Entertainment For Lively Minds
Crap Lyrics Re-evaluated No. 445
Parisienne Walkways*
Lyrics by Phil Lynott
I remember Paris in '49
The Champs Elysees, Saint Michel
And old Beaujolais wine**
And I recall that you were mine
In those Parisienne days
Looking back at the photographs
Those summer days spent outside corner caffs***
Oh, I could write you paragraphs****
About my old Parisienne days
*Little is known of the network of concrete and steel overpasses that spanned the boulevards of Paris, from the Champs Elysees to Montmartre, in the late Forties. Influenced by the nascent Birmingham school of architecture, les walkways were thought to be reserved for the use of Les Parisiennes, the female residents of the city. Exactly why it was felt necessary to elevate local women above street level is not known, although experts believe it was probably something to do with looking up their skirts. One theory suggests the walkways were subsequently destroyed by gangs of feral linguists furious at the Anglification of the French language, and grafitti recently discovered on a footbridge near Gare du Nord ('Ceci c'est un chemin de marche') is thought to originate from this time.
**Lynott is careful here to point out that it is Beaujolais wine that he shares with his loved one, rather than, for example, the Beaujolais ice cream which was briefly popular in that summer of '49. Eschewing the fad for nouveau and presumably unable to afford vintage, Lynott selects from the cellar marked "old".
***Historians believe these corner caffs, or cuillères grasse, were another direct influence of the brief Parisian obsession with Birmingham. Such was their popularity that people would, as Lynott points out, queue in the streets all day for their chip butty and mug of Bovril, often sheltering in the shade of an adjacent walkway. If Lynott had looked down the street to the nearby Patisserie, he could have rhymed it with reverie. But he didn't.
****Like the sonnets of Shakespeare's time and the epic poems of the Romantics, the paragraph briefly flowered as the poet's preferred format in '49. The strength of one's affection could be determined from the coquettish offset of one's indent. Lynott here boasts that he could manage two or more paragraphs, a show of youthful braggadocio which would eventually lead to a new form of romantic expression, the memo.
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*applauds*
(And not incidentally attracts odd glances from colleagues re. sniggering.)
I look at the floor and I see it need sweeping
from WMGGW has always irritated me to the point of distraction. I was going to post it in the greatest guitar solo thread but it seems less out of place here. It's a bit humdrum to mention the state of the floor for a start, but then George continues
I don't know how you were diverted
you were perverted too
I don't know how you were inverted
no one alerted you
Pretentious and meaningless, IMHO.
And on the subject of George Harrison in the song Badge co-written by Eric Clapton the lines
"Then I told you about our kid
Now he's married to Mabel"
just to get an -able rhyme are just as unforgivable. How many women of marriageable age would have been called Mabel when the song was written? I suspect many would already been collecting their pensions.
emotional
Those lines at the end of Badge have always been my favourite bit of the song.
You've got a point there Pikemeister....
...much as I like his Beatles era music, there IS a bit of 'will this do?' aspect to some of his lyrics. You can see where he has a rhyme problem every time. The use of 'woo' in 'Something' for example, is desperate and clunky in an otherwise magisterial piece of affecting simplicity.
Having said that, there is - somehow - a pleasing bit of mystery and enigma in the Mabel lines in 'Badge'...
Apparently its from Ringo
He wandered in plastered while The Quiet One and his rock star pal Eric were sitting around in a late 60's rock star stylee, trying to crack the last lyrics of 'Badge' - and Ringo came up with that and the bit about the swans
Somewhere In My Heart - Aztec Camera
An otherwise perfect song - but I can never forgive this:
From Westwood to Hollywood
The ONE thing that's understood
is that you can't buy time (1)
But you can sell your soul (2)
And the closest thing to heaven is to rock n roll (3)
Come on Roddy - you numeracy needs much attention!
And geography.
From Westwood to Hollywood is nearer than from Tehachepi to Tonopah.
I'd read it thus:
From Westwood to Hollywood
The one thing that's understood
is that you can't buy time [sole negative understood thing];
BUT, you can sell your soul [positive alternative understood thing no. 1],
and the closest thing to heaven is to rock n roll [postitive alternative understood thing no. 2].
I concur
Very much my reading too. As you were, Roddy.
Fantastic!
My poor interpretation has prevented me from enjoying the song for years, I shall enjoy again henceforth.
Can you fix
the guitar solo.
