Entertainment For Lively Minds
powerful lines in unpretentious pop songs
Posted by another Iain on 12 August 2011 - 12:30pm.
Hearing Mickey by Toni Basil this morning, I was struck again by how the line 'you take me by the heart when you take me by the hand' sums up so well how love, unrequited or otherwise, can feel.
I don't say Chinn/Chapman were the first to put it like that, but there it is.
Of course the other thing I think about every time I hear the song is the scene in Wayne's World where they start singing it in the car before shamefacedly realising what they're doing.
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Coward of the County
The line …
They took turns at Becky. And there was three of them.
… sends a shiver up my spine.
I thought it was..
Tommy's love was specky. (Visually impaired)
Along the same lines
The Jam - Down In The Tube Station At Midnight
"They took the keys and she'll think it's me ..."
Nice idea for a thread
How about "I believe in truth though I lie a lot" from Love Action by the Human League. I find that a genuinely profound illustration of how the best intentions can go awry, and how we can lie and hate ourselves for doing it.
Blub!
I'm going to say Human League too, but from Louise.
'It's not always true, that time heals all wounds. There are wounds you don't want to heal. The memories of something really good, something truly real, that you never found again.'
Yea, yea and thrice yea
I love this song. I love the Human League. Louise is just a gorgeous song, so full of tenderness and regret; and lovable ol' out-of-tune Phil sings it better than anyone else could have.
Then there's this, from Life On Your Own: "It's funny how my problems stopped when we went for a walk." Wonderful.
I can't possibly
count the number of times I've put those tracks on compilations.
PS
I'm listening to Human League on Spotify, and bugger me if Louise didn't bring a tear to my eye.
Human is a wonderful song too, especially the bit where Suzanne and Jo sing "I am just a man". It almost lurches into comedy with the "while we were apart I was human too" spoken bit, but then I think mixing pathos with farce can work if it's done well - that's why I love Jane Campion's film Holy Smoke so much, though that may be another thread...
In case
you're not aware of this lovely version, though it appears to omit the line you mention.
Tony Christie - Louise
"There's no need to act...
like I shot your dog; I was only telling a lie." - James Taylor
"And so it goes,
and so it goes, and so will you soon, I suppose." Billy Joel
"You put your arms around me and we held each other tight...
...and you said, I think we're alone now, there doesn't seem to be anyone around..."
Slightly salicious, capturing the teenage tryst perfectly when you're limited by time and space.
Sounds better (and racier) from Tommy James than it did from Tiffany but both still excellent readings.
Though neither as good as the version by the Rubinoos!
And just for the hell of it
Here's another version! From the very fine and rather overlooked Lene Lovich, from her first album.
I like big butts
And I cannot lie.
Arf!
We can't top that.
Wise words mate
Talk about bum flaps
My girls got them
Spinal Tap
A poor film, a ropey soundtrack
And a single which is a nick of Oui 3's steal of "For What It's Worth" but I always nod at
"Don't let a win get to your head or a loss to your heart" on Public Enemy's "He Got Game".
*edit*
Now I think about I rather like
"Pinball machines have sign saying 'tilt'
But in life it's difficult establishing guilt"
from the Oui 3 song
ELO
Bank job, in the city
Robin Hood, William Tell, Ivanhoe, Lancelot - they don't envy me
I absolutely adore that lyric, from Can't Get It Out of My Head.
Martha Reeves asks...
...'Could it be a devil in me, or is this the way love's supposed to be?'
(Heat Wave by Martha and the Vandellas)
The Great Philosopher Howard Jones...
...advised us all to "Throw off Your Mental Chains", and I'm not sure I've heard the concept of opening the mind to see beyond the obvious being expressed more succinctly.
See, I'm not sure
I'm still having difficulty visualising the 'mental chains' concept. I think he should have used some sort of visual aid to help communicate this idea to the audience.
Arf arf
This is still making me laugh nearly a day later.
A shoo-in
for post of the year, imho
The Jam (again)
Adding to the love generated by the recent thread, I always felt that Weller captured the exhilaration of youth in just eight words with
"Life is a drink, and you get drunk, when you're young...."
Mind you, the same song contained the all-time clunker:
"Life is your oyster, but you're future's a clam,..."
that reminds me, not from a song but it should have been
The world is my lobster
See also
"to either cut down on beer or the kids' new gear
It's a big decision in a town called Malice"
And furthermore, from Going Underground:
"it's the kidney machines that pay for rockets and guns"
Not sure if this counts
Paul Simon's Think Too Much (A) from Hearts and Bones, which was at least an attempt at making a pop song, contains the following:
Have you ever experienced a period of grace, where your brain just takes a seat behind your face?
Slip Sliding Away
Every verse of this song is so beautifully observed and feelings of loss, resignation and sadness articulated in such simple, direct way...it's just perfect IMO I'm always moved by it...
From 'The First of May'
by the Bee Gees.
'The Apple Tree that grew for you and me,
I watched the apples falling one by one.
And I recall, the moment of them all,
The day I kissed your cheek and you were gone.'
The whole song usually makes me cry and always reminds me of T.S.Eliot's Little Gidding (which also usually makes me cry).
http://www.sitemappro.com/examples/peliot.html
Love that song...
Thanks.
Birthday Girl - Microdisney
People die, so will I.
Dressed to kill
And guess who's dying?
I can generally take or leave Roxy but that line absolutely nails the feeling of running into your recent ex.
(From what I remember anyway, I should add)
That
gets me every time
I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
I love Elvis Costello's version, but the original (I think) best brings out the beauty of the song:
I am a living result
of a man who has been hurt a litle too much
And I've tasted the bitterness of my own tears
and, at the start of the second verse:
Simple as love is, still it confuses me
Why I'm not loved the way I should be
Well she was just seventeen
You know what I mean...
