knirirr Posted April 17, 2023 Share Posted April 17, 2023 I've always assumed that James Brown's lyrics don't actually mean much and are essentially a form of scat. Approx. 40 seconds into this one is a favourite example: https://youtu.be/asJpYyVROqg?t=39 It may well be that I'm simply too square to get it, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bassbiscuits Posted April 17, 2023 Share Posted April 17, 2023 Pretty much all Kasabian lyrics leave me wondering what they’re talking about. Just words that sound good together I assumed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpondonBassed Posted April 17, 2023 Share Posted April 17, 2023 Qua qua, da diddly, qua qua, da diddly... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baloney Balderdash Posted April 17, 2023 Share Posted April 17, 2023 (edited) Anyone up for interpreting this one I just wrote off the top of my head?_ The Ballad of Baloney Balderdash James Diddle had a mighty doh Dee do the Humpty Dumpty routine on a whim And everyone fall down, oh no I know my skittles Memory like scrambled eggs Yo, ho! And here we go again, like nothing Empty pockets, no way home Floating in my shuttle Shut the door, forgot my keys No way home I'm floating, dry Hope I'll die before I live My love is purple, so is like desert sand And prunes in May, the hurdled hum of hundred men Oh, man! I left the oven on Deserted cherry pie on random shuffle Deeds are done by no command No water left in my spirit bottle At ends suddenly out of rhythm without a rhyme and non the wiser Yo ho! I knew it! Here we go again... Edited April 17, 2023 by Baloney Balderdash 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGreek Posted April 17, 2023 Author Share Posted April 17, 2023 I don't listen to Oasis but I'm told that Champagne Supernova is also a load of bolllocks. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waddo Soqable Posted April 17, 2023 Share Posted April 17, 2023 1 hour ago, Baloney Balderdash said: Anyone up for interpreting this one I just wrote off the top of my head?_ The Ballad of Baloney Balderdash James Diddle had a mighty doh Dee do the Humpty Dumpty routine on a whim And everyone fall down, oh no I know my skittles Memory like scrambled eggs Yo, ho! And here we go again, like nothing Empty pockets, no way home Floating in my shuttle Shut the door, forgot my keys No way home I'm floating, dry Hope I'll die before I live My love is purple, so is like desert sand And prunes in May, the hurdled hum of hundred men Oh, man! I left the oven on Deserted cherry pie on random shuffle Deeds are done by no command No water left in my spirit bottle At ends suddenly out of rhythm without a rhyme and non the wiser Yo ho! I knew it! Here we go again... 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellzero Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 9 hours ago, Baloney Balderdash said: Anyone up for interpreting this one I just wrote off the top of my head?_ The Ballad of Baloney Balderdash James Diddle had a mighty doh Dee do the Humpty Dumpty routine on a whim And everyone fall down, oh no I know my skittles Memory like scrambled eggs Yo, ho! And here we go again, like nothing Empty pockets, no way home Floating in my shuttle Shut the door, forgot my keys No way home I'm floating, dry Hope I'll die before I live My love is purple, so is like desert sand And prunes in May, the hurdled hum of hundred men Oh, man! I left the oven on Deserted cherry pie on random shuffle Deeds are done by no command No water left in my spirit bottle At ends suddenly out of rhythm without a rhyme and non the wiser Yo ho! I knew it! Here we go again... Too bad David Bowie is dead, it could have been the follow up of Space Oddity. Just replace James Diddle by Major Tom and there you go. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Earbrass Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 (edited) "Labouring tongues we give rise to soft lies, disguised metaphors that keep us in a vast inverted stillness twice-edged with fear" (Henry Cow, Living in the Heart of the Beast) so do please bear that in mind, won't you. Edited April 18, 2023 by Earbrass 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy_L Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 On 16/04/2023 at 23:11, MacDaddy said: Carmina Burana. This should help you 3 1 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lonestar Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 Cocteau Twins Lovely stuff, but even if you could decipher the words... I have no idea. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacDaddy Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 2 hours ago, Andy_L said: This should help you It's all clear now! 😜 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_b Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 She was just seventeen, you know what I mean. A satisfying lack of pretentious arty-farty nonsense in this one. