The following are collected favorite lyrics from your humble staff, contributors, and friends. While the original idea was “best lyrics of the last 10 years,” we quickly expanded it to “favoirite lyrics of the last 15 years for any possible personal or other purpose.” Was this more necessary or convenient? Only time will tell.
Zealots
The Fugees (1996)
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I slept through my Introduction to Astronomy course. It was the one “hard” science class I had to take to meet the core requirements for my very un-scientific International Relations degree. However, leave it to the Fugees to rescue me on one ID question: Parallax. Wyclef Jean spit out the answer, which actually did get me a point on the exam:
“Gaze into the sky and measure planets by Parallax
Check out the retrograde motion, kill the notion
Of biting and recycling and calling it your own creation.”
But it’s the hard-hitting anthropological critique from Lauryn Hill, one of the best MCs of all time, which vaults Zealots into my favorite three.
“So while you’re fuming, I’m consuming
Mango juice under Polaris
You’re just embarrassed
Cuz it’s your last Tango in Paris
And even after all my logic and my theory,
I add a ‘motherfucker’ so you ignorant niggers hear me.”
I hear the last couplet as a devastating critique of African-American culture similar in nature to the views of other African-Americans such as Bill Cosby. The two lines are the most intellectually stimulating ones I’ve ever heard. Know what I’m saying, motherfucker?
Strange Fruit
Written by Abel Meeropol (1937)
Nina Simone (1989)
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I’m bending the rules with this selection. Clearly written more than 15 years ago, but still being covered today (see Nina Simone for my personal favorite), Strange Fruit paints a chilling picture of my southern roots, somehow marrying both the pictorial with the grotesque:
“Pastoral scene of the gallant South
Them big bulging eyes and the twisted mouth.”
“Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”
It’s haunting what human beings will do to one another and the “strange fruit” metaphor captures society’s innocence and complicity perfectly.
True Love Waits
Radiohead (recorded 2001)
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Radiohead never released a studio version of this incredible song, sticking with a live version on the Radiohead - I Might Be Wrong EP. Thom sings about what people will do for true love. “I’ll drown my beliefs/To have you be in peace.”
Perhaps most poignant is when he sings “True love lives/On lollipops and crisps.” The inspiration for the line came from a story Thom read in the newspaper about a child between the ages of 5-8 who was left on his/her own for a week in a house while the parents were gone on a vacation. He survived on lollipops and crisps.
The song ends with a somber plea: “Just don’t leave” sung twice, thereby achieving the same eerie effect delivered in Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, which ends “And miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep.”
Just don’t leave.
Just don’t leave.
Casimir Pulaski Day
Sufjan Stevens
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I can’t write much to equal the simple beauty of this song. So I won’t even try. It’s filled with eloquent observations like:
“In the morning through the window shade
When the light pressed up against your shoulder blade
I could see what you were reading”
and:
“I remember at Michael’s house
In the living room when you kissed my neck
And I almost touched your blouse”
Together it creates a heartbreaking tale. Told over sparse orchestration, with banjo and trumpet playing the leads, it’s truly a thing of beauty.
Wax Paper
J-Live
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It’s too bad that Brooklyn-based MC/DJ/Producer J-Live has faded into obscurity. Not that he ever blew up to begin with. J-Live is a truly gifted MC. His first two LPs (The Best Part, All of the Above) are must haves. He crafts lines like:"I write like opposite left/I left opposites right what they left off/My rights left right-wing as left to right beside me/Left my right hand man ‘cause he left what’s right/And I reserve the right to write ‘til I’m free.” He’s also up for some (limited) alphabet-twisting: “My Capacity to Massacre Crumbs/And Motive Change Most Certainly Makes you Consider me/Champion, Microphone is Consistently/Modelling Candor of Magnificence/See My Conduct is Mute to Cajolery.” However, my J-Live track of choice is “Wax Paper.” J-Live, over a stripped-down Prince Paul beat, shows us how a story is meant to be rapped. There’s not a wasted word here.
My Humps
Black Eyed Peas
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I can’t think of a single reason Fergie is famous. She has no talent. She’s not particularly attractive. She wets herself on stage. And "My Humps" was essentially the launch of her solo career. Wow. When I first heard "My Humps" I thought it was a joke. And it still plays like one. The sheer absurdity of the lyrics is beyong belief. Which is why this "song" makes my favorites list. It really takes something special to create a masterpiece of stupidity like this. Take for example:
"They say I’m really sexy,
The boys they wanna sex me.
They always standing next to me,
Always dancing next to me"
I could have quoted the entire song, but I’ll let you click on the link for more reading pleasure.
Umbrella
Rihanna
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"When the sun shines
We’ll shine together
Told you I’ll be here forever
Said I’ll always be your friend
Took an oath
I’mma stick it out ‘till the end
Now that it’s raining more than ever
Know that we still have each other
You can stand under my Umbrella"
I like this song very much and I think these lyrics are, well, simply put, cute. Shows the value of friendship in a cold, harsh, sometimes friendless world.
Secret Meeting
The National
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"I know you put in the hours to keep me in sunglasses, i know."
