Songs with strange or incredibly abstract lyrics

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Um… “This Side”, anyone? :bounce:

You dream of colors that have never been made,
You imagine songs that have never been played.
They will try to buy you and your mind.
Only the curious have something to find.
 
How about Leonard Cohen?
Now in Vienna there’s ten pretty women
There’s a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There’s a lobby with nine hundred windows
There’s a tree where the doves go to die
There’s a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws
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Edwin
 
I know this is probably far too obscure a song for anyone but myself to find amusing, but here it is anyway. 🙂 From Sonata Arctica’s “My Dream’s But a Drop of Fuel for a Nightmare”:

I’m skating with a seal,
the tarantula, the fly, the broken ring
the dusty little flea
an ugly giant, a disappointed child

here comes a rabid snake
the broken violin, a wild ballet
Shakespeare and company
refuse to kill the kitten scratching me…
 
In the movie The Commitments, the classic movie how new bands form and self-destruct, the band’s founder is in his Church in Dublin, up in the organ loft with a friend discussing the band while the founder/manager is practicing his assigned pieces–when the discussion gets the manager distracted and he starts seguing into Procul Harem’s Whiter Shade of Pale–both the manager and his friend start singing the lyrics…

"…one of 16 vestal virgins
that was headed for the coast…"

and of course, the young priest walking by just smiles and says “You never, I never understood that lyric”
 
Galnextdoor said:
One song I never quite figured out was People are strange by the Doors.
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It’s about loneliness and alienation. Might be more evident in the cover by Echo and the Bunnymen.

Anyway, I see you all, and raise you:

The Legendary Pink Dots, anything and everything…
Poppy Day:
We’ll remember when that wreath is just a crown of thorns to drape around your helmet - hide out anywhere at all. We’ll remember when you’re no more than a poem on a grave - a sideline for the guy who writes the birthday cards but never signs his name. He’s got your number, feels your pain… though you’re smiling from the mantel-piece and you’ve got your rifle trained. It’s pointing at the T.V. Shall we tell you when to fire? There’s a programme we all hate… it’s not a late show so you won’t be tired. We remember how you loved the war films, and hid behind the sofa throwing balls of silver paper. We remember. We remember. We’ve got our poppies on. We hear the clock chime out eleven. We remember, we remember it’s Poppy Day. (You shall not grow old!)

Waving At The Aeroplanes:
Waving at the aeroplanes… See my hand swing left swing right. Milk white in the dawn sky, dives to the brown earth. Bound to an arc that only I can see. See me crouch on the grass, on the concrete; eyes slit tight, fist clenched and bleeding. Faith moves mountains headfirst into seas. Waving at the aeroplanes… make them crash crash crash on the runway, crash on the motorway. I’ll show them how it pays to just wave back… Wave back to me to me… They crack in the dawn, get wrapped in the cloud shroud. It’s raining limbs, white wings and aspirins. Pitter patter scatter brains and burn… Fly me!!!

Idiot Flesh, Diggity Cow and the Dandy Mr Clyde
Clever, clever, 2 clever 3 4 5. Having spent all morning warming up the sing-song dog paddle, who would have thought they could look so good times are coming down, side winder should know ‘cause I saw him flinch, he likes it, all the way home, he does, holding up the Frisbee licking carpet baggers, dog breath dog breath diggity dig, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your big wig nun catcher. Cow. Big bad cow. The clowning glory of the freeloading industry, soaked through, run down, pent up, and losing badly. Yes. No. Hold on mister. You can’t place the corners on the edges of the dining room tank battle. Frantic door babies catch cold quicker than you can, Mr. Clyde. But don’t tell me. Tell Richard, who can hold his own but doesn’t realize it yet. Fool. Snack boy. With the loaded banjo American midgets, pierced below the wasting ladle, hocus poked through the jocular fainting of a girl no bigger than a thumbtack, jack, dandelion, worm, god, 1 clever losing 2 badly 3 dog 1 2.

Tom Waits, The Piano Has Been Drinking:
cause the bouncer is a Sumo wrestler
cream puff casper milk toast
and the owner is a mental midget
with the I.Q. of a fencepost
cause the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking…

And I got more!
 
CTA1967 said:
Um… explanation, please? 😛
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‘Horse’ is sometimes used as a slang term for heroin, depending on where you are. Withdrawal, the time it takes for an addict’s body to begin producing endorphins (the hormone mimicked by opiate derivatives) again, takes a week or so – nine days isn’t particularly unusual if you’ve acquired a good-sized habit. And opiates, a class of drug which includes heroin, are the outright best painkillers known to humanity.

As far as withdrawal songs go, it isn’t as obvious as ‘Cure For Pain’ by Morphine, but then that one’s a gimme.
 
Have a friend who is a massive Pink Floyd fan.

Always loved ‘Careful with that axe, Eugene’. Certainly a weird-a@@ song in all respects, but a gem nonetheless. Lyrics go:

Down, down. Down, down. The star is screaming.
Beneath the lies. Lie, lie. Tschay, tschay, tschay.
[sound of blowing into the microphone]
[light screaming]
Careful, careful, careful with that axe, Eugene.
[very loud and prolonged scream]
[another very loud and prolonged scream]
[blowing into the microphone]
[light screaming]
The stars are screaming loud.
Tsch.
Tsch.
Tsch.
[low groaning sound]
 
What about some of those Simon and Garfunkel songs?

Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again, because of visions…:eek:
(softly creeping? left their scenes while I was sleeping):bigyikes:

They had some other ones that use to freak me out too.
 
I Am The Walrus

Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.
Corporation t-shirts, stupid bloody Tuesday.
Man you’ve been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.
I am the eggman, wooo
They are the eggman, wooo
I am the Walrus, goo goo goo joob:shrug:
 
CTA1967 said:
Um… explanation, please? 😛
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“Horse” was a code word for heroin…being in the desert meant drying out…“out of the rain”…without heroin…“three day in the desert sun”…average number of days before a junkie begins to feel better…“the story it told of a river that flowed made me sad to think it was dead” longing for heroin…and so on.

Some of the lyrics are just fillers.

John
 
I imagine one of those filler lines includes “the heat was hot”? 😛
 
NoobSalad41 said:
After listening to Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” (yes, more prog) I remembered the line, “Salvation a la mode, and a cup of tea.”

:confused:

Weird enough song anyway…
“Sitting on a park bench. Eying little girls with bad intents.” :bigyikes:

Iron Maiden’s “Revelations” is one of their few songs where I’m completely lost.

Still trying to decipher Dream Theater’s “Metropolis” (Pt. 1)
(I figured out the album. 😃 )

I was tempted to include soulja boy, but then I remembered this was a thread on music 😉
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Well don’t know about the other two songs, but Aqualung is about a dirty old man.
 
Galnextdoor said:
When I was a kid, I used to sing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. It had absolutely no meaning to me, but my mom heard me singing it one day and forbade me from singing it again.:o
She thought it had some vulgar underlying meaning.🤷

Has anybody ever heard what it is supposed to mean? I still don’t understand it to this day.

Another song my mother wouldn’t let us sing was Let it be. She said that mother mary in the song was marijuana. She about croaked one day when she heard it in church.:bigyikes:
She was so upset that I thought she was going to blow a gasket. I know it wasn’t appropriate to sing in church, but I really liked the song. When I was an adult, I heard that it was about McCartney’s mother.🙂 Her name was Mary and died when he was in his teens. Whenever he struggled with something in life, he would dream that his mother would come to help him. My mother still refuses to believe that.🤷
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That’s like one time my dad and I were driving to go to the store, and the song,Lola by the Kinks came on. My dad didn’t turn it off, but he said it was a dirty song.I later realized he was right, because in the song it says, I just can’t understand why she looks like a woman but talks like a man. And then later the guy and Lola hook up, and lola is really a drag queen.
 
Ghoti said:
I find the National Anthems make no sense.

I watched a hockey game once, they played the Canadian one (in French) and the American. Here are the lyrics. What is the composer trying to say here?

U.S.:

*Jose! Can you?
“¡Si!”
Buy the darn surly light!
Matzoh prob’ly inhaled,
Abbatoir listless cleaning.
Ooze bra-straps and rice tars
Rue the berry! Let’s fight!
Or their Ampere’s sweet Watts,
Worse, or gallons leak steamy.
End Iraq, it’s read clear,
The Pom’s first thing in Eire,
Gay frou-frou denied –
Fanny Flagg was still th’ heir.
Jose! Is that spar-spank’d
Cabana yet weighed
Overland or the breeze
Or the whole 'nother braid?
*

“O Canada”, French version with translation

O Canada! Terreur de nos soyeux!
O Canada! Terror of our silky ones!
T’enfant est cinq!
Your child is five!
Lafleur est glorieux!
Guy is a great hockey player!
Gardons brasses, sports de le pays,
Let us guard that which is brewed, sports of the nation,
Île, c’est porté; l’accrois.
Island, it is carried; grow it.
Ton histoire est une poupée,
Your story is a puppet
de poubelle-lion (ex-loir)
of the trashcan-lion (formerly an edible dormouse)
Et ta fêleur
And your cracker
Deux fois trempée
Two times dipped,
Protégera nos foyers et nos doigts.
Protect our vestibules and fingers.

Some guy named Monty Greene was singing. I find the imagery a bit obscure… :hmmm:
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WOW! THAT WAS HILARIOUS! I FELL ON THE FLOOR! thx.😃
 
Carpet of the Sun by Renaissance

Come along with me
Down into the world of seeing
Come and you’ll be free
Take the time to find the feeling
See everything on it’s own
And you’ll find you know the way
And you’ll know the things you’re shown
Owe everything to the day

[Chorus:]
See the carpet of the sun
The green grass soft and sweet
Sands upon the shores of time
Of oceans mountains deep
Part of the world that you live in
You are the part that you’re giving

Come into the day
Feel the sunshine warmth around you
Sounds from far away
Music of the love that found you
The seed that you plant today
Tomorrow will be a tree
And living goes on this way
It’s all part of you and me

[Chorus 2x]

See the carpet of the sun
See the carpet of the sun
See the carpet of the sun
See the carpet of the sun
 
Well from the little bit of this thread I’ve read, there’s been several mentions of Bob Dylan. But I’ll add one of my favorites: VISIONS OF JOHANNA - this is the last verse. Besides the arcane lyrics (part abstract visions, part urban bohemian), the whole thing just works musically.

The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Saying, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
"Ya can’t look at much, can ya man "
As she, herself prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.
 
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