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The Greatest Song Lyrics of all time


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Old 10-01-2016, 23:40
owen10
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There have been some great songs that have some of the greatest lyrics My favourites are from the song Fairytale of New York where it goes like You scumbag You Maggot you cheap lousy faggot and Dont you want me baby where the songs starts with You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar that much is true What are your favourites
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Old 10-01-2016, 23:50
barbeler
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Melt - Siouxsie and the Banshees

You are the melting men
You are the situation
There is no time to breathe
And yet one single breath
Leads to an insatiable desire
Of suicide in sex
So many blazing orchids
Burning in your throat
Making you choke
Making you sigh
Sigh in tiny deaths
So, melt
My lover, melt
She said melt
My lover, melt
You are the melting men
And as you melt
You are beheaded
Handcuffed (in lace and blood and sperm)
Swimming in poison
Gasping in the fragrance
Sweat carves a screenplay
of discipline and devotion
So, melt
My lover, melt
She said melt
My lover, melt
Can you see?
See into the back of a long, black car
Pulling away from the funeral of flowers
With my hand between your legs
Melting
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Old 10-01-2016, 23:51
konebyvax
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Not sure I would say the greatest song lyrics of all time but I love this chorus taken from Ray Lamontagne's Jolene (his song, not the Dolly opus!)

I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze in my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
In the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene

The lyrics throughout the song are pretty brilliant and very evocative. In fact, sod it I'm going to print them all

"Jolene"

Cocaine flame in my bloodstream
Sold my coat when I hit Spokane
Bought myself a hard pack of cigarettes in the early morning rain
Lately my hands they don't feel like mine
My eyes been stung with dust, I'm blind
Held you in my arms one time
Lost you just the same
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze on my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
in the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
Ah, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
Been so long since I seen your face
or felt a part of this human race
I've been living out of this here suitcase for way too long
A man needs something he can hold onto
A nine pound hammer or a woman like you
Either one of them things will do
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze in my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
In the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
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Old 11-01-2016, 00:02
BadLadAsh
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Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?
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Old 11-01-2016, 00:19
mgvsmith
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I have only heard the version by Robert Plant's Band of Joy but this is allegedly Townes Van Zandt's last set of lyrics and how appropriate they seem for a man about to enter the Undiscovered Country!

Harm's Swift Way

There is a home out of harms swift way
I set myself to find
I swore to my love I would
Bring her there
Then I left my love behind
The desert was long
The mountain high
The road ran steep and winding
The promises so easily made
Unbearable, yet binding
Oh me, oh my
Who's gonna count my time

Time will go, it never stays
Memory locked in her passing
Try, oh try to cling to her
Until she becomes everlasting
The world's still blue
My word's still true
I feel I'm turning hollow
She does as she please
If ever she leaves
I'll strangle upon the sorrow
Oh me, oh my
Who's gonna mark my time

The road is past, tomorrow the sky
Between sometimes is blinding
Someday soon when I turn to cloud
I will fly on her wings somehow
Wrapped in the road and filled with above
The ground seems to fade away
Hold to the earth like a new born child
Pray she returns someday
Oh me, oh my
Who's gonna mark my time
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Old 11-01-2016, 07:08
skinnirib
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Bryan Adams 'Run To You'

'She says her love for me will never die
But that'd change if she ever found out about you and I'

Just sums up betrayal perfectly for me
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Old 11-01-2016, 14:28
Jambo_c
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There's so many but a couple that I really love.

The Loss Adjuster

Sitting in the World's End with some indie friends, a newsflash on the TV says the world's about to end. Can't catch all the details 'cos the volume's turned down: this is the last night on Earth – as spent in Camden Town.

There's no way to escape - this is it. Tomorrow we will all be gone, so check what time the band are on. Let's go outside.

Yeah and this was the night I was going to balance the books; the night I turned a minus into a plus. The night my adjustment became complete – I could start again with a clean sheet.

Now I can't get through 'cos all the networks are down, and fires are starting all over town, and you're probably being gang-banged by tattooed locals: Damn those Yokels! Damn those Yokels!

And a girl cries as she stumbles by "No, the world can't end now – no, it's got to wait. It can't end when I haven't got a boyfriend and I'm half a stone overweight."

The guys from Arlington House are marauding the streets, and convent girls are screwing every man that they meet, and the album you just bought will never get heard: Oh yeah, complete social breakdown has occurred.

And then you find yourself thinking about Egyptian Sue and the evil things that she used to do. And the night you almost did it after the wedding reception but you didn't have any contraception, and anyway, you couldn't get an erection.

