Entertainment For Lively Minds
Words that are only in one song
Posted by Inky Fingers on 2 July 2010 - 7:27pm.
This is the only song I know that contains the word ‘trainee’:
Any other words that occur in just one song?
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Ah, an old favourite
I remember Danny Baker threads on this many years ago, and when the Rocking Vicar asked for contributions on this theme I was thrilled to see my submission printed in The Word.
Mine was 'misericord' from Richard Thompon's Outside of the Inside. Another contender is 'parallelogram' from Motorhead. I know there's a Grateful Dead track called Parallelogram but I believe it is an instrumental.
Correctamundo...
Parallelogram is a percussion track off the Infrared Roses improvisation compilation. No-one sings the word anywhere in it so you're safe there.
Parallelogram is also used
in 'You Broke my Heart' by the Saw Doctors. In Gaelic football, it's the er, parallelogram shaped box just in front of the goal...
And another one
The song He Said, She Said, by Loudon Wainwright III, also contains the word "parallelogram".
trust the acid folkies...
more parellelograms than you can shake a rhombus at
And there's this:
Onomatopoeia by Todd Rundgren
I haven't searched but I can't believe it appears in too many other lyrics.
I believe that Kid Creole
- was it "Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy"? - featured it as a sort of backing chorus in that song..."Ono Ono Onomatopoeia..."
And also there's the creation "Onamatopoetry - symmetry in motion" by Lowell George/Little Feat in "Down Below The Borderline"
I really must...
I really must...read the replies properly before posting
I really must...read the replies properly before posting
I really must...read the replies properly before posting
I really must...read the replies properly before posting
I really must...read the replies properly before posting...
...and try to get them in the right order
Little Feat...
...onormatapoetry. Even better and made up, presumably - does that count ?
Instinction
Spandau Ballet
Sole usage
perhaps because it's a word they invented.
Radio Musicola
Nik Kershaw's "Radio Musicola" features the words "numismatical polity", as well as the somewhat tamer "plasticised". Great tune though:
I nominate...
... 'Electro-encephalograph' as featured in 'Nervous Wreck' by the Radio Stars.
Radio Stars
Nervous Wreck by Radio Stars includes:
"Electroencephalograph, electroencephalograph,electroencephalograph. Plug it in my brain."
in the backing vocals.
Can't believe that particular piece of medical equipment appears in too many songs.
and let's not forget the MRI
scanner Charlotte Gainsbourg sang about the album IRM, maybe an honorary mention.
Damn you Billybob
Beaten by two minutes!
Great minds...
... and all that, Tony!
Two by Aimee Mann
...unless you know otherwise. Gibbous and Chanticleer
There's an instrumental piece
called Waxing Gibbous - think it was a Joni Mitchell track, but obvious not sung...
Chanticleer...
occurs in The Drinking Song by The Divine Comedy
I think...
..."I've Been Tired" by the Pixies might be the only pop song I know to contain the word "penis".
never heard this then, Idiotbear?
That is...
...erm, interesting. ;-)
Erm..
Mr Bear, I have to tell you, Your Mother's Got A Penis.
That's a Goldie Lookin' Chain song title, not a personal comment. *blushes*
I know this because of my 'orrible teenage nephew. I can categorically state it has at least four penises (penii?) in the chorus alone.
Dammit.
I actually own that song. *blushes harder*
Still, it's a comedy song, so doesn't count. ;-)
Double-dammit.
I just double-posted.
Katy Perry also has a "penis"
... at the end of the song "Ur So Gay."
"I think I've written a hit song"
Since His Penis Came Between Us
LMAO! A definite song to cover.
On the subject
Can anyone think of a song containing the word "vagina"? I can't.
Closest I can think of
Not quite...
...but someone has already mentioned Big Muff by John Martyn
Ho (and furthermore) ho
Art of Noise
OK having been beaten to it above. I' ll go for Paranoimia by Art of Noise featuring Max Headroom.
Can't believe no one's said this
Brucellosis in "Play It All Night Long" by Warren Zevon
Catholic upbringing
Eileen Rose in Failure To Thrive from At Our Tables includes the word Thurible.
There can't be...
...many songs with 'thrive' in them.
As Motty used to say to Lawro
"good spot".
