What's your favorite line from a song

Subject: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,lefthanded guitar
Date: 06 Jul 17 - 05:40 PM

It can be trad/roots oriented, etc. or for that matter leaving your heart in San Francisco, if you like.

Mine is:

" I'm going up the country
where the cold wind doesn't blow,
Ain't telling how much further I may go."

(from: Make me a Pallet on the Floor)

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Joe_F
Date: 06 Jul 17 - 06:05 PM

Isn't that three lines?

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Jul 17 - 06:10 PM

"It's all right"

(from Here Comes The Sun)

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 06 Jul 17 - 06:38 PM

Impossible question - but possibly one of these:-
The eponymous "All you need is Love"
"Time is short and the days are sweet" From Dylan's Dark Eyes
"What makes you go abroad, fighting with strangers?" from Our Captain Cried All Hands.
"Amoebas are very small" Mike Heron - A Very Cellular Song
"There is a crack in everything, that's where the light gets in" might just win by a nose (Anthem - Leonard Cohen)
But I'll probably change my mind by tomorrow!

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: RTim
Date: 06 Jul 17 - 08:10 PM

The cork is in the bottle - but the whisky is in me!

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,Sol
Date: 06 Jul 17 - 09:10 PM

"As the dish outside the window fills with rain" Time by Tom Waites.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: mg
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 12:22 AM

a lot of people in previous threads have mentioned if it weren't for the alligators i'd sleep out in the swamp from lakes of ponchatrain.

i love i put my head into a cask of brandy from peggy gordon

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 12:56 AM

"It was just too true to be good" Just Like Jim Brown, Pierce Pettis

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: rich-joy
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 01:01 AM

OMG! ya can't have just one, eh!! I'll start with these two though :

"She'd a smile like an acre of Sunflowers" from "Alongside of the Santa Fe Trail" (Lisa Null, and many more)

and

"There is a crack, a crack in everything; that's how the Light gets in" (from Leonard Cohen's "Anthem")

Cheers!
R-J

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 02:15 AM

From A Pub With No Beer, ' Theres a far away look on the face of the bum '

Dave H

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 02:17 AM

Here in California, fruit hangs heavy on the vines;
There's no gold, I thought I'd warn you;
And the hills turn brown in the summertime.

Kate Wolf, "Here In California"

-Joe Offer, suffering through a hundred-degree week-

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 02:34 AM

From 'Rambling Boys of Pleasure' - the greatest description of youth in oral literature: after the singer has been rejected by his lover because of his poverty; "For I am young and the world is wide"
A description of pregnancy from the ballad, 'Gil Morris' by a woman confessing to her husband that the youth he has just killed is not her lover but her illegitimate son:
"I once was full of Gil Morris as the hip is of the stone"
(the rose hip is a berry made up of a large stone surrounded by a thin layer of flesh)
A bad weather omen from, 'Sir Patrick Spens':
"I saw the new moon yester-e'en with the old moon in her arms"
A declaration of love by a defiant young woman from 'Bonny Peggy':
"It's I would lie in Jimmy's arms 'though his grave was growing green"
They don't write them like that any more!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 03:36 AM

"If it weren't for the alligators I'd sleep out in the wood"

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,SteveT
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 04:13 AM

From The Bonny Bunch of Roses "If I'd lived I might have been clever"

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: IanW
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 04:40 AM

Keith Marsden from Prospect Providence - "and the blame gets passed right down the line till the gaffer goes and kicks the sheep"

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: meself
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 05:01 AM

With their goblin brains,
They could spell their names:
G-O-B! L-I-N!
G-g-g-goblins!

- Fred Penner

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 06:34 AM

From ''The Little Pot Stove'' sung by Nic Jones ''Where the chill seeps in your soul''       https://youtu.be/Nj0phYz38NU?list=PL5B538B7C3C7BA03C

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Snuffy
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 06:45 AM

With a smile upon her countenance
She answered "Jack Munro"

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 06:55 AM

"little birdie, little birdie, come sing to me your song
got a short time to be here, and a long time to be gone"

Manages to crystallise what existentialism - indeed, most philosophy full stop - is trying to say, in just two lines.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 07:02 AM

I also always thought that these opening lines were absolutely amazing:

"The trees they do grow high and the leaves they do grow green,
The day is past and gone, my love, that you and I have seen."

Never liked the rest of the song much, to be honest. I've sometimes wondered whether I could sing just those two lines, as a sort of haiku of a song... or maybe use them as the springboard for a song about getting old and handing over the real business of living to the next generation. (God that sounds depressing, ha ha!)

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Mo the caller
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 07:10 AM

Depends on your mood when you hear them. And I suppose the lines that stick are the ones that echo a sad mood.

...died in the church and was buried along with her name -nobody came.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,DaveA
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 07:43 AM

Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt

Sunday Morning Coming Down - Kris Kristofferson

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 08:31 AM

One line from The Grand Coulee Dam by Woody Guthrie:


"In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray"


Sheer poetry. Beautiful alliteration. The rest of the verse is equally good but I'm only allowed one line!

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: fat B****rd
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 10:23 AM

"You know how many leaves there is on a tree
You know who killed the Dead Sea" Willie Harper "The Power Of Love"

"The pump don't work
'Cause the vandals took the handles" Guess Who?

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 10:29 AM

The Turtles

I really think you're groovy, let's go out to a movie

So bad it is good. They reckon it was ironic but I am not so sure :-)

DtG

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 10:31 AM

"New Jersey Turnpike in the wee, wee hours . . ."

