Favorite Song Lyrics (1 Viewer)

[guidomerkinsrules]

It’s Alright, Ma might be one of the most cynical yet brutally honest songs about the vagaries, contradictions and confusing aspects of American politics, consumerist culture and economy. It’s a very sobering song, too because Dylan was as much critical of the emerging, nascent “counterculture” as he was of mainstream American society, MIC. It also reveals a lot about a part of human nature where pessimists, cynics like to intellectually degrade, castigate people to feel as bad and hopeless as they are.

It it’s not a ‘both sides’ idea - it’s saying capital L liberals also aren’t doing enough- more humanism is needed not inert moderation

 

[Saintman2884]

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Always thought it was CSNY but net says Joni Mitchell?

It was a cover of Mitchell’s “Woodstock” as Mitchell couldn’t attend nor play at Woodstock Festival due to a prior TV show engagement she had to honor.


My God, though, doesn’t it always seem to go that maybe she didn’t realize what she could’ve had until it had gone or past, at least Max Yasgur’s descendants didn’t tear down paradise to make a parking lot.

 

[Saintman2884]

It it’s not a ‘both sides’ idea - it’s saying capital L liberals also aren’t doing enough- more humanism is needed not inert moderation

Dylan could be just as critical of them as much as he criticized reactionaries or social conservatives. As an artist, while it’s certainly a given to be lumped in or perceived as supporting progressive, left-wing causes just as Hemingway, Kafka, Sartre, Orwell, Robeson did during the 1930’s and 40’s with Spanish Civil War, involvement in WWII, or labor movements, sometimes you have to CALL OUT YOUR SIDE’s BULLshirt when they go too far and too many Western intellectuals are eager and willing to overlook or ignore USSR’s Stalinist or Maoist transgressions when they commit gross human rights violations like with the Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward, Killing Fields, Chinese forcibly arresting, detaining and incarcerating hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese Muslims in western China in “concentration camps”.


Orwell witnessed it in mid-late 1930’s Spain and Catalonia as an international fighter and war correspondent and he wouldn’t censor himself nor keep him mouth shut just to appease the Cambridge 5 leftist crowds, in “Homage to Catalonia”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “Animal Farm”, and “1984”. Dylan was more then willing to do the same, others, like Steely Dan, in the early 70’s did the same, too in a song some have argued was a cynical,”real world” response to Lennon’s utopian peace song “Imagine”.



Unconditional, uncompromising brutal honesty when the truth has to be told, not when it’s just convenient mostly for “your side” or “my side”.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Dylan could be just as critical of them as much as he criticized reactionaries or social conservatives. As an artist, while it’s certainly a given to be lumped in or perceived as supporting progressive, left-wing causes just as Hemingway, Kafka, Sartre, Orwell, Robeson did during the 1930’s and 40’s with Spanish Civil War, involvement in WWII, or labor movements, sometimes you have to CALL OUT YOUR SIDE’s BULLshirt when they go too far and too many Western intellectuals are eager and willing to overlook or ignore USSR’s Stalinist or Maoist transgressions when they commit gross human rights violations like with the Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward, Killing Fields, Chinese forcibly arresting, detaining and incarcerating hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese Muslims in western China in “concentration camps”.


Orwell witnessed it in mid-late 1930’s Spain and Catalonia as an international fighter and war correspondent and he wouldn’t censor himself nor keep him mouth shut just to appease the Cambridge 5 leftist crowds, in “Homage to Catalonia”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “Animal Farm”, and “1984”. Dylan was more then willing to do the same, others, like Steely Dan, in the early 70’s did the same, too in a song some have argued was a cynical,”real world” response to Lennon’s utopian peace song “Imagine”.



Unconditional, uncompromising and brutal honesty when the truth has to be told, not when it’s just convenient mostly for “your side” or “my side”.

