Let's not forget how good Bernie Taupin was


Tune me in to the wild side of life
I'm an innocent young child sharp as a knife
Take me to the garretts where the artists have died
Show me the courtrooms where the judges have lied
Let me drink deeply from the water and the wine
Light colored candles in dark dreary mines
Look in the mirror and stare at myself
And wonder if that's really me on the shelf

And each day I learn just a little bit more
I don't know why but I do know what for
If we're all going somewhere let's get there soon
Oh this song's got no title just words and a tune

Take me down alleys where the murders are done
In a vast high powered rocket to the core of the sun
Want to read books in the studies of men
Born on the breeze and die on the wind
If I was an artist who paints with his eyes
I'd study my subject and silently cry
Cry for the darkness to come down on me
For confusion to carry on turning the wheel

 

​

Air – Electronic Performers


We are the synchronizers
Send messages through time code
Midi clock rings in my mind
Machines gave me some freedom
Synthesizers gave me some wings
They drop me through 12 bit samplers

We are electronic performers
We are electronics

We need to use envelope filters
To say how we feel
Riding on magnetic waves
We search new programs for your pleasure
I want to patch my soul on your brain
BPM controls your heartbeats

We are the synchronizers
We are electronic performers



​

​

 

That's a good one

 

We can walk our road together
If our goals are all the same
We can run alone and free
If we pursue a different aim
Let the truth of love be lighted
Let the love of truth shine clear
Sensibility...
Armed with sense and liberty
With the heart and mind united in a single
Perfect...
Sphere.

RUSH - Hemispheres - [Part V. The Sphere: A Kind Of Dream]

 

Depeche Mode - I want you now

I want you now
Tomorrow won't do
There's a yearning inside
And it's showing through
Reach out your hands
And accept my love
We've waited for too long
Enough is enough
I want you now

My heart is aching
My body is burning
My hands are shaking
My head is turning
You understand
It's so easy to choose
We've got time to kill
We've got nothing to lose
I want you now

And I don't mean to sound
Like one of the boys
That's not what I'm trying to do
I don't want to be
Like one of the boys
I just want you now

Because I've got a love
A love that won't wait
A love that is growing
And it's getting late
Do you know what it means
To be left this way
When everyone's gone
And the feelings they stay
I want you now

 

The god of man is a failure
Our fortress is burning against the grain of the shattered sky
Charred birds escape from the ruins and return as cascading blood
Dying bloodbirds pooling, feeding the flood
The god of man is a failure
And all of our shadows are ashes against the grain

 

Pretty much anything that is just a story without addressing "you", the listener. I don't know why like 99% of pop songs do that, but I hate it so much that I generally avoid songs/lyrics entirely. It makes me feel like I am reading other people's mail. Also I avoid singing about singing, and singing about dancing.

 

What means you? Throw out an example, please.

 

No Rap song in Fav Song lyrics thread..

 

These are examples I just dug up on LyricsFreak's "recommended" list:

Steve Aoki, Pretender "I'm a good pretender Won't you come see my show?"
Architects, Hereafter "And every route I take Leads right back to you"
Pusha-T, Santeria "You killed God's baby when it wasn't his will"
A$AP Rocky, Purity "See, this what that voice in your head says"
ZAYN, Entertainer "You thought you had me, didn't you?" - This song is packed with them!

Do they think they are singing to me? Do singers just have a lot of imaginary friends? Am I supposed to know who they are talking about? It's like the musical equivalent of somebody poking me in they eyeball to get my attention. I guess it's intended to create some feeling of rapport with listeners, but it seems lazy and manipulative to me.

Anyway, bringing it more on-topic, the minority of songs that don't do this are my favorites!

 

He's talking about songs written using the first person, direct address format

 

Last edited: Oct 9, 2018

@meow

 

Armalite, street lights, nightsights
Searching the roofs for a sniper, a viper, a fighter
Death in the shadows he'll maim you, he'll wound you, he'll kill you
For a long forgotten cause
On not so foreign shores
Boys baptised in war
Boys baptised in war

Morphine, chill scream, bad dream
Serving as numbers on dogtags, flakrags, sandbags
Your girl has married your best friend, loves end, poison pen
Your flesh will always creep, tossing turning sleep
The wounds that burn so deep, burn so deep

Your mother sits on the edge of the world when the cameras start to roll
Panoramic viewpoint resurrect the killing fold
Your father drains another beer, he's one of the few that cares
Crawling behind a Saracen's hull from the safety of his living room chair
Forgotten Sons
Forgotten Sons
Forgotten Sons

And so as I patrol in the valley of the shadow of the Tricolour I must fear evil
For I am but mortal and mortals can only die
Asking questions, pleading answers from the nameless faceless watchers
That parade the carpeted corridors of Whitehall
Who orders desecration, mutilation, verbal masturbation in the guarded bureaucratic wombs
Minister, Minister care for your children
Order them not into damnation
To eliminate those who would trespass against you
For whose is the kingdom, the power, the glory for ever and ever
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen
Amen

