Like most Wordy music lovers, I like a well turned lyric but, really, are lyrics that important? I have to admit, I think not.

Even with the best wordsmiths, it's the hypnotism of music and voice that bind you to a song. Without which, the lyrics mean about as much as the ingredients label on a hill of beans.

Strip the lyrics out of a great song and it's still a great song, as evinced by foreign language hits, e.g. "Je t'aime" by Serge Gainsbourg, "Da Da Da" by that 80s German band, and that Belgian take on "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Plastic Bertrand (well, at least for two minutes, it is).

Plus, a fair bit of Super Furry Animals Welsh output.

Does anyone love any songwriting just for the lyrics?

Can anybody think of any examples of lyrical inaccuracies? Here are some off the top of my head:
Madness - “Driving in My Car”
Describing a “Morris” :
“It was made in ’59/ in a factory by the Tyne” (The Morris was built in Cowley). The lyrics also state that it was used by the G.P.O. at some point but the open topped Morris used in the video for the song doesn’t look like the sort of think Postman Pat would ever drive.

U2 – “Pride (In the name of Love)”
“Early morning, April 4, shot rings out in the Memphis sky” (Martin Luther King was shot at 6.01pm that evening)

Charlene “I’ve never been to me” :
"I've been to Nice/and the isle of Greece/where I sipped champagne on a yacht..." (isle?)

Any More?

I know its a daft game but sometimes those are the best.

Looking for songs where the song title only appears right at the end

A couple to start

Up the Junction - Squeeze

Virginia Plain - Roxy Music

Apologies if this has been posted earlier, but I just discovered this and it had me giggling like a loon five minutes before a class I had to teach, (not a good place to be in mentally, not in front of my students at least). I'm sure this will put an end to any debate about the relative merits/overratedness of The Clash.

The camel face bit is priceless.

Hello! Long-time lurker, occasional poster...

I will be bridesmaid to a friend in a few days' time, and I've been asked to find a reading. Edward Monkton's 'A Lovely Love Story' is a favourite at the moment, but there must be something else out there that I'm missing.

Dear Massive, you are people of excellent taste with a sound appreciation of the romantic - any recommendations? Are there any readings that have stuck with you, as being particularly insightful or unusual, or that brought a lump to the throat? What was read out at your own weddings?

A little more about this wedding - it will be a non-religious service, in a French vineyard (sigh). The service and speeches will be in both English and French, so I'm not looking for anything too flowery or olde Englishe. We're all in our mid-thirties, so Britpop era lyrics might work a treat.

Thanks!

(waits with bated breath...)

We've probably done this before but no matter, what do you think is the greatest opening line in music?

To my mind, you have to go some way to beat, "she was just 17, you know what I mean". Straight away the scene is set: it's a song about a girl, and what's more, the kind of girl you want to know more about.

Others that spring to mind are:

- "I wrote this song two hours before we met" from Pulp's Something Changed (full of intrigue, makes you want to know what the song's about).

- "Punctured bicycle upon a hillside desolate" from The Smiths' This Charming Man (just so utterly different).

So, which ones have I missed?

I think I've seen the phrase "heavy lifting" enough times now to firstly ask someone to explain it to me, and then never want to see it again. I think it's used to mean a good track somehow lifts an average album to above average. Even if I guessed right, it's still annoying.

And in a completely different area, has anyone noticed that the use of ring to mean anus is only used by comedians in a way that is trying to suggest that everyone uses it that way, but when they say it but don't mean anus, they have made a hysterical mistake? The first time I heard that gag, I had to do the double think. (Worst offender being Julian Clarey, of course).

A finally - just getting a lot of things off my chest - the great Jimmy Webb lyric from Wichita Lineman "And I need you more than want you and I want you for all times" is not a great lyric, but some kind of mathematical equation that needs a greater or equal to sign somewhere in the middle?

As a kid, not content with spending hours poring over LP sleeves in record shops, I used to pay regular visits to proper music shops where I sought out the sheet music to albums to unlock the mystery to lyrics which I couldn't make out in favourite songs. I never used to buy the 'music books' as they more properly resembled, but rather thumbed through them to find the particular missing lyric that had been driving me crazy.

The sad result of all this is that I can still sing the lyrics to virtually all songs by Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jackson Browne, Genesis and many others, even after many years of not hearing the songs at all.