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Tiger
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 10:32 AM

"Bone and blood is the price of coal"

... The Ballad of Springhill — Ewan McColl & Peggy Seeger

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: andymac
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 10:47 AM

There's too many. My favourites change depending on the mood but some of the ones which always move me are

"Like waves the sheep rolled in as they drove us from the glenside". The dark Loch- Alistair Hulett

"Ah but ye're no the first that thon Scots have beguiled..".
Flooer O Northumberland- Trad.

But the sparkle of her laughter ever after I'll recall,
Like the linklin, trinklin jinklin as the mountain burns fall"
Bonnie Lass O the Morning- Jack Foley

"you must rise up with the dawn and trudge to the mill in the early morn"
Handweaver and Factory Maid- Trad

Ask me tomorrow and it'd probably be slightly different.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: robomatic
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 02:42 PM

Acknowledged by NPR and Susan Stamberg:

Yip Harburg, "The Eagle and Me"

Ever since the day when the world was an onion

The first thing I think of when the subject is brought up:

Warren Zevon, "Jungle Work"

We parachute in....we parachute out

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: StephenH
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 06:57 PM

Impossible task! However, here's a line from "No Gods (and Precious Few Heroes)" by Brian McNeil. It's actually full of lines which could qualify as favourites, but I like the wry humour of this one:

"Try goin' down the broo with your claymore in your hand and count all
the Princes in the queue"

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Gabriel
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 07:16 PM

My favourite line of any song (and a wonderful opening line) id from 'Sweet Carnlough Bay'.

"When winter was brawling, o'er high hills and mountains"

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: frogprince
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 07:17 PM

I tried to get this in last night, but the post wouldn't take. From "Zebra Dun", author unknown, sung by Cisco"

Then Shorty grabbed a lariat, and he roped the zebra dun,
and gave him to the stranger, and we waited for the fun.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Deckman
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 07:18 PM

"You could make me believe,
   By the falling of your arm,
      That sun, rose in the West"

From "Pretty Saro" as sung by Walt Robertson

bob(deckman)nelson

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,GUEST Marcia Palmater
Date: 07 Jul 17 - 08:34 PM

From Robert Burns' My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose:
"Till a' the seas gang dry, my love, and the rocks melt wi' the sun ...'

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Effsee
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 05:24 AM

"But for two thousand years, he's brought nothing but tears, and the cross that they plant on the graves" ...Harvey Andrews.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 05:54 AM

I'll post this in the hope that Jack may not be reading this thread. 😉 Almost any line from a Jimmy MacCarthy song. In the words of Christy, he's been given the gift.

"And she like a ghost beside me goes down with the ease of a dolphin
And emerges unlearned, unshamed , unharmed."

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Raggytash
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 07:04 AM

From Peter Bond's Stillness That The Snow Brings:

"And in the evening hear the peals the bellman sends, leap from the tower and tumble laughing down the hill"

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 07:46 AM

from John Warner's Bring out the Banners

How dare we lose what they have won?

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Michael
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 08:48 AM

" May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold. May you never make your bed out in the cold" John Martyn.

Mike

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 09:04 AM

From Song For Ireland
Drinking All The Day, In Old Pubs Where Fiddlers Love To PLay
From Raglan Road
The Queen Of Hearts Still Baking Tarts, and I not making Hay
From I'm So Lonesome
The Silence Of A Fallen Star, Lights Up The Purple Sky

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: oldhippie
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 12:18 PM

"Life is a rainstorm, but love is the ark"

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,MacTalla
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 04:35 PM

From Woody's Pretty Boy Floyd:
"Some will rob you with a six-gun; some with a fountain pen."

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,Bert
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 06:20 PM

About the hemp rope on his neck the golden ringlets clung - Roddy McCorley.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Gallus Moll
Date: 08 Jul 17 - 08:16 PM

Robert Burns 'Highland Mary':

The golden hours on angel wings flew ower me and my dearie


Hamish Henderson 'Freedom Come All Ye':

Roch the wind in the clear day's dawin', blaws the cloods heelster-goudie ower the bay


Iain Ingram 'Beneath The Painted Veil'

Beware of fools and words of doubtful wisdom, the hawk who masquerades as gentle dove

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,gopherit
Date: 09 Jul 17 - 12:27 AM

From The Goodnight Loving Trail by Utah Phillips regarding getting old "There's nothing that can change it, there is no one to blame."

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Stewie
Date: 09 Jul 17 - 12:38 AM

From Blues in the bottle:

Little chickens don't do nothin', but they strut their stuff

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: GUEST,Erich
Date: 09 Jul 17 - 02:57 AM

"I'm headin' into trouble with a big grin on my face"
also
"she grabbed me by my balls and said I'm so in love with you"

from "Sir" Oliver Mally - Headin' into trouble

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 09 Jul 17 - 03:21 AM

Kristofferson has featured already, never had a lot of time for him myself. But:

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"

Ought to be tattoed on the foreheads of Boris, Gove, Farage et al.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: Roz
Date: 09 Jul 17 - 12:18 PM

The cops and the legislators called them dangers agitators, and they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

Woody Guthrie's Jesus Christ, to the tune of Jesse James.

Another favorite, the first time I ever heard the Mingulay Boat Song, I was part of a group of people rowing hell-bent thru the San Juan Islands, where summer homes looked down upon our sorry selves, and I mis-heard the line 'what care we how wide the minch is' as 'what care we how white the mansions' and still sing it that way.

Subject: RE: What's your favorite line from a song
From: David C. Carter
Date: 09 Jul 17 - 02:04 PM

"I forced my hands in my pockets,and felt with my thumb,
And gallantly handed her my very last piece of gum".



The Boy himself.