Keep Your Distance
Saint Richard Thompson has a way with words as well as guitar strings.
If I cross your path again
Who knows where, who knows when
On some morning without number
On some highway without end
Don't grasp my hand and say,
Fate has brought you here today
Fate is only fooling with us, friend
Thanks and well spotted
I have known this song a long time and your post highlighted its amazing poignancy. It really is hard to say where the best lines are - that line in verse 2 - I'm sweeping out the footprints where I strayed' or that remarkable comment about irrationality of desire: 'when I feel you close to me what can I do but fall?
Not to mention to the performance of it. Thanks again.
Mr R. Frame
Reason for Living
If I should drown in the light of your eyes
Well I'd rather die giving
Walk the the line with some grace say it wasn't a race
Ain't that a reason for living?
I put all the love and beauty in the spirit of the night
And I'm holding my ticket tight
Stupidity and suffering are on that ticket too
And I'm going down the Dip with you
Drink a drink to before
And our memories spill
Adding on as they pour
From our Saturdays and secret sensations
Drink a drink to tonight
Whisky words tumble down in the street
With the pain that they cure
Sentimentally yours
From Killermont Street
(probably getting away from the OP in terms of 'unpretentiousness' pop songs as far as Roddy is concerned but what the hell. Wonderful anyway.)
More Roddy
I steered clear of putting any Roddy Frame lyrics on as, while he wouldn't strike me as pretentious, very few of his songs would count as simple either. I think the whole Surf album is full of spot-on descriptions of heartbreak, none more poignant than the title track's "Take her face out of the start of the day for me,I'm half crazed wondering if I should follow or let it go".
I also think he was always able to nail particular feelings and Frames of mind from his first recordings..."They call us lonely when we're really just alone".
I love "Reason For Living"
To me, and i'm probably well off the mark, it's about Billy Mckenzie. It sounds a little like "Those First Impressions" and came out soon after Billy's tragic death.
Works for me.
"Surf" is incredible too. When is Roddy going to get his due.
"Well, it's been building up inside of me...
for oh, I don't know how long..."
I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert
but I can live and breathe and see the sun in Winter time
"In A Big Country" Big Country
Reid em and weep...
Your beauty and kindness
Made tears clear my blindness
While I'm worth my room on this earth
I will be with you
While the Chief, puts Sunshine On Leith
I'll thank him for his work
And your birth and my birth
Stay alive..
Christ, that song makes me cry now...
The two bands
Most likely to make me start to greet.
"Sunshine on Leith" is a beautiful song.
"My Act of Remembrance" is an absolute killer:
"Doctor's face, said the time had come
I stood up, and began to run"
From the same songsters
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful truth
don't leave because I can't see you
Let me think...
Hey mighty brontosaurus / Don't you have a lesson for us
No, hold on a minute...
“Something tells you that you've got to get away from it”
Madness are one in a lineage of British groups capable of deftly inserting a poignant observation into an otherwise jaunty and light-hearted number in a way that turns the whole thing on its head. As a boy watching the band on Top of the Pops I remember enjoying their manic energy. It was only as I got older that the meaning of their songs came into focus.
Our House taps into that near universal experience of family life under one roof - a range of different sexes and age groups doing their best to live harmoniously in an atmosphere of chaos and overlapping personal space. It’s also about how growing up and the encroachment of the outside world slowly eats away at familial bonds.
The line “Something tells you that you've got to get away from it,” sung just once as an aside to the chorus, is the voice in your head that lets you know when you’ve outgrown the place you called home; when circumstances have changed to the extent that you no longer belong there and cannot stay.
.
The line that sticks in my mind is
"She's the one they're going to miss, in lots of ways." about the mother.
That always turns the song on its head for me. Suddenly all this domestic chaos is transient.
I've always taken it as a nod to mortality, however perhaps it is just reinforcing the one mentioned above and is about leaving rather than dying.
From The Masters of Keane...
Everybody's changing and I don't feel the same.
I never made the first team...
...I just made the first team laugh.
Billy Bragg's The Saturday Boy about a boy who is good but not good enough for the girl he is hopelessly in love with. Sums up schoolboy crushes into two lines.
add in...
The amazing trumpet solo and you have a corker of a song.
And also
from "Don't Walk Away Renee (version)":
Then one day it happened
She cut her hair and I stopped loving her
Lines so evocative that they make me want to both laugh and cry.
I was so upset
that I cried all the way to the chip shop.
Being dumped as a teenager in a line.
Some might say
They don't believe in heaven, go and tell it to the fan who lives in hell
Yes.
That's where I'd imagined most of their fans to abide.
Ha ha ha
I'd not noticed that typo, very good
;)
*puts The Roller on and feels groovy*
Kokomo
'There's no point in fighting for
A love you can't have no more.
If you do, you got a high price to pay
You're just pushing any love that's left
A little bit further away.'
Kokomo - A Little Bit Further Away
It's high time that you found
The same people you misuse on the way up,
You might meet up, on the way down.
Allen Toussaint.
Be My Downfall
Be my great regret,
Be the one girl, I never could forget,
Be my undoing,
Be my slow road to ruin, tonight.
Del Amitri.
Rage Against the Machine: Settle for Nothing
To escape from the pain, in an existence mundane
I got a 9, a sign, a set and now I gotta name
I can't help but think of this when there's another school shooting in the US, for instance.
And the way it's delivered in the song is incredible - it sounds desolate and angry.
I realise "Pop song" is pushing it.