I challenge you to go a week without invoking Stalin

 

[UpHere]

It was Friday night, and as the show let out
I was rolling all over around on the ground

Under the lights of the marquee
At the Liberty Theater I was skinnin' my knees
I was breakin' my nose on the fist of a Croat
Smashin' my balls on the boot of one, too

Loosened my teeth, but I didn't really know it
I was bleedin' on someone and dreamin' of you

Ike Reilly Assassination

 

[Saintman2884]

I challenge you to go a week without invoking Stalin

Tell me why and give me a good reason other than me mentioning him hurts some side”s arguments. You can’t erase or dismiss how early 20th Century Western intellectuals ignored, naively unaware or were blissfully ignorant of his crimes and for that, I hammer them hard and often. Because their generation supported at least the ideals of what they idiotically believed the classless, stateless anarchic-communist society USSR brutally aspired to be (where belief in God and religion itself was seen as ridiculous, asinine bullshirt and outlawed, too) and didn’t admit too until decades later, long after his death.



And honestly, Guido, the last time I even mentioned Stalin was about 5-6 months ago, maybe longer into last year. Usually it never comes up when I discuss issues or events in the Ukraine war thread (and why should it, frankly?)



If I can avoid politically-themed threads like these or they turn out like this, I’ll try my best and to meet you halfway, and not mention the Bloody Red Czar who had his Kremlin psychiatrist murdered not too long after he diagnosed him as a paranoid, malignant narcissist with megalomaniacal tendencies.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Tell me why and give me a good reason other than me mentioning him hurts some side”s arguments. You can’t erase or dismiss how early 20th Century Western intellectuals ignored, naively unaware or were blissfully ignorant of his crimes and for that, I hammer them hard and often. Because their generation supported at least the ideals of what they idiotically believed the classless, stateless anarchic-communist society USSR brutally aspired to be (where belief in God and religion itself was seen as ridiculous, asinine bullshirt and outlawed, too) and didn’t admit too until decades later, long after his death.



And it’s not just Stalin, either. Mao’s domestic policies led to widespread famine, starvation, malnutrition, millions of deaths with the Great Leap Forward, endorsed, condoned mob violence with the Cultural Revolution. I say these things because I do sincerely believe their are some on the left, mostly the far left, that still romanticize these idiots beliefs, principles, and would blindly execute these despots commands and orders today.



If I can avoid politically-themed threads like these or they turn out like this, I’ll try my best and to meet you halfway, and not mention the Bloody Red Czar who had his Kremlin psychiatrist murdered not too long after he diagnosed him as a paranoid, malignant narcissist with megalomaniacal tendencies.

But it doesn’t hurt a side’s argument - it just kneecaps whatever point you try to make - you go from one to Stalin in the blink of a sentence and it becomes too easy to dismiss what you have to say
I enjoy reading your thoughts but when you go to Stalinism so readily so often it just becomes your white whale

 

[Saintman2884]

But it doesn’t hurt a side’s argument - it just kneecaps whatever point you try to make - you go from one to Stalin in the blink of a sentence and it becomes too easy to dismiss what you have to say
I enjoy reading your thoughts but when you go to Stalinism so readily so often it just becomes your white whale

Well, okay I just thought Dylan was being brutally honest in “It’s Alright Ma” about American society, consumerism, hypocrisies and vagaries that get ignored.


Dylan also had a way in writing and composing songs where he’s not always pointing fingers, claiming ultimate, self-righteousness, smugness that he and his types are better than you idiotic dolts listening. Sometimes, maybe most, he did because it was warranted, a few times, maybe not so much.

 

[Jeff]

For me it’s probably been Coldplay’s The Scientist since my wife passed back in ‘22. I don’t if I would have used favorite until recently. Sometimes you need music to help you feel or be a time machine, and The Scientist hits that spot.

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets and ask me your questions
Oh, let's go back to the start
Running in circles, coming up tails
Heads on a science apart
Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start
I was just guessing at numbers and figures
Pulling the puzzles apart
Questions of science, science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
But tell me you love me, come back and haunt me
Oh and I rush to the start
Running in circles, chasing our tails
Coming back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Oh, it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start.

