Best Line in a Song

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 01:44 PM

I think it is wonderful that a new thread was started, although I don't mind links to old threads. But I hate opening up a thread from 2003 when it is 2008 now. Anyway, their was a lot of consensus in previous threads for "if it weren't for the alligators I'd sleep out in the swamp." mg

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: open mike
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 02:18 PM

ting tang walla walla bing bang
oo ee oo ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang
(the witch doctor)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8qDphoQPdw

and then there is the one eyed one horned flying purple people eater
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9H_cI_WCnE

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 03:36 PM

The only person on the scene missing was the Jack of Hearts...

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Ken Brock
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 03:53 PM

two of my favorites are from one song, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's "Take Him" (from Pal Joey, 1940):

last year his arm was busted, reaching _from_ a check

and later

so here's my benediction, please take my Benedict, too.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: oldhippie
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 04:41 PM

More;

"Deliver me lord from the judgement
Of the Saints who have never been caught" - Larry Jon Wilson

"Your light still shines
It's one small star to guide me" - Eric Bogle

"'Cause I know I'm going nowhere
And anywhere's a better place to be" - Harry Chapin

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: The Mole Catcher's Apprentice (inactive)
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 04:50 PM

"Gonna see Miss Brer Foxhole she's got diamonds in her teeth"

- W.S. Walcott Medicine Show. The Band

Charlotte (up on Cripple Creek)

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: JulieF
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 05:00 PM

Always loved

I saw a shooting star last night
i wished on it but it was just a satelite
its wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish, i wish you care

billy bragg - new England

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 05:06 PM

What's interesting about this is that no one has commented on posters' choice of "best lines". Maybe, they only really work in the context of the complete song.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Brendan
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 05:26 PM

I heard Louis Killen singing a song last week that I think was written by Mike Waterson. The song was about a common working man whose run of bad luck was described beautifully with the brilliant line....

If he fell into a barrel of ladies parts he'd climb out sucking his thumb.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 05:59 PM

If you do not when you may, you shall not when you would!
   from Blow Away The Morning Dew-as sung by Ewan MacColl

Aint it enough to break your heart,
You've got to work all day, and at night it's dark.
   Hard Times In The Mill as sung by Pete Seeger

He has both come and gone! (?)

This young couple were childhood sweethearts,
She was a child and he was a hood.
In my song called That's The Ticket But this line actually is from Carol Thieme if you really want the truth of it!!!
(So there...)

Art Thieme

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Frank Lee
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 06:09 PM

Eddie Cochrane's, 'I called my Congressman and he said, quote,
"I'd like to help you son, but you're too young to vote" From 'Summertime Blues'

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 06:19 PM

"they asked for some collaterol, and I pulled down my pants" - Dylan

"ADAM RAISED A CAINE!!! ADAM RAISED A CAINE!!!" - Springsteen

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: dulcimerjohn
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 06:21 PM

would have to mine my databank but I'm sure it's something either from Richard Thompson, Dave Cousins or Dylan..Dulcimerjohn

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 06:21 PM

It's knowing I can get some sex without having to commit to you at all,
That makes me leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind your couch...

----A parody of Gentle On Ny Mind that I once improvised during my set on the steamboat Julia Belle Swain and sang for John Hartford. It got less than a hearty welcoming, and that's about as far into it as I went...

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 06:23 PM

You had to be there!

Art

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 06:29 PM

Hello and goodbye, divided by a line down the middle of the road. --Pierce Pettis

The dust that Pancho bit down south ended up in Lefty's mouth __ Van Zandt

And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time --Jim Webb

But this Tom waits lyric is the most blow-my-mind best written shit I've ever heard...