Screws it for me.
"Tender is The Ghost
The Ghost I Love The Most"
STAB!!!! Albarn must die!
Let England Shite
"I've seen and done things I want to forget;
I've seen a corporal whose nerves were shot
Climbing behind the fierce, gone sun,
I've seen flies swarming everyone,
Soldiers fell like lumps of meat"
Anus-clenching doggerel from jury-hoodwinking songstress out-stupids Boy George's "War Song" for crass armchair war correspondence.
War's baaaad, m'kay?
Yeah, what is it good for?
The...
manufacturing industry.
and
slum clearance.
Have you ever had one
of those moments when you're lying in Alan McGee's Alpaca-lined sex sling as a Balinese "pleasure ambassador" blows pharmaceutical grade cocaine into your jap's eye through a drinking straw whilst simultaneously stroking your bottyhole with a swizzle stick held between their toes when you suddenly wonder what it's all about?
Noel Gallagher has:
I don't really care for what you believe
So open up your fist and you will receive
The thoughts and the words of every man you'll meet
Get up off the floor of the leaving line
No one's ever gonna ever ask you twice
Get all the fuss and bring it all home to me
I met my maker, I made him cry
And on my shoulder, he asked me why
As people won't fly through the storm
I said listen up now, we don't even know you're born
Have I Ever Had One Of Those Moments..?
No.
In my case, the sling was cashmere-lined and belonged to Trevor Horn. And I think she was Ukranian. And she had the swizzle-stick in her other hand.
Ah, yes:
The Buggle snuggle...
All together now
"All my people right here right now,
d'you know what I mean?"
Sorry Noel, could you run that one by me again, please?
Old Beaujolais?
My dears, Gamay is a grape which should be drunk young *adjusts cravat*
Once upon a time...
Merchant ships under sail took a triangular route from Britain's west coast ports (Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow), loaded with wool for the New World. They would sail west, offloading the cargo in the Carolinas, the Caribbean and elsewhere, then stock up on tobacco, sugar, spices and exotica, heading back towards France. With their relatively shallow draft, they could sail up the Garonne to Bordeaux, trading then stocking up on wine before sailing back to Britain.
Impatient wine merchants would be tearing their hair out back at the British docksides - once a year - waiting for the barrels of Bordeaux to arrive. "Where have you been?" they'd cry, "Are you trying to ruin me with your tardiness?"
"My apologies sir," the captains always said, "but we've been on the Gamay leg."
/coat, hat, shoes, sells flat, leaves country etc
The lyrics may be un peut
The lyrics may be un peut fromagesque, n'est pas but it's still a cracking song.
Indeed. Criticising a Gary Moore song
for the lyrics is a bit like criticising a Morrissey song for it's lack of widdly guitar solos.
Bob Dylan?
Bob McGonagall more like! From the same album:
One day they blew him down in a clam bar in New York
He could see it coming through the doors as he lifted up his fork
and
Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp(!!!)
And a piece of an old ship that lies on the shore
You always responded when I needed your help
You gimme a map and a key to your door
Was he really that desperate to find a rhyme for help, or had he just lost interest? And are there any other songs which mention kelp? We need to know.
One very famous number with a seaweed reference
When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's kelp in anyway.
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind, I've opened up the doors.
(I'm not counting What's The Story, Morning Nori as Oasis aren't very good.)
Didn't Oasis do one:
Wrack and roll star?
Wakame Up
Before You Go-Go
Let's not forget...
the blindingly obvious, and possibly obligatory, HJH number: Kelp!
As the Welsh Beatles once sang...
"All you need is laver"
Let's not forget the Dave Dee, Dozy, Mick & Titch classic
Bladderwrack....
\coat
Dear Mr Dylan
If, as you assert, there is no place you're going to, it's somewhat contradictory to suggest that you are intending to take a trip on my magic swirling ship or that you are planning to go madly swinging across the sun.
Yours,
The tambourine man
(PS Stop stalking me and go to bed)
Let's hear it for the Boy
My baby, he don't talk sweet
He ain't got much to say*
* (he's a grunting, gurning oafish donkey - less of a man than a walking, punctured colostomy bag)
But he loves me, loves me, loves me
I know that he loves me anyway**
** (in his own way, I suppose. Haven't entirely got to the bottom of it yet - but I'll get there in the end. Call me Miss Marple.)
