To ask you what your favourite Song Lyric is?

[YouBetterWerk]

Sitting here thinking about mine when I should be working and thought I would throw it out to the MN masses.

After much deliberation, it is a tie for me between:

'Jonnys in the Basement mixing up the medicine, I'm on the pavement thinking 'bout the government' - Dylan

And

'Tank fly boss walk jam nitty gritty'

Anything that pulls you up? Makes you laugh? Breaks your heart? Has great memories?

the following is more of a hymn but was my mother's favourite and was played at my wedding and her funeral and deserves to be included - also reflects my deep love of England

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green & pleasant Land

The following and Streets of London reflect London or any big city - I hasten to add that I love London, but there is a melancholy and loneliness below the business which these songs express so well. And then I really will shut up and stop being so self indulgent!

"Another Day In Paradise"

She calls out to the man on the street
"Sir, can you help me?
It's cold and I've nowhere to sleep,
Is there somewhere you can tell me?"

He walks on, doesn't look back
He pretends he can't hear her
Starts to whistle as he crosses the street
Seems embarrassed to be there

Oh think twice, it's another day for
You and me in paradise
Oh think twice, it's just another day for you,
You and me in paradise

She calls out to the man on the street
He can see she's been crying
She's got blisters on the soles of her feet
Can't walk but she's trying

Oh think twice...

Oh lord, is there nothing more anybody can do
Oh lord, there must be something you can say

You can tell from the lines on her face
You can see that she's been there
Probably been moved on from every place
'Cos she didn't fit in there

Oh think twice...

Sorry meant to say below the 'surface' not business!

You didn't say we were restricted to English and the following makes me swoon - especially sung in deep French accent

Et Si Tu N'existais Pas Joe Dassin
Et si tu n'existais pas
Dis-moi pourquoi j'existerais
Pour trainer dans un monde sans toi
Sans espoir et sans regret
Et si tu n'existais pas
J'essaierais d'inventer l'amour
Comme un peintre qui voit sous ses doigts
Naître les couleurs du jour
Et qui n'en revient pas

Et si tu n'existais pas
Dis-moi pour qui j'existerais
Des passantes endormies dans mes bras
Que je n'aimerais jamais
Et si tu n'existais pas
Je ne serais qu'un point de plus
Dans ce monde qui vient et qui va
Je me sentirais perdu
J'aurais besoin de toi

Et si tu n'existais pas
Dis-moi comment j'existerais
Je pourrais faire semblant d'être moi
Mais je ne serais pas vrai
Et si tu n'existais pas
Je crois que je l'aurais trouvé
Le secret de la vie, le pourquoi
Simplement pour te créer
Et pour te regarder

Et si tu n'existais pas
Dis-moi pourquoi j'existerais
Pour trainer dans un monde sans toi
Sans espoir et sans regret
Et si tu n'existais pas
J'essaierais d'inventer l'amour
Comme un peintre qui voit sous ses doigts
Naître les couleurs du jour
Et qui n'en revient pas

My spell check doesn't like it though!

Dolcelatte- I recently used a fab Streets of London youtube video, I think the montage had been done for Shelter, or one of the other charities, in a class of mine to show the kids a) why they should have opinions on stuff and b) how important lyrics are.

Eco- The "The The" song is probably my favourite song in the world. Takes me back to my moment. Also the bit about "reading some old letters" and "smile to think how much we've changed" Except I haven't, at all. Hurricane is my favourite NY song, and the Mission do a pretty mean version as well.

Salsmum- Grocer Jack! Excerpt from a teenage opera. Loved it too, remember listening to it on Radio 2

Here's my morning offering: (I have whole notebooks full of lyrics and quotes )

We who wrestle the years
Have traded our fears
For a glimpse of ecstasy in the dark
(Runrig) (bloody marvellous Runrig)

And

40,000 stars in the evening
Look at them fall from the sky
40,000 reasons for living
40,000 tears in your eyes
Texarkana REM (best REM song ever IMO)

Sangria - thank you for your comment which I will take as encouragement! Here's another Leonard Cohen favourite

"Seems So Long Ago, Nancy"

It seems so long ago,
Nancy was alone,
looking ate the Late Late show
through a semi-precious stone.
In the House of Honesty
her father was on trial,
in the House of Mystery
there was no one at all,
there was no one at all.
It seems so long ago,
none of us were strong;
Nancy wore green stockings
and she slept with everyone.
She never said she'd wait for us
although she was alone,
I think she fell in love for us
in nineteen sixty one,
in nineteen sixty one.

It seems so long ago,
Nancy was alone,
a forty five beside her head,
an open telephone.
We told her she was beautiful,
we told her she was free
but none of us would meet her in
the House of Mystery,
the House of Mystery.

And now you look around you,
see her everywhere,
many use her body,
many comb her hair.
In the hollow of the night
when you are cold and numb
you hear her talking freely then,
she's happy that you've come,
she's happy that you've come.

"Like a fallen angel, no one hears the tears I cry.
And still it mystifies me, why and why and why?
And as the sun sets on another day
There's still no place to hide.
I'm losing my direction, leave the world behind

As the days grow longer, hoping that the pain won't last
Dancing with the devil, my fate so distant in the past
Crowds are all around me, I'm like a fallen angel
And the tears like silent rain drops fall
They don't make a sound as they hit the ground

And then the rain falls, falling to wash the tears away
And then the rain falls, my friends all left behind and I fly away"

made me cry first time I heard it, still sticks with me now, who would have thought a sixteen minute trance song could be so profound?

its up there with 'Missing' by Everything but the Girl

Lionsteeth I adore the mountain goats but how to pick a favourite from his lyrics!!!

