"





Ahem. Got a tad carried away there. Sorry...

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: coldjam
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 08:08 PM

Seems fair to me...!

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 10:36 PM

... took all the trees and put 'em in a tree muse-um,
and they charged all the people a dollar and half just to see-um!

but all us young people thought Joni was just wunnerful!

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 11:56 PM

Bert, I believe the Beatles said,

"Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate your being 'round,"

The un-hearable apostrophe replaces "a", just as in another pop oldie, also British:

"I'm leaning on a lamp,
Maybe you think I look a tramp,
Or maybe you think I'm 'round to steal your car".

When I'm down, I do like my friends to be around, or "there for me" as we say over here. At least that's how I've always heard "Help!"

--Guest Too

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 13 Feb 05 - 01:45 PM

Guest Guest: No apostrophe needed, especially in Britain. "Round" as an adverb & preposition is perfectly good English, but more common there than in the U.S. Saying "around" in the lines you quote (besides spoiling the meter) would stamp you as an American.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: What is fascinating in a mirror? A world I am not at the :||

||: center of.                                                 :||

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: JennyO
Date: 14 Feb 05 - 05:58 AM

"Riders on the Storm" came on the radio this afternoon, and I heard a line that I remember always grates a bit when I hear it - the next line's not all that wonderful either IMO, but I particularly don't like the "dog without a bone" bit.

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we're born
Into this world we're thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Feb 05 - 06:30 AM

... now would you be getting confused with "dog without a boner"? ...

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 14 Feb 05 - 07:07 AM

Having learned English in later life (and because of that being always in "learning mode"), there are some things that glare at me which native English speakers take for granted. Two examples from traditional English songs:

"With a hammer in his hand he looked so clever...". Visions of a rough-looking smithy with vacant expression wielding a 7-pounder...CLEVER, for God's sake? I think not.

"She held a rose in each hand...". Are we talking about the goddess Kali here?

There are of course many (too many) corny lines in contemporary songs, and C&W has a lot to answer for in that respect. But that's been dealt with in another thread.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Feb 05 - 07:57 AM

El Greko - English words can often change their meaning - and for instance that 'clever' may have meant something quite else in the dialect in which the song first appeared...

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: alanabit
Date: 14 Feb 05 - 08:02 AM

Roger in Baltimore, I think the song by the Steve Miller Band was "Take the Money and Run". In context I think those lines sound funny, which is what the writer intended. Apparently it was a reference to a US detective series, in which the lead character's catch phrase was, "Just the facts Ma'am." I also like "Jack and Diane", which I think is by John Cougar Mellencamp.
Didn't George Formby sing "Maybe you think I'm hanging round to steal a car?" There are wiser (and older) heads than mine on Mudcat, so I am sure the correct line will emerge.
Joe F has pulled out a couple of appalling lines from Dylan. I have also always thought that was a rotten line in the otherwise excellent "Ballad in Plain D", which is a favourite of mine. "You're a Big Girl Now" has several lines which score highly on the cringe factor scale too. I like W.Somerset Mauigham's comment,"Only a mediocre writer is always at his best."

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Apr 06 - 07:00 PM

blinded by thelight is a springsteen song, opriginally, not manfred mann.

worst line ever, and i'm an english teacher:

live and let die--"but in this ever changing world in which we live in ...."

THREE ins!!!

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 21 Apr 06 - 08:00 PM

For I am married to a house carpenter
   And I think he's a nice young man

Now that's what I call passionate commitment.

Doesn't sound like the devil has lot of persuading to do, does it?

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 21 Apr 06 - 09:40 PM

Guest Jack: I have never heard that version of the line, and suppose it is corrupt; "nice" in that sense is recent. The version I know best has "And he is a fine young man"; Child likewise quotes an American version "And a fine young man is he". Earlier versions have "And by him I have a son" or the like, which express the real point. Serious business.

*

I have since thought of another embarrassing line from Bob Dylan: "In the ovens they fried". Ick.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits. :||

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Brian
Date: 22 Apr 06 - 07:39 AM

It may be a bad song from beginning to end but Ken Dodd's Happiness comes out as:

A penis, a penis
The greatest gift that I possess,
I thank the Lord that I've been blessed
With more than my share of a penis.

Now that has to be worth singing.

Part way through singing 'Eggs in her Basket' the other night,
Jacqui burst out laughing at the the line

She sat down to take her ease (E's)

Brian

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Hawker
Date: 22 Apr 06 - 09:21 AM

In the song 'Up in the North'
'He was a ships carpenters son, by his trade'
A What?

Cheers, Lucy

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: melodeonboy
Date: 22 Apr 06 - 11:15 AM

"Then I met a nice urologist,
But she was always taking the piss"

(From "Psychiatrist" by Peter Buckey-Hill)

Mind you; he meant it to be cheesy!

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Cluin
Date: 24 Apr 06 - 12:27 AM

"Bed of Roses" by Bon Jovi has a few real cringers in it:

"With an ironclad fist, I wake up and french kiss the morning..."

"I wanna be just as close as the Holy Ghost is..."

"Tonite I won't be alone but you know that don't mean I'm not lonely..."

"The barkeeper's wig's crooked and she's giving me the eye; I might have said yeah, but I laughed so hard I think I died"


(That last line from the very clumsily worded and sung bridge. )

Basically a stupid fucking song.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Cluin
Date: 24 Apr 06 - 12:46 AM

On a second listening to "Bed of Roses", I've decided to start a grass-roots email campaign to demand a public apology from Jon Bon Jovi for inflicting that song on us. It's really insipid and insulting at the same time... it's insipulting is what it is. I don't care if it ended up being a last-dance song at a lot of high school parties. He had a lot of nerve putting it out there, like leaving a huge steaming pile of dog poop on our collective doorstep. Damn him!

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Cluin
Date: 24 Apr 06 - 12:47 AM

This guy's got it right too!