You're browsing all posts tagged Unlikely Lyrics

Sullivan Street Across from the Medical Center

Consider Billy Joel’s antimaterialistic #17 single “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” specifically Sergeant O’Leary, who is trading in his Chevy for a Cadillac-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack: And if he can’t drive with a broken back / At least he can polish the fenders Let’s leave aside the question of how Sergeant O’Leary is walking the beat or working as […]

posted 26 August 2013 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

Through the Walls You Hear the City Groan

Where is “Bullet the Blue Sky” set? I always assumed the United States–mostly because of the way Bono keeps saying “Outside is America.” But just recently I tracked on the lyric in Bono’s rap: You take the staircase to the first floor And thought it was an amusing Irish mistake–here in the U.S.A., pal, we […]

posted 22 March 2012 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments

Where Angels Fear to Tread

From “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” the 1983 chart-topper by Yes: Look before you leap / And don’t you hesitate at all Listen, Jon Anderson, I am perfectly willing to follow your commands down to the last detail, but you need to make up your mind.

posted 13 December 2011 in Tasty Bits. 1 comment

Some Funky Cosmonaut

Consider the final verse of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush,” in which mankind trundles onto “silver spaceships” and disembarks for a location more hospitable to human life than planet Earth: Flying Mother Nature’s silver seed to a new home in the Sun The Sun? Really? Not the Moon, or Mars, or even another galaxy? […]

posted 18 January 2011 in Tasty Bits. 3 comments

Spanish Johnny Proves Slow on the Uptake

From Bruce Springsteen’s “Incident on 57th Street”: Puerto Rican Jane, oh, won’t you tell me, what’s your name? Dude, you know her name. It’s “Puerto Rican Jane.”

posted 27 September 2010 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

The Return of Unlikely Lyrics

In the Beatles’ “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” Paul McCartney sings: And so I quit the police department / And got myself a steady job Leaving aside the overuse of “and” to fill out the lines–how does McCartney think police employment works? Seasonally? Piecework? What kind of crazy freelance police work is the […]

posted 20 September 2010 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments

The Rainbow Connection

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

Moving Violation

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

The Nylon Metaphor

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

High Technology

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