Song Lyrics That Won't Let You Go

I often find myself with song lyrics rolling around in my head, hours or days after I last heard them. Here's a random selection of some of the ones that come to mind and don't go quietly into that good night very often.

From A Little At A Time by Magnolia Electric Company:

"I start looking back for the things I used to live by
If only I could remember them
Even one of them
You can’t lose it all at once, can you really
Cause brother I’ve been trying
These days even stars fall only a little at a Time
Maybe if I send back the blues her broken heart
She will send back mine
A little at a time"

The daughter says MEC's music is depressing, and I guess I can see her point even though I don't have that reaction myself. I find Jason Molina's use of words and imagery elevates my spirit, rather than depresses it. In particular in the preceding passage, the line about sending back the Blues her broken heart makes my knees go all wobbly, it's such a perfect metaphor for trying to mend. Or at least that's how I always interpret it.

From I've Been Riding With The Ghost, also by MEC:

"I put my foot to the floor
To make up for the miles I’ve been losing
See I’m running out of things
I didn’t even know I was using"

Just a short little snippet that sounds so Country but goes so far beyond what I'd expect from that type of music. The paradox of the last 2 lines tickles my sense of the absurd, for sure.

From My Iron Lung, by Radiohead:

"Suck, suck your teenage thumb
Toilet trained and dumb
When the power runs out
We'll just hum

This, this is our new song
Just like the last one
A total waste of time
My iron lung"

Introduced, as I was, to Radiohead by a friend who said, "You love Pink Floyd so you'll like these guys," it seems fitting to include a selection that's so similar in theme to the cut-to-the-bone approach to lyric writing shown by Floyd on their best albums.

From Karma Police, also by Radiohead:

"Karma police
arrest this man,
he talks in maths,
he buzzes like a fridge,
he's like a detuned radio.

Karma police
arrest this girl,
her Hitler hairdo
is making me feel ill
and we have crashed her party."

While not entirely sure what "talking in maths" sounds like, if anyone would know, it's occasional commenter Jim Hinckley who I'm always reminded of when I hear this selection. And can't we all just picture the girl with the Hitler hairdo, and I certainly feel a bit sick when I do.

And no retrospect of great lyrics without some from the master:

From Mercy Street, by Peter Gabriel:

"looking down on empty streets, all she can see
are the dreams all made solid
are the dreams all made real

all of the buildings, all of those cars
were once just a dream
in somebody's head

she pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam
she pictures a soul
with no leak at the seam

confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box
to the priest-he's the doctor
he can handle the shocks

dreaming of the tenderness-the tremble in the hips
of kissing Mary's lips"

The single most evocative set of lyrics I've ever heard, I always scratched my head in wonder at what might've compelled a man to pen such a touching female tale. He credits the song "for Anne Sexton", so I just did a little research (only 20 years after hearing, and falling in love with, the song for the first time). Anne Sexton was a poet who committed suicide in 1974 (before this song was written), which explains the general tone of the song. She's credited as being a "confessionalist artist" so the line about "the warm velvet box" falls in place. She apparently even wrote a Broadway play called Mercy Street. The things one can learn when one makes the effort!

I think I've been at this too long now, as I'm starting to get loopy. Time to pay attention to the ballgame (3-0 Det in the 7th inning of Game 2).