The coming of the Internet means that I can now visit dozens of sites to read all the lyrics of all the songs ever written by favourite artists, without leaving home. I won't remember them though.

Any other such memories?

This is the only song I know that contains the word ‘trainee’:

Any other words that occur in just one song?

Dear chaps and wochaps of the Massive,

It's come to my attention during my short time here that many of us are softies, nancies and sobsacks. Romantics, in short. Now, as well as being a sniffling, kitten-cooing love-addict, I'm a great believer in good lyrics. I find it difficult to get on board with artists who don't write them, and when they're done right, pop lyrics are a splendid thing.

With that in mind, could we contribute the lyrical fragments which just make us melt? Only one rule: no more than four lines allowed.

Here are my two, at the moment:

The Decemberists: "Wager All"
Lay you down in clover bed,
The stars a roof above our head...

The National: Conversation 16
I figured out what we're missing
I tell you miserable things after you are asleep
Now we'll leave the silver city 'cause all the silver girls
Gave us black dreams

I wanted to go with a contrasting pair, there. "Conversation 16" is so sad and yet so lovely: the sound of love amid unhappiness. "Wager All" is just sweetly, erotically tender. They're gorgeous songs, and these are the moments that make them so, IMO.

Bus Stop by The Hollies - lyrics tell of a love that blooms, music says otherwise.

I'm sure you have yours...

This morning, I got to work only to realise the server was down, my mouse was broken and I'd left my lunch at home. I posted something to this effect on Twitter, and received a reply from Gauntlet of this parish, saying there was a country song to be made from my travails, which got me thinking...

Can you update old blues or country songs to make them more modern? Something like:

"Woke up this morning/
To the sound of Aphex Twin on my DAB radio"

"Since my baby left me/
I've been looking at her Facebook profile every day"

Any more for any more?

Misheard lyrics
I used to listen to Floyd a lot, but during Breathe, I thought Gilmour sang "it's good to warm my bum beside the fire" and my friend thought Wish You Were Here went "we're just 2 lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year..running over the same old ground.. and how we found the same old fish!!"

Morning,

It's an unearthly hour and I'm still awake so I thought I'd put some lyrics
up. Not all are good. See if you can guess the song AND artist for each.
This isn't easy (well, I don't think it is, you might think I'm being
presumptuous, so I'll be extra generous with the word count. Pint/shot on
offer to any one person who gets the highest score. No cheating. Minus 2
points for each wrong answer - i.e. if you get 8 right and 2 wrong, you'll
end up with a score of 4. Make sense? Enjoy and beware of guesses, these
hills are filled with traps like weird, sneaky bears.

In no particular order:

1. 'I am the world's forgotten boy
the one who searches and destroys'

2. 'Outside there's a boxcar waiting'

3. 'Walking back to you
Is the hardest thing that
I can do
That I can do for you
For you'

4. 'And I hope you're holding hands by new years eve,
They made it far too easy to believe,
That true romance cant be acheived these days'

5. 'And the Britney song was on
and the Britney song was on
and the Britney song was on'

6. 'Fear of a female planet?
Fear of a female planet?'

7. 'He wants to go to the football match
because it makes him feel like a real man
he wants to be hard just like his dad'

8. 'There are fewer more distressing sights than that
Of an Englishman in a baseball cap'

9. 'Just a small town girl
Livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin' anywhere'

10. 'But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked'

J. x

ANSWERS ARE UP IN MY FINAL COMMENT ON THIS THREAD. ENJOY!

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m irritated by lyrics that don’t scan – specifically where the emphasis is awry.

You’ve written the music – and I’m assuming that generally it precedes the words – and you’re going to go to the trouble of recording it. Why, then, do you try and cram an ill-scanning word in instead of choosing another, better fitting one? Or, if the phrase is of such importance, save it intact for a tune where the emphasis fits the metre.

I mean, Kilimanjaro rising like Olympus above the Serrr-en-ge-tee` is kind of annoying, but I don’t listen to Toto much. My enjoyment of KT Tunstall’s great Other Side of the World, however, is definitely tempered because of her ty`-ered ex-cu-ses`. Del Amitri’s Nothing Ever Happens has four – four! – mangled words in as many minutes.

I know it sounds like a grumpy old man thing. Sorry about that. But to me, a lyric that truly doesn’t scan shows a lack of craft.