Jere7my passes along a LJ ‘meme’, which, for no very good reason, I’ve decided to do. Having done it, I’m posting it here, also for no very good reason. The suggestion is this: Shuffle your current playlist and write down your favorite line of each the first twenty songs.
YHB bizarrely assumed the suggestion was for 25, rather than 20, and did 25. So there. I could slice off the last five, but (a) what would be the point, and (2) having given Jere7my the business for having 3 Elvis Costello songs, my randomizer gave me three as well, and if I cut back to 20, I wouldn’t, which wouldn’t be as funny for me (or, conceivably, for him). So, there are 25 lyrics. I’ve left the instrumentals and non-English songs in place, but didn’t count them towards the 25. Where the title was a giveaway, I replaced it with [title], but there is more than one lyric below which contains the full title.
The thing that surprised me about doing this was that I had to look up the lyrics for almost all the songs. This is a function of having 3700 clips in rotation, so that many songs on the list are quite unfamiliar to me. In fact, without preparation, YHB would probably recognize less than half of these himself, although it’s hard to know what would strike my memory. Some of the songs have crap lyrics: # 10 was particularly bad, but it was hard to decide on a lyric I liked for #s 2, 3, 5, 7, etc., etc. I always think of myself as being a big fan of lyrics, so the fact that of the 25 there are only a few with lyrics I like makes me reconsider. Of course, I don’t particularly adore these songs; they are good enough that if they came on the radio, I wouldn’t look for another station, but there are only two that got rated four out of five.
Anyway... the list:
1 [Yiddish, unintelligible]
* [instrumental]
2 [title],Her eyes are just kept to herself/[title], well I, I can still look at someone else
3 If I only had another hand/I’d cut it off and start a band
4 I’m gonna scratch cars/with my keys again
5 My head was stuck in the cat flap on the door/Where I could see her walking on the kitchen floor
* [Yiddish]
* [instrumental]
* [instrumental]
6 I like to listen and I like to look/But if you can’t accommodate, I’m fine with a book
7 I hear it in dreams and somehow it seems/it makes me weep and I can’t sleep
8 Oh, when I'm leaving, there's no doubt your heart'll be grieving/You're gonna miss your daddy, mama, [title]
9 He said ‘Hey, that’s OK/You’ll be back’
10 Every day, every week every month every year/every minute that you aren’t here/I’ll weep tear after tear after tear/and I won’t stop til you reappear
11 Before there were junk stores/Before there was junk/He lived with his mother and the torments of Christ
* [Instrumental]
12 I gets the wiggles in my knees/When she looked at me and sweetly smiled
13 Remember the days of rent control/Grandpa remembers rock and roll
14 I thought I heard Judge Fogarty say/thirty days in the parish, without no pay
15 I've got no deeds to do, no promises to keep./I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
* [instrumental]
16 The shore was kissed by sea and mist tenderly/I can't forget how two hearts met breathlessly
17 Fire, they cried/So evil must die
18 I got two eyes that happened by ya/And when they saw you, they said they knew you were fine/I got two lips that long to kiss you/And when they speak, they say they wish you were mine
* [instrumental, but title shouted repeatedly]
19 Deep in the garden/There’s a little gnome/He holds a lantern to lead us on the way
20 At least my hair is all mine, my teeth are my own/But everything else is on permanent loan
* [instrumental]
21 I have magic plastic toys/I can recreate the world
22 I'm out ... of luck/I'm not ... that strong/My hands ... your neck/I might ... have wrung
23 Pleasantly out of proportion/It's hard to hold on to the ground
24 Eternity stinks, my darling. That's no joke/Don't waste your precious time pretending you're heartbroken
25 It must be great fun to be mean to me
My next post will be the list with song title and performer, and if I feel industrious, explanatory notes. We'll see.
,
-Vardibidian.
Playing “Name that lyric,” I get only 2, #9 and #15.
Your YHBs are #s 11, 18, 22. And indeed, I am amused. (Only 466 of my 7568 songs are Declan’s, and yet they show up thrice for me.)
#13 is DB (from RM), #23 is TH (from SiT).
#15 is, well, duh.
#1 must be the Pompatus of Love, since that’s what it sounds like to me, and #17 must be from Webber’s underground smash rock musical, “Prince of Lies Superstar.” (“So like Cain before him, this evil must die.”)
(After checking spoilers: Whoops! I conflated TMBG and EC. How often does that happen?)
I’m amused to see this meme. About a week ago, I saw a similar idea (“Pick the nearest book to you. Go to page 28. Post the third complete sentence.”) in a Penn prof’s (Fernando Periera’s) blog.
So I guess I’m witnessing memes mutating. Or else, it’s convergent evolution, or something, I dunno.