Most powerful lyrics you ever heard?

Anything fits. If it's deep, and sends a chill up your spine, it's fair game.

I'll have to go with these soul-crushing bits from Bruce Springsteen's Adam Raised a Cain:

You're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past
Well Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain
Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame
But you inherit the sins, you inherit the flames

 

More meaningful than it would seem at first glance:

Just because you find that life's not fair
It doesn't mean that you just have to grin and bear it
If you always take it on the chin and wear it
Nothing will change

Just because I find myself in this story
It doesn't mean that everything is written for me
If I think the ending is fixed already
I might as well be saying
I think that it's ok
And that's not right

-- Matilda the Musical, "When I Grow Up"

 

" People call , say : ' Beware , doll , you're bound to fall !' You thought they were all kiddin'you."

 

These lines from Joy Division's New Dawn Fades still give me chills every time I hear them:

Different colors, different shades
Over each mistakes were made
I took the blame
Directionless so plain to see
A loaded gun won't set you free
So you say

Ian, I truly hope you found peace in the end.

 

Tonight I was listening to America with my wife and I looked at her and almost teared up at the lines “I just can’t live without you, can’t you see it in my eyes?”

I’ve never ever before gotten choked up listening to America lol!!

Maybe it was the wine.

 

Reminds me of my favorite joke.
A man sitting with his wife drinking a glass of wine and says,
"Ya know... I just love ya so much; I just don't know how I could ever live without you,"
Wife says, "Oh, that's so sweet. Is that you or the wine talking?"
Guy looks up and says, "oh no, that was me talking to my wine."

 

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer’s dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

 

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose

Is one of my favourite lines.

 

Waiting Around To Die and Marie by Townes Van Zandt. Powerful and devastating.

The songs in their entirety.

 

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

 

Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you

 

Among them

"...but many brave men are returning,
back to the place where it had begun
and all our chalices are still burning,
where the devil's bones lay parching in the sun...."

Stacy Sutherland

 

I"m the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to.

If six was nine
Jimi Hendrix

 

Would type Dylan's Ballad Of Hollis Brown lyrics but they are too powerfully sad.

 

Why I should feel this way?
Why I should feel the same?
Is something I cannot say
Is something I can't explain
I feel you
Outside at the edge of my life
I see you
Walk by at the edge of my sight
Why I should follow my heart?
Why I should fall apart?
Why I should follow my dreams?
Why I should be at peace?
I feel you
Outside at the edge of my life
I see you
Walk by at the edge of my sight
I had to let you go
To the setting sun
I had to let you go
And find a way back home

 

This is the time and life that I am living
And I'll face each day with a smile
For the time that I've been given's such a little while
And the things that I must do consist of more than style
There are places that I am going
This is the only thing that I am sure of
And that's all that lives is gonna die
And there'll always be some people here to wonder why
And for every happy hello, there will be goodbye
There'll be time for you to put yourself on
Everything I've seen needs rearranging
And for anyone who thinks it's strange
Then you should be the first to want to make this change
And for everyone who thinks that life is just a game
Do you like the part you're playing

 

One of the first that comes to mind is Ani DiFranco’s Fuel. Not just the lyrics, but the delivery. Not even a top 50 artist for me, but the track is sublime.

 

YES YES YES!

Especially that first line above.

 

" all along the watchtower
princes kept the view
while all the women came and went
barefoot servants too
outside in the cold distance
a wildcat did growl
two riders were approaching
and the wind began to howl "

Robert Allen Zimmerman

 

Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

- Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot

 

Neil Young, "Like a Hurricane". Blows me away every time.

 

This verse about everybody deserving redemption always gives me the feels:

"There's a golden moon that shines up through the mist
And I know that your name can be on that list
There's no eye for an eye, there's no tooth for a tooth
I saw Judas Iscariot carrying John Wilkes Booth
He was down there by the train
Down there by the train
Down there by the train
Down there by the train
He was down there where the train goes slow"

From "Down there by the train" writen by Johnny Cash.
(I prefer the Tom Waits version).

 

The French song "Mon fils ma bataille" by Daniel Balavoine.

He is singing about his ex-wife taking him to court to get full custody of their child.
I cannot translate the full lyrics here.

Also some Jean-Jacques Goldman songs such as "La-bas", written in the 80's and still true 40y later, he basically is singing about being born in the wrong country and wanting to move "there" where people have freedom and can succeed, a female singer impersonates his wife or girlfriend asking him to stay because it is dangerous and unknown.

 

All turned quiet, I have been here before
A lonely boy hiding behind the front door
Friends have all gone home
There's my toy gun on the floor
Come back, Mum and Dad
You're growing apart, you know that I'm growing up sad
I need some attention
I shoot into the light

--Family Snapshot

 

"The Ghost of Electricity Howls in the Bones of Her face".
I WIN!