What's your favorite lyric from a song?

"The Mona Lisa’s sister doesn’t smile
she tried to pose, but only
for a while
Leonardo sent her home
since then she has lived alone
with her few belongings
and a copy
of a painting of herself unhappy
she is going to burn it
when she’s ready

Chorus:

Get started...Start a fire
Get started...Start a fire

Marylin was lying all alone
with an empty bottle by the phone
Kennedy was not around
She was cold when she was found
but she’d gone were the
goddesses are sleeping
where the molten tougues
of flames are weeping
or when the angels
hearts are beating

chorus

Joan of Arc was burning at the stake
somebody had made a big mistake
She lit a cigarette
in an airport where you get
your fingers taken off
for smoking
meanwhile up the road a
factory is choking
the one’s who killed her
work there, I’m not joking

chorus...………


Graham Parker "Get Started, Start a Fire"

"God never makes mistakes
he just makes _uck ups"

"_uck Up"  Sarah Shook & The Disarmers"

Just to wet your whistles again...

"Drinking water tonight because
I drank all the whiskey this mornin’"

Sarah Shook & The Disarmers "Dwight Yoakum"

Shane McGowan is certainly one candidate for the greatest lyricist the UK has produced, but another songwriter, his one-time friend Elvis Costello (also of Irish descent like Morrissey too), has probably has put down more clever couplets and phrases than anyone.

Here's just a of the few memorable ones.


'Nice girls not one with a defect
Cellophane shrink-wrapped, so correct
Red dogs under illegal legs
She looks so good that he gets down and begs'


'She's been a bad girl.
She's like a chemical.
Though you try to stop it,
she's like a narcotic.
You wanna torture her.
You wanna talk to her.
All the things you bought for her,
putting up your temp'rature.'


'You either shut up or get cut up;
they don't wanna hear about it.
It's only inches on the reel-to-reel.
And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools tryin' to anaesthetise the way that you feel'


'And it's the damage that we do
And never know
It's the words that we don't say
That scare me so

Somehow I found myself down at the dockside
Thinking of the old days of Liverpool and Rotherhide
The transparent people who live on the other side
Living a life that is almost like suicide'


'Your body speaks much louder than your voice
You let it do the talking so I don't have any choice'


'But if your patience is exhausted and you still cannot decide
You're sitting in the garage contemplating suicide
And you have no motivation you can't even catch your breath
All of this acceleration is driving you to death'


'When I said that I was lying I might have been lying
Never let me hear you say you're not trying'


'So in this almost empty gin palace
Through a two-way looking glass
You see your Alice'


'There's a tuppeny hapenny millionaire
Looking for a fourpenny one
With a tight grip on the short hairs
Of the public imagination'

'They talked to the sister, the father and the mother
With a microphone in one hand and a chequebook in the other'


'I saw a newspaper picture from the political campaign
A woman was kissing a child, who was obviously in pain
She spills with compassion, as that young child's face in her hands she grips
Can you imagine all that greed and avarice coming down on that child's lips?'


'Two newspaper editors like playground sneaks
Running the book on which of them is going to last the week
One of them calls to me
And he says, "I know you"
"You gave me this tattoo back in '82"
"You were a spoilt child then with a record to plug"
"And I was a shaven headed seaside thug"
"Things haven't really changed that much"
"One of us is still getting paid too much"'

You're built like a car
You got a hubcap
Diamond star halo
You're dirty sweet
And you're my girl

T.Rex