Post by asmith on Apr 16, 2020 15:04:29 GMT -5
A wordier cousin to the famous Maj-Min chord thread, perhaps.
What are your favourite short snippets of lyrics? Couplets, verses, chorus hooks, etc. Not whole songs.
I am writing lyrics these days, and I often find that reading others' lyrics and appreciating the rhythm, rhyme patterns, assonance, and plosive percussion of words helps my own. Good artists copy, and great artists steal, no? And to create something wonderful of your own, it helps to practice recreating others' output, noticing your own mutations, and imagining your own improvements; Hunter S. Thompson retyped The Great Gatsby before drafting up Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, for example.
I'll start:
Jellyfish — Joining A Fan Club
Joining a fan club's a big mistake;
I still get heartburn when I think about all of the stamps I ate.
I adore this. On the surface it's a comicstrip image of a kid licking stamps to mail in to a fan club, but once you clock that 'stamps' are LSD tabs, and that the Fan Club is the rock-'n'-roll-fuelled counterculture movement, I think it becomes such a brilliant comment on how that 'free-thinking' culture became exactly a cult full of disciples, the likes to which it arose in opposition.
Radiohead — Morning Bell (Amnesiac Version)
Where'd you park the car? Where'd you park the car?
It oozes frantic anxiety underneath the commonplace mundane, akin to Hemingway's 'iceberg theory:' showing 10% material reality to indicate the hidden 90% emotional undercurrent. Thom Yorke is wonderful at this, and also spectacular at playing lyrical motifs off against each other to create context that the iceberg's 90% content is outlined against:
Radiohead — Let Down
One day, I am going to grow wings, a chemical re-
-action, hysterical and useless, hysterical and
Roger Waters' later Pink Floyd stuff contained the same kitchen-sink material:
Pink Floyd — The Fletcher Memorial Home
They can polish their medals and sharpen their smiles, and
Amuse themselves, playing games for a while.
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead.
Else, when Waters played with words' sound, they weren't as impactful in content as anything Dark Side of the Moon onwards, but they're very pretty in form:
Pink Floyd — Echoes
Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air, and
Deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves, the
Echo of a distant tide comes willowing across the sand, and
everything is green and submarine.
Lastly,
Tom Waits — Come On Up To The House
Come down off the cross, we can use the wood.
You gotta come on up to the house.
I really enjoy the balance between empathetic and romantic, and practical and genial.
What are your favourite short snippets of lyrics? Couplets, verses, chorus hooks, etc. Not whole songs.
I am writing lyrics these days, and I often find that reading others' lyrics and appreciating the rhythm, rhyme patterns, assonance, and plosive percussion of words helps my own. Good artists copy, and great artists steal, no? And to create something wonderful of your own, it helps to practice recreating others' output, noticing your own mutations, and imagining your own improvements; Hunter S. Thompson retyped The Great Gatsby before drafting up Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, for example.
I'll start:
Jellyfish — Joining A Fan Club
Joining a fan club's a big mistake;
I still get heartburn when I think about all of the stamps I ate.
I adore this. On the surface it's a comicstrip image of a kid licking stamps to mail in to a fan club, but once you clock that 'stamps' are LSD tabs, and that the Fan Club is the rock-'n'-roll-fuelled counterculture movement, I think it becomes such a brilliant comment on how that 'free-thinking' culture became exactly a cult full of disciples, the likes to which it arose in opposition.
Radiohead — Morning Bell (Amnesiac Version)
Where'd you park the car? Where'd you park the car?
It oozes frantic anxiety underneath the commonplace mundane, akin to Hemingway's 'iceberg theory:' showing 10% material reality to indicate the hidden 90% emotional undercurrent. Thom Yorke is wonderful at this, and also spectacular at playing lyrical motifs off against each other to create context that the iceberg's 90% content is outlined against:
Radiohead — Let Down
One day, I am going to grow wings, a chemical re-
-action, hysterical and useless, hysterical and
Roger Waters' later Pink Floyd stuff contained the same kitchen-sink material:
Pink Floyd — The Fletcher Memorial Home
They can polish their medals and sharpen their smiles, and
Amuse themselves, playing games for a while.
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead.
Else, when Waters played with words' sound, they weren't as impactful in content as anything Dark Side of the Moon onwards, but they're very pretty in form:
Pink Floyd — Echoes
Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air, and
Deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves, the
Echo of a distant tide comes willowing across the sand, and
everything is green and submarine.
Lastly,
Tom Waits — Come On Up To The House
Come down off the cross, we can use the wood.
You gotta come on up to the house.
I really enjoy the balance between empathetic and romantic, and practical and genial.
Somebody's gonna have to work awful hard to get back into my good graces. 
h"