{"id":2003,"date":"2004-05-04T15:01:32","date_gmt":"2004-05-04T19:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/05\/04\/2003.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:46:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:46:04","slug":"lyrics-from-randomly-selected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/05\/04\/lyrics-from-randomly-selected\/","title":{"rendered":"Lyrics from randomly selected songs: an LJ meme"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jere7my<\/a> 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.<\/I>\n

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.\n

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.\n

Anyway... the list:\n

 1     [Yiddish, unintelligible]
\n *     [instrumental]
\n 2     [title],Her eyes are just kept to herself\/[title], well I, I can still look at someone else
\n 3     If I only had another hand\/I’d cut it off and start a band
\n 4     I’m gonna scratch cars\/with my keys again
\n 5     My head was stuck in the cat flap on the door\/Where I could see her walking on the kitchen floor
\n *     [Yiddish]
\n *     [instrumental]
\n *     [instrumental]
\n 6     I like to listen and I like to look\/But if you can’t accommodate, I’m fine with a book
\n 7     I hear it in dreams and somehow it seems\/it makes me weep and I can’t sleep
\n 8     Oh, when I'm leaving, there's no doubt your heart'll be grieving\/You're gonna miss your daddy, mama, [title]
\n 9     He said ‘Hey, that’s OK\/You’ll be back’
\n10     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
\n11     Before there were junk stores\/Before there was junk\/He lived with his mother and the torments of Christ
\n *     [Instrumental]
\n12     I gets the wiggles in my knees\/When she looked at me and sweetly smiled
\n13     Remember the days of rent control\/Grandpa remembers rock and roll
\n14     I thought I heard Judge Fogarty say\/thirty days in the parish, without no pay
\n15     I've got no deeds to do, no promises to keep.\/I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
\n *     [instrumental]
\n16     The shore was kissed by sea and mist tenderly\/I can't forget how two hearts met breathlessly
\n17     Fire, they cried\/So evil must die
\n18     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
\n *     [instrumental, but title shouted repeatedly]
\n19     Deep in the garden\/There’s a little gnome\/He holds a lantern to lead us on the way
\n20     At least my hair is all mine, my teeth are my own\/But everything else is on permanent loan
\n *     [instrumental]
\n21     I have magic plastic toys\/I can recreate the world
\n22     I'm out ... of luck\/I'm not ... that strong\/My hands ... your neck\/I might ... have wrung
\n23     Pleasantly out of proportion\/It's hard to hold on to the ground
\n24     Eternity stinks, my darling. That's no joke\/Don't waste your precious time pretending you're heartbroken
\n25     It must be great fun to be mean to me
\n\n

My next post will be the list with song title and performer, and if I feel industrious, explanatory notes. We'll see.\n

                           ,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jere7my passes along a LJ \u2018meme\u2019, which, for no very good reason, I\u2019ve decided to do. Having done it, I\u2019m posting it here, also for no very good reason. The suggestion is this: Shuffle your current playlist and write down…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17009,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions\/17009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}