Hmm
See My Baby Thrive? Thrive Talkin'?
i have two:
Parthenogenesis in Nemesis by the mighty Shriekback
and
Neo-cathecumenate in NC by the godlike genius that is Cathal Coughlan
Some more
Staithes - (plural of staith, not the town in Yorkshire) in Vane Tempest by the very wonderful Blyth Power
Rookery, in the archaic sense of a thieves' den, in the eponymous Blyth Power song
Adrenochrome - from the song of that name by The Sisters Of Mercy
Ziarah from Sumerland by Fields Of The Nephilim
Adrenochrome...
featured in an episode of the Inspector Morse spin-off drama "Lewis" where it was the cause of a suspicious death...
'It' of course being the adrenaline by-product substance not the SoM tune. I suppose SoM fans may wish to view this episode "... on cathode-ray in monochrome..."
Disarray
Jackson Browne says this all the time, but I can't think of any other songs it pops up in.
Two Star - EBTG
I am on a serious Tracey Thorn jag at the moment and the fabulous "Two Star" from "Amplified Heart" uses "disarray" throughout in the hook. Sadly not on You Tube so you should all buy it from iTunes because it is wonderful. (NB - features Danny Thompson and Dave Mattacks along with some bloke called Richard Thompson).
Well it's not for me to say,
but I can't see what you see in him anyway.
But such righteousness in me
is not a nice thing to display,
and who am I for cristsakes anyway
to judge a life this way
when my own's in disarray?
I watch Saturday kids' TV
with the sound turned down.
I leave food on the eiderdown.
All my thoughts pushed underground.
Maybe you're happy
- everyone says you are.
You drive around on two star,
you leave your life ajar,
and God knows you deserve it.
Bad luck follows everyone.
So go on, and stop listening to me.
Stop listening to me.
And don't ask me how I feel.
Don't ask me how I feel.
So it's not for me to say,
because I change my mind from day to day,
and when I look at you
I only see bits of myself anyway.
So go on, and stop listening to me.
Stop lisening to me.
And don't ask me what to say,
or to judge a life this way
when my own's in disarray
Sericulture...
... from The Human League's Being Boiled.
Pompitous
Well done, Steve Miller, you invented a new word.
Sorry, Hannah...
... Vernon Green made it up in a song he wrote called 'The Letter' for his band The Medallions. Steve Miller pinched it and used it in two songs.
To be fair...
...Green's word was slightly different to Miller's "pompatus" and according to all the sources I've read, it was spelled either "pulpitudes" or "puppetutes".
Pompatus
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pompatus
Now let's leave it at that and stop the fighting, boys and girls.
A few from Genesis
Undinal - Firth of Fifth
Bread bin - All in a mouses night
Heracleum mantegazziani - Return of the Giant Hogweed
Domino
as I recall Phil Collins always used to complain about having to sing "double glazing" in Domino
Parthenogenesis
Nemisis by the (mighty) Shriekback
edit:
Goddamn you badartdog that was my trump card
If it's any consolation, James...
..."trump" features in "Nelly The Elephant"!
Silicosis
From "More Than a Paycheck" by Sweet Honey in the Rock
Silicosis
is also in 'Mining For Gold', the first song on Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
...Can't remember the track.
Verisimilitude.
Anyone other than The Fannies?
Has anyone other than Krafwerk used the word "Ohm"?
I suppose Supercalafragilistiexpialodocious doesn't count.
The HJH...
... "She's Leaving Ohm."
Not so silly.
Kraftwerk's song being called "Ohm sweet ohm".
Germanic humour. Nurse, make haste with the side-repair kit (© M. Ellen 1995 I believe..)
There must be a joke in there about...
...."My Resistance Is Low" or something.
Dup...
....licate post.
Cali
cala?
The Moody Blues had Om
In their song "Om." Is that close enough?
Ohm Sweet Ohm
Pretty sweet Cheap Trick throwaway from their box set, "Sex, America, Cheap Trick".
Another ohm/om
"Ja gura deva om". Does that count?
Bums!
I hate you, Nick.
*cackles manically*
*watches 'Mary Poppins' again*
Bebop Deluxe...
... "Superenigmatix."
"Barbecutie" by Sparks (B side of "This Town...)
Bodacious
There are quite a few unusual words in the obtuse canon of Messrs Becker & Fagen, but this is the one that sprang to mind. From the Steely Dan song 'Gaucho'
and I'm pretty sure Frank Zappa is the only person for whom zircon encrusted tweezers would have been suitable lyric material.
Zapped! pt.1
"unconsio"/"unconsho" from Camarillo Brillo the title's another two off the Overnight Sensation ellpee
Sonic Youth
"hylozoic"
"irreal"
both from "Stereo Sanctity"
re parallelograms - theres the song called that by Linda Perhacs
Song with most only-in-one-song words in it?