When traveling abroad in the continental style
It's my belief one must attempt to be discreet
And subsequently bear in mind your transient position
Allows you a perspective that's unique

And though you'll find your itinerary a blessing and a curse
Your wanderlust won't let you settle down
And you'll wonder how you ever fathomed that you'd be content
To stay within the city limits of a small Midwestern town

Most vagabonds I knowed don't ever want to find the culprit
That remains the object of their long relentless quest
The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending
The pursuit, you see, and never the arrest

Without fear of contradiction, bon voyage is always hollered
In conjunction with a handkerchief from shore
By a girl who drives a Rambler and furthermore
Is overly concerned that she won't see him anymore

Planes and trains and boats and buses
Characteristically evoke a common attitude of blue
Unless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passport
And the cargo that they're carrying is you

A foreign affair, juxtaposed with a stateside
And domestically approved romantic fancy
Is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances, knowing
It will only be parlayed into a memory

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Joseph de Culver City
Date: 06 Mar 08 - 12:29 PM

Yes and only if my own true love was waiting
And I could hear her heart a softly pounding
Only if she was lying by me,
Would I rest in my bed once again

Bob Dylan

White, so white, refrigerator white
Everything about you is refrigerator white
You're cold pretty mama, like a Utah night
Everything about you is refrigerator white

Nick Lowe

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: wordfella
Date: 06 Mar 08 - 12:31 PM

Bob Seger: Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then...

Ah, ironic reversals!

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: The Vulgar Boatman
Date: 06 Mar 08 - 03:09 PM

"I'd rather have drowned in misery than gone to New South Wales..."
Jim Jones - trad.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: slowerairs
Date: 06 Mar 08 - 03:48 PM

She isn't a virgin but she's trying to become one.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,The Mole Catcher's unplugged Apprentice
Date: 06 Mar 08 - 04:20 PM

from a song that I actually perform:

"So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen"

- Desperados Waiting For A Train . written by Guy Clarke

Charlotte (the view from Ma and Pa's piano stool

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 Mar 08 - 07:47 PM

Carl had a way with cotton
Mama had a way with words
And I had my way with a red haired Catholic girl

Sometimes they drink Four Roses
Sometimes the old Grandad
They don't drink in the mornings, but sometimes they wish they had

from Happy Endings by Eric Taylor

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: number 6
Date: 06 Mar 08 - 08:30 PM

"And I would write Jesus a letter,
But I hear that he don't speak English...
So instead I'll just throw these cobblestones Until I ring that old church bell."    ..... from Sleepy Town by Jim White

.... biLL

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Bert
Date: 06 Mar 08 - 10:20 PM

From a Johnny Cash song...

I like to get my loving, while I've got it on my mind.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Melbert
Date: 07 Mar 08 - 05:57 AM

AS an "attention getter" for an opening line, I don't think you can beat Thachray's "I love a good bum on a woman, it makes my day"......

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,wayne monroe
Date: 07 Mar 08 - 06:07 AM

"I never had a job where the boss wouldn't steal the bass drum from his own brass band", from Cheyenne, written and sung by John Stewart.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Green gal
Date: 07 Mar 08 - 07:09 PM

she doesn't have to say she's faithful
she's true like ice, like fire

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: number 6
Date: 08 Mar 08 - 01:01 AM

"You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun."

by Eric Clapton and Martin Sharp


... biLL

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: The Mole Catcher's Apprentice (inactive)
Date: 08 Mar 08 - 12:22 PM

And the colours of the sea bind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses...

sorry couldn't resist...it's a really great song, one of Cream's best

Charlotte (disraeli gears)

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,David Jones, Guest.
Date: 08 Mar 08 - 04:02 PM

From the days of -49.

"They call me a bummer and a gin sot too, but what cares I for praise"

David Jones

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: moongoddess
Date: 08 Mar 08 - 10:41 PM

From a John Denver song:
"Please Daddy, don't get drunk this Christmas, I don't want to hear my mamma cry."

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: freightdawg
Date: 08 Mar 08 - 11:09 PM

"When people say that life is rough,
I wonder, "compared to what?""

From "I'm Just Me" performed by Charlie Pride

"In a place of enchantment, where the wild things are known
will the future remember, when the lovers are gone?"

From "A Song For All Lovers" by John Denver

"I thought he walked on water."

From the song of the same title, Randy Travis

"And today I saw the first airplane that flew, touched a moon rock, saw a senator at the zoo."

From "Nothing as Original as You", The Statler Bros.

Just a few, many many others but I'm too sleepy...

