A line in a song that makes you go "wow!"

Inspired by a recent post of nonsensical lyrics:
One line in a song that makes you go “huh?”

However, this is for lines or couplets or verses that stand out for their incisiveness, brilliance, emotion, humor, whatever.

A few I like:

X - Devil Doll (Exene Cervenka/John Doe): "I'd wrap her up in a bullet, shoot her 'round the world..."

White Stripes from The Same Boy You've Always Known (Jack White): "And if there's anything good about me/I'm the only one who knows..."

Johnny Winter - The Good Love (Dennis Collins): "I don't wanna wreck nobody's soul/ I just wanna Rock'n'Roll..."

 

Love that song.

 

Men Without Hats-The Same Halo, 86/87
'When I Look In Your Eyes, Only One Road To Follow'
20 years later, this simple line still hits me.

 

The Doors - L.A. Woman: 'If they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar'. Gets me all the time, even after 1000+ times listening to the song.
The Doors - The End: 'Lost in a roman wilderness of pain'. Just so evocative of a place you don't ever want to be...
The Cure - One Hundred Years: 'It doesn't matter if we all die'. What a way to start a song!

 

White Lies - To Lose My Life
Chorus: "Let's Grow Old Together And Die At The Same Time"
Preceeding verse: "He said to lose my life or lose my love
That's the nightmare I've been running from
So let me hold you in my arms a while
I was always careless as a child

And there's a part of me that still believes
My soul will soar above the trees
But a desperate fear flows through my blood
That a dead love's buried beneath the mud"

 

They are simple words, but so devastating, and they resonate with me personally...The first line of Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" always gets me in a very emotional way:

"Somethin' filled up. My heart with nothing. Someone told me not to cry."

 

"I decree today that life is simply taking
And not giving
England is mine and it owes me a living"

Morrissey on Still Ill by The Smiths.

 

A thief can only steal from you,
He cannot break your heart,
He'll never touch the precious things inside...

 

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

 

Someone's going to post it, might as well be me. I'm a little more jaded or cynical now, but at the time...….

The Beatles: "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make"

Ahhhhhh,,,good times.

 

Cast your words away upon the waves (Oasis- The Masterplan).

Lovely bit of poetry from Noel Gallagher right there, a lyricist not usually known for poetic lyrics.

 

Bob Dylan

 

The bugger in the short sleeves f**cked my wife, did it quick then split - Guts by John Cale

Some line to start a song.

 

Don't wear your heart out on your sleeve
When your remarks are off the cuff

 

David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes
"I've never done good things and I've never done bad things, I never did anything out of the blue "
That's always line that's always resonated with me.

 

"How many roads must a man walk down
Before you can call him a man".

"Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement thinking of the govt."

To many other great Dylan lines to list!

 

"She was a part of my heart
Now she's just a line in my face"

'The Trip to Pirate's Cove' by Tom Petty

 

I know that some day I'll be just the same,
Wearing an apron instead of a name.
There's nothing can change it, there's no one to blame

For the desert's a book writ in lizards and sage,
It's easy to look like an old torn out page,
Faded and cracked and discolored with age.

Written by Utah Phillips

 

These lines in “Our Anniversary” by Bill Callahan continue to transport me every time I listen to this fantastic song:

It's our anniversary and the bullfrogs
And everything that can sing is singing
Its mating song
The soil is steaming
Grass is swooning
Guns or fireworks are popping
Down in the town

Don't know if more evocative lines have ever been written. And the guns OR fireworks line kills me -- mysterious, funny, scene-setting, just wonderful!

 

“And in the eyes of a jackal I say KA-BOOM”

-Smashing Pumpkins, “X.Y.U.”


“I didn’t know whether to duck or run, so I ran.”

-Bob Dylan/Sam Shepard


“I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song.”

-Leonard Cohen

 

Bugger = Kevin Ayers?

 

Neko Case -- Middle Cyclone

This one song has several of my favorite "wow" moments. But as a Midwesterner steeped in stoicism, this couplet may be my favorite:

I can't give up acting tough
It's all that I'm made of
Can't scrape together quite enough
To ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love

 

Apparently so...

 

"We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view."

"Tangled Up in Blue" - Bob Dylan

I think of this line often. It almost seems like an oxymoron.

 

For sheer poetry and resonance, I've always loved the opening lines from "Graceland"

"The Mississippi delta was shining like a National guitar"

So much wrapped up in one line, from the location, the history and the significance, as well as the motivation for the trip in the song.