Was listening to Village Green Preservation Society by Le Kinks today, and was struck by how many words and terms Raymond Davies used that have probably never been employed in popular song before or since.
How about: vernacular, affiliate, billiards, consortium, and draught beer?
(Not to mention Fu Manchu, Moriarty, Mrs Mopp and Mother Riley)
Small Faces
......and 'Ogden's'!
lumbago
"Minature golf"
Rare enough separately, but surely unique together in "All Summer Long" by The Beach Boys.
politesse
"Sympathy for the Devil" Stones
Anglepoise
has anyone, apart from Robyn Hitchcock, written a song referencing an anglepoise lamp?
Great song too
Rhododendron
Only place I've ever heard it used is in 'Do the Strand' by Roxy Music
Said song
also features the little-used 'strandsky'.
Well, it is
a nice flower
Afraid to say...
the now-disbanded Bloc Party wrote a track called Rhododendron...
And Donovan used Rhododendron in....
...at least one song - the rather fine single, "Epitsle to Dippy"
And The Syn's incredible psych 45 'Flower Man'
'I'm a flowerman,
A sunshine shower man,
And I make a living out of giving
Attention to rhododendrons'
How about the word Biro
as in The Snivelling Shits - I Wanna Be Your Biro.
Pete Atkin (and Clive James)
"Have you got a biro I can borrow" (from the "Beware of the beautiful Stranger" album.)
Also used by Half Man Half Biscuit...
... in "The Best Things In Life"
"There is nothing better in life than writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro on a Saturday night instead of going to the pub."
Fine sentiments.
Rectorates used as a verb meaning to direct
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Switch
"Doctor rectorates, condescending from on high"
'hemi-powered'
('Born To Run')
Got one (two)
Malleus Maleficarum VDGG White Hammer
Wisteria
from Nick Cave's "Nature Boy".
The use of "Frappuccino" in Abattoir Blues is probably also a first.
Lowell George
wrote a song called 20 Million Things on his solo album 'Thanks I'll Eat It here' that contains the line:
I've got mysterious wisteria hanging in the air
The Incredible String Band
got there first in 'Darling Belle', which also has 'veranda'.
Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Pataphysical
Not to mention
...that Joan was quizzical.
the School of Pataphysics gets a mention on..
Soft Machine vol II before they launch into the 'british alphabet'
Half Man Half Biscuit
Conformatism (We've had Cant conformatism since 1966 - Trumpton Riots)
Fallopian (If it wasn’t for my pills, my psychiatric bills, And your unreliable fallopian - 1966 and All That))
Dukla Prague (And he’d managed to get hold of a Dukla Prague away kit - All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit)
kleptomania (Stevie nicks books about kleptomania - Fuckin’ ‘Ell, It’s Fred Titmus!)
Trumpton Riots
It's actually "Cant conformism since 1966" although to be fair I can't think of any other songs that contain the word
There is this one
Fallopian - (With skills unused like fallopian tubes on a dyke)
immortal technique - the cause of death
Panglossian
From Out On The Boundary by everyone's favourite cricket-inspired songsmiths the Duckworth Lewis Method
Old School
Rodgers & Hammerstein, Sound Of Music. "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria"
"She's a FLIBBERTY GIBBET, a willo-the-wisp, a clown..."
Flibberty Gibbet!!!
Well obviously...
Taumatawhakatangihangakoayauo-
tamateaturipukakapikimaungahoro-
nukypokaiwhenuakitanatahu
As you might guess I've copied & pasted but I'm sure theres a bit missing at the end. Something like:
....matakuitanamurapokkabikkimungo.
Me and a mate both learned this in the late 70's as a bit of a party piece and I can still say it from memory.
Yes I'm a sad get.
You and me both, Neil.
I did the same thing.
Dudes!
You must've been beating the skirt off with a stick!!
James Grant
in his recent excellent album "Strange Flowers" uses quite a few that I can't find elsewhere:
furbelow (title track, below)
sarcophagus - "My Father's Coat"
liminal/vetiver - "Catherine Burns"
furbelow
Lionel bart got there first on that one in "Fine Life" from Oliver.
"No fancies, no feathers, no frills and furbelows..."