Now, what the hell made you think of her? Could it be that old saying coming true? That: 'Nothing could survive a nuclear holocaust except cockroaches and Egyptian Sue?' But even Sue won't make it through. No, even Sue won't make it through this time.

It was around this time that the levels of hysteria around the Kentish Town Road caused a warping of the space/time continuum and I found myself face to face with a version of myself from 15 years earlier, when I'd lived in the area. "Greetings indie legend", said I. "**** off sad bell-end", came the reply. I wanted to warn him about the rough times ahead but for some reason he had his coat pulled over his head and wouldn't listen. I left him trying to extricate a punctured Spacehopper from under some rubble in a skip. "He'll find out soon enough", I thought.

And then suddenly I realised that I could no longer breathe.

Here we go, move along, one last time. The Loss Adjuster lost his mind: too many claims, too little time to file them.

And then suddenly it was a Tuesday afternoon and I could see it all, crystal clear; like a giant chandelier turning slowly in the sideways sunlight – hanging by a thread with only seconds to last. And each time you rang it was like an Indian call centre on the line: "Yes, I'm doing fine – just like the last time, and the last time; make this the last time."

We'll all be gone by Monday morning – this is it: your final warning. You never did see Dog Day Afternoon. Here today but gone tomorrow – now you could hang your head in sorrow or you could do it. But you'd better do it soon.

We'll all be gone by Monday morning – this is it: your final warning. You never did see Dog Day Afternoon. Here today but gone tomorrow – now you could hang your head in sorrow or you could do it. But you'd better do it soon.

We'll all be gone by Monday morning – this is it: your final warning. You never did see Dog Day Afternoon. Oh, here today but gone tomorrow – now you could hang your head in sorrow or you could do it. But you'd better do it soon.






and


Wickerman


Just behind the station
before you reach the traffic island
a river runs though a concrete channel
I took you there once; I think it was after the Leadmill

The water was dirty
and it smelt of industrialisation
Little mesters coughing their lungs up
And globules the colour of tomato ketchup
But it flows
Yeah, it flows

Yeah, underneath the city
through dirty brickwork conduits
connecting white witches on the Moor
with Pre-Raphaelites down in Broomhall
Beneath the old Trebor factory
that burnt down in the early seventies
Leaving an antiquated sweet-shop smell
and caverns of nougat and caramel
Nougat

Yeah, nougat and caramel

And the river flows on

Yeah, the river flows on beneath pudgy fifteen-year olds addicted to coffee whitener, courting couples naked on Northern Upholstery and pensioners gathering dust like bowls of plastic tulips. And it finally comes above ground again at Forge Dam: the place where we first met.

I went there again for old time's sake, hoping to find the child's toy horse ride that played such a ridiculously tragic tune. It was still there - but none of the kids seemed interested in riding on it. And the cafe was still there too; the same press-in plastic letters on the price list and scuffed formica-top tables. I sat as close as possible to the seat where I'd met you that autumn afternoon. And then, after what seemed like hours of thinking about it, I finally took your face in my hands and I kissed you for the first time and a feeling like electricity flowed through my whole body. And I immediately knew I'd entered a completely different world. And all the time, in the background, the sound of that ridiculously heartbreaking child's ride outside.

At the other end of town the river flows underneath an old railway viaduct; I went there with you once - except you were somebody else - and we gazed down at the sludgy brown surface of the water together. Then a passer-by told us that it used to be a local custom to jump off the viaduct into the river, when coming home from the pub on a Saturday night. But that this custom had died out when someone jumped and landed too near to the riverbank and had sunk in the mud there and drowned before anyone could reach them. Maybe he'd just made the whole story up. You'd never get me to jump off that bridge. No chance. Never in a million years.

Yeah, a river flows underneath this city
I'd like to go there with you now my pretty
and follow it on for miles and miles
below other people's ordinary lives
Occasionally catching a glimpse of the moon
through man-hole covers along the route
Yeah, it's dark sometimes
but if you hold my hand
I think I know the way

Oh, this is as far as we got last time
but if we go just another mile
we will surface surrounded by grass and trees
and the fly-over that takes the cars to cities
Buds that explode at the slightest touch
Nettles that sting - but not too much
I've never been past this point
What lies ahead I really could not say

And I used to live just by the river
in a disused factory just off the Wicker
And the river flowed by day after day
And "one day" I thought
"One day I will follow it"
That day never came; I moved away and lost track
but tonight I am thinking about making my way back
I may find you there
and float on
wherever the river may take me

Wherever the river may take me
Wherever the river may take us
Wherever it wants us to go
Wherever it wants us to go
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Old 11-01-2016, 20:42
moonlily
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Me my thoughts are flower strewn,
Ocean storm , bayberry moon….
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Old 11-01-2016, 21:52
dearmrman
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"Look up here, I’m in heaven

I’ve got scars that can’t be seen

I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen

Everybody knows me now"

"This way or no way

You know, I’ll be free

Just like that bluebird

Now ain’t that just like me"
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Old 12-01-2016, 14:24
julie2009
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Vincent - Starry Starry Night by Don McClean.

