Popular Music Lyrics That I Like

Anyone who's read more than a handful of posts on this blog knows that I'm always complaining about the decline of poetry. Well today--

Hey wait! Wait! Come back! This post isn't going to be about the decline of poetry! I promise!

Actually this post is going to be about popular music lyrics that I like. By "popular music" I mean all genres of popular music-- pop itself, rock, heavy metal, etc. etc. I'm going to refer to it as "pop music", on that understanding.

I only mention the decline of poetry because, as I said in a previous post, I don't think pop music lyricists are the heirs of the classical poets-- despite frequent claims to the contrary. I don't think there's even any comparison. 

Good pop music lyricsts (and even mediocre pop music lyricists) often produce moments of lyrical brilliance. But they're only moments. A line here, a line there. It takes a lot more than that to make a poem. A good poem has to flow from beginning to end, to have a satisfying structure, and (most of them) to have depth of thought and subject matter. Pop music lyrics don't have this.

Having said that, there are many pop music lyrics that do I love, that do spark my imagination. Here are some of them.

I had the idea for this post when I was listening to a Rory Gallagher, "Bowed Not Broken", which is a bonus track on his latest album, Fresh Evidence. Like many Rory Gallagher lyrics, it takes inspiration from the seedier side of American life. (Gallagher was a fan of hardboiled detective fiction. Rather curiously, he never seems to have written a song with an Irish theme.)

Anyway, this is it:

"When will you tire of those crap-game casinos?

You've played every dice-game from Vegas to Reno..."

Simple, but I like its evocation of a whole way of life, a particularly atmospheric way of life, that has its own sort of bleary poetry.

It reminds me of another of my favourite lyrics, from "Pinball Wizard" by The Who:

"Ever since I was a young boy, I've played the silver ball
From Soho down to Brighton, I must have played them all..."

In my experience, there's a tremendous poetry in the past imperfect. I don't mean the grammatical past imperfect, necessarily. I mean the sort of thing it describes, a recurring event in the past. It summons up a vista.

Rory Gallagher has some other great lyrics, for instance, in his Prohibition-themed Barley and Grape Rag (which I must have listened to hundreds of times in my teens):

"Be my friend, and tell me where that place is

Where the whiskey flows and the dices roll till dawn."

That's pure poetry (the echoing "o" sounds are a nice touch), but the whole song has pretty solid lyrics, like this verse:

"I don't care if I get investigated

And the City Fathers they all black my name.

I'm pretty sure that you can smell the traces

But tomorrow morning, I take all the blame."

(I love the concept of "City Fathers", local worthies, etc.)

Another of Gallagher's songs, "Kickback City", would have made a brilliant song to play over the opening credits of some gritty crime film (as the camera slowly pans across the rough, foggy streets of some rundown metropolis). The opening lines fit this atmosphere perfectly, even if the fourth is a bit clumsy:

"They say this town will kill you, they say this town ain't got no soul

This town could take a child's smile, and turn it into stone.

But don't you think I know that? This place has cut me to the bone.

Trouble crawling up your back, fear just eats your soul..."

The last two lines are good, too:

"But I won't let it beat me, 'cause trouble's knocking on my door.

Somehow it's just your smile keeps me coming back for more."

Moving on from Rory Gallagher, here's another song with a similar theme and atmosphere: "Avenues and Alleyways" by Tony Christie, which was indeed the theme song to a TV show. (I even love the title; there's a hint of excitement about the words "avenue" and alleyway", and this song brings out that excitement.)

All of the lyrics are impressive in this one, but I especially like this verse:

In the avenues and alleyways, where a man's got to work out which side he's on

Any way he chooses, chances are he loses, no-one gets to live too long.

The avenues and alleyways where the soul of a man is easy to buy

Everybody's wheeling, everybody's stealing, all the low are living high.

Every city's got 'em, can we ever stop 'em? Some of us are gonna try..."

A bit cartoonish, but very evocative.

I hadn't intended to quote whole verses when I started writing this. I'd planned to concentrate on individual lines.

Here's one of my very favourite individual lines, from the Saw Doctor's smash Irish hit of 1991, "I Useta Lover". It's the first line of this couplet:

"Do you remember her collecting for Concern on Christmas Eve?

She was on a forty-eight fast, just water and black tea..."

(Concern is an organized charity based in Ireland.)

I wrote a whole blog post about this one, back in 2013! As I wrote then: "But what always strikes me, when I listen to it, is how perfect that line I've quoted in the title is, lyrically speaking. It flows so effortlessly, with such joyous euphony-- and it fits perfectly into the rhythm of the song, too."

Another line that I think has perfect euphony (in my opinion) is from "Life of Riley" by the Lightning Seeds, which Ian Broudie wrote as an optimistic ode to his young son: "All this world is a crazy ride so take your seats and hold on tight." Again, it just flows beautifully, and its sound mirrors its meaning. It sounds like a breathless carnival ride. A lyric like this actually fills me with light and optimism, for a moment.

I think I'm going to have to live it there, since this post could go on indefinitely. Please let me know any evocative lyrics that you love, in the comment section. (But not more than a verse, please, since that's what I'm writing about here. I've included links to the songs I've mentioned in case people were interested, but in all honesty, I rarely-to-never watch videos people post in comments.)