Entertainment For Lively Minds
An alphabetical guide to songs that start with a stunning declaration
Posted by PaddyH on 10 July 2011 - 12:41am.
Easy peasy. What are the songs from A-Z that begin with a stark declaration of 'fact'? Can be the artist's name or song title.
I'll start things with A for A House and their 1991 minor hit 'Endless Art' which starts with a bold borrowing from the Ballad of Reading Gaol hitmaker:
All art is quite useless, according to Oscar Wilde
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B is for Beatles
Help. I need somebody.
Great
And a song that starts straight into the chorus in the old Danny Baker radio show sense too.
C is for
the surprising declaration by Donald Byrd; "Change ( Makes You Wanna Hustle )".
Does it really, Donald ?
For D - Bill Hicks
'Drugs have done good things for us...'
See also 'Drugs are Bad' from Love, Laughter and Truth.
C is for Clash
"This Is A Public Service Announcement with Guitars", Strummer declaimed at the opening of Know Your Rights.
Cockney Rejects - Police Car
"Freedom? There ain't no fucking freedom!"
D, quite rightly,
Reminds us: don't eat yellow snow. Thanks, Frank.
Dylan: It's All Over Now Baby Blue
Using Danny Baker's song punctuation game:
You Must Leave Now! Take what you need you think will last!
E is for Eels
And the none-more-striking
"it's a motherfucker, being here without you"
F would be
Not Now John by Ver Floyd
Fuck all that we gotta get on with these
G for Grinderman
"My face is finished! My body is gone!"
No beating about the bush for Mr. Cave, as he explains why he has the No Pussy Blues.
Good times, these are the good times
The wonderful Chic of course, telling us how it is.
H is for How Soon Is Now...
"I am the son, and the heir, of a silence that is criminally vulgar/ I am the son and heir... of nothing in particular..."
"I" is for...
...the rather unlikely declaration at the start of Arthur Brown's 'Fire@...
I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving
The Smiths Still Ill
I is for
I don't believe in an interventionist god
Mr. Cave lays out his belief system on the first line of Into Your Arms.
Two from 1976 come to mind:
I am an antichrist,
of course, but far more significantly, as we've recently been reminded.
I've got a brand new combine harvester.
You might have stumbled on something important there Paxo...
...The Pitchfork: chosen instrument of Satan and harvesters. Similarly, The Banjo...
Jo Jo
was a man
you know - those guys
Jesus
died for somebody's sins, but not mine.
Jake Thackray
I love a good bum on a woman, it makes my day.
K is for Killing Floor
By the Electric Flag - Mike Bloomfield, Buddy Miles, Nick Gravenites et al. Nice bit of declamation at the beginning of this - LBJ, if memory serves...
L is for 'Love, love, love..."
...yes, it's Those Guys again, in a song comprised entirely of philosophical declamations:
Alternatively
The Rutles - Love Life
M is for "Most People I Know Think That I'm Crazy"...
...so say Billy Thorpe & His Aztecs, and who are we to disagree?
FACT:
Ninety nine percent of gargoyles look like Bob Todd.
Oh
I just don't know where to begin...
"Please take me out of this place..."
...quite a chilling start to a song about a mental institution:
Queen
Mama, just killed a man.
Dickie's Such An Asshole - Frank Zappa
"One and one is eleven!
Two and two is twenty two!
Won't somebody kindly tell me
What the government's trying to do..."
Or, alternatively:
"Baby take your teeth out
Try it one time
Baby take your teeth out
Try it one time
Leave 'em on the kitchen table"
"Read about the things
that happen throughout the world" er not any more Paul.....
"News of the World" The Jam
Topical as well, get me.
If you mean Paul as in Weller,
sorry to be pedantic, but News of The World was written by Bruce Foxton.
"News of The World was written by Bruce Foxton"
...before he moved his operation to America and launched that scourge of the Democratic Party Foxton News...
Something Is Squeezing My Skull!
So sayeth the nation's favourite rough-trade-loving, crisp-guzzling, Nick Griffin (but with eyes) lookalike, Morrissey.
H is for Hawkwind
you do have to wait a while for it but....it's a big claim :
"I am the centre of this universe, wind of time is blowing through me"
(Masters of the universe....a million versions in 10 million places but the first and best is on "In Search of Space")