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Your Favourite Line or Verse from a song and why?

  • 27-06-2007 2:08pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 3,432 ✭✭✭


    Just an idea i had.....This can be any song by any artist, and explain why you chose the line/verse.

    Mine has to be - Positively 4th Street by Bob Dylan

    You gotta lotta nerve to say you are my friend
    When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
    You gotta lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
    You just wanna be on the side that's winnin'
    You say I let you down, you know it's not like that
    If you're so hurt why then don't you show it?


    I picked this verse because i find it hugely relevant to stuff that went on in my life in the past. Brilliant lyrics!


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Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 2,413 ✭✭✭frobisher


    Great thread idea but hard to come up with. There are so many for different times. But I have always loved Bird on a wire from Leonard Cohen:

    Like a bird on a wire
    Like a drunk in a midnight choir
    I have tried in my way to be free


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,287 ✭✭✭joe_chicken


    Agreed, great thread idea.

    Gonna go with an oldie too, I'm sure It'll change by the end of this thread. :)
    From Old Man by Neil Young:

    "Doesn't mean that much to me, to mean that much to you"

    Not sure why I like it so much, I think it's more the matter of fact tone he sings it in. I'd love to be able to say it to someone and mean it.


  • Registered Users Posts: 849 ✭✭✭nervous_twitch


    'And after my dreaded beheading I tied that sucker back on with a string, and I guess I'm pretty different now, considering...'

    - Manhole, Ani DiFranco


    'It's a stiff competition to see who can stay up later,
    the stars or the street light?
    When all I really want, its to be alone with the darkness,
    No more wish I may, No more wish I might.
    It takes a stiff upper lip, just to hold up my face,
    I gotta suck it up and savour the taste of my own behaviour,
    I am spinning with longing, faster than a roulette wheel,
    this is not who I'm meant to be, this is not how I'm meant to feel'

    - a couplet of verses taken from 'Wish I May' by the same artist. Both of them carry so much weight because they bear a striking relevance to a headspace I was in a few years back.

    Yup, big Ani fan :D


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,432 ✭✭✭Steve_o


    frobisher wrote:
    Great thread idea but hard to come up with. There are so many for different times. But I have always loved Bird on a wire from Leonard Cohen:

    Like a bird on a wire
    Like a drunk in a midnight choir
    I have tried in my way to be free

    I love Leonard Cohens stuff aswell...he's a genious

    Ok folks keep em comin!!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32 oooops


    Speaking of Leonard Cohen..from Famous blue raincoat..


    Thanks for the trouble you took from her eye, I thought it was there for good, so I never tried....

    Poignant lyrics indeed


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  • Registered Users Posts: 7,231 ✭✭✭Fad


    ''My greatest gift gift to you is a DANCEFLOOR''
    ''we will persist untill all thats left is a perfect sphere''
    ~Alexisonfire (i love them)
    and the obligitary emo one:
    ''drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands''
    a la Gerard Way
    :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,422 ✭✭✭RAIN


    ''The only girl I've ever loved
    Was born with roses in her eyes
    But then they buried her alive
    One evening 1945
    With just her sister at her side
    And only weeks before the guns
    All came and rained on everyone
    Now she's a little boy in Spain
    Playing pianos filled with flames
    On empty rings around the sun
    All sing to say my dream has come''

    holland,1945 by Neutral Milk Hotel
    I was obsessed with this song for nearly a year
    and it took me about a month to realise he was talking about anne frank.

    At the moment though ''Fake Empire'' by The National has some great Lines in the verse


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,735 ✭✭✭pinksoir


    Oh, oh, what a night
    Oh what a garden of delight
    Even now that sweet memory lingers
    I was playin' my guitar
    lying underneath the stars
    Just thankin' the Lord for my fingers
    For my fingers

    Paul Simon - Duncan

    Last few lines get me every time. It's the winner.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,026 ✭✭✭Killaqueen!!!


    When I awoke today suddenly nothing happened
    But in my dreams I slew the dragon
    And down this beaten path
    And up this cobbled lane
    I'm walking in my own footsteps once again

    And you say,"Just be here now
    Forget about the past
    Your mask is wearing thin"
    Let me throw one more dice
    I know that I can win
    I'm waiting for my real life to begin

    -Colin Hay "Waiting For My Real Life To Begin"

    Ok, it's a verse and chorus but I just love the lyrics and the way he sings them.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,287 ✭✭✭davyjose


    Most of the time it's well understood
    Most of the time I wouldn't change it if I could
    I can make it all match up
    I can hold my own
    I can deal with the situation right down to the bone
    I can survive and I can endure
    And I don't even think about her
    Most of the time

    Bob Dylan - Most of the Time

    There's something about his fragile indignance ... I dunno, its something only Dylan can do.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,060 ✭✭✭Anto McC


    Today i keep repeating these lyrics in my head:

    "I keep walking you into those lamposts again
    But i'd rather do that then let go of your hand"

    "I must confess that in my quest I felt depressed and restless
    But this casanova's roving days are over more or less"

    By BellX1 and Thin Lizzy respectively.


  • Registered Users Posts: 57 ✭✭Flattery


    Oh, the Union Central is pullin' out and the orchids are in bloom,
    I've only got me one good shirt left and it smells of stale perfume.
    In fourteen months I've only smiled once and I didn't do it consciously,
    Somebody's got to find your trail,
    I guess it must be up to me.

    From "Up To Me" by Bob Dylan.

