Songs with strange or incredibly abstract lyrics

[NeedsMercy]

What a fun topic! Here are my favorites:

Lookin’ Out My Back Door by CCR:
Won’t you take a ride on the flyin’ spoon?
(I know what it means now, but not when I was a kid!)

Mellow Yellow by Donovan:
Electrical Banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze
Electrical Banana
Is bound to be the very next phase.

Macarthur’s Park by Richard Harris:
Macarthur’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh no

Anything by Led Zeppelin (and I’m a Led Head!)

Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey by Paul Mccartney and Wings:
Admiral Halsey notified me
He had to have a berth or he couldn’t get to sea
I had another look and I had a cup of tea and butter pie
(the butter wouldn’t melt so I put it in the pie)

Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary

Am I dating myself, or what? They don’t write lyrics like they did in the 60’s and 70’s anymore! Good times…

:dancing:

 

[AthenaC]

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…

Oh WOW! I laughed so hard. Haven’t seen the rest of the thread, but I just had to give you an internet high five.

 

[Ne_OrangeKnight]

Anything by Led Zeppelin (and I’m a Led Head!)

I disagree with “anything.” Well over 25% of the Zeppelin catalog is perfectly comprehensible.

Sam, the Neon Orange Knight

 

[Et_Cetera]

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.

Love this song!

 

[Song_Sparrow]

from, I think, Happy Together…not sure about the artist, sorry…
“…So happy together
How is the weather?
So happy together…”
Huh? Couldn’t they just have put another “so happy together” in there? It would have been less repetitive than a lot of today’s songs. Other than that one line, as far as I can remember, all the lines in the song make perfect sense… oh no, wait, how could I forget this one from the same song, which makes sense logically but *is *a little strange…
“If I should call you up, invest a dime…”
Well, I guess a dime was worth a little more back when that song was written, so I guess the object of the song could be happy knowing she was worth at *least *a dime to somebody. Ha ha.

 

[prodigalson2011]

When it comes to strange/abstract lyrics, no one comes close to The Mars Volta. Pick any song. The songs are part of larger narratives which, fair warning, are pretty bleak and morbid, and aren’t really obvious from the lyrics, which are sometimes so over the top that they’re almost hilarious. I’ll give a few examples:

“Roulette Dares” (about a man in a coma after a suicide attempt)

Transient jet lag, ecto mimed bison
This is the haunt of roulette dares
Ruse of metacarpi,
“Caveat emptor” to all that enter here…

Open wrists talk back again in the wounded of its skin
They’ll p(name removed by moderator)rick the witness in ritual contrition
The A.M. trinity fell upon asphyxia derailed in the rattles of…
Found its way through the cracks of a snail slouching whisper
Half-mass commute through umbilical blisters
Specter will lurk, radar has gathered
midnight nooses from boxcar cadavers

Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed,
Exoskeletal junction at the railroad delayed,
It’s because this is…

Cranial bleeding, leeches drain the living
Cursed are those who speak its name
Ruse of metacarpi,
“Caveat emptor”
to all that enter here…

Rattling the laughter, hinges splintering inside
Bludgeoned to a saddle, rang the cloister bell inside

“Cygnus Vismund Cygnus” (about a man who discovers he survived the attempted murder/forced abortion of his pregnant mother and is now seeking vengeance)

The ocean floor is hidden from your viewing lens
A depth perception languished in the night…
All my life, I’ve been sewing the wounds
But the seeds sprout a lachrymal cloud

Que vas a sufrir, salte veneno
Salte de aqui, labios temblando
Salte veneno, salte de aqui
Brincan los cuerpos, vas a sufrir

My, my, my nails peel back
when the taxidermist ruined
goose-stepped the freckling impatience
All the brittle tombs, 500 little queues
I’m splitting hairs to match the faces

Come on now

All night, I’ll hunt for you
Now let me show you what I mean…
Sangre, sonando, de rabia naci.

Now this trail don’t lie, an abortion that survived
A lineage of bastard mastication
All the severed proof, talons scratch my suit
These are the feathers that replace them

Come on now

All night, I’ll hunt for you
Now let me show you what I mean…
Sangre, sonando, de rabia naci.

Who do you trust?
Will they feed us the womb?
Chrome the fetal mirage?
Will they feed us the womb?

I found the remnants of a crescent fang
It cleaned my wing down to the bone
Umbilical syllables left to decode
There was no cradle, I can taste it

Come on now

All night, I’ll hunt for you
Now let me show you what I mean
Sangre, sonando, de rabia naci

Bring me this plague, she took a drink
Those nicotine stains on his every word
My scavenger quilt will only hide the truth
Bring me… bring me this plague.

