I will die in ecstasy,
but I'll be a vagabond,
driving down the road alone."
- Norah Jones, 'Don't know why'
I don't really know what these lines mean. Its like art. When I look at this painting, I don't understand it but I love it. Not because its a masterpiece, which I don't think it is. Because.
Lyrics define the rise and fall of a song. Some songs do well without lyrics or with bad lyrics. For example, the la-da-di-dah bit in pump it can be summed up to say "Hey this music is good, so lets all dance!". But the music makes me forget bad wording. Some songs don't exactly have super lyrics, but I find their words oddly endearing. "Nobody got none on us". "Chivalry is dead but you're still kinda cute"."Now she's back from the atmosphere,drops of Jupiter on her hair". Cute.
Once an acquaintance of mine heard this song(hit play button) and said,"What nonsense! Why does everything have to be golmaal?"
I explained to her that not all songs have meaningful, sane and inoffensive words. Lots of f***, b**** and @#$%^%&&whatnot thrown around nowadays. "If you wanna be rich, you have to be a bitch". Could anyone be more distastefully direct?
Having said all this, I bring forth this gem of a song which has currently stolen my heart. The lyrics are right here. Hit the play button, sing along, and enjoy!
"We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I", and "The Catcher in the Rye"
Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye
CHORUS
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
Josef Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu Falls, "Rock Around the Clock"
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, "Peter Pan", Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez
CHORUS
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide
Buddy Holly, "Ben-Hur", space monkey, Mafia
hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no go
U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo
CHORUS
Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion
"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say
CHORUS
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollolah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
"Wheel of Fortune" , Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law
Rock and Roller Cola Wars, I can't take it anymore
CHORUS
We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on...
Labels: words