Bodhisattva
have you been mentioned in another song apart from the one on Countdown To Ecstacy?
can you show me? Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva Vow
The Beastie Boys
Vetiver
Vetiver also turns up in 'Find The River' by REM, but to be honest I only know this because I once googled for Vetiver lyrics, looking for something by said group and the REM song turned up. I must have listened to Find The River scores of times and never heard 'bergamot and vetiver'. Ooh there's another, "bergamot" anyone?
Brian Eno
...manages to rhyme logistics, heuristics and ballistics all in the same verse of "Backwater", along with mystics and realistic.
He is a noted clever-clogs though...
King's Lead Hat
I think you'll find!
Which is...
... an anagram of Talking Heads. But you knew that.
No I won't, Actually
http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/brian_eno/kings_lead_hat.html
No startlingly original words used but a finely crafted choon nonetheless.
er it is backwater..
...tits!
"Letraset"
Most Decemberists songs qualify.
But let's pick the first part of "The Island", which contains the following...
Affix, curlews, arabesques, jetty, cormorants
boot-mark, soundless, Witnessed, lowlands, nestled, heath,
briar-cradle, contents, Sycorax, Patagon, parallax, foretold, rumbling, Amidst.
Good call
You're right about The Decemberists. Their song The Infanta includes the words pachyderm, phalanx, falderal, and chaparral, after kicking off with palanquin in the first line.
Pachyderm already taken
Joni Mitchell uses the delicious phrase "Hanging on your boom-boom pachyderm" in Blue Motel Room.
Another Joni
how about "rink" (29 skaters on Wollmann rink) in a song on Hejira ?
And no, I won't accept "the Pink Panther, the tinky dink panther" as another usage ;-)
Pachyderm also turns up in Dumbo
Here...
The Sun Ra version
is ace.
There's a Brian eno song with 'curlews' in it...
... now which one is it? [hums not very tunefully] "...while miles below below the curlews call from strangely stunted trees".
Ooh! I know! it's "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More", the opening track from the splendiferous "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strtegy".
"equilibrium" from "In The Crowd"-The Jam
Whenever I listen to this that word always jars even though I am a great fan.
Episcopal Philanthropists
Josh Ritter uses this phrase in the sublime 'Wings'. I've never heard either word, let alone the phrase, in another song.
All may have been done...
by Liz Fraser (possibly).
Actually; puer aeternae, tinderbox, vitrine, rosehip, hitherto, balustrade, aureole, fifty-fold, hairs-breadth. These may all be unique to cocteau twins songs although you'll have to take my word for it...
Revenoor and cubic zirconia
cubic zirconia (2 mins 11 secs)
I'm rather surprised
no-one's mentioned Tom Lehrer's rendition of the periodic table in song - plenty here that dosn't crop up anwhere else, even if he couldn't claim copyright.
Vatican Rag
can also probably lay claim to a couple of unique words.
Transubstantiate and genuflect, two good examples.
'mould'
crops up in 'bitter sweet symphony' rather surprisingly. I was singing it at karaoke once and it put me off my stride. I mean, 'mould'??!!
Audacious and Opportune
Audacious - anyone heard this outside an Orange Juice album? (it's from In a Nutshell)
Opportune - from Shakin Through by REM off Murmur. For years I thought it was "off until"
myxomatosis
Left Hand Luke T REX
Audacious/Bodacious
For years after firsting hearing Gaucho, I thought the Dan sang "Audacious Cowboy", which I always thought was a great line. I was a bit disappointed to find it was "bodacious"...
Sorry
double post
I haven't got any further than titles of
Carcass' magnum opus Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious
...but I think we have a winner
"Inpropagation"
"Corporal Jigsore Quandary"
"Symposium of Sickness"
"Pedigree Butchery"
"Incarnated Solvent Abuse"
"Carneous Cacoffiny"
"Lavaging Expectorate of Lysergide Composition"
"Forensic Clinicism / The Sanguine Article"
"Tools of the Trade"
"Pyosisified"
"Hepatic Tissue Fermentation II"
Ever heard of Magma?
Those Carcass titles are just Mark E. Smith goes death metal.
Now Magma, they had the right idea. They had their own language - Kobaïan.
Spin
"Centrifugal motion" in This Kiss by Faith Hill.
"Centripetal force" in Downside Up by Peter Gabriel.
Zapped! pt.2
Frank on the (') album had a wonderful track called Excentrifugal Forz, here are the full lyrics (lyric?) for your edification - http://www.metrolyrics.com/excentrifugal-forz-lyrics-frank-zappa.html
I think there's a few 'one offs' in there
I think Ya Hozna
probably has a few, but it's a touch tricky, seeing as they're in German. And backwards.
