My New Favourite Old Lyric
The iPod threw up a treat on the 8:05 this morning, namely Best I Can from Rush's 1975 ker-lassic, Fly By Night. Now, Rush are many things, as we've discussed here before, but sassy, street-walking, hip-swinging, gum-chewing lady-killers - Aerosmith with a debilitating maple syrup habit - they most assuredly are not. However, on this track they give it a go and it's sort of disastrous and sort of brilliant, ie, my absolutely favourite type of pop record. So they shimmy and shake and it's all very Ziggy Stardust, but then they get to the chorus and just can't help letting themselves down, to whit:
You can tell me that I got no class
Look around, you'll see who's laughin' last
Don't give me speeches 'cos they're oh so drôle
Leave me alone, let me rock and roll
Has anyone other than Rush ever attempted to convey their innate rockness , their nose-thumbing abandon and reckless sexual mores by rhyming "drôle" with "rock and roll"? Are there, perhaps other examples of people who are clearly too clever to be writing rock and roll songs revealing themselves through their lyrics?
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Has to be that Ol' Stripey....
Mr Sting, with his godawful look how learned I am lyrics from Don't Stand so Close : "Loose talk in the classroom
To hurt they try and try
Strong words in the staffroom
The accusations fly
Its no use, he sees her
He starts to shake and cough
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabakov"
Funny how he has yet to appear in the list of those up for re-appraisal...........
I seem to recall a Spitting Image spoof
...highlighting just this habit of old Gordo's. As I recall it had a couplet along the lines of "All my songs make references to NAbokov and Nietzsche, Can you tell I use to be a teacher?"
Lloyd Cole
I always thought that lyric be Lloyd Cole was a bit 'try hard'
"If you really want to get straight/ Read Norman Mailer/ Or get a new tailor."
Those early Rush albums...
...are a bit of a dogs' dinner in my opinion. 'Caress Of Steel' was especially ghastly! I love 'A Farewell To Kings'- something magical about that one for me, maybe because it was recorded in Wales- and many of the albums that followed. That particular lyric above sounds more like something Kiss would have come up with on an off-day.
That Sting lyric is pretty awful too, yeah.
CoS - "ghastly", you're joking, right?
How could any record that contains Lakeside Park ever be considered "ghastly".
OK...
...save 'Lakeside Park' and maybe 'Bastille Day'. I don't think I ever got through 'The Fountain Of Lamneth' though, which does take up most of the album. And those shorter songs I like are on the live album 'All The World's A Stage' anyway.
Slightly off-topic, but you brought them up...
My favourite Aerosmith lyric is from Bitches Brew, where Steven Tyler starts a verse with something that sounds like an ill-advised attempt at profundity, but rescues it with a really dumb second line. And dumb is what Aerosmith do best:
I been thinkin' - ran my hands through the sands of time
Yeah, and I been drinkin' - just to make this here song rhyme
Lovely stuff.
you can't beat
sci-fi situationalist Zodiac Mindwarp's 'I love TV and I love T Rex/I can see through your skirt girl, I've got X-ray spex'.
Notforgetting an incident where, apparently, her 'lipstick flickers round my lightnigh rod'. Beyond irony and parody, I reckon