Lyrics That Stuck

[Numanoid]

The difference between Daniel Miller and Morrissey may relate to their experience with car seat heaters

A tear of petrol is in your eye
The hand brake penetrates your thigh
Quick - Let's make love before you die
On warm leatherette

It was dark as I drove the point home
And on cold leather seats
Well, it suddenly struck me
I just might die with a smile on my face after all

[mumpcake]

7. We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year.
9. In natural selection I've avoided all detection.

Close, but kind of meatless, like actors who play Jesus

That whole song sticks.

[mumpcake]

Our love is all of God's money
Wilco, "Jesus Etc."

He used to do surgery
for girls in the eighties
but gravity always wins
Radiohead, "Fake Plastic Trees"

Cold summer listening
Hot color, melting the anger to stone
Yes, "Long Distance Runaround"

[e@rs]

He used to do surgery
for girls in the eighties
but gravity always wins
Radiohead, "Fake Plastic Trees"

[e@rs]

Even the greatest stars dislike themselves in the looking glass

Kraftwerk - Hall Of Mirrors

[Luftrum]

"And when a child is born into this world
It has no concept
Of the tone the skin is living in"

Neneh Cherry - 7 Seconds

[harryupbabble]

Close, but kind of meatless, like actors who play Jesus

That whole song sticks.

I agree. It's too bad that Beck's Loser was made two years earlier. I can't help but wonder if the Odds just ripped Beck off, idea-wise.
Okay I guess being inspired by is not the same as ripping off someone, but still. Both songs are about scoundrels, or pretenders at least.
But maybe Beck himself ripped off the idea from elsewhere. Maybe someone with a wider knowledge of songs can find older songs like Beck's. I can't.
Compare the two songs:


Odds - Someone Who Is Cool

In natural selection I've avoided all detection
And the tender bits underneath
All with window dressing and calculated guessing
And a bark bigger than my teeth

It was the suit that got me the gig
It was the tear that got me the girl
I'm a sheep in this wolf clothing
I'm a picture that I'm holding of someone who is cool

Soul like a thimble swallowed up in symbols
Wanting what I don't need
If sympathy's the answer I'll have temporary cancer
But that's not what I'll have, you believe

It was the suit that got me the gig
It was the tear that got me the girl
I'm a sheep in this wolf clothing
I'm a picture that I'm holding of someone who is cool
Someone who is cool

Close but kind of meatless
Like actors who play Jesus in movies of the week
What other people wish for oozes from every pore
I'm the coffee not the sleep

And I'm the song about the song
That once said something new
I'm a scandal that's unfolding
I'm a picture that I'm holding of someone who is cool
Someone who is cool





Beck - Loser

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins so I'm out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables
Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin' with a loser and the cruise control
Baby's in Reno with the vitamin D

Got a couple of couches sleep on the love seat
Someone keeps sayin' I'm insane to complain
About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
Don't believe everything that you breathe
You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park

(Yo cut it)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare
Banned all the music with a phony gas chamber
Cause one's got a weasel and the other's got a flag
One's got on the pole shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose job

The daytime crap with the folksinger slop
He hung himself with a guitar string
Slap the turkey neck and it's hangin' on a pigeon wing
You can't write if you can't relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite
Who's chokin' on the splinters

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
(Get crazy with the Cheeze Whiz)

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
(Drive-by body pierce)

(Yo bring it on down)
Soy
(I'm a driver I'm a winner things are gonna change I can feel it)

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
(I can't believe you)

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
Sprechen Sie Deutche, baby)

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me?
(Know what I'm sayin'?)

[harryupbabble]

Update: it seems Radiohead's Creep was made one year earlier than Beck's Loser. But then... a lot of Nirvana's songs seem to be about losers and Nirvana was way before Radiohead? And then there's the punks. And Iggy Pop was doing that in the late 1960's? Ah fark, nevermind.