I count the days to find what was left behind
Only these names I clutch will lead me to my home
Somehow this river marks a wrinkled hand in mine
And every day that parts the water into two
Mothers and fathers start to drown the living proof
I can’t remember these lakes of blood
Wrapped in a blanket, there sweats a cut

Who do you trust?

There’s 2 that I can somewhat make sense of… However, here are 2 more that make no sense at all:

“Eunuch Provocateur” (this one is in some way related to the story of the first song)

The Al Sirat hides
Behind a wardrobe of eunuchs
Seconds collide
'Til the Padasha scandal

The cauldrons have eyes
by way of racket and vice
A brothel’s bedpan
filled with demimonde lice
De-throned by the comatorium,
de-loused in the comatorium

The Al Sirat hides…

Tribunals installed
Now the provost’s defrocked
Labefaction is venal
My, how these tricks turn themselves
In the wake of the inquisition,
limbless answers inoculated

The Al Sirat hides…

I caught mono bobbing for barbed wire
These nasty sores of ataxia
Will feel the sting of the opiate copulation

The Al Sirat hides…

“Cut That City” (or as I like to call it, “Huh?”)

Neo-necropopulace has no reflection
Neo-caesaristic symphallic ruins
Just east of the river denial
The techs are breathing
Welcome to this neo-Tokyo

The gridlocks will warn the cromleck alarms
This bouquet of cuticles, landscape tantrums
Tramontane torching the tramontane
I’ve heard the mumbling of citadels,
shifting on a richter scale.

Neo-infidels, let’s plug them in
Neo-polygraphic trip cords
Centrocircuiphobia–the fallacy
Welcome to this neo-Tokyo.

The alleys will flow marble intercourse
Roil the pantheon of subterfuge
Tramontane torching the tramontane
This marabout isn’t untouchable
Indentured by servitude.

Tore the wings off seraphim,
fed them to the anglophiles
In this stag caberet,
the bark of buildings surged,
through the whipping volt abode
go to the lexicon you sluggard, if you will.

I don’t think you can get much stranger than that.

 

[prodigalson2011]

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!

I <3 Tom Waits. “The Piano Has Been Drinking” is one of my all time favorite songs. “The piano has been drinking, and my necktie is asleep… and the combo went back to New York, and 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, my favorite line, “And you can’t find your waitress with a geiger counter… and she hates you and your friends but you just can’t get served without her… …and the piano has been drinking… the piano has been drinking… not me.”

 

[Ne_OrangeKnight]

“If I should call you up, invest a dime…”
Well, I guess a dime was worth a little more back when that song was written, so I guess the object of the song could be happy knowing she was worth at *least *a dime to somebody. Ha ha.

At the time, a phone call from a pay phone cost a dime.

Doesn’t seem at all strange or abstract to me.

Sam, the Neon Orange Knight

 

[Song_Sparrow]

At the time, a phone call from a pay phone cost a dime.

Doesn’t seem at all strange or abstract to me.

Sam, the Neon Orange Knight

But considering that the rest of the song is all about how he wants to be “so happy together” with this person, what really is the point of mentioning the dime (besides, of course, that it fit into the meter of the song)?
I really just think it’s one of those cases where the lyricist didn’t have anything better to put in that spot.
I mean, it’s as if he wrote her a love letter and somewhere stuck in there, “oh, by the way, I invested such-and-such in the stamp for this letter”.
Oh, and I think the fact that he actually used the word “invested” is kind of strange, too.
I think the line was probably written mostly because it was the right number of syllables and rhymed, etc., but I still think it qualifies as a tad strange.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

“Balloon Man” by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians always had memorably surreal, and somewhat sinister, lyrics:

I was walking up Sixth Avenue when Balloon Man came right up to me
He was round and fat and spherical
With the biggest grin I’d ever seen

He bounced on up toward me
But before we could be introduced
He blew up very suddenly
I guess his name was probably Bruce

And I laughed like I always do
And I cried like I cried for you
And Balloon Man blew up in my hand

He spattered me with tomatoes, Hummus, chick peas
And some strips of skin
So I made a right on 44th
And I washed my hands when I got in

And it rained like a slow divorce
And I wish I could ride a horse
And Balloon Man blew up in my hand

I was walking up Sixth Avenue when
Balloon Man blew up in my face
There were loads of them on Bryant Park
So I didn’t feel out of place

There must have been a plague of them
On the TV when I came home late
They were guzzling marshmallows and
They’re jumping off the Empire State

And I laughed like I always do
And I cried like I cried for you
And Balloon Man blew up in my hand
Balloon Man blew up in my hand