Let's nitpick some lyrics

I stand corrected!

now you're going to tell me that they usually have snow there in December....

 

Interesting interpretation. I always figured he would rather see her dead than for HER to be with another man. Didn't think Lennon was being homophobic just a little psychopathic.

 

No, but nearby Kenya gets some. Altitude training, my friend . . .

 

It was Emelio who posted this, not Jack.

Now, THAT'S ironic.

 

Yeah. I can't see any other interpretation. John was just a Jealous Guy.

 

Hey, you're right! Never thought of that one.

 

Ok, what's that line in Elvis' "The Next Step Is Love", the one about eating last week's cake or something like that. Fine lyrics otherwise but that line sounds something McCartney would come up with.

 

But we’ve yet to taste the icing on the cake
That we’ve been baking with the past


Someone left the cake out in the rain. . .

 

I don't think anyone is suggesting the line should be or is intended to be interpreted that way -- just that it's bad grammar that gives it an unintentional meaning.

 

Heart's 'Strong, Strong Wind' has the line: And It would take a strong, strong wind / To take me from your arms again

Basically this means I'll never leave you again unless it's for someone really hot.

 

That's the line. I guess I have hard time believing Elvis didn't eat the icing on the cake....

 

There's a song sung by Dinah Washington that has a very suggestive lyric, but I've never been sure if it was intentional by the songwriters or not. The song is 'Don't Hold it Against Me' and it concludes with:

'Cause if you hold it against me, baby
I can make it hard for you.

Now Dinah's songs have often had suggestive lyrics, but they've always been blatently obvious and humourous (see 'Big Long Slidin' Thing' for Pete's sake), but this time it's not humourous (except to the degree that she makes it so, and in its unintentionality) and it only occurs at the end of the song, undermining an otherwise serious song.

(sidebar: Japanese releases often had a university English major transcribe the lyrics, the results of which can be quite humourous. In this very song, Dinah sings, 'I'm leaving you baby but please don't bear a grudge/come on be sensible about it/let your conscious be your judge.' What the transcription says is: 'I'm leaving you baby but please don't bear a girl/come on be sensible about it/let your conscious be your jerk.' )

Anyway....and then there's Lennon's 'But it's so hard. It's really hard. Sometimes I feel like going down.'

 

That reminds me of that other song:

"If I said you had a beautiful body,
would you hold it against me?"

Clever! Isn't it?

 

We're four pages in and no-one's mentioned the king of 'em all, ya'll:

Ob-La-Di
Ob-La-Da
Life Goes On
Bra
La-La
How The Life Goes On

Yeh...right

 

Technically, not a McCartney line. Paul new someone (from Hamburg, IIRC) that use to say that line (expression, if you will) all the time. It somehow stuck in Paul's mind and he wrote a song around it.

 

Well, I doubt "Mr. or Ms. Hamburg" received the royalties, so I'm afraid Sir Paul is going to have to live with this lyrical milestone...

 

I agree! It was Paul that still wrote the song around that saying. So...the blame is still on him...and the royalties!

 

"hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.............."

On a tambourine ????

EDIT Whoops! someone already did this one !

How about the CSN track After The Dolphin:

"At the Dolphin the beer flowed like wine" !!!!

 

Not from Hamburg, this time we Germans are not to blame ! It was this Desmond raggae dude from London the story goes, Paul used to know him from clubbing. And the guy kept saying the same line over and over again, and as Paul always was looking for some "hot" expressions to build his songs around he "borrowed" this line... But anyway, to bitch about Paul's nonsense lyrics is kind of lame. We know that he did a lot of them, but who cares... IMO, it's more funny to look for unintentional double meanings.

 

Already mentioned in post #12:

 

Alright. Anytime you're ready

 

Shania Twain "I feel like a woman"
What do you want today? Well, I feel like a woman. Makes me wonder if her marriage is a ruse

 

I stand correct! Thanks for the heads up. I new the line came from somebody that Paul knew. Hamburg sounded right at the time.

 

Uhhhh--no, mentioning Keats and Plant together was not an attempt to compare their respective literary merits. But my point was that a literary technique, when used in the context of a supposedly "high culture" work gains respectability. However, when a rock star applies that same technique, the assumption is, too often, that he doesn't use language precisely enough.

But just for the record:

1) John Keats is the man. He may not have written about the "darkest depths of Mordor," but if you read poems like "La Belle Dame Sans Mercy" or "The Eve of St. Agnes," they would sound pretty tasty as set to music on Led Zep IV.

2) Plant's wordsmithery is just fine, too. (Plus, he rocks harder than Keats.)