Still get chills when I hear these lyrics:

On that starry starry night
You took your life like young often do
But Vincent I could have told you
This world was never meant for someone as beautiful as you
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Old 12-01-2016, 14:37
bryemycaz
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1st part

There is no pain you are receding.
A Distant ship smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I cant hear what your saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two ballons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.

2nd Part

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

(Then the Greatest Guitar solo in a song though that's a different topic).
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Old 12-01-2016, 21:54
belly button
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There is some of the greatest poetry ever written in song format and it is often never recognised as such.

Simon and Garfunkel wrote some wonderful words. I particularly like those from 'The Sound of Silence'.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.
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Old 12-01-2016, 22:43
Mr Perks
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Jimmy Webb's finest moment among many near equals...
And I need you more than want you,
and I want you for all time
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Old 12-01-2016, 22:50
petertard
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Paint It Black.
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Old 14-01-2016, 13:13
scottie2121
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Just a couple of examples of the genius of Mark E Smith

What About Us?

Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba

Well, leg-end... living
We are living leg-ends
The living leg-end

I am a rabbit from East Germany
I was very happy
And I could get anything I want
I was so-oh happy

Then I moved to North Britain
I became an immigrant
I could frolic around all night
In the green grass

I was sort of happy

Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba

But then one night
By the green grass
By a rubbish receptacle
I saw a newspaper
I was not very happy

There was a man going round all the time
He was dishing out drugs
He was a doctor
Dishing out morphine to old ladies

I said, what about us? (Shipman!)
What about us? (Shipman!)
What about us? (Shipman!)
What about us? (Shipman!)
What about us, Shipman?
What about us? (Shipman!)
What about us, Shipman?
What about us? (Shipman!)

Hop hop hop!
Hop hop hop!
Hop hop hop!

I'm an immigrant from East Germany
I was sort of happy
I could frolic around a lot
In the train station
I could get anything I want

There was a doctor going around
He was dishing out drugs
He was dishing out left and right
To old ladies

So don't get me wrong
People in Great Britain
Please don't get me wrong

Hop hop hop!
Hop hop hop!
Hop hop hop!
Please don't get me wrong
Hop hop hop!

What about us? (Shipman!)
What about us? (Shipman!)
What about us? (Shipman!)
What about us? (Shipman!)
What about us, Shipman?
What about us? (Shipman!)
What about us, Shipman?
What about us? (Shipman!



Greenway

It's good enough for you it's good enough for me (2)
It's good enough for you it's good enough for Richard
It's good enough for Richie sounds (3)

Channel hopping the other day through Danish rock TV
I noticed the video, where the person beared a remarkable coincidental resemblance to myself
To the video I was in recently
So I rang the crew that the Jason fellow cited
The attitude that group had to me when I asked if they had a CD player in their room
Their tone especially
Greenway
Greenway

I decided to visit their room, where they had a pile of chairs piled behind the door
Their tone was snotty and offensive so I called them
People like that really get on my nerves (4)
To relax I called my cat
Greenway
Greenway

I had to wank off the cat to feed the ****ing dog (5)
It's good enough for you it's good enough for you
It's good enough for Richard
It's good enough for Richie sounds
Greenway
Greenway

I had wank off the dog to feed the ****ing cat
Greenway
It's good enough for me it's good enough for you boy
It's good enough for you it's good enough for me
It's good enough for Richard
It's good enough for right now
Greenway

Channel hopping the other day on danish rock TV
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Old 14-01-2016, 13:39
peter_s
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My favourites are by Pink Floyd:

Childhood's End

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTyt0okJak


Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwYX52BP2Sk

I think that both songs compliment each other well, almost as if Time is the follow up to Childhood's End.
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Old 14-01-2016, 15:54
PhilH36
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Thunder Road, Jungleland, The River, Roulette, Seeds, My Hometown and the whole of the Darkness On The Edge Of Town album.

