best single lines in songs

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Neil D
Date: 19 Dec 21 - 12:37 AM

Thanks for the trouble you took, from her eyes
I thought it was there for good, so I never tried
    Leonard Cohen

Albert Einstein was a ladies' man
While he was working on his universal plan
He was making out like Charlie Sheen
He was a genius
    Warren Zevon

How do the angels get to sleep
When the Devil leaves his porch light on?
    Tom Waites

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,Bo in OH
Date: 18 Dec 21 - 11:37 PM

Just a few of many from Chris Smither:

Don't try to find your place in line 'cause it's everywhere

I'm not a passenger, I am the ride.

It ain't what it is that's such a sin, it's what it might have been

And not a single line, but still:
I don't pick no cotton, and I never pick my nose
Couldn't pick a pocket in a pile of dirty clothes
But I pick'em, and I choose'em,
I pick the locks they use to keep me in
I pick'em up I put'em down, that's how I get around
But it's wearin' thin.

Just genius.
Bo

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,Roger
Date: 06 Dec 21 - 04:55 PM

Bob Dylan: Its hard to stumble when you've got no place to fall.

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Dec 21 - 11:58 AM

"A fig for those by law protected,
Liberty's a glorious feast.
Courts for cowards were erected,
Churches built to please the priest"
Robert Burns.

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,The Mouth O' The Tay
Date: 24 Nov 21 - 05:08 PM

Michael Marra - Baps And Paste :

Baps and paste and corned dog,
Peace on Earth and earth on piece,
Butcher's hough an' tinkies' gochles,
Wha' could tell the difference ?

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Nov 21 - 01:20 PM

I said my pretty Creole Girl,
My money here's no good,
And if not for the alligators,
I'd sleep out in the woods.-Lakes of Ponchartrain

The dust Pancho bit down south,
Ended up in Lefty's mouth.- Townes Van Zandt

If I thought it would do any good,
I'd stand on the rock where Moses stood.- The Band

Goin' on down to the railroad track,
Let the 4:19 scratch my back.- The Band

There's no love song finer,
But how strange the change,
From major to minor,
Every time we say goodbye.- Cole Porter

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,Jon Dudley
Date: 24 Nov 21 - 01:12 PM

I don't think this line has been mentioned yet, the last from 'The Banks of The Sweet Primroses'

"For it's many's a dark and a cloudy morning, turns out to be most sunshiny day"

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 24 Nov 21 - 12:59 PM

Everybody by John Prine

While out sailing on the ocean, While out sailing on the sea
I bumped into the Savior, And He said pardon me
I said "Jesus you look tired", He said "Jesus so do you,
Sit down son, 'Cause I got some fat to chew"

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: John P
Date: 24 Nov 21 - 11:14 AM

Sorry, that last quote was from cookieless me.

John

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 21 - 11:12 AM

"By rights she should be taken out an hung
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue"

Pedant alert: The past tense of "hang", when referring to execution, is "hanged". Your coat was hung on a hook. The criminal was hanged. The quote from My Fair Lady above is almost tragically ironic.

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,lochee
Date: 23 Nov 21 - 12:58 PM

"assholes get elected, cause assholes get to vote" - "Assholes on Parade" by Timbuk3
https://youtu.be/2nTcDU73gLs

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: The Og
Date: 23 Nov 21 - 11:18 AM

Edgar Allen Poe....as sung by the Modern Folk Quartet:

"Keeping time, time, time, with a sort of runic rhyme
From the tintinnabulation, that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells"

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Stewie
Date: 21 Nov 21 - 08:31 PM

Naked as the eyes of a clown (John Prine - That's the way the world goes round)

Now I shoot the darkness down, I puncture what is swollen (Mark Germino - Black angel cure)

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 21 Nov 21 - 05:30 PM

The preacher asked her, and she said, I do
The preacher asked me, she said, Yes, he does too

The preacher said, I pronounce you 99 to life
Son, she's no lady, she's your wife

Lyle Lovett

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Nov 21 - 05:08 PM

also Loudon Wainwright III - from "Your Mother And I" :
"your parents are people and that's all we can be".

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: PHJim
Date: 21 Nov 21 - 03:15 PM

"I stepped outside and I didn't get shot; it's a pretty good day so far."
Loudon Wainwright III

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,Roderick A Warner
Date: 21 Nov 21 - 07:56 AM

William S. Burroughs, when asked what the American flag meant to him: ‘Soak it in heroin, doc, and I’ll suck it.’ Applies to all flags imo…

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,peter
Date: 21 Nov 21 - 07:45 AM

"What will you take to remember me by,,I've no money to buy you a smile".....(Dave Cousins)

"when we did spy a bold man-of-war sailin' three feet to our two"....(trad)

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Nov 21 - 06:53 AM

Sorry, slightly more than a single line, but inspirational in way that this atheist can't quite put his finger on:

They cut me down and I leapt up high;
I am the life that'll never, never die;
I'll live in you if you'll live in me -
I am the Lord of the dance, said he.

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Nov 21 - 05:59 AM

"When we fell, we aye got up again, and sae will we yet"
- from "Sae Will We Yet" , as sung by Tony Cuffe.

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: PHJim
Date: 21 Nov 21 - 12:44 AM

"First it's D and then it's G, then A, then back to D, G a little more and then back to A"
John Hartford (My Rag)

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Nov 21 - 11:03 PM

All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon when we're poisoning pigeons in the park....