And maybe he don't dress fine
But I don't really mind***
*** (he's a slob. Tracckie bottoms and a stained checked shirt, with sweat patches under the ams, rippled like rings of Saturn.)
'Cause every time he pulls me near I just wanna cheer
Let's hear it for the boy
Let's give the boy a hand****
**** (Look, okay, I'll admit, I'm what's technically known in psychiatric circles as an 'enabler'. I've got various self-esteem issues, and I'm working through them, but for now, it's all I can do to preserve my farce of a marriage, and so I'm going to masturbate him. To issue.)
Classic
'Classic' by Adrian Gurvitz
“Got to write a classic
Got to write it in an attic..."
Rumours abound that an alternative opening line under consideration - “Got to got to write a hit Jen, got to write it in the kitchen” was rejected over concerns that it might limit the appeal of the song to women named Jenny or Jennifer.
Widely circulated untruths like this were a calculated attempt to tarnish the professional reputation of Adrian Gurvitz, who had obtained a 1st in chemical-based song-writing while studying at Cambridge and wrote an influential dissertation on the ionic meta-lattices that form the bedrock of all prog rock lyrics.
A man who blamed bedsits and flats for the dismal state of the single’s charts at the end of the 1970s, Gurvitz cited the attic as the optimum location for song-writing. It was here, he claimed, that a combination of solitude, darkness, and a high spider-to-human ratio would unlock hitherto unexplored realms of creativity where the doors of perception lay somewhere behind a pile of cardboard boxes full of old Christmas decorations.
Gurvtiz’s theories, which were derided at the time, have since gained mainstream acceptance. As of 1990 all songs submitted for publication in the UK have been required to incorporate information about the location in which they were written, including the height above sea level, rounded up to the nearest foot. This accumulated data has revealed that the majority of hits and critically acclaimed songs are composed at an altitude of roughly 30-40 feet (what would have been regarded as attic height during the early 1980s when Gurvitz was at the incandescent zenith of his powers as a songwriter.)
“Ironically Thom Yorke wrote the title track from Radiohead’s second album - The Bends - at an altitude where he couldn’t have possibly experienced the rapid changes in atmospheric pressure associated with the symptoms decompression sickness,” is a quote often attributed to Gurvitz.
Strange the stories you hear
I heard that for The Bends, Thom gained most of his inspiration for that album while apprenticed to be a plumber. Fortunately or not for us he left the profession after a series of "hilarious" and improbable Robin Asquith style incidents, many of which found him at the mercy of angry, bruising husbands with his trollies around his ankles and the scanty protection of little more than a medium sized torque wrench.
His first proposed title for the album, "Smash The Cistern" was knocked back by Johnny Greenwood on account of his deep aversion to ballcocks following a traumatic childhood accident.
This explains
why Chris Rea's On the Beach (written at sea level) is not as good as The Drifters' Up on the Roof (written more or less at attic height) while The Byrds' Eight Miles High is totally over the top.
Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
speaks for itself
It also partially explains
why The Groundhogs are so poorly regarded these days.
As for the Wombles...
Underground, overground... pah I shit 'em
Taupin fingered
"If I was a sculptor … but then again no" by the Crocodile Rock hitmaker always gets my goat. You're writing the song. It's the summation of a set of ideas. There's editing involved. It's just not acceptable to change your mind in mid-line and then just leave it there. It's almost as if you just wanted something to rhyme with "travelling show".
Sometime Bernie sucks
And that's a great example.
But more often it's the terrible scanning by Elton that keeps Taupin/John songs out of the top division.
Scanning 'Hollywood created a superstar' into about two syllables is always good for a chuckle.
Sarstedt
"And then they laugh. A-ha-ha-ha."
I mean really.
At least Jon Anderson was honest
"Now the verses I've sang
Don't add much weight
To the story in my head
So I'm thinking I should go and write a punchline.
But they're so hard to find
In my cosmic mind
So I think I'll take a look
Out of the window"
A punctured bicycle on a hillside desolate?
A punctured tyre on a hillside desolate, Steven, surely.
The La's - "accidents show mercy none"
The La's album is one of my all-time favourites. But I'm very glad that the scouse growl of Lee Mavers's voice renders a lot of the lyrics unintelligible. "Freedom Song" is particularly awful.
"I'm not scared to die, God help me
We went to the same schools
And we all learned the same rules of lament"
I mean , what?