The Rangers had a homecoming
In Harlem late last night
And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine
Over the Jersey state line
Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain
The Rat pulls into town rolls up his pants
Together they take a stab at romance
And disappear down Flamingo Lane

Well the Maximum Lawmen run down Flamingo
Chasing the Rat and the barefoot girl
And the kids round here look just like shadows
Always quiet, holding hands
From the churches to the jails
Tonight all is silence in the world
As we take our stand
Down in Jungleland

The midnight gang's assembled
And picked a rendezvous for the night
They'll meet 'neath that giant Exxon sign
That brings this fair city light
Man there's an opera out on the Turnpike
There's a ballet being fought out in the alley
Until the local cops
Cherry Tops

Rips this holy night
The street's alive
As secret debts are paid
Contacts made, they vanish unseen
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades
Hustling for the record machine
The hungry and the hunted
Explode into rock'n'roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street
Down in Jungleland

In the parking lot the visionaries
Dress in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet girls are dancing
To the records that the DJ plays
Lonely-hearted lovers
Struggle in dark corners
Desperate as the night moves on
Just one look
And a whisper, and they're gone

Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender
In a bedroom locked
In whispers of soft refusal
And then surrender
In the tunnels uptown
The Rat's own dream guns him down
As shots echo down them hallways in the night
No one watches when the ambulance pulls away
Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light
Outside the street's on fire
In a real death waltz
Between what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here
Don't write nothing at all
They just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of the night
They reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand
But they wind up wounded
Not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland

--------------------------------------------------

Well a great black river a man had found
So he put all his money in a hole in the ground
And sent a big steel arm drivin' down down down
Man now I live on the streets of Houston town

Packed up my wife and kids when winter came along
And we headed down south with just spit and a song
But they said "Sorry son it's gone gone gone"

Well there's men hunkered down by the railroad tracks
The Elkhorn Special blowin' my hair back
Tents pitched on the highway in the dirty moonlight
And I don't know where I'm gonna sleep tonight

Parked in the lumberyard freezin' our asses off
My kids in the back seat got a graveyard cough
Well I'm sleepin' up in front with my wife
Billy club tappin' on the windshield in the middle of the night
Says "Move along man move along"

Well big limousine long shiny and black
You don't look ahead you don't look back
How many times can you get up after you've been hit ?
Well I swear if I could spare the spit
I'd lay one on your shiny chrome
And send you on your way back home
So if you're gonna leave your town where the north wind blow
To go on down where that sweet soda river flow
Well you better think twice on it Jack
You're better off buyin' a shotgun dead off the rack
You ain't gonna find nothin' down here friend
Except seeds blowin' up the highway in the south wind
Movin' on movin' on it's gone gone all gone

---------------------------------------------------

We left the toys out in the yard
I took my wife and kids and I left my home unguarded
We packed what we could into the car
No one here knows how it started
Well suddenly everything was just so out of control
Now I want some answers, mister, I need to know
I hear all the talk but I don't know what you're saying
But I think I got a good idea of the game that you're playing

Roulette, that's the name
Roulette, that's the game now
Roulette, I don't believe what they're saying
Roulette, everybody's playing

I grew up here on this street
Where nothing moves, just a strange breeze
In a town full of worthless memories
There's a shadow in my backyard
I've got a house full of things that I can't touch
Well all those things they won't do me much good now
I was a fireman out at Riker's, I did my job
Mister, I've been cheated, I feel like I've been robbed
I'm the big expendable, my life's just cancelled null and void
Well what you gonna do about your new boy

Roulette, you're playing with my life
Roulette, with my kids and my wife
Roulette, every day the stakes get bigger
Roulette, a different finger on the trigger

Down by the river that talks
The night speaks in searchlights and shortwave radios squawk
Well the police patrol the streets
But I've left behind the man I used to be
Everything he believed and all that belonged to me
I tried to find my way out to somewhere where I thought it'd be safe
They stopped me at the roadblock they put up on the interstate
They put me in detention but I broke loose and then I ran
They said they just want to ask me a few questions but I think they had other plans
Now I don't know who to trust and I don't know what I can believe
They say they want to help me but with the stuff they keep on saying
I think those guys just wanna keep on playing

Roulette, with my life
Roulette, with my kids and my wife
Roulette, the bullet's in the chamber
Roulette, who's the unlucky stranger
Roulette, surprise, you're dead
Roulette, the gun's to your head
Roulette, the bullet's spinning in the chamber
Roulette, pull the trigger, feel the click
No further danger

All lyrics copyright Bruce Springsteen.
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Old 14-01-2016, 16:02
ayrshireman1
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'When I'm drinking my Bonaparte Shandy
Eating more than enough apple pies
Will I glance at my screen and see real human beings starve to death
Right in front of my eyes'
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Old 15-01-2016, 00:01
SweetHeartHolly
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Go here for what I think are some of the best lyrics that have ever been put out there.

God bless you always!!!

Holly
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