In what way does a shot in the dark beat a walk in the park and how does it make you feel alright exactly?

[Barking Spiders]

I need to know. All explanations gratefully received.  So, more examples please of lyrics that are utter nonsensical ballcocks and what your own interpretations are. I'll start with the entire lyric of Jean Genie. The song is almost as old as I am and to this day I've haven't a firkin clue what it's about except Bowie must've been out of his tree on 'ludes, mescalin, Charlie or whatever his poison of choice was.

[Grimalkin]

One man's meat is another man's poison, anyway:

 

"I smell like I sound, I'm lost and I'm found
And I'm hungry like the wolf..."

[police squad]

I drive a Rolls Royce, because it's good for my voice

[yorks5stringer]

Maybe it's a metaphor?

[ricksterphil]

46 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

I need to know. All explanations gratefully received.  So, more examples please of lyrics that are utter nonsensical ballcocks and what your own interpretations are. I'll start with the entire lyric of Jean Genie. The song is almost as old as I am and to this day I've haven't a firkin clue what it's about except Bowie must've been out of his tree on 'ludes, mescalin, Charlie or whatever his poison of choice was.

 

...from Rolling Stone

 

The music to “The Jean Genie” was inspired by Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man”; Bowie wrote the song’s lyrics in the New York City apartment of model-actress Cyrinda Foxe, then a publicist for his management company and later married to David Johansen of the New York Dolls and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. But the actual subject of the song was Iggy Pop, or at least a fictionalized version of him, Bowie said. The lyrics were about somebody who “sits like a man but he smiles like a reptile.” The title of the song was an homage to French novelist/dramatist Jean Genet – Bowie has told different stories over the years whether the reference was unconscious or deliberate – while the line “He’s so simple-minded, he can’t drive his module” would, in turn, inspire the name of the band Simple Minds.

 

as you say, probably written while out of his box on some recreational chemical or other

 

[BigRedX]

53 minutes ago, police squad said:

I drive a Rolls Royce, because it's good for my voice

 

Written by a man who never learned to drive.

[fretmeister]

"Isn't it ironic?"

 

No Alanis. Nothing in your song is.

[fretmeister]

Closets of my mind destroyed, as I enter outward from a void
Corpses white have strapped me down, I rise above then fall
Tactual hallucination, cockroaches infest the wall.

 

 

Nonsense lyrics, but actually work quite well as a rhythmic device.

 

 

[cetera]

"Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball" - Oasis

 

Actually, almost anything from them...

 

[police squad]

48 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

Written by a man who never learned to drive.

well spotted

[mikel]

Almost the whole Yes back catalogue. And I love their music. 

[Grimalkin]

"Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof..."

 

 

[lowdown]

Max Romeo - Wet Dream.

"When pressed, Max Romeo insisted the song was about fixing a leaky roof, but few outside of the Carpenter's Union believed him".

 

 

Lie down girl let me push it up, push it up, lie down
Lie down girl let me push it up, push it up, lie down

Look how you're big and fat, like a big, big shot
Give the crumpet to big foot Joe, give the craddock to me

Lie down girl let me push it up, push it up, lie down
Lie down girl let me push it up, push it up, lie down

 

 

[MacDaddy]

Well, a shot in the dark, is one step away from you, while a walk in the park, is a step in the dark, and it's the things that you do, that will make me feel alright.

Hope that helps 😜

[Old Horse Murphy]

"Take your seaside arms and write the next line"

 

🤷‍♂️

[Nail Soup]

For me, making sense is not a requirement for lyrics. It can be good to leave a bit (or a lot, or everything!) to the imagination. Don't need to be too literal.

That said, I do like songs with easily penetrable lyrics too.

 

[Shaggy]

An unoriginal choice, but prize for most random lyrics has to go to Procol Harem’s “Whiter shade of pale”.   Of course everyone was high on the good stuff back then, so it probably made more sense.

Fiction Factory’s “Feels like heaven” comes a close second.    Both great songs, mind.

[Clarky]

Meaningless title (and awful song):

 

"Born to be alive"

 

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by Clarky

[fleabag]

Not much out there weirder than Zappa

 

She had that Camarillo brillo
Flamin' out along her head
I mean her Mendocino bean-o
By where some bugs had made it red

She ruled the Toads of the Short Forest
And every newt in Idaho
And every cricket who had chorused
By the bush in Buffalo

She said she was a Magic Mama
And she could throw a mean Tarot
And carried on without a comma
That she was someone I should know

 

She had a snake for a pet and an amulet
And she was breeding a dwarf but she wasn't done yet
She had gray-green skin, a doll with a pin
I told her she was awright but I couldn't come in

And so she wandered through the door-way
Just like a shadow from the tomb
She said her stereo was four-way
An' I'd just love it in her room

Well, I was born to have adventure
So I just followed up the steps
Right past her fuming incense stencher
To where she hung her castanets

She stripped away her rancid poncho
An' laid out naked by the door
We did it till we were un-concho
An' it was useless any more

Is that a real poncho? I mean is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Hmmm, no foolin'...

[NikNik]

Sounds like an Ed Straker reference. 

[pigface]

5 hours ago, fleabag said:

Not much out there weirder than Zappa

One of my favourite songs. It's not particularly weird, though, IMO. Just a story about a weird woman 😄

[Grimalkin]

"Pigeons in flight
I wanna see you tonight
I want to hold you
If I may be so bold to
And tell you some things that you like..."

[Barking Spiders]

21 hours ago, MacDaddy said:

Well, a shot in the dark, is one step away from you, while a walk in the park, is a step in the dark, and it's the things that you do, that will make me feel alright.

Hope that helps 😜

 Yes thank you, now I get it 😁

 

11 hours ago, Nail Soup said:

For me, making sense is not a requirement for lyrics. It can be good to leave a bit (or a lot, or everything!) to the imagination. Don't need to be too literal. 

 Hmm, but any no talent tack can write absolute meaningless rhyming couplet ballcocks as Noel Gallagher has demonstrated a hundred or so times. Radiox describe him as a songwriting genius!!!! WTF...https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/liam-gallagher/which-oasis-songs-did-liam-gallagher-write/

[Grimalkin]

"From the early 1970s, David Bowie used cut-ups to create some of his lyrics. In 1995 he worked with Ty Roberts to develop a program called Verbasizer for his Apple PowerBook that could automatically rearrange multiple sentences written into it."

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique#:~:text=The cut-up technique (or,Burroughs.

 

Write them on bits of paper and put them into a hat.

[Grimalkin]

"The phone, the TV and the news of the world
Got in the house like a pigeon from hell, oh-oh..."

 

More pigeons. From hell this time.