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Marty
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 12:12 AM

Harry Nilsson:
You're breakin' my heart,
You're tearin' it apart,
So fuck you

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 05:20 AM

There have definitely been other threads on this subject - I've clickied some of them below. My fave line is buried in one of them, among 759,834 others so that means I get to write it again here:

"She had to have something flash every time she smiled" (Bob Dylan, Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts)

We all know people for whom that is the perfect description. Another favourite has surfaced in my memory because of the recent Swiss Cottage lyrics thread. It's less poetic but just so true - and it's replayed itself in my head a thousand times when sparked off by some life-event or other:

"You know you can't make people be what you want them to be..." (Al Stewart, Swiss Cottage Manoeuvres)

In addition to this thread, there are also:

Great turns of phrase in lyrics

Songs that hook you with one great line

Lines that really grab you

Favorite lines This is the one Midchuck posted above, just so it doesn't feel left out.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: eddie1
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 05:34 AM

"I fumbled in my closet through my clothes to find my cleanest dirty shirt". (Kris Kristoffersen, "Sunday Morning Coming Down".)

Eddie

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 06:22 AM

Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go
I don't think so
Gonna take a look around it though

- Blue, the incomparable Joni

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 10:21 AM

His tongue it could not speak but only flatter, Dylan. The priest he sat in the airport bar, he was wearing his fathers tie. Joni M. I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me, but the room just filled up with mosquitos, they heard that my body was free. L. Cohen.
She's a hundred but she's wearin something tight. L. Cohen. Kick the darkness til it bleeds daylight. Bruce Cockburn.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Midchuck
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 11:09 AM

Well maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya

Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah"

Peter

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 02:14 PM

Thank God and Greyhound You're Gone!

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Dan in NS
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 03:27 PM

Fighting for the right to fight the right fight for the Right - (John Birch Society, the Chad Mitchell Trio)

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: SouthernCelt
Date: 09 Mar 08 - 04:27 PM

A couple more from Robert Earl Keen, Jr., (yeah, I like him a lot).

"He bought a house in southern France, but he lives in Hollywood"
From "Mr. Wolf and Mama Bear" and you have to take that line in the context of the rest of the song.

"This morning our house looks like hell...or possibly WalMart."
From Keen's second novelty Christmas song called, I think, Merry Christmas You-all" (can't lay my hands on the CD right now).

SC

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Syd's ghost, in a minor key.
Date: 10 Mar 08 - 12:07 AM

Oh, 'tis my delight on a Friday night, at one and nine a throw.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Claymore
Date: 10 Mar 08 - 12:52 AM

There was a couple of bawdy ballads that we sang in the 'Nam.

One was about the "Night We Gunned Down Santa Claus" ( The password was not Ho Ho Ho).

The other had a verse that went;

You come into the room, talking that talk,
I can tell what you've been doing by the way you walk...

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Mar 08 - 06:16 AM

Don't get too gay in Botany Bay unless you be well hung; unless you be well hung me boys, and after that Jim Jones, way up upon the gallows high, the crows will pick your bones...

Otherwise:

Sweeney the thin-groined it is,
in the middle of the yew...

Is that Flann O'Brien's translation? Alas I can't lay my hands on either At Swim-Two-Birds OR Sweeney Astray (Seamus Heaney). Meanwhile making do with Buile Suibhne. It's a sair fecht, as Oor Wullie would say.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Bernard Quenby
Date: 10 Mar 08 - 09:39 AM

'Drop-Kick me Jesus, through the goal posts of life - Bobby Bare

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 10 Mar 08 - 12:08 PM

Lulu, oh lulu come and open up this door,
Before I have to open it with my old 44.
from "Been all around this world." (traditional)

The beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for desert. (Kris Kristoffersen, "Sunday Morning Coming Down".)

Your debutante knows what you need, but I know what you want.

Russ (permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Mar 08 - 01:28 PM

Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now!

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,Henry
Date: 10 Mar 08 - 02:53 PM

'I've seen landladies who've lost their lovers at the time of Rupert Brooke'. Four years of history and personal tragedy in one line by Clive James.

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 10 Mar 08 - 08:08 PM

"Where are you when we need you Christy Moore?"

(Eric Bogle, Plastic Paddy)

Subject: RE: Best Line in a Song
From: GUEST,TonyK
Date: 10 Mar 08 - 11:19 PM

A picnic in the rain
after a prairie fire.
Prine