Richard Thompson
In Outside Of The Inside he uses the word "misericord", which I don't suppose has had many outings in popular music.
I don't think this thread is about place names, but in A Love You Can't Survive, Brazzaville gets a rare name-check.
obvious ones
'colitas' - from Hotel California
and
'Leodensian' - Kaiser Chiefs' I Predict a Riot
Effloresce And Deliquesce
The Chills...Submarine Bells.
Haven`t seen much mention of Flying Nun`s finest...any other fans out there?
Apricot
Surely used just the once in Carly Simon's "You're so vain"...
Ozymandias the Hellebore
offered this gem of a couplet in the lilting ballad "And The Goslings Graze As The Dogstar Doubts"
Ecumenical eventide brings forth the wanderling
Bicuspid tri-dextered sun-exposed and still blundering
Cuneiform proboscis - not in Brussels she sprouts
And the goslings graze as the Dogstar doubts
not sure how you spell it
'standiddleyquaqua'? - 'Stand and Deliver'
and I thought
it was only me who heard that
On the album sleeve
It actually spells it out as: 'Da diddley qua qua'
Da Diddley...
... Bo Diddley's Irish father?
Lobotomy
Lobotomy Gets Them Home by The Men They Couldn't Hang. I await correction from the Massive.
Consider that done
Bowie
Give me some good old lobotomy - all the madmen (from, the man who sold the world)
Sorry
Roy Harper - Committed
His first album, Sophisticated Beggar, ended with a song that featured the line, "Life is such monotony without a good lobotomy".
Committed
also starts with the line "ECT today my friend, ECT today" and I can't think of any other song that mentions that particular form of treatment.
Mozzer's "Something Is Squeezing My Skull"
From the middle section:
"Diazepam (that's valium), temazepam... lithium...
HRT... ECT... How long must I stay on this stuff?"
Hexagram
in "Caledonia Mission" by The Band.
You know I do believe in your hexagram
But can you tell me how they all knew the plan?
Did you trip or slip on their gifts you know were
just a con?
You knew it, why d'you do it, I've been hiding in
the dawn
see also Joni Mitchell's "Amelia"
It's worth copying in the whole verse:
I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens
it was the strings of my guitar
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
I bow to no man
in my love for the work of St Joan and cherish "Amelia" - but - I think that near perfect verse and image is clunkified by the double use of "across" and the fact that vapour trails can't be left "across" terrain - bleak or otherwise.
She could have used "above" or if it was the shadows of the vapour trails on the land that she was alluding to - then a different contruction should have been employed.
And while I'm at it, I'm not sure deserts can be bleak. Seems to be more redolent of moorland and implicit of a certain wintriness.
"'Ere"
"Wot?"
"Guess wot vat Sheev's gorn an' dun?"
"Wot?"
"Only questioned Joni bleedin' Mitchell's imagery!"
"Wot?!!"
Brigatine
"and fills up her brigatine sails"....
Waterfall, The Stone Roses.
I heard an interview in which Ian Brown claimed that he liked to put a word he'd never heard in a song into every new song he wrote, but then went on to spoil this fine idea by saying 'I'm thinking of using "inclement" next'. the monkey-king can't be much of a student of Paul McCartney or Ian Macnabb, but maybe I was exepecting a little too much of him there....
More..
Instigator from Something in the Air.
Vegemite from Down Under.
Striped (two syllables) from MacArthur Park.
Trousers
We all wear 'em! But does anyone, other than Depeche Mode, sing about them?
"Promises me I'm as safe as houses
as long as I remember who's wearing the trousers"
(Andy Stewart sung about "troosers", before anyone piles in there. Troosers are entirely different.)
Oh crap
Baggy Trousers - just remembered. But apart from Depeche Mode and Madness etc...
"Old men in stripey
"Old men in stripey trousers" some godawful nik kershaw song. god i hate my brain sometimes.
the "godawful nik kershaw" song is
"I won't let the sun go down on me", I believe
(I quite like it actually. I loooooooove Nik Kershaw)
Chrissie Hynde
"I may be a punk, but you're a piece of junk... and furthermore, I don't like your trousers." From Pack It Up.
Who could forget
The Bonzo Dog Band and Trouser Press?
Yes, I had "forgotten" that one
Also the Blessed Kate with "Rubber Band Girl" talks of pulling her trousers up, so in a very real sense, my trouser suggestion was very very wrong.
In that case...
