Cool turns of the lyric

[grondak]

I was listening to Thick and Thin by The Black Crowes this morning’ and noticed a lyric:

Clock tick-tockin’ => meant to rhyme with Thick and Thin… nice twist.

Know of any others?

Metal Method is helping me across the board!

[Retro51]

Some of my favorites;

Alice Cooper – We can’t find a word that rhymes with Principal (Schools Out)

Journey – Na na na na na – Several songs maybe

Steve Miller – Abracadabra – I’m gonna reach out and grab ya

Steve Miller – I speak of the pompitous of love  (I know, it wasn’t a rhyme, but how cool is it to make up your own word?)

Great White (written by someone else) – <span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 16.7999992370605px; line-height: normal; text-align: center; background-color: #ccccdd;”>I got there in the nick of time</span>

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 16.7999992370605px; line-height: normal; text-align: center; background-color: #ccccdd;”>Before he got his hands across your state line</span>

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 16.7999992370605px; line-height: normal; text-align: center; background-color: #ccccdd;”>Half way home in the parking lot</span>

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 16.7999992370605px; line-height: normal; text-align: center; background-color: #ccccdd;”>By the look in her eye she was giving what she got</span>

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 16.7999992370605px; line-height: normal; text-align: center; background-color: #ccccdd;”>You didn’t know that rock and roll burned</span><br style=”border: 0px none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 16.7999992370605px; font-family: Verdana, Arial; color: #000000; line-height: normal; text-align: center; background-color: #ccccdd;” /><span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 16.7999992370605px; line-height: normal; text-align: center; background-color: #ccccdd;”>So you bought a candle and you lived and you learned</span>

 

[metalj]

Jay aka the letter J

[safetyblitz]

I always liked this bit from the end of Rush’s “The Body Electric”. I really like the combination of music and lyrics and the emotional urgency of this part, but the lyrics by themselves are kind of cool too. For anyone not familiar with the song, the face value meaning is about an android trying escape an oppressive regime (borrowing liberally from a short film by George Lucas), and this passage gets repeated near the end of the song, when the android is facing its own demise.

It replays each of the days
A hundred years of routines
Bows its head and prays
To the mother of all machines, mother of all machines

The song also includes the choice line “A pulse of dying power in a clenching plastic fist”. And the chorus includes a sequence of 1s and 0s. As a kid, I made fun of this song, but it’s grown on me over the years. Maybe I appreciate the allegory more now, and the irony of how the singing of digits is inflected with emotion at the end of the final chorus.

[safetyblitz]

And here are a few from Canadian folk-pop group Crash Test Dummies, from “The Bereft Man’s Song”:

I have all my wisdom teeth
Two up top, and two beneath
And yet, I’ll recognize
My mouth says things that aren’t so wise

And from their song “How does a duck know?”. There’s no clever rhyme or even wordplay per se really, I just find the framing of the duck’s problem as “his wife” versus “all the other ducks” amusing.

How does a duck know
What direction south is?
And how to tell his wife
From all the other ducks?

[superblonde]

Kurt Cobain has so many.. “Hello, how low?” etc.. when he repeats a line, often one of the lines will have a different, but sound-a-like, word in the same place. It makes the lyrics seem really layered or deep in meaning or mysterious somehow. Whether or not the lyrics have deep meaning, or just happen to be words that sound good in the melody, is an open question.

I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

[metalj]

That song also inspired a lyric by weird al containing the words bargle nawdle zouss

Jay aka the letter J

[superblonde]

Recently I was reminded about Roadhouse Blues, apparently no one can really decide the original line, if it’s “Woke up this morning and got myself a beard” (as Manzarek had said) or “Woke up this morning and got myself a beer“.

the Beard would be more poetic.. symbolic or metaphor..
but the bar crowd of course will like singing about Beer.
So in this case, maybe the audience decided the lyrics.
Here is the isolated vocal track found on youtube and it certainly seems like Morrison sung Beer for the album track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi0QgvMVtdE

Other audience-changed Nirvana lyrics are in Breed. The final line is, “She.. saiddd… dddd” (last syllable apparently an effect created in vocal mix), while all lyrics everywhere online, and even professional covers, have the final line as “She.. saiddd.. GOOD.” The isolated vocal track is on youtube and it’s clear that Cobain is singing “She.. saidddd.. dddd” and not “good”. I think the word “good” gives the song a lot more meaning, it’s like the final answer to what the song is about, how he’s bugging his girlfriend about being together and the girlfriend finally answers Good, but that wasn’t what Cobain originally wrote.. so in effect all the fans re-interpreted the song using a misheard lyric. Also the other misheard line in this song is at the end of the verses, “Afraid.. ghost“. There is no way Cobain is singing “ghost.” He’s singing “Afraid.. ’cause!” with the chorus immediately following. Also easy to hear the “’cause!” in the isolated track. (Even my vocal instructor made both of these lyric mistakes when instructing, which didn’t endear me to further paying for lessons.)

I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

[Author]

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