Not really sure what this means, but I like it a lot. I like sunglasses.
No One
Alicia Keys
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"I don’t worry cause
Everythings gonna be alright
People keep talking
They can say what they like
But all I know is everything’s gonna be alright"
I just think its uplifting and I appreciate the sentiment.
Black Superman
Jude
Listen (only part of this video is Black Superman - it goes into another totally sweet Jude song after that).
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"Here comes hot Johnny again
That boy could ride the lightning and then come home and eat again.
He’s everything I’ll never be
He’s got the feathered hair and a lot of things the ladies see.
Got him an albatross love
She wraps her wings around him, ten feet long of downy love."
I used to go to Largo or the Hotel Cafe in LA something between bi-weekly and monthly to hear these lines. He never actually played it, though, while I still lived there. I was busy getting "Out of LA" before he really started playing off of this album. Certainly, much of why I wanted to hear it was because of the time, and because of how you end up feeling in LA when you want to be somewhere else. There are disagreements about what the lyrics are, mind you, but if it really is "ten feet longer down in love," well, then it’s a stupid lyric. So I like my version better.
I’ll be Yr Bird
M. Ward
Listen (but, for the love of God, DO NOT WATCH the video. It’s terrifying).
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"I’ll sing statistics
And hide the truth
I’ll tell your dad anything that you want me to
I’ll hide your locket under the dirt
I’ll be your bird."
Again, the time of first hearing, or the actual awesomeness of the lyric? It’s telling an old story: I’d do things for you. Bryan Adams wrote a version (forever burned into my skull as about Kevin Costner), and Meatloaf oscillated near the same theme. But there’s something childish, impish and honest about this reworking of the motif that strikes me as special. The rest of the lyrics in this little short are also good; this outro just ties it up particularly nicely.
Triumph
Wu-Tang Clan/Inspectah Deck
(1997)
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The first time my friend Owen and I saw the video for Triumph on MTV we both just kind of laughed. There was nothing even resembling a chorus or a hook and it just seemed to go on forever. We pictured all of Staten Island there in the studio and somebody shouting “Anybody left back there? Keep em comin’!” When I started to get into hip-hop shortly after though, this track was one of my early favorites. And it all started with that Inspectah Deck verse. How did I not see it back then?
“I bomb atomically,
Socrates’ philosophies and hypotheses
can’t define how I be droppin these mockeries,
lyrically perform armed robbery.”
I read somewhere that after RZA heard this verse he didn’t want to put his own voice on the track, afraid he’d ruin it somehow. I don’t blame him, although I always get a special pleasure from hearing him say “perpendicular to the square” and “in particular” in the rhyme he did eventually throw down here. There are countless other Wu-Tang related lyrics I could cite, Ghostface’s entire catalogue comes to mind, but Deck sets this one right from the start and forces the rest of the Clan to step their games up.
The Rat
The Walkmen
(2004)
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“The Rat,” caught me a bit off-guard after the hazy “Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone.” The incessant driving pulse that kicks in at about 17 seconds and only briefly lets up in the middle was such a contrast to the messiness of that first album. The raspy, weathered quality to Hamilton Leithauser’s voice is perfect as he pleads:
“Can’t you hear me? I’m calling out your name!
Can’t you see me? I’m pounding on your door!”
The best moment for me is when the drums finally do take a break and Hamilton starts to sound weary after all that pleading:
“When I used to go out I would know everyone that I saw.
Now I go out alone, if I go out at all.”
The break is brief though and the drums propel him forward again, back to where he started:
“I’m sure we’ve been through this before”
For Real
Okkervil River
(2005)
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What I like most about this song is how shocked I am when I find myself singing along to lyrics that wouldn’t be at all out of place on Slayer’s Reign in Blood:
“Some nights I thirst for real blood
For real knives
For real cries
And then the flash of steel from real guns
In real life
Really fills my mind”
Except here there are no down-tunings, no grumbling or growling, and no double bass drum. The sentiment is loud and clear and, although we might not express it quite so directly ourselves, we all understand it.
So I just smile, as visions of wide-eyed psychopaths dance through my head, and Will Sheff reminds me as this track comes to an end:
“You can’t hide!
You can’t hide!
You can’t hide!”
All Tracks from Destroyer’s Rubies
Destroyer
(2006)
The greatest lyrics throughout this album are the ones that aren’t uttered. Nearly every song has a hummed or sing-songy type chorus that gives you a brief respite from Dan Bejar’s intricate and sometimes bewildering narratives. It’s almost like he’s saying “You’re right, even I’m tired of all this word-play, let’s just hum along!”
“Mmmm,
Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm,
Mmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm …….”
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Wilco
(2002)
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I’ve never really been a huge Wilco fan and I think it’s because they haven’t written enough songs like this. Just when I think I have some kind of grasp on what Jeff Tweedy is warbling about here, he drops lines like:
“Take off your band-aid ‘cause I don’t believe in touchdowns”
And although I don’t know exactly when the proper moment will be, I look forward to the day when I, too, can “assassin down the avenue.”