...you probably don't remember this one either
The 30 second spoken word track titled Narcissus which closes side one of Gorilla, the Bonzo's debut LP.
Just as Death Cab For Cutie ends we hear this exchange:
How do you think it's going?
So-so.
A lot of it's rubbish, you know.
Mmm.
Hey, you have the same trouble with your trousers I do!
Yes.
It's a Bonzos double trouser whammy!
Too many trousers now for my liking
Particularly when I also now consider the "cor blimey" trousers sported by Lonnie Donegan Snr.
.
.
How about Scritti Politti - Lover to Fall
I found a new hermeneutic
I found a new paradigm
I found a plan just to make you mine.
Semiotics
Benny Profane - Rob A Bank
Correction
It was in 'Beam Me Up', mid '80's scouse jangle pop fans.
"Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin"
Not really a word but it is used nonetheless on an Amateur Transplants song of the same name
Pneumothorax
In some Kaiser Chiefs song... can't remember which...
Also used
tectonic in Oh My God and Leodensian in I Predict a Riot.
Let's have a couple of hits...
'eleanor' by the Turtles with the wonderful line...
"you're my pride & joy ETCETERA
honourable mention to Rick Springfield 'Jessies Girl' for...
"I wanna tell her that I love but the point is prob'ly MOOT"
Sweet and Tender Hooligan
Has "et cetera", repeated again and again at the end. Which, I think, is a reference to a song from the King & I (or Anna and the King) when Yul Brynner prances around singing the same thing.
Don't know any other moot references but I do know that Joan Armatrading suggests the dropping of a "mahoot" in her "Drop the Pilot" song. A mahoot being someone who sits on an elephant and drives it along by waggling its ears.
CHARABANG....
...from the Stranglers' Peaches...
(there's another rare and rather rude word in that song but I believe Ian Dury also used it...)
There's an Ivor Biggun song
(well, more a monologue) called The Charabanc Trip
Is that a typo?
I always understood the word to be a "charabanc", rather than "charabang".
There is a debate about whether the other word is clitoris, clitares, or a very clever piece of word play.
Sequestered
The Hold Steady, when they're not banging on splendidly about Minnessota or townies
Slubberdegullions
(On squeaky feet) - actually even 'squeaky' is rare to my mind..?
What a Waste
by Ian Dury is full of 'em:
"I could be the teacher in a classroom full of scholars
I could be the sergeant in a squadron full of wallahs...
...I could be a lawyer with stratagems and ruses
I could be a doctor with poultices and bruises"
Clash - The Right Profile
ARRRGHHHGORRA BUH BHUH DO ARRRRGGGGHHHHNNNN!!!!
Although, there not actually words are they?
Was printed as part of the lyric though
snd
They Might Be Giants:
Dead - contains 'Procrastinate' & 'Expiration'
We Want A Rock - contains 'Prosthetic Foreheads'
They Might Have a Thesaurus
Birdhouse to your Soul contains the words "filibuster vigilantly".
Preparing to be shot down in flames....
Elegiac and perhaps stanzas
As in "I wrote elegiac stanzas for you" from It Ended on an Oily Stage by British Sea Power
Has
anyone said the very word that defines rock & roll?
Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom?
Supposedly it was intended to be an onomatopoetic parody of a drum intro!
Does it appear anywhere other than Tutti Frutti?
Snot...
Used by Love in their song Live & Let Live.
'Oh, the snot has caked against my pants/it has turned into crystal'.
It's probably been used elsewhere in a comedy or thrash metal song, but I've never heard it.
Zappa
used it as well in The Torture Never Stops
"Slime and rot and rats and snot and vomit on the floor"
Nonchalant
Jackie DeShannon's great lines from 'When You Walk in the Room:
I close my eyes for a second and pretend it's me you want
Meanwhile I try to act so... nonchalant.
Okay, maybe it crops up in a few Johnny Hallyday and Francoise Hardy songs, but not, y'know, REAL pop.
Clifford T Ward managed to squeeze
'Worcestershire', 'Cistern' and 'Browning' into "Home Thoughts From Abroad".
Get him.
As any fule no...
Kursaal Flyers rhymes with "spindriers". "Little Did They Know" this when they squeezed both this, and the word "detergent", into their only hit.
"Love Action" by The Human League
is, I think, the only song that contains the word: "Phil", and "Ant Rap" by Adam & The Ants would be nothing without the word "Tibbs".
The Beatles...Oh Darning
....the use of the word "Darning" in Eleanor Rigby is surely unique.