Thanks, TheCatAteMyTaxReturn
You reminded me of The The too.

"Well you didn't wake up this morning
Cos you didn't go to bed
You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red"

very cool Avon

'This is the Day" perhaps the greatest ever song with an accordion on it

also this

I'm too tense to be tender/You're too weak to be true/You try to make it easier upon yourself/By makin' it hard on you/But it's the lies in your eyes
That make me wanna cry/It's just sometimes I get so lonesome/
I could die - Slow Train to Dawn

Neneh Cherry and Matt Johnson on the same track. WNTL?

I feel like I can't take too much longer
It's too much lying, and too much fightingÂ
I'm all cried out 'cause I grew up crying
They all got a sales pitch I ain't buying
They trying to convince me that I ain't tryingÂ
We uninspired, we unadmired
How I got over- The roots

"Laughing as the ship goes down
We shall live again"

Immaculate Fools.

My current favourite is:

I recalled you couldn't swim so I booked us Scuba diving of the North coast of Belgium, oh my, I drew an image in my head of you sinking just like led, but I never found you washed up on the shore. Gotta take my plot back to the drawing board.

George Ezra does break up songs very well :o

"May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold ...." John Martyn

"The boys of the NYPD choir
were singing "Galway Bay"
and the bells were ringing out
for Christmas day"

Fairytale of New York - and the whole thing too - great Christmas song

For all of you who have posted lyrics by The Smiths and Morrissey, this is brilliant 10 lyrical charts inspired by Morrissey

Seeline I love that - it's brilliant!!

seeline brilliant!

Brilliant Seeline (non-miserable face!)

"Don't you ever, don't you ever
Lower yourself, forgetting all your standards
[...]
Ridicule is nothing to be scared of
[...]
Respect yourself and all of those around you"

as far as I'm concerned, that song shows us the best way to live!

(bonus points to those who are old enough to know what it is!)

Dolcelatte I've been driving through France recently and it was on the radio and I was surprised I knew all the lyrics to it despite not having heard it for decades.

Some of these are so lovely.

I'm surprised 'Imagine' hasn't made it on here, that normally tops the poll on these sort of things. (Sorry if it has been mentioned!) I think it's because it's such a simple sentiment that gives it so much meaning.

YY to anyone mentioning Frank Turner.
My friend committed suicide 5 years ago and 'The Queen is Dead' by him is for her.

On a lighter note:

'It makes no difference if you're black or white
If you're a boy or a girl
If the music's pumping it will give you new life
You're a superstar, yes, that's what you are, you know it'

Ooh, I forgot my favourite ever Lloyd Cole lyric (from Rattlesnakes) -

She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On The Waterfront
As she reads Simone De Beauvoir, in her American circumstance
Her heart, her heart's like crazy paving
Upside down and back to front
she says 'ooh, it's so hard to love when love was your great disappointment'

"You're a star the way you are
You know you're not fooling anyone, no
You got the eyes of an angel
Don't try to change, yeah
Everybody's got their scars
No matter what they tell you you're beautiful the way you are"

(bowling for soup - star song)

I have way too many to pick just one song lyric...

This is a great thread :) have not read it all yet just wanted to add some I've thought of first :)

I'm never going back, the past is in the past - Let it Go (sorry) am a Frozen fan and the whole song speaks to me but that line gets me every time!

And if I know you,
I know what you'll do,
You'll love me at once,
The way you did once,
Upon a dream - from Sleeping Beauty (I'll stop with the Disney ones now!)

By too many hands
Touching where I stand
And I can't fall
Because you'll try and catch me
Never let me go
You don't think I know
I've heard it all
And so you'll never scratch my skin

• Heard it All, Emilie Autumn

One baby to another says -
I'm lucky to have met you
I don't care what you think
Unless it is about me
It is now my duty to completely drain you
I travel through a tube
And end up in your infection
-Breed. Also the whole rest of the song and most anything by Nirvana

So many from Jack Johnson:-

If the moon can turn the tides it can pull the tears and take them from out eyes...

Sometimes it feels like a heart is no place to be singing from at all...

All at once, the world can overwhelm me, there's almost nothing that you could tell me that could ease my mind. Which way will you run, when it's always all around you, and the feeling's lost and found you again, the feeling that you have no control...

Go to sleep and know that if I knew all of the answers I would not hold them from you, you'd know all of the things that I'd know...

Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die?
At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes
Mama said
It's just make believe
You cant believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight

Amongst SO MANY others. Then there's Paolo:

I'm a heartless man at worst babe and a helpless one at best.

I'm some stain there on your bedsheet, you're my diamond in the rough.

The Saw Doctors:-
When the world belongs to distant dogs and the air is dark and still, and drunken conversations pass beneath the window sill. And there's someone singing Elvis songs as they make their way back home. And all your fears and worries attack when you're alone.

Life's too short for wasting, for ifs and mighthavebeens, life's too short for wondering if you could have lived your dreams.

A Welsh one- the song "Mil Harddach Wyt" which is on the Visit Wales advert!

Am going back to read the thread now, sorry for any repeats!