Thread: Your Favorite Killer Song Lyrics (any genre)

I thought it would be fun to get members to post samples of lyrics that have left a profound impression on them...memorable lyrics that stand the test of time or are just so catchy or clever that you never forget them.

Please limit the lyrics to just the part of the song that you remember most.
The easiest way to get the correct lyrics is to GOOGLE either the artist's name or the name of the song (with the word "lyrics" at the end of it) and you should get plenty of options from which to choose.
Find the song and then just cut and paste it here along with a brief explanation of why the lyrics mean what they mean to you.
ALL genres are acceptable so everyone should be able to join in.

I will start it with a cheesy 80s lyric that most 80s children should remember...keeping it light to start but I will get deeper as the thread develops.
It should be interesting to see how diverse the music is that our members listen to and love!

Sometimes you're better off dead
There's gun in your hand and it's pointing at your head
You think you're mad, too unstable
Kicking in chairs and knocking down tables
In a restaurant in a West End town
Call the police, there's a madman around
Running down underground to a dive bar
In a West End town

"West End Girls" - Pet Shop Boys

Explanation: Just because it sounds cool in the song!
LOL

When I was going through some bad times in my life this song kept popping in my head.
Found out who my real friends were.
Love this song.

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Rainy Day Women by Bob Dylan

you've gotta lotta nerve to say you are my friend
when i was down you just stood there grinnin'
you've gotta lotta nerve to say you have a helping hand to lend
you just want to be on the side that's winnin'

you see me on the street, you always act surprised
ya say "how are you?", "good luck", but ya dont mean it
when you know as well as me you'd rather see me paralized
why dont you just come out once and scream it

i know the reason you talked behind my back
i used to be among the crowd you're in with
but do you take me for such a fool, to think i'd make contact
with the one who tries to hide what he dont know to begin with?

you say i've let you down - ya know its not like that
if you're so hurt, why then doncha show it?
you say you've lost your faith, but thats not where its at
ya have no faith to lose - an' ya know it

no, i doe not feel that good when i see the heartbreaks you embrace
if i was a master thief perhaps i'd rob them
and tho i know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place
dont you understand, its not my problem?

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

For history buff, probably one of the coolest songs because it lists almost all the major historical personalities and events from 1949-1989.
Still love this song!
I was going to post my other favorite historical song, American Pie by Don McLean, but it is a little long for a thread entry.
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We Didn't Start The Fire by
Billy Joel

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I", and "The Catcher in the Rye"
Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

CHORUS
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu and "Rock Around the Clock"

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, "Peter Pan", Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez

CHORUS

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly, "Ben-Hur", space monkey, Mafia
hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no go
U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo

CHORUS

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion
"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say

CHORUS

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollolah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan

"Wheel of Fortune" , Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller Cola Wars, I can't take it anymore

CHORUS

We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on...

Here's a lyric that is stuck in my head this moring since I was listening to the CD on the way into work this morning.
It's by Atmosphere which is hip hop and he's actually out of Minneapolis so some of you may know him.
Anyway, I can't think of the name of the song but the lyric that is stuck in my head is:

"Maybe then this space alien, can learn to coexist with other homosapiens!"

Man I love that verse!

For a song's lyrics to stand out to me, it's gotta do a couple things to me.
* It's gotta give me chills when I think about it
* It's gotta get me to scream out the song when it comes on in the car.

"Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" - U2

"Tough, you think you've got the stuff
You're telling me and anyone
You're hard enough

You don't have to put up a fight
You don't have to always be right
Let me take some of the punches
For you tonight

Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don't have to go it alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you when I don't pick up the phone
Sometimes you can't make it on your own"

=Z=

Stay (Faraway, So Close) - U2

"Green light, Seven Eleven
You stop in for a pack of cigarettes
You don't smoke, don't even want to
Hey now, check your change
Dressed up like a car crash
Your wheels are turning but you're upside down
You say when he hits you, you don't mind
Because when he hurts you, you feel alive
Oh no, is that what it is?

Red lights, grey morning
You stumble out of a hole in the ground
A vampire or a victim
It depends on who's around
You used to stay in to watch the adverts
You could lip synch to the talk shows

And if you look, you look through me
And when you talk, you talk at me
And when I touch you, you don't feel a thing

If I could stay... then the night would give you up
Stay, and the day would keep its trust
Stay, and the night would be enough"

Few rock and roll phrases are so evocative of a mental image as "Dressed up....like a car crash", IMHO.