 

[Saintman2884]

For me it’s probably been Coldplay’s The Scientist since my wife passed back in ‘22. I don’t if I would have used favorite until recently. Sometimes you need music to help you feel or be a time machine, and The Scientist hits that spot.

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you, tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets and ask me your questions
Oh, let's go back to the start
Running in circles, coming up tails
Heads on a science apart
Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start
I was just guessing at numbers and figures
Pulling the puzzles apart
Questions of science, science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
But tell me you love me, come back and haunt me
Oh and I rush to the start
Running in circles, chasing our tails
Coming back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Oh, it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start.

First off, let me say I’m extremely sorry to hear of your wife’s passing. As someone who lost his brother to an auto-immune disease last July, the pain and intensity of the loss you feel when losing a spouse or a close loved one.


But, if you like Coldplay, tell me you like their song “Clocks”?

 

[tenordas]

Dig Me (King Crimson):
It's here I sit and rust amid this ruin and rancour like tyre irons
Toothy grills and car parts before me... the acid rain floods my
Floorboard, burns my pores and rots my upholstery
Once I was worshipped, polished magnificently, now I lay in decay by the dirty
Angry bay
I'm ready to leave
I wanna be out of here
I'm ready to rot away
I don't wanna die in here
I'm ready to rot
My skin is metallic now, no longer an elegant powder blue
My body unhinged and sleeping in the jungle of motor block manifolds and metal relics
What was deluxe becomes debris, I never questioned loyalty
But this dead end demolishes the dream of an open highway
I'm ready to leave
I wanna be out of here
I'm ready to rot away
I don't wanna die in here
I'm ready to rot
Dig me...
But don't...
Bury me

 

[Madmarsha]

.... at least Max Yasgur’s descendants didn’t tear down paradise to make a parking lot.

Ol' Max sold his farm and moved to Marathon, FL and was dead by 1973 at the age of 53.

 

[Madmarsha]

Kinda like that last scene in Field of Dreams, if I'm not crying by this verse, you'll know I'm dead:


On the day old Curtis died nobody came to pray
Ol' preacher said some words and they chunked him in the clay
Well he lived a lifetime playin' the black man's blues
And on the day he lost his life that's all he had to lose
Play me a song Curtis Loew, hey Curtis Loew
I wish that you was here so everyone would know
People said you were useless them people all were fools
'Cause Curtis you're the finest picker to ever play the blues

 

[tenordas]

The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) - Tom Waits:
The piano has been drinking, my necktie is asleep
And the combo went back to New York, the jukebox has to take a leak
And the carpet needs a haircut, and the spotlight looks like a prison break
And the telephone's out of cigarettes, and the balcony is on the make
And the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking...
And the menus are all freezing, and the light man's blind in one eye
And he can't see out of the other
And the piano-tuner's got a hearing aid, and he showed up with his mother
And the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking
As the bouncer is a Sumo wrestler cream-puff casper milktoast
And the owner is a mental midget with the I.Q. of a fence post
'Cause the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking...
And you can't find your waitress with a Geiger counter
And she hates you and your friends and you just can't get served without her
And the box-office is drooling, and the bar stools are on fire
And the newspapers were fooling, and the ash-trays have retired
'Cause the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking
The piano has been drinking, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me

 

[HoustonSaint68]

Kinda like that last scene in Field of Dreams, if I'm not crying by this verse, you'll know I'm dead:


On the day old Curtis died nobody came to pray
Ol' preacher said some words and they chunked him in the clay
Well he lived a lifetime playin' the black man's blues
And on the day he lost his life that's all he had to lose
Play me a song Curtis Loew, hey Curtis Loew
I wish that you was here so everyone would know
People said you were useless them people all were fools
'Cause Curtis you're the finest picker to ever play the blues

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s lyricism is highly underrated. What it lacks in grace, it makes up for in clear-eyed human observation.