    My favourite verse from an all-time favourite song. As ever, Dylan proving himself the king of observation.


  • Registered Users Posts: 237 ✭✭lukegriffen


    from The Magnetic Fields 'I Don't Believe you'
    opening line...

    "so you quote love unquote me.."

    a brilliantly simple way of getting across a sarcastic lyric


  • Registered Users Posts: 78 ✭✭belleray


    For Cohen my favourite lines are
    "Jane came by with a lock of your hair, she said that yo gave it to her, that night that you planned to go free, did you ever go free?"

    best opening ever in Springsteens tunnel of love
    "fat man sitting on a little stool, takes the money from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over you, hands me a ticket, whispers good luck, well cuddle up angel, cuddle up"


  • Registered Users Posts: 176 ✭✭Sir Graball


    Great thread :

    Joni Mitchell's 'Refuge of the Roads' from the album 'Hejira' ( best album ever about touring) has a final verse which is stunning. She's writing about a photo of the earth she sees on a calendar in a gas station-

    In a highway service station, over the month of June
    Was a photograph of the earth taken comin' back from the moon
    And you couldn't see a city on that marble bowling ball
    Or a forest or a highway or me here least of all
    You couldn't see these cold water restrooms
    Or this baggage overload
    West bound and rollin'
    Taking refuge in the roads

    Brilliant song writer

    Best opening line has to be The Smiths - 'This Charming Man'

    Punctured bicycle on a hillside -desolate!


    You're imagining it I know!!!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 669 ✭✭✭Photi


    "The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face"

    Bob Dylan - Visions Of Johanna

    One of the best lyrics ever written in popular music.


  • Registered Users Posts: 247 ✭✭mct1


    That's a coincidence Steve O. Before I opened the thread, I was going to post this other bit of Positively 4th Street)


    I wish that for just one time, you could stand inside my shoes
    And just for that one moment I could be you
    Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
    You'd know what a drag it is to see you


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 23 lilly03


    Hey,

    A bit corny this one but it always gets me -

    "the history book on the shelf, forever repeating itself"

    Any takers on who penned it ???


  • Registered Users Posts: 57 ✭✭Flattery


    Abba, n'est pas?


    Am I admitting I know this?

    *Grudgingly submits reply*


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 158 ✭✭coady


    But I want something good to die for
    To make it beautiful to live.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 375 ✭✭im_invisible


    ...gets me thinking of:

    And nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
    The needle returns to the start of the song
    And we all sing along like before

    And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

    -Del Amitri


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,581 ✭✭✭judas101


    'If you ever need self validation,
    just meet me in the alley by the railway station'

    -The one and only Morrissey


  • Registered Users Posts: 176 ✭✭Sir Graball


    judas101 wrote:
    'If you ever need self validation,
    just meet me in the alley by the railway station'

    -The one and only Morrissey
    Yeah Bigmouth Strikes Again.

    He has to rank as one of the wittiest lyricists of all time

    'Now I know how Joan of Arc felt
    As the flames rose to her Roman nose
    And her Walkman started to melt':D


  • Registered Users Posts: 18 DarrenAF


    Great thread!

    I was hankering between this and a few lines from "Up the Junction" by Squeeze, but I went with this in the end 'cos every time I hear it it chills me down to the bone:

    "When I was a young boy
    my momma told me: son,
    always be a good boy,
    and don't ever play with guns,
    but I shot a man in Reno,
    just to watch him die"

    Johnny Cash, Fulsome Prison Blues


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 197 ✭✭jmck87


    One of my fav lyrics of modern times is from alex turner in "When the sun goes down" by the Arctic Monkeys.....

    "And Ive seen him with girls of the night,
    and he told Roxanne to put on her red light,
    theyre all infected but he'll be allright,
    coz hes a scumbag dont you know..."

    The Roxanne bit did it for me.... modern classic.. great band too.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 14 sophiemarie


    "He ain't got no distractions
    Can't hear those buzzers and bells
    Don't see lights a flashin'
    Plays by sense of smell
    Always gets a replay
    Never tilts at all
    That deaf, dumb and blind kid
    Sure plays a mean pinball"

    The Who, Pinball Wizard


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 79 ✭✭Extreme-LoopZ


    "How I wish, How I wish you were here, we're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, running over the same old ground, what have we found? the same old fears."
    - Pink Floyd, Wish you were here


    What if this whole crusade's
    A charade
    And behind it all there's a price to be paid
    For the blood
    On which we dine
    Justified in the name of the holy and the divine

    Just how deep do you believe?
    Will you bite the hand that feeds?
    - NIN, The hand that feeds


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 14 sophiemarie


    What if this whole crusade's
    A charade
    And behind it all there's a price to be paid
    For the blood
    On which we dine
    Justified in the name of the holy and the divine

    Just how deep do you believe?
    Will you bite the hand that feeds?
    - NIN, The hand that feeds
    [/QUOTE]

    Great Lyrics...


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,432 ✭✭✭Steve_o


    Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam
    And admit that the waters around you have grown,
    and accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone,
    if your time too you is worth savin',
    Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone,
    for the Times They are A Changin'


    Its very powerful and its also quite ageless, it has been used in context since the 60's and still holds a valid meaning....the genius of Bob Dylan i guess!


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 23 lilly03


    Can we have 2 favourites?

    I'd add GreenDay

    So take the photographs
    and still frames in your mind.
    It's not a question
    but a lesson learned in time.

    It's something unpredictable
    but in the end it's right.
    I hope you had the time of your life


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