"Beautiful" lyrical moments in songs

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13586]

"The only reason we never worked out was
We didn't work out, it never works out"

So good

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13586]

You'd know what a drag it is to see you

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13586]

 

Can't you hear that rooster crowin'?
Rabbit runnin' down across the road
Underneath the
Where the water flowed through
So happy just to see you smile
Underneath the sky of blue

On this new mornin', new mornin'
On this new mornin' with you

Can't you hear that motor turnin'?
Automobile comin' into style
Comin' down the road
For a country mile or two
So happy just to see you smile
Underneath the sky of blue

On this new mornin', new mornin'
On this new mornin' with you

The night passed away so quickly
It always does when you're with me

Can't you feel that sun a-shinin'?
Ground hog runnin' by the country stream
This must be the day
That all of my dreams come true
So happy just to be alive
Underneath the sky of blue

On this new mornin', new mornin'
On this new mornin' with you

So happy just to be alive
Underneath the sky of blue

On this new mornin', new mornin'
On this new mornin' with you

New mornin', new mornin', new mornin'
New mornin', new mornin', new mornin'
New mornin'

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13586]

I'm not a telephone junkie
If I'm inserting my coin I'm doing just fine.
And the things in my head start hurtin' my mind.
And I think about the way things used to be,
knowing you with him is driving me crazy.
Sometimes I phone you when I know you're not lonely,
but I always disconnect it in time

 

[jimmyjazz 46001]

Best song I've heard in a couple of decades.  It literally made me gasp the first time I heard it.  Astonishing lyrics and a deceptively effective melody:

===

She said, "Andy, you're better than your past"
Winked at me and drained her glass
Cross-legged on the barstool, like nobody sits anymore

She said, "Andy, you're taking me home"
But I knew she planned to sleep alone
I'd carry her to bed and sweep up the hair from the floor

 

If I had fucked her before she got sick
I'd never hear the end of it
She don't have the spirit for that now

 

We just drink our drinks and laugh out loud
Bitch about the weekend crowd
And try to ignore the elephant somehow
Somehow

 

She said, "Andy, you crack me up"
Seagrams in a coffee cup
Sharecropper eyes and her hair almost all gone

When she was drunk, she made cancer jokes
Made up her own doctor's notes
Surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone

 

I'd sing her classic country songs
And she'd get high and sing along
She don't have a voice to sing with now

 

We'd burn these joints in effigy
Cry about what we used to be
Try to ignore the elephant somehow
Somehow

 

I buried her a thousand times
Given up my place in line
But I don't give a damn about that now

 

There's one thing that's real clear to me
No one dies with dignity
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow
Somehow
Somehow

 

 

 

Edited January 11 by jimmyjazz

[Hornius Emeritus 12480]

I broke down in December and headed for the coast

I thought the wind and water would elevate my mind

I surfaced in the springtime feeling like a ghost

Missing more than ever the things I left behind

 

 

I

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13586]

You were a child reaching out brave and true

For big things in the next room

And I couldn't step into such open sky

Where on the crest of uncertainty you loom

I'm learning to hunt for you

Say that you'll never run too far away

Even with all the answers out there

Where it's brighter but no one will care

Half as much as I care about you

I'm learning to hunt for you

[ohchaucer 1443]

I’ll start with “Angel from Montgomery” because all of it is as good as John Prine gets but the line “Make me a poster of an old rodeo” is one of my favorite lyrics in all of music.

Also, “Red Dirt Girl” is a beautiful narrative song but I’ve always loved:

“She loved her brother, I remember back when
He was fixin' up a '49 Indian
He told her, little sister, going to ride the wind
Up around the moon and back again
He never got farther than Vietnam
I was standing there with her
When the telegram come for Lillian
Now he's lying somewhere
About a million miles from Meridian”

AND:

“Yes, she tried hard to love him
But it never did take
Just another way for the heart to break
So she learned to bend
One thing they don't tell you about the blues
When you got 'em you keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom
And there ain't no end, least not for Lillian”

Also love so much of James McMurtry’s writing but for some reason I’ve always loved this quick line - so perfectly simple and tells a whole evocative story in a handful of words:


“And at the base of the barstool there's a drain in the floor
You better not go in there, if you don't know what that's for”


Don’t even know where to start (or, more specifically, where to stop) with writers like Prine, Lovett, Patty Griffin, Farrar, Hiatt, etc. And those are just some of the more mainstream singer songwriters that inspire me. There are really good writers everywhere I look. My only maybe slightly less popular opinion: I love Jeff Tweedy but I think some of his writing is too contrived and gimmicky. Even after reading his book.

Anyway, great thread.

[Scraps 13570]

Brings a tear to my eye every time - 

 

Lord have mercy, how'd she even get them britches on
That honky tonk badonkadonk

[Jerry Callo 8709]

I went to see him just today
Oh, but I didn't see no tears
All dressed up to go away
First time I'd seen him smile in years

He stopped loving her today
They placed a wreath upon his door
And soon they'll carry him away
He stopped loving her today

[Al_4_ISU 12473]

"All you ever wanted was someone Ma was scared of.  All you're ever losing is a little mascara."

 

"We were two tornadoes touching down out in the ol' Midwest.  We did our best at dodging the debris."

 

"You can have my breath, and you can have my darkness.  You can have my blood if it gets you high."

 

"It's gonna be a long Monday.  Stuck like the tick of a clock that's come unwound again."

 

"John Henry was a steel drivin' bastard.  But John Henry was a bastard just the same.  And an engine never thinks about his Daddy.  And an engine never needs to write his name."

 

[Gil Bang 25984]

thank you for your time

you've been so much more than kind

 

 

you can keep the dime

Edited January 12 by Gil Bang

[stc 1462]

 

[TexasHooch 5122]

Ruby's Two Sad Daughters

 

In this land that knows no laughter,
And this land that holds no water,
We were all in love
With Ruby's two sad daughters.

 

One went way out west,
One went way wrong.
One left at seventeen,
And the other couldn't wait that long.
Neither went anywhere with me.
Not to the games or the Dairy Queen.
They split with the first boy who lied sweet
And looked vaguely mean.

 

_______________________________________

Love at the Five and Dime

 

Rita was sixteen years, hazel eyes and chestnut hair
She made the Woolworth counter shine
And Eddie was a sweet romancer, and a darn good dancer
And they'd waltz the aisles of the five and dime

Edited January 12 by TexasHooch

[Post Oak 20254]

Lots of good ones.  Long Monday is my favorite John Prine song and I havent thought about Ruby's Two Sad Daughters in years.

Turnpike Troubadors - Long Drive Home

Well people anymore, they got no staying power
A love you come by easy, it'll leave you just the same
You want somethin bad, you gotta bleed a little for it
You gotta look it in the eye, you gotta call it out by name

[Pre-Chorus 3]
Oh and lovers they march by, but they ain't like you and I
They all wanna be Hank Williams, they don't wanna have to die

 

 

[hullabelew 3724]

McMurtry. "Cashing in on a 30 year crush. You can't be young and do that"

[baboso 6056]

Drunk Evan Felker was a better songwriter than sober Evan:

Dan says, "Look at ol' Jim
A dozen Decembers behind him no worse for the wear
And your time spent in Tulsa did not help your shooting
And look at the gray in your hair

 

How good does it feel? You belong in these hills
It's best that you let it all end
If you'd have married that girl, you'd have married her family
You dodged a bullet, my friend"

 

She said, "Go back to Cherokee County
Won't you crawl back with nothing but a razor and a comb?"
Says, "Babe, if you need me, I'll be where you found me
Go on to hell, honey, I'm headed home"