You're browsing all posts tagged Unlikely Lyrics
It took me a long time to notice this lyric, from Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough”: Just like a rainbow, you know you set me free Now, Vince Clarke has always been a goofy guy, but this is extra-silly. This is not one of the things that rainbows are traditionally good for! “Just like [...]
posted 19 October 2009 in Tasty Bits. 1 comment
Nobody ever accused Sammy Hagar of being a genius. But I would have guessed that he passed driver’s ed. Unfortunately, the opening line of “I Can’t Drive 55” is as follows: One foot on the brake and and one on the gas Not only can you not drive 55 with that technique, you can’t drive [...]
posted 28 September 2009 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet
I hadn’t heard Billy Joel’s “Pressure” in a long time: it hit #20 in 1982, but it doesn’t seem to have entered Joel’s canon of hits. So thank you, Sirius-XM ’80s channel. I thoroughly enjoyed the song this time around, even the throbbing synth sound (which sounds more dated than Joel’s ’50s pastiches on An [...]
posted 14 September 2009 in Tasty Bits. 4 comments
I don’t hear Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” as much as I used to, which is for the best, really. But it came up last week on the Sirius-XM ’80s station, and I thought of something that I never noticed twenty-four years ago–you don’t need to “install” microwave ovens. You put them on the counter [...]
posted 11 August 2009 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments
Consider, if you will, the opening lines to Air Supply’s #2 hit from 1980, “All Out of Love”: I’m lying alone, with my head on the phone / Thinking of you ’til it hurts Dude, that pain isn’t from a broken heart–it’s because you’re trying to use a telephone as a pillow.
posted 5 May 2009 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet
I recently wondered what album had the highest differential between the times I listened to before my high school graduation to times I listened to it after that. The answer, I decided, was Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut. It was one of the first three albums I ever owned, and was in heavy rotation in [...]
posted 7 April 2009 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments
Of all the songs likely to name-check the African country of Mozambique, I would have put Tom Cochrane’s catchy but lunkheaded 1991 hit “Life Is a Highway” fairly low on the list. But last week I actually paid attention to the verses, for the first time ever, and there it is: From Mozambique to those [...]
posted 16 March 2009 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet
I’ve been listening to U2′s “I Will Follow” for over 25 years (not continuously). But only recently did I pay attention to this lyric: Your eyes make a circle Two eyes, of course, make a line. So I am forced to conclude that the person whom Bono is addressing has more than two eyes. Actually, [...]
posted 7 July 2008 in Tasty Bits. 1 comment
The first installment in an irregular series of posts, highlighting some of the more improbable lyrics I run across. Writing about “Always on My Mind” got me listening to my old Pet Shop Boys albums. Generally, they hold up really well, but Introspective does have a few clunkers. Neil Tennant mispronounces “Debussy.” He fails to [...]
posted 23 June 2008 in Tasty Bits. 3 comments
