The Songwriter Forum - songwriting reviews, tips and chat
Songwriter Forum => The Bar => Topic started by: cowparsleyman on December 11, 2023, 09:13:12 AM
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It never fails to impress me how songsmiths find such fantastic lines, Chris Difford, Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg, Missy Higgins etc. have all hit me between the eyes with words.
To start off here are a few, and I'd love to hear yours:
"Don't know how much more I can take/
She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake" - Watching the detectives by Elvis Costello
"She unscrews the top from her new whiskey bottle/
Shuffles about in her candle lit hovel/
Like some kind of witch with blue fingers and mittens/
She smells like a cat and the neighbors she sickens/
Black and white TV has long seen a picture/
The cross on the wall is a permanent fixture/
The postman delivers the final reminders/
She sells off her silver and poodles and in china" - Labelled with Love by Squeeze
"If I was in your blood, you wouldn't be so ugly" Annie I'm not your Daddy by Kid Creole and the Coconuts
"While a million thoughts go running through my mind/
I find I haven't spoke a word/
And from the bedroom those familiar sounds/
Of our baby's cryin' goes unheard" - A good year for the roses by Elvis Costello
"And I was on shakey land/
Lost and unsure I opened my hand/
And she held it like sinking sand" - Forgive Me by Missy Higgins
If only I could write lyrics like that....
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“ The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, so boy, get running
It's the best years of your life they want to steal”
Joe Strummer - Working For The Clampdown
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@pompeyjazz (http://www.songwriterforum.co.uk/index.php?action=profile;u=20269) - superb.
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I like strange lines
Like In Dylans
Po' boy
"By the way, what happened to that poison wine.
I gave it to you drank it"
He just skips a "you"
And leaves the listener confounded
Nice thread
Wish I could contribute more
I am a lyric junky
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“ The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, so boy, get running
It's the best years of your life they want to steal”
Joe Strummer - Working For The Clampdown
Sound advice from Joe
I did that very thing without prompting
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"I see the sun dip down and disappear
Digging all the music of the young guns here
Sentimental chords without suffering
Jesus carrying all of our sins
Crying at the joy of his children
Playing in the dirt"
Roddy Frame - Rear View Mirror
"Sentimental chords without suffering". Wow! what a lyric!
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I love the lyrics from bones in the ocean by the longest johns.
When the chorus changes from "I remember the fallen do they think of me, when their bones in the ocean forever will be" to "I remember the living do they think of me, when my bones in the ocean forever will be" as the story progresses gives me goosebumps.
It is so simple yet so effective, it is one of my biggest inspirations.
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I looked in the sky where,
an elephants eye was,
looking at me
from a bubblegum tree
Traffic.
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@shadowfax (http://www.songwriterforum.co.uk/index.php?action=profile;u=20024) - wow...
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@cowparsleyman (http://www.songwriterforum.co.uk/index.php?action=profile;u=21308)
"The chairman of the board is a complement collector.
I'd love to be his funeral director " Elvis Costello
"Will Smith says he doesn't have to cuss to sell records.
Well I do ,so f**k him and f**k you too" Eminem.
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"You left me here to remind me of you". Mike Skinner
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You closed your eyes
And made a wish
You laughed and looked at me
And said what are you still doing here
That was before I learned how to disappear . . . Blue Rodeo
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I saw my wife and my daughter and it seemed so strange
Both of them dead and gone from extreme old age
See here, when I die make sure I'm gone
Don't leave 'em nothing to work on
You can raise your arm, you can wiggle your hand
And you can wave goodbye to the frozen man
James Taylor , Frozen man