Tom Lehrer

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Nov 21 - 10:42 PM

She spoke of astrology while muttering apologies
For coffee that tasted of hot dogs
I said 'That's OK, mine was cold anyway, and just grand'
Then she lay on the bed while the radio fed us
With records and adverts for cat food....

Al Stewart - In Brooklyn

(Mr S certainly had a knack imho for making poetry from the mundane)

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 06:43 PM

Following on from Tim:

"There's a thousand years of history drowned in that whisky glass..."

(Elvis Costello, via Christy)

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 05:18 PM

pS   - also the saddest.

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 05:18 PM

Dixie Chicks : "he was a missing person no one missed at all".

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: PHJim
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 01:20 PM

Goodbye Pluto, Being number nine was nice till you
Lost your planetary status. Now you're simply rock and ice
-Vance Gilbert

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: PHJim
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 01:18 PM

So you'd better go romance her before she hauls off and flies to France, sir
Or up and dies of cancer And it's no longer your choice to make
-Vance Gilbert

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: RTim
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 12:24 PM

"The cork is in the bottle..but the Whisky is in me..."

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GerryM
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 06:45 AM

If dirt was a kingdom, then you'd be the king. – Utah Phillips

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GerryM
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 06:43 AM

There is a crack, a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in. – Leonard Cohen

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GerryM
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 06:41 AM

Blow the dustcake from your nose – Stan Rogers

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Jim McLean
Date: 19 Nov 21 - 03:18 AM

“Mr Ben Nevis you’re as old as the hills” Bob Halfin.

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 18 Nov 21 - 06:32 PM

“These words were composéd by Spencer the Rover …”

To me, that’’s one of the great opening lines of the tradition but … it’s all downhill after that!

Regards

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Joe_F
Date: 18 Nov 21 - 06:09 PM

And overside I heard him call my name.
-- Stan Rogers

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Sol
Date: 18 Nov 21 - 09:51 AM

"...And when they're on a roll she pulls a razor from her boot
And a thousand pigeons fall around her feet.
So put a candle in the window and a kiss upon his lips
As the dish outside the window fills with rain......"

Time - Tom Waites
-----------------

"...And in your lonely flight
Haven't you heard the music in the night?
Wonderful music
Faint as a will o' the wisp
Crazy as a loon
Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon."

Skylark - Hogey Carmichael/Johnny Mercer

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: PHJim
Date: 18 Nov 21 - 09:06 AM

"They're tearing down buildings that I watched them build." -Shel Siverstein

"To me you're as fair as you were Maggie, when you and I were young."
-George W. Johnson

"My face is a well written page Maggie, and time alone was the pen." -George W. Johnson

"64 percent of all the world's statistics are made up right there on the spot and 82.4 percent of people believe 'em whether they're accurate statistics or not" - Todd Snider

"Is that the sun goin' down over there in the west or just a headlight glow, C&O Express?" -Utah Philips

"The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are I'm so lonesome, I could cry" -Hank Williams

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: David C. Carter
Date: 18 Nov 21 - 05:48 AM

Shoulda said that line was from Dylan.

Sorry.

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: David C. Carter
Date: 18 Nov 21 - 05:46 AM

"Even the President of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked".

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GerryM
Date: 18 Nov 21 - 04:05 AM

We are riding on a railroad, singing someone else's song. James Taylor

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Nov 21 - 06:19 PM

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


...Woody describing the Columbia River in his song Grand Coulee Dam. How's that then!

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Joe_F
Date: 17 Nov 21 - 06:01 PM

I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land.
-- Kipling, "Mandalay"

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: Bert
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 11:52 PM

Nice selection GUEST Joe F.

I'm gonna cheat and quote one of my own. (I think ALL my lyrics are great HEE HEE)

"Don't make her choose between her pride and you"

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: freightdawg
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 08:54 PM

Kat, I'm sure JD had been to Wyoming, its just that you all live so far apart up there that the mother earth has to whisper just a little bit louder to be heard. (snicker)

And I should have mentioned that I don't think Charley Pride wrote "I'm Just Me" but he sang the song. The line I quoted starts off the second verse and, whoever wrote it, I think it is one of the best lines in all songdom.

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 09:02 AM

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,old git
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 07:21 AM

my favourite put down

I said to her," me darling and how are you this morning?"
She said,"None the better for the seeing of you!"

from the shanty "Wild goose"( Ranzo)

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 07:02 AM

Heres a few;While beating off Magellan straits,it blew exceeding hard
Two Jolly Tars we did lose,. blown from the topsall yards.
By angry seas the ropes we threw, from their poor grasps was torn
We had to leave them to the Sharks,that prowl around Cape Horn from The gallant frigate amphitrite.
       From sailortown. C Fox Smith, Dick Miles
Off a broad brimming water, where the summer sun has died .
Like a wounded whale a sounding, in the sunset tide.
       Bantry Bay song, Dick Miles
across the heathery moor came the curlews call.
While Dragonflys danced their farewell ball.
       DickMiles

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: clairerise
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 05:49 AM

sugar, aw honey honey

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,old git
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 05:47 AM

"Yes to dance beneath a diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea.........
Let me forget about today until tomorrow"


Mr Tambourine man ----Bob Dylan



not exactly a single line...but still....

Subject: RE: best single lines
From: GUEST,old git
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 05:38 AM

"The priest was sprinkling prayers and holy water in the rain"

The man in the hat ----Colum Sands