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buddster Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 On 16/04/2023 at 19:07, Gasman said: McArthur Park... That is my all time most disliked song, purely for the stupid lyrics 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baloney Balderdash Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 3 hours ago, Andy_L said: This should help you Genius! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellzero Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 4 hours ago, Andy_L said: This should help you Excellent! I'm still laughing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 Marc Bolan was another writer of obscure lyrics, from the psychedelia of Tyrannosaurus Rex ("Great horsey champer gold braid, pranced proudly in the garden villas with the Sun, dipped diving with his horned onyx, saddle shining in the black aped eyeballs of the gun. When the great apple falls, she'll be queen of your halls.") to the random lyrics of T Rex ("Metal guru, is it you? Sitting there in your armour plated chair. Metal guru, could it be, you're going to bring my baby to me? She'll be wild, you know, a rock and roll child"). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham56 Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 A Flower!??? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baloney Balderdash Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 (edited) I do actually usually have a pretty good idea of what I am actually writing when writing lyrics, but must admit I did write a fair share of nonsense for the lyrics of the songs I produced with the psychedelic electronic duo "Electro Jar" that I had together with a friend a few years back. Here are the lyrics I wrote for the 3 songs on our "Divinorum" EP: Divinorum Black and white silhouette ruins shooting up past the last winding corner of a glimpse of an eyes wide shut future hope of illusions scanning the horizon of the vast sea of time an infinite ocean in our mind breaking waves off a breathless surfer revealed as a corpse on the shore that is present before us as he struggles to breath just to drown counting one thousand waves down before we arrived to dive in free fall past the cliffs in our watery grave to survive to tell the cautionary tale of our lives spreading like drops as we hit the surface recycled infinitely through the weather system and further out beyond the Universe and concept of time and space as such. Spacefuzz 2016 Comets fill the sky satellites are drifting by a star is born another die a roaring silent cry And I'm gone... Alien and lonely moondogs howl along the Univers' a song spacing out of orbit nowhere to belong And I'm gone.... Winding wormholes withered molehills Saturn, Sirius semi circle fish gills And I'm gone... Flesh wounds dread looms Mars, Pluto, fools and dead prunes And I'm gone... Somewhere Over the Ocean (a song dictated in a dream) A broken sea of liquid electricity held in the palm of my hand a mountain view of waves inside my tiny eye of solitude, and deep down the Ocean shelf lies books of unbound wisdom, in liquid form as it comes, flowing with the water. Dive! Dive! Dive! And somewhere over the Ocean, beyond the tress, lies the dreams Somewhere over the Ocean, somewhere beneath a tree, somewhere someone is sleeping, somewhere someone is dreaming, a song dictated in a dream Somewhere over the Ocean, we sail the memory sea Sail the broken sea sail the burning sea sail the lonely sea Edited April 18, 2023 by Baloney Balderdash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SumOne Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 I just watched the Graceland ('Classic Album' series) documentary last week and he discussed this: He said it was about a point in his life where he was feeling down and unsure about life, had recently split from his wife and the Garfunkel partnership, but then he finds redemption in S Africa recording the Graceland album. A lot of the lyrics are depressing and he sort of regrets the jokey video. A man walks down the street He says, "Why am I soft in the middle, now? Why am I soft in the middle? The rest of my life is so hard I need a photo-opportunity I want a shot at redemption Don't want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard" .....that's him writing about himself, feeling irrelevant - like the famous version of him is a cartoon caricature, a 'cartoon' joke that'll die Bonedigger, Bonedigger Dogs in the moonlight Far away in my well-lit door Mr. Beerbelly, Beerbelly Get these mutts away from me You know, I don't find this stuff amusing anymore ......... again, fairly depressing stuff: graveyard, dark, dogs after him, unfit, he's had enough of feeling afraid and worrying about death. If you'll be my bodyguard I can be your long lost pal I can call you Betty And Betty, when you call me, you can call me Al ...........he needs help (he