Absolutely Cuckoo
Magnetic Fields
(1999)
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The first of Stephen Merritt’s 69 love songs was just the sentiment for me in 1999 when I was beginning college. Looking back, I would definitely say I lacked a certain amount of swagger and my swagger-less self could really relate to getting it all on the table:
“Don’t fall in love with me yet
we only recently met
true i’m in love with you but
you might decide i’m a nut
give me a week or two to
go absolutely cuckoo”
So just in case I managed to fool you for a minute there:
“It’s only fair to tell you
I’m absolutely cuckoo”
El Scorcho
Weezer
(1996)
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This song struck the same kind of chord as Absolutely Cuckoo for me. But whereas Stephen Merritt is more or less embracing his faults, Rivers is clearly in a sort of anguish throughout Pinkerton. El Scorcho is one of those “just give me a chance!” songs:
“You won’t talk, won’t look, won’t think of me
I’m the epitome of Public Enemy
Why you wanna go and do me like that?
Come down on the street and dance with me!”
I think Pinkerton took a while to catch on because we didn’t want to admit right away that we were just like Rivers. But as he realizes, no one was going to give us a chance if we didn’t even try:
“I wish I could get my head out of the sand
‘Cause I think we’d make a good team
And you would keep my fingernails clean”
So that’s really the message to take away from this boys and girls; Mind your hygiene.
The Spark That Bled
Flaming Lips
(1999)
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I can’t get enough of the child-like wonder of the Soft Bulletin. I particularly like the positivity that this song exudes:
“I stood up and I said, yeah!
I stood up and I said, yeah!
I stood up and I said, hey! Yeah!”
This is the song you need to listen to on the way to your big interview or presentation.
“From this moment on
Blaring like a trumpet
Coming from above us and somewhere below
The confidence of knowing
Descending to relieve us of the struggle
To believe it’s so”
Come on, say it with me....
YEAH!
First things first: I was just imagining that if this were "Riley’s favorite lyrics from middle school," it would consist almost entirely of Pink Floyd laments and "The Crow" soundtrack, so… thank god for progress. Moving right along.
Grass Skirt and Fruit Hat
Themselves
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Representative excerpt:
"Dripping with face lost
I’ve the frozen meats and convention center specs
to build a mirrored phallus right here
10 miles high
for everyone to imitate"
It’s a slight shame that Doseone and Jel, who together comprise Themselves, so strenuously avoid the spotlight. Slight because it lends their fans an ever-important air of snobbery, and shameful because underneath that veneer of lo-fi nerdcore elitism exist some truly remarkable abilities. Witness Jel banging out beats on his bedroom MPC, or the frenetic editing needed to keep pace with Doseone’s manic logorrhea (sidenote: he also performs as part of labelmate cLOUDDEAD).
I happened upon Themselves a few years back, when they opened for ex-krautrockers The Notwist (on a tour which eventually led to a collaborative effort under the name 13 & God). Three nerdy guys on stage with keyboards have never been quite so entertaining. Note to "self": SEE LIVE IF POSSIBLE. RADICAL THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO YOUR HEAD.
Taken as a whole, "Grass Skirt and Fruit Hat" isn’t my favorite Themselves track (try instead the Hrvatski mix of "Good People"), but it sure is chockablock with their sonic trademarks: disturbingly fragile beats and borderline psychedelic free verse. "She blinks while roughage falls from my skirt"? Seriously? Yes. These fellas is straight-up beatniks with drum machines.
Ugh. Paste’s profile of Free Energy made me kind of hate them. So does your review. It’s this unctuous defense of good-time rock-and-roll ("we’re just here to party, and we’re awesome!") that seems more self-serving than fun-loving.
by beth on Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 09.41 pm from the entry: Foreign Born + Free Energy - The Knitting Factory (Brooklyn, NY; Mar. 12, 2010)
that inescapable feeling you are referring to, is that like when you hear something and you could have sworn you heard it before because of the nostalgic catchy quality? or is is like when you’ve heard a band exactly like said band?
great post by the way!
by paul on Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 03.15 pm from the entry: The Novel Ideas - "The Sky Is A Field" - Borrow It
Whoa! I had no idea she was enegaged. You would never know with the way she behaves! Wow!
by art on Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 09.48 am from the entry: Nikki Darlin and John McCauley: 1+1=1
This comment stream is so meta. Great review Kelly.
by chris on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 07.50 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
no prob. The whole album is excellent, combining some of the harder sonics of Los Angeles with the meat of his debut and obviously difficult to summarize in only 50 words… 
I’d say it’s on par with the debut, but better than Los Angeles.
by kelly on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.23 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
By the way, I really liked the mp3 posted. Thanks.
by Joshua H on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.17 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
WHO WROTE THIS...PUKE ! “WHO WROTE THIS...PUKE ! “Picture yourself coasting your bike past space funk palm trees, homeless harpists, vintage video arcades, electronic drum circles, and 60s psychedelic singers who’re waiting for the bus. Cosmogramma is kinda like that if someone suddenly tripped you just as you’re starting to enjoy the ride. But in a good way.””
by Joshua H on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.17 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
