Popular music has a lot of mindless lyrics. One doesn't need to be a genius to figure out those lyrics. Just assume the song is about sex and you'll probably be right about 50% of the time. But most of us aren't looking through enlightenment from popular music. We just want to rock, to feel something, to have a good time, to create a mood and a million other reasons. What sets a mood- no matter the mood one is looking for- better than music? That's a rhetorical question.
Anyway while most lyrics are inane, every once-in-a-while a song breaks through with the clutter. It might be a smart thought or universal truth. Here are some of those songs and the lyric(s) that's a bit smarter than it's fellow lyrics. Or maybe more insightful, more thought provoking or more outside the box.
Starting off with the song that inspired this blog, John Parr's "St. Elmo's Fire (A Man In Motion)":
"You can break the boy in me, but you can't break the man."
Smashing Pumpkins "Bullet With Butterfly Wings":
It's the sad truth: "Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage."
U2's "One" is one of the smartest pop songs ever. It's chock full of amazing lyrics.
I'm combining some of the lyrics so the blog won't be as long.
Did I disappoint you, Or leave a bad taste in your mouth
You act like you never had love, And you want me to go without
Did I ask too much, More than a lot
You gave me nothing, Now it's all I got
Love is a temple, Love a higher law
Love is a temple, Love the higher law
You ask me to enter, But then you make me crawl
And I can't be holding on, To what you got
When all you got is hurt
Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" (A song about Pink Floyd's first singer Syd Barrett.)
How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found
The same old fears
Wish you were here.
Pink Floyd's "Learning To Fly":
Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction is holding me fast
How can I escape this irrestible grasp?
Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)":
From one of the greatest CDs ever of any genre, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill":
"Don't be a hard rock, when you really are a gem."
Simon and Garfunkel "The Sounds of Silence":
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets
Are written on subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence"
Rush's "Limelight":
Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can't pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend.
Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville":
For some of us it takes longer to come to this realization.
"Some people claim that there's a woman to blame,
But I know, it's my own damn fault.
Yes, and some people claim that's there's a woman to blame
And I know it's my own damn fault."
Don McLean's "American Pie"
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
When I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets
Are written on subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence"
Rush's "Limelight":
Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can't pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend.
Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville":
For some of us it takes longer to come to this realization.
"Some people claim that there's a woman to blame,
But I know, it's my own damn fault.
Yes, and some people claim that's there's a woman to blame
And I know it's my own damn fault."
Don McLean's "American Pie"
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
When I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
themusicaddict
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