Other Fabs verbal oddities are "Truffle", "Montelimar" and "Crabalocker"....
I'd also
be interested to hear more songs using the words socks and fishwife, though I guess the Fabs got Walrus in twice.
...erm that's three Walruses....
I guess your thinking:
"I am the Walrus" from I Am the Walrus
and
"The Walrus was Paul" from Glass Onion
but the one that gets forgotten is...
"Walrus Gumboots" from Come Together....
and if we're including solo works....
"I was the Walrus but now I'm John" from Lennon's God..
phew!
Indeed I was
I stand (in the English rain) corrected ... that's a whole lotta Walruses ...
obviously a phrase well known to some
http://www.myspace.com/thewalrusgumboots
Obscure words
A lot of the entries here are from songs on the "obscure" side.
A couple from Big records (at the time anyway)
Scaramouche, scaramouche, will you do the Fandango? (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Quando, Callamoocho, Me O moray, Pepellini, callabon.
(Abbey road side 2 - Just before mean mister mustard)
Smoked Fish
Do you like KIPPERS for breakfast ??
Supertramp - Breakfast in America
Saucy fish
"Home improvement expert Harold Hill of Harold Hill
Of do-it-yourself dexterity and double glazing skill
Came home to find another gentleman's kippers in the grill
So he sanded off his winkle with his Black & Decker drill"
Ian Dury & The Blockheads - This Is What We Find
Kippers
Excellent !! I am more than happy to stand corrected.
Ian Dury again
In England's Glory:
Nice bit of kipper and Jack the Ripper and Upton Park
A debate from long ago.
Smash Hits originally had this line as "Curry and kippers for breakfast / Mummy dear, Mummy dear"
There was a disagreement in the letters page, if I remember. The lyric was changed to "Could we have kippers for breakfast.."
Sussudio? Abacab?
And now I come to think of it, 'fart' is a bit under-used lyrically. Or am I mistaken?
(Stand back please, ladies and gentlemen, to allow the floodgates to fully open.)
Well...
...there's The Old Fart At Play from Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica
Glutton and
Liquorice
Pollywogs (Toad Tadpoles)
by Jellyfish on 'Spilt Milk'
Also in 'Sebrina, Paste and Plato' : -
Plato
Dapper
Lovetarian
Lunchbox, hopscotch on the rocks with spitballs, pratfalls, alcohol
The Final Cut
in The Fletcher Memorial Home the phrase, "a group of anonymous Latin American meat-packing glitterati" pops up.
I'm sure that neither 'meat-packing' nor 'glitterati' are that common and might even be a googlewhack on their own
Similarly
"sableized" (or sableised?) from Diamond Dogs
Guru Guru
had a track called Oxymoron. Has that word cropped up anywhere else?
Yep
Shouty-anarchists Chumbawamba had a ditty called Oxymoron, with the apparently contradictory terms in conjunction being 'good' and 'cop'. Which was a little OTT, I felt...
Om, Aum, Augm
The Moody Blues, Gong then Steve Hillage, Can in respective order
Om...
...appears in thousands of Swedish songs, as it's the Swedish word for "about".
But perhaps this shouldn't really count.
that's me told
scuttles off under something where it's dark
erm!
...and I think a certain English band used it in a ditty called Across the Universe!
John Martyn - Big Muff
He sings:
I've never, ever, come across that word anywhere, let alone in another song.
whereas
Muff is commonly used ?
[Only asking ...]
[edit: Fascinated to see btw that caterempously only gets 13 hits even on Google !].
Waterboys
"You saw BRIGADOON"
Brigadoon
I'm hazy on this but surely the word must appear somewhere in the lyrics from the musical?
'Antsy'?
Used to describe 'the kids' in the terrific track 'Carnies' by Martina Topley-Bird...
This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us
"Stampeding"
"Rhinos"
"Khaki"
"Bombardier"
"Dawdle"
Any takers?
Also, Pet Shop Boys' "I Made My Excuses And Left" includes the word "Supplicant".
Sparks are actually quite good at this...
'yielding' in "Pineapple"
'diminuitive' in "Under The Table With Her"
'yehudi' and 'menuin' in "Amateur Hour"
'mezzannine' 'workmanship' and 'asiatic' in "Complaints"
'hindrance' in "At Home, At Work, At Play"
'unilaterally' in "Reinforcements"
'legree' in "Don't Leave Me Alone With Her"
'ornithologist' in "Something For The Girl With Everything"
'invalids' in "Achoo"
'saunter', 'randomest' and 'dickering' in "Bon Voyage"
'dacron' in "Tips For Teens"
'mifune' in "Where's My Girl"
and
'Nastassianic' in "That's Not Nastassia"
Bombadier...