[mumpcake]

Close, but kind of meatless, like actors who play Jesus

That whole song sticks.

I agree. It's too bad that Beck's Loser was made two years earlier. I can't help but wonder if the Odds just ripped Beck off, idea-wise.
Okay I guess being inspired by is not the same as ripping off someone, but still. Both songs are about scoundrels, or pretenders at least.
But maybe Beck himself ripped off the idea from elsewhere. Maybe someone with a wider knowledge of songs can find older songs like Beck's. I can't.

I'm not sure what Beck is actually saying, so who knows. It just seems to be about someone pathetic, where the character in the Odds song is clearly someone who is a fake. If they are ripping off someone, they probably owe more to the Platters' "The Great Pretender".

Yes I'm the great pretender
Just laughing and gay like the clown
I seem to be what I'm not, you see
I'm wearing my heart like a crown
Pretending that you're still around

Or maybe the Who's "Substitute"

You think we look pretty good together
You think my shoes are made of leather

But I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated, yeah

Substitute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plastic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine linen suit is really made out of sack

I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those crocodile tears are what you cry
It's a genuine problem, you won't try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by

Substitute me for him
Substitute my coke for gin
Substitute you for my mum
At least I'll get my washing done

[mumpcake]

I also have to throw in some lines from Sloan's "Underwhelmed"

She wrote out a story about her life
I think it included something about me
I'm not sure of that but I'm sure of one thing
Her spelling's atrocious

She told me to read between the lines
And tell her exactly what I got out of it
I told her affection had two F's
Especially when you're dealing with me

...

She says I'm caught up in triviality
All I really want to know is what she thinks of me

[Electric Phase]

I'm gonna be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Though true love could have been a contender
Are you there?
Say a prayer for the Pretender.
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender.

Jackson Browne – The Pretender

[harryupbabble]

51. You got the touch so gentle and sweet. But you've got that look so critical.
52. Say something once, why say it again?
53. You'll wait for clear skies to tell us how changes come about.
54. Baby, I would like to go out tonight. If I go with you my folks'll get uptight.
55. Tonight I should have stayed at home, playing with my pleasure zone.
56. It changed, it grew, and everybody knew semi-mojo. Who's this kinky so-and-so?
57. You and me, and a bottle of wine.
58. I try to walk away and I stumble.
59. I'm running towards nothing again and again and again and again.
60. Be running up that road, be running up that hill.
61. So I kept my spirits high entertaining passers-by.
62. Don't let your friends say you have no taste.
63. You've got the universe reclining in your hair.

[harryupbabble]

64. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, wipe out.
65. Hot meat. Hot rats. Hot cats. Hot ritz. Hot roots. Hot soots. Hot zitz.
66. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.
67. What fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight.
68. For he's a jolly good fellow, that nobody can deny.
69. May good luck go with you, and happiness too.
70. Everyone of us, everyone of us, has all we need.
71. But all I've ever learned from love was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya.
72. Tequila!
73. I finally passed out in her front yard (whoo!).
74. Every time I see you falling I get down on my knees and pray.

[Electric Phase]

He sees his children jumping off
At the stations -- one by one.
His woman and his best friend --
In bed and having fun.
He's crawling down the corridor
On his hands and knees --
Old Charlie stole the handle and
The train won't stop going --
No way to slow down.
He hears the silence howling --
Catches angels as they fall.
And the all-time winner
Has got him by the balls.
He picks up Gideon's Bible --
Open at page one --
God stole the handle and
The train won't stop going --
No way to slow down.

Jethro Tull - Locomotive Breath

[Numanoid]

Ian Anderson know how to pen a striking and good lyric

Aqualung
Feeling like a dead duck --
spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
Whoa, aqualung

Sun streaking cold --
an old man wandering lonely.
Taking time
the only way he knows.
Leg hurting bad,
as he bends to pick a dog-end --
he goes down to the bog
and warms his feet.