=Z=

' If Heartaches Were Nickels '
Joe Bonamassa

Excerpt

" If wine and pills were hundred dollar bills I might keep you satisfied.


If broken dreams were limosines I might take you for a ride.

And if heartaches were nickels I just might be the richest fool alive. "

I'm an amatuer blues and blues rock gutarist. Music of all kinds moves me.
Prophet I really like your choice as well. Great stuff!

Paradise by Eyedea and Abilities
8)

What a beautiful world, so fragile and fertile
Pain filled the void when boy met girl
He’s a puppet to nature, one year later
Now so deeply and sickly in love it makes him hate her
The average romanticized American relationship
Sinks, capsized when either side becomes a slave to it
Conditioned, dependent, afraid to be alone
He needs that feeling that he can’t create all on his own
He despises the fact she has a life outside of him
It drives him crazy to think she’s not insanely consumed with him
Give her the guilt-trip and maybe she’ll quit living,
To stay behind his prison walls and lose all individualism
Well this is happiness, masochistic torture
Played by the decadent, craved of affection
The needle digs deep to push contentment through his bloodstream
And drown out hollow, the pothole of a junkie
If he could only hear her sing, he wouldn’t want to break her wings
But emptiness has such a warm, subtle sting
She makes up for what he lacks, trapped,
He can’t imagine life without someone like that

Chorus:
We’ve rediscovered the long-lost art of dying
Only to lonely resent angels for flying
Twisted, living off of each other’s sickness like parasites
This is paradise

We’ve rediscovered the long-lost art of dying
Only to lonely resent angels for flying
Addicted, afraid to take control of my own life
This is paradise

Verse 2:
What a beautiful world, emotionally destroyed
her became plural when girl met boy
Between several breakups and plenty relapses
Routine bred-comfort led to serious attachment
Now every once in a while she forgets to breathe
Terrified of losing him, paradise is misery
Too much faith in the life-saving knight in shining armour
Now her knight’s noticing the scars she can’t hide any longer
But they were her story way before he was
It was gross hope to think he could heal such deep cuts
At first it felt so right but after one too many fights,
He turned out that hallway light and all the wonder turned to spite
So they sleep in the same bed with guns to each others’ heads
Dead to romance, boiling the blood that painted roses red
Suffering from post-honeymoon disease, bleached through
His whole existence, she’ll die if he decides to leave
Addicted to the way she feels when they spend time together
Detouring the now in a childish attempt to find forever
Despite the fact they hold each other heart to heart
You can’t be that close to somebody without being so far apart

Chorus

Silence, the most obscure sound I’ve ever heard
Those lonely, giant spaces in between your every word
And maybe, I’m totally crazy for holding on but
Just cus I’m insane, don’t mean that I’m wrong
Now that you’re gone I can’t sleep at night
I barely even function right, my memory’s on overdrive
Too hungry and too cold to cry
Miss the companionship I once took for granted
The way you helped me manage, the partnership that vanished
But I don’t expect you to stay chained by the ankle,
There’s so much world to see so, fly free my angel
I’m dying without you, but it’s teaching me to live
Heaven ain’t something someone else can give
It’s all inside of me

Chorus

There’s so much world to see
What’s stopping me from flying free?
There's so much world to see
What's stopping you from flying free?
(Repeat to Fade)

'Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.'
Bob Dylan 'It's Alright, Ma (I'm only bleeding)

"Prophet" wrote:

When I was going through some bad times in my life this song kept popping in my head.
Found out who my real friends were.
Love this song.

================================================== =========

Rainy Day Women by Bob Dylan

you've gotta lotta nerve to say you are my friend
when i was down you just stood there grinnin'
you've gotta lotta nerve to say you have a helping hand to lend
you just want to be on the side that's winnin'

you see me on the street, you always act surprised
ya say "how are you?", "good luck", but ya dont mean it
when you know as well as me you'd rather see me paralized
why dont you just come out once and scream it

i know the reason you talked behind my back
i used to be among the crowd you're in with
but do you take me for such a fool, to think i'd make contact
with the one who tries to hide what he dont know to begin with?

you say i've let you down - ya know its not like that
if you're so hurt, why then doncha show it?
you say you've lost your faith, but thats not where its at
ya have no faith to lose - an' ya know it

no, i doe not feel that good when i see the heartbreaks you embrace
if i was a master thief perhaps i'd rob them
and tho i know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place
dont you understand, its not my problem?

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

Great song Prophet. The song title is actually 'Postively 4th Street'. 'Rainy Day Woman' is the song everybody knows better as 'Everybody Must Get Stoned'