...appears in David Bowie's 60s ditty, Little Bombadier...
...while "stampeeding" appears in Suede's Elephant Man..
Snowflake Bombadier
is a song on Phil Everly's 1973 album 'Star-Spangled Springer'.
Duane Eddy plays lead!
Another 'bombadier(s)'
is in Bob Dylan's 'Jet Pilot'.
http://open.spotify.com/track/5KxsIooTBxPkAuVGzbZxd8
Quintessence
As in 'In Quintessence' by Squeeze on 'East Side Story'
Slough
I believe the only musical mention of the Berkshire town is in 'Eton Rifles' by The Jam.
Pompitous
as in 'of love'. Steve Miller - though I suspect he may have just made it up.
Scroll up...
... a bit. Well, more than a bit, actually. And anyway, Steve Miller used "pompitous" in two songs.
d'oh!
.
Gollum, Mordor?
...were Led Zep the only act to lift these names from the works of Tolkien?
Surely there must have been other mentions from the fantasy obsessed early 70s rock scene?
Here you go
Fill yer boots
http://www.tolkien-music.com/
Peter Blegvad
His lyrics for Slapp Happy and Henry Cow:
Pencil thin, we're near done in, we're/ masticating maize
Can you dismiss hats as/simple things/vapid things/scant, evanescent things? (although come to think of it the last two adjectives are in a Syd Barrett song as well)
"Darling Be Home Soon" Lovin Spoonful
"dawdled" and "toddled"
On the subject of the 'V word'...
...as somebody mentioned above, I must admit that I've written/demoed a song recently which features, at 180 BPM, the couplet: "Woman diseased by triple-job greed/Lining her v----- with another man's seed" - amongst what can only be described as a torrent of such stuff. It's inspired by a wholly imaginary family of politicians embroiled in such an implausible and tawdry farrago of scandal that it couldn't possibly be true...
That said, I think this'll be the one I leave OFF the album it was planned for. Wouldn't want to sink to their (imaginary, of course) level...
BUT... still on the odd words front, I have another recently demoed piece of catharthis about public sector human resource departments which includes the line: "It's an obfuscation factory..."
Are there any other examples of 'obfuscation' in the music world?
None other than
Sir Gordon Sumner has faced much mocking for the line "In that book by NABOKOV" in "Don't Stand So Close to Me".
Mellow My Mind
I was listening to this yesterday. Can't think of another song that contains the word 'casualise'.
http://open.spotify.com/track/1M2emfpP6x9gyv85QkM1R9
on Planet Rock today
The Stranglers ~ No More Heroes
***WARNING***
may contain made up word
Shakespearos
I don't think they're like Oreos
Petroglyph
Bruce Cockburn's Wondering Where The Lions Are is probably the only song to include this.
Which reminds me, is anything going to become of those requests for artists with longevity, as I nominated Bruce for that?
Quell?
Not that rare a word, but the only song I can think of that uses it is Aimee Mann's rather wonderful 4th Of July.
Coroner
Chely Wright, on her fab new Rodney Crowell produced album Lifted Off The Ground, has a song titled Notes To The Coroner that employs the word in the chorus. It's a great song too.
There's already...
... Lindisfarne's 'Meet Me On The Coroner.'
As usual the answer lies with the HJH
The word "letterbox" in "Across The Universe" (although maybe it's also in a Crowded House song - can't think which one at the moment...)
And also used by They Might Be Giants
Letterbox
(Song starts at about 0:30)
The peerless Okkervil River...
manage to squeeze 3 candidates into what is possibly their finest song, 'So Come Back, I Am Waiting,' which works through a diapason, a magisterial and an abecedarian, without seeming pretentious at any point. Some achievement.
Has anyone other than Badly
Has anyone other than Badly Drawn Boy ever used "ipso facto"
Yes
Monty Python's "Eric the half-a-bee" song.
The lyric ponders the fact that if Eric is half-a-bee, then he must, ipso facto, be half NOT bee.
You had to be there.
Thanks
I'll be singing that all night now.
Cyril Connolly?
Semi-carnally.
Bisected accidentally
....
half-asleep upon my knee
some freak from a menagerie?
NO!
Slade
From "Thanks for the memory"
"Have AWESKAS CHICKAVEE, Tap the water on your knee"