"Halt who goes there!" - " Death!!"
"Approach ... friend"
You're just another coffin on it's way down the emerald aisle
When your children's stony glances mourn
Your death in a terrorist's smile
The bomber's arm placing fiery gifts on the supermarket shelves
Alley sings with shrapnel detonate a temporary hell
Forgotten Sons
Forgotten Sons

From the dolequeue to the regiment a profession in a flash
But remember Monday signings when from door to door you dash
On the news a nation mourns you unknown soldier count the cost
For a second you'll be famous but labelled posthumous

Ring-a-ring-o-roses, they all fall down
Ring-a-ring-o-roses, they all fall down
Ring-a-ring-o-roses
Ring-a-ring-o-roses
Ring-a-ring-o-roses, they all fall down

Forgotten Son
Forgotten Son
Forgotten Son
They're still forgotten, they're still still forgotten
Peace on earth and mercy mild, Mother Brown has lost her child
Just another Forgotten Son



I lost several friends during the troubles, this song always hit home.

 

Vs. I:

What you wanna come back here for?
Thought you with your uptown friends
Don’t need none of your junkie business
Gonna screw us up again
Get your blackjack off my table
Get your coat out of my rack
We don’t need you round here jerkoff
I want you off my back​

Chs.:

We almost made it (repeat three times)
We almost made it to the top​

Vs. II:

Got a gun from Uncle Freddie
Got a station all picked out
Got a plan and now we’re ready
Gonna take that station out
So you go on ’bout your business
You just leave us fools alone,
We don’t need no two-bit junkie
Screwin’ up our happy home​

Chs.:

We almost made it (repeat three times)
We almost made it to the top…​

 

But if Sanskrit isn't far out enough, you need to be willing to be pretentious enough for prog-fusion opera
in your own custom language...

 

@WeRAllFosterChildren @Zenarcist

I got a little nervous as well as a bit self conscious about my song writing, hoping that I wasn't doing something lazy or ... gadds...manipulative, but in a bad way, though to be fair, to some extent a rather large bit of any creative writing is a form of manipulation, and if one is really good at it, kidnapping by holding prisoner the reader or listener until their release when you finish the song or story, they being gripped and unable to break free of the bond of being in the moment that the writer has conjured, holding them in rapt attention, giving them a taste of compassion such as they never felt before.

So I looked through my catalogue and found five songs in which I use the word you. In one song (the half of the song that uses the word was penned by a friend, the lyrics very descriptive and paints a whimsical portrait of the subject) "you" is referring to the person the song is titled after, her name given freely in the very first line, so I think this one passes muster, and as well is directed at her in conversation directly.

In #2 the very first word is "You" and is the gateway to the entire song, and again is directed at yet another person who's name is in the title...is the whole title, one word, Dan. I think that this one is also good to go.

The third song uses "you" but referes to me, so once more not in the first person, so, whew...saved again!

The fourth is rather tricky, as some devil or demon speaks directly to "you" as the person actually listening to the song or reading the poem, sometimes berating, sometimes enticing, kind of working "you" to commit sin in a kind of Faustian contract, literally as well as figuratively. Off the hook here (I think)!!

And finally the last, a song about a friend who was threatening suicide and my attempt of dissuading her. I am, yes, this time guilty as charged, but the song is so fucking great, if I do say so myself, that frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 10, 2018

it does not matter what I think

 

No offense to Depeche Mode but lyrics of the "I want you baby" ilk are the antithesis of good lyric writing. It is one dimensional and banal. It is not inviting the listener to delve into any deeper meaning. It is representative of the shallowness of todays pop music.

 

Here again, another piece of poetry from the almost 80 year old Ian Hunter telling the story of an alcoholic:

I shiver and shake, every morning I wake to the roar of the trains overhead
I got a newspaper floor and a towel for a door and there's things crawlin' round my bed
The facilities are free at The Ship hostelry before the football supporters appear
And I'm losing my mind in the great left behind
I got to get myself out of here

Man overboard, waves washing over me
Hard times, it's a perilous sea
I'll never learn
Anyone can tell ya where you can find me
Drunk and disorderly

There is rain on the ground and I can see upside down
Streetlamps and repossessed homes
They say crime doesn't pay, well take a walk down my way
And I'm stuck here with nowhere to go
Out on the streets with all the other deadbeats
Wasting away with the years
Their ship's going down on the wrong side of town
And I gotta get my ass out of here

Man overboard, waves washing over me
Sometimes it's a treacherous sea
The walls spinning around the anger that's hidden deep inside of me
Drunk and disorderly

Reality this, reality that
I been there once and I ain't going back
They squeezed me 'till I fell apart at the seams
Now I'd rather dream drunk and disorderly dreams

They got lasers that zap, they got cures for the clap
You can see your insides on TV
They got all kinds of pills for all kinds of ills
But they ain't found a cure yet for me
Out on the street where the cigarettes meet
Abandon hope all who live here
There ain't no medicine for the state that I'm in
And I gotta get myself out of here

Man overboard, waves washing over me
Sometimes it's a perilous sea
I'll never learn the 12 steps to heaven
They never work for me
Drunk and disorderly

Man overboard, straight in the deep end baby
Sometimes it s atreacherous sea
If I'm going down well it can't hurt any more than what you did to me
Drunk and disorderly