Not-So-Good Lines in Songs

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 10:31 AM

Guest Nancy: "Stood around", said of one person, is a (I believe) vulgar American, and a tipoff that that stanza is a fairly recent U.S. interpolation. To me, it suggests, not vagrancy, but idle frustration, as in "She immediately chatted up a storm with her ex, while I stood around with my finger etc.". So, yes, that is a funny line; but on the other hand it is so perfectly in the spirit of the original that I have always found it charming.

*

Sometimes, a word that is not poetic diction can be not only tolerable but an improvement in the poetry. An example, IMO, is in "Angel Band":

I hear the noise of wings.

I have heard that "corrected" to "I hear the sound of wings". It is true that, in a certain mood, "noise", with its suggestion of unpleasantness, is ludicrous. But that is not the mood for even a skeptic to approach a hymn in. "Noise" makes a startling improvement in vividness. That song, after all, belongs to people who believe they are *saved*, and who know from their Bible that salvation is not pretty. If you were saved, profanely & prosaically, from some earthly misfortune, and contemplated telling about it with a sentence "I heard the blessed --- of a helicopter", would you go for "sound", or "noise", or indeed "racket"?

Another example, from "Fox on the Run":

She walked thru the cornfield and down to the river.

Her hair shone like gold in the hot morning sun.

It would have been easy to call the sun bright instead of hot -- a better link with "shone", besides being more "poetic". But "hot" takes us back to the cornfield, back to earth, and even its sexual tinge IMO is not unwelcome. After the gold, and end of romance! That one unexpected word invigorates the refrain & thus the whole song.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: You have to die of something. :||

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 07:12 AM

What is THIS thing called, Love?

But I thought a pianist was someone who plays the piano....

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,John O'Lennaine
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 03:52 AM

From Roy Orbison:

"Love is like a stove, burns you when its hot."

What is this thing called love?
Well, it's a bit like a stove, see?

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 03:37 AM

From Lizzie Wan:

"There is a child between my two sides
Between my willy and eye."

Bit odd, like, her having a willy?

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 08:10 PM

Mary, you've got it. The "come to your life like a warrior ('war-yah'), nothing can bore ya" is the worst. Even Shatner could not have topped that if he wrote songs.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Nancy King at work
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 07:58 PM

I think the "Cherry Tree Carol" is a lovely song, but have always been uncomfortable with the line,

   "And Mary gathered cherries while Joseph stood around."

Makes him seem like a vagrant or something.

Nancy

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 12:41 PM

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"
Try and sing that without sounding ridiculously Scandinavian!

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 10:46 AM

In Kipling's "Mandalay":

"Though I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand"

If one is reciting rather than singing that, it is just barely possible, by putting enormous stress on "fifty", to deliver the intended sense (I don't care how many dates I have with Englishwomen). But that won't fit in a tune, so there he is, poor fellow, traipsing along the pavement with his train of 50 housemaids. Ah, but then we come to

"I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land"

and, once again, all is forgiven. How often, on business trips from my commune in Virginia, did I think of that line when I saw the New York women stuck in their fashionable clothes like castings stuck in their dies!

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: If you do the right thing under duress, you still get credit, but you don't have as much fun. :||

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

I like the pharase of Guest, Joe's:

"worst line that fails to ruin a good song" because I really like the next two songs:

Bonepony, a wonderful rockabilly song:

"There is a sacred spot upon a mountaintop
Beside a river flows, and it don't ever stop"

Well, obviously, that river isn't flowing on the mountaintop.

I am a devotee of the work of Dan Bern. I recall that in one of his songs he reaches the end with: "I've got to go I need a shave" to get out of it.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: CStrong
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 07:49 AM

I'm tempted to correct Neil:

Songs she brought to me/Songs she taught to me...

But then ya need two MORE!

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 05:56 AM

In " Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound", Tom Paxton writes " nail your shoes to the kitchen floor, lace them up and shut the door", But really those actions should surely be reversed - i.e. could you reach the door with your shoes pinned to the ground?

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 04:52 AM

And of course:-
My Willie's not returning from the plains of Waterloo

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 04:40 AM

Seven long years I've been paitently waiting, for just one glimpse of my Willie-O....

Ho hum.....

LTS

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: BillR
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 04:40 AM

>Or that Christmas song ... "I'll be Home for Christmas":
>And presents *on the tree?

I've always heard that line as: "And presents under tree."
Maybe I've been hearing it wrong all these years.

-Bill

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: RobbieWilson
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 04:28 AM

Eric Clapton sang"You talk to me in sign language, while I'm eating a sandwich", but I'm not sure that counts for this thread as it would be stretching it a bit to call that an otherwise good song. Another rhyme which has always made me cringe is from Tom Paxton's "made of sand"
As I walk down the street my thoughts are tumblin',
round and round, round and round.
Underneath my feet the subway's rumblin'
underground, under ground"
love Robbie

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Schoolmaster
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 12:49 AM

Mary,

Go to bed.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Teresa
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 12:47 AM

Thanks, Melani.   I'm amazed at the things I learn on Mudcat. :)

Teresa

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: mg
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 12:40 AM

I think there was almost a consensus before that the absolute worst line was from a song I forget the name of..come to your life like a warrior nothing can bore yer...actually the rest of the song is quite fine...

And for an author who consistently has about one great outstanding verse and several not great ones..Percy French...it's a shame because his good verses are so good.. mg

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Melani
Date: 03 Feb 05 - 12:02 AM

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

And presents *on the tree?

It was an old custom to hang small presents on the tree--19th century, and possibly 20th as well.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 09:05 PM

I could never get comfortable with Judy Collins turning "Man of Constant Sorrow" into "Maid of Constant Sorrow." "Maid" is just too cutesy. So I start it like this:

I've lived a life of constant sorrow...

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 08:38 PM

GUEST,Gerry says:

> 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

Why is the dust cake any less dignified than the trickle? Both show he's been there.

*

My nominee for the worst line that fails to ruin a good song ("All My Trials") is

"And the pilgrims call it the tree of life."

The rhyme is "paradise". The vowel in "life" is stretched out over two whole measures, during which the naive listener can wonder whether the word is going to be "lies" or "lice". But then, we come to "Too late, but never mind", and all is forgiven.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Politics is dirty business, and business is dirty politics. :||

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 07:34 PM

PS: Don't be misled by the wee boreen and the crossroads and the rambling lane - they're a later improvement.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 07:28 PM

What about this verse, which brings the otherwise haunting "Teddy O'Neill" way down beyond sub-sub music hall farce (no wonder Dolores couldn't bring herself to sing it). Worse still, it's the opener:

I've seen the old cabin he danced his wild jigs in
As neat a mud cabin as ever was seen
Considerin' t'was used to keep poultry and pigs in
I'm sure it was always kept elegant clean

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Cats
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 04:38 PM

'I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps' - New York, New York...eh?

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Peace
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 01:23 AM

Dreamboat Annie, Dreamboat Annie, little ship of dreams.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Peace
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 01:21 AM

Muskrat love.

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 01:19 AM

Someone who thinks they've just made a very funny scatological pun, of course.

Bletch...

Lin

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: goodbar
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 12:37 AM

alistair hulett "plains of maralinga" (sp?)

"if they'd been white you could bet your backside there'd be holy shit to pay"

who the hell says 'backside' and then goes on to say 'holy shit'???

Subject: RE: Not-So-Good Lines in Songs
From: Bobert
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 12:09 AM

Pick any line from Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey".... Absolutley the worst song ever written!!!! Makes that song about the cake baked in the rain sound like the "Gone With the Wind" song of the 20th century...