doesn't mention why the Betty/Al in the documentary but other places say it was him and his wife being mistakenly referred to as that at a party) A man walks down the street He says, "Why am I short of attention? Got a short little span of attention .......aparently a Richard joke. And, whoa, my nights are so long Where's my wife and family? What if I die here? Who'll be my role model Now that my role model is gone, gone?" ...........dark. He ducked back down the alley With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl All along, along There were incidents and accidents There were hints and allegations If you'll be my bodyguard I can be your long lost pal I can call you Betty And Betty, when you call me, you can call me Al Call me Al A man walks down the street It's a street in a strange world Maybe it's the third world Maybe it's his first time around Doesn't speak the language He holds no currency He is a foreign man He is surrounded by the sound, the sound Cattle in the marketplace Scatterings and orphanages He looks around, around He sees angels in the architecture Spinning in infinity He says, "Amen and Hallelujah!" ......recording 'Graceland' album in South Africa and finding redemption. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellzero Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 On 17/04/2023 at 15:59, Cato said: I understand what all these words mean individually, but.... Seems to be a song about a trip (and maybe a trip too) to Cuba and some wrong destinations... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waddo Soqable Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 7 hours ago, lonestar said: Cocteau Twins Lovely stuff, but even if you could decipher the words... I have no idea. In fairness she always said she used the words for the sounds rather than any meaning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waddo Soqable Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 3 hours ago, Baloney Balderdash said: I do actually usually have a pretty good idea of what I am actually writing when writing lyrics, but must admit I did write a fair share of nonsense for the lyrics of the songs I produced with the psychedelic electronic duo "Electro Jar" that I had together with a friend a few years back. Here are the lyrics I wrote for the 3 songs on our "Divinorum" EP: Divinorum Black and white silhouette ruins shooting up past the last winding corner of a glimpse of an eyes wide shut future hope of illusions scanning the horizon of the vast sea of time an infinite ocean in our mind breaking waves off a breathless surfer revealed as a corpse on the shore that is present before us as he struggles to breath just to drown counting one thousand waves down before we arrived to dive in free fall past the cliffs in our watery grave to survive to tell the cautionary tale of our lives spreading like drops as we hit the surface recycled infinitely through the weather system and further out beyond the Universe and concept of time and space as such. Spacefuzz 2016 Comets fill the sky satellites are drifting by a star is born another die a roaring silent cry And I'm gone... Alien and lonely moondogs howl along the Univers' a song spacing out of orbit nowhere to belong And I'm gone.... Winding wormholes withered molehills Saturn, Sirius semi circle fish gills And I'm gone... Flesh wounds dread looms Mars, Pluto, fools and dead prunes And I'm gone... Somewhere Over the Ocean (a song dictated in a dream) A broken sea of liquid electricity held in the palm of my hand a mountain view of waves inside my tiny eye of solitude, and deep down the Ocean shelf lies books of unbound wisdom, in liquid form as it comes, flowing with the water. Dive! Dive! Dive! And somewhere over the Ocean, beyond the tress, lies the dreams Somewhere over the Ocean, somewhere beneath a tree, somewhere someone is sleeping, somewhere someone is dreaming, a song dictated in a dream Somewhere over the Ocean, we sail the memory sea Sail the broken sea sail the burning sea sail the lonely sea .. & I bet they sound bangin' in Danish.... 😁 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishfacefour Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 Don't forget Sigur Ros and their made up language, Hopelandish I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waddo Soqable Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 I did wonder about.. Flat Foot Floogie With a Floy Floy, Floy Doy, Floy Doy, Floy Doy... ?? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gasman Posted April 18, 2023 Share Posted April 18, 2023 (edited) Poppity poppity poppity pop, went the motor-sickle (hittin' on one!), Poppity poppity poppity pop, went the motor-sickle (hittin' on two!) Dizzy Gillespie needed his carb cleaned out? Edited April 18, 2023 by Gasman attribution of title Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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