Not-So-Good Lines in Songs

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 11:57 PM

But not so poetic an image.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: DonMeixner
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 11:56 PM

WEll fair is fair Guest, what ever you are, and Amos, John Denver only sang "Darcy Farrow" he didn't write it. That was Steve Gillette.

And as to "Field Behind The Plow", Gerry, you never plowed a field with a tractor driving across forty acres of dust on a hot june day have you. That is a purely descriptive and accurate line.

Don

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: sixtieschick
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:54 PM

Whoops, I'm not sure that's an otherwise good song.

In "Someone to Lay Down Beside Me" it always grates to hear:

"...Of a world that can be sort of heartless
Not like love that I feel in my heart
Still you know that may be all you get..."

First person? Second person? "Sort of" heartless? YOOOWWWWWWWW.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:54 PM

Dick Greenhaus said, in part:


WEll, there's he memorable line in some versions of "Jam on Gerry's Rocks" where "..They granted her her final wish, to be laid by young Monroe."

That brings out that some of these line, seen as bad or awkward today, were fine when originated. It's only with modern turns of phrase and modern dirty turns of mind that they become an embarrassment to the song.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:53 PM

"songs she brang to me .." "Bring" for "brought" is common enough in quite a lot of dialects. And pronouncing "bring" as "brang" is not such an unusual way of doing it in some places. We don't always notice that kind of thing when it isn't written down.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: sixtieschick
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:45 PM

Someone left the cake out in the rain....

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Amos
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:41 PM

That's Vandie -- the song is Marcie Darcie, or Farsee Arrow or Dark Sea Barrow or something like that.... :)


A

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:27 PM

John Denver....."young Randy(?)in his pain, put a bullet in his brain"....pass the sick bag!

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:10 PM

WEll, there's he memorable line in some versions of "Jam on Gerry's Rocks" where "..They granted her her final wish, to be laid by young Monroe."

and the immortal line in one version of "Red River Valley"   "....can I leave her behind unprotected..."

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:06 PM

From the Christmas staple "Sleighride":

Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling "Yoohoo!"

But of course! I call "Yoohoo!" at least three or four times a day! More often than that if there's a sleigh somehwere nearby! What's the deal? Whoever wrote the thing couldn't afford a rhyming dictionary? Aren't there about 10,000 words in the English language that would make a more sensible rhyme for "you" than "yoohoo"?

But, at least he didn't totally cop out like Alice Cooper did in "School's Out":

...and we got no principals
and we can't even think of a word that rhymes!
School's out for summer...

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Teresa
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 06:05 PM

Thank you, Clinton. another mystery solved. on to the next one, wherever it may be. :)

Teresa

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 05:47 PM

"What the heck are the lyrics after "Blinded by the light"

Racked up like a deuce... another runner in the night...

What was it Jimmy Rabbit said about "Whiter Shade O Pale"?
"Poxiest bleeding lyrics ever"

*walks away singing*
'In and out of the front door rraaaaan...
12 back... door angels
Their hair was a golden-brown
they didn't see me wink my eye'

dirty old man...

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

Stan Rogers' song, The Field Behind the Plow, is terrific - provided you can get past
the second part of the second line:

Watch the field behind the plow turn to straight, dark rows
Feel the trickle in your clothes, blow the dust cake from your nose

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Teresa
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 05:33 PM

Ok, a nit-pick, and I'm not a gardener.:

...Far beneath the bitter snow,
Is the seed, that with the sun's love
In the spring becomes the rose.

seed?

Or that Christmas song ... "I'll be Home for Christmas":

And presents *on the tree?

Teresa

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 05:25 PM

I dispute the Stan Rogers line above. It's all about context and intonation. Meanwhile, while you're on one of the great wrongliners of modern hist, towit Mr. Lightfoot:

Oh, the skyline of torONto is something you'll get ONto.....
But they say you've got to live there for awhile
And if you've got the MON-ee you can get yerself a HON-ee
A written guarantee to make you smile.

And o'course Dave Barry loves hectoring Neil Diamond:

I am I cried to no one there and no one said a word not even the

chair

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Teresa
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 05:23 PM

Gods, that previous one bugs the heck out of me, too!

Not a folk song, but remember "Blinded by the Light" What the heck are the lyrics after "Blinded by the light" in the chorus. Sounds like "revved up like a doucher in a rumor of the night". :-P what are those called--mondegreens? (sp?)

I know there's probably a thread on this somewhere. I'll come back when I think of more.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Charmion
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 05:14 PM

In "Play Me" by Neil Diamond: "Songs she sang to me, songs she brang to me ..."

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 03:40 PM

In Hard Times:

'Tis a whale that is heard upon the shore...

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Bert
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 02:58 PM

It happens to all of us. The other day I was singing my song "There's never a good time for leaving" and I heard the line

There's never a good time for going

In a different light.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Leadfingers
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 02:28 PM

Be a shorter list of Brilliant lines in otherwise good songs !!

Subject: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Feb 05 - 01:26 PM

Those lines which, to you anyway, jump out as being either clumsy or rough or silly or ill-advised or whatever, in an otherwise good or great song.

Examples, to me...

from Gordon Lightfoot's Mountains and Mary Ann:
There'll be hot blooded mountain love
    (Hot blooded MONKEY love??)

from Danny Boy:
It's you, It's you...
    (Gesundheit! And cover your mouth when you sneeze!)

from Mac Davis's Texas in my Rearview Mirror:
Hollywood was a lady in red, who danced in my dreams as I tossed in bed...
    (OVERSHARE! OVERSHARE!!)

from Stan Rogers' Mary Ellen Carter:
And the groan she gave, as she went down...
    (Alright! Jeez, if you really don't want to do it tonight, let's just watch some TV!)


Any more? I know there are.