Best lyrical phrase

"well you wore out your welcome with random precision"

Couldn't resist that one

"Cracked forgotten statues we are strangled in the undergrowth,
Lost in ancient magic we are sucked in by the undertow,
Nothing really matters, we are motion, we are wonderful flow."
(From Peter Hammill's "Now Lover", a song about orgasm).

"All you tocuh and all you see is all your life will ever be" - Pink Floyd, Breathe

"What God wants, God gets, God help us all" - Roger Waters, What God Wants (Part 1 & 2)

"I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul" - Bob Dylan, Masters of War

"Share bride failing star
Care-line
Care-line
Care-line
Care-line driving me
Shirley, Shirley, Shirley own
Share bride failing star" - David Bowie, Subterraneans

"Blood rack barbed wire
Polititians funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty first century schizoid man" - King Crimson, 21st Century Schizoid Man

"No tears to cry
No feelings left
This species has amused itself to death" - Roger Waters, Amused To Death

I really enjoy the chorus from Genesis' Seven Stones:
"Despair that tires the world brings the old man laughter.
The laughter of the world only grieves him,
believe him,
The old man's guide is chance."

there's so many songs to choose from. i'll try to pick later, but all i know is that it will have been written by peter hammill. 

If I get to post a non-prog song, but I love this:
"I never thought I'd need so many people"
From Five Years, David Bowie.

Also from Bowie, one of the most powerfull phrases to me:

"Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do..."

"Mankind is a plague" always cranks me up jajajaja... its by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum by the way

" If there were no rewards to reap,
loving embrace to see me through,
this tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would've walked awaaay by now." Maynard James Kennan, Tool ...who, by the way, is the BEST lyrics writer ever if you ask me

"And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghost, hot ashes for trees, hot air for a cool breeze, cold comfort for change? Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"
Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here

Mind you, I think the whole lyric is perfect, not a wasted word.


"Strangers passing in the street, by chance two separate glances meet and I am you and what I see is me..."
Pink Floyd, Echoes

"No-one told you when to run – you missed the starting gun... And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking, coming around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death."
Pink Floyd, Time

"So I opened my door to my enemies and asked could we wipe the slate clean, but they tell me to please go and f*** myself, you know you just can't win"
Pink Floyd, Lost For Words

"We got warehouses of butter, we got oceans of wine, we got famine when we need it, we got designer crime. We got Mercedes, we got Porsche, Ferrari and Rolls-Royce. Yeah, we got choice"
Roger Waters, It's A Miracle

"Muslim or Christian, Mullah or Pope, preacher or poet, who was it wrote 'give any one species too much rope and they'll f*** it up'?
Roger Waters, Too Much Rope

"If you can carry it out, you can take it away. If you can carry it out, you can take it away. If you can buy it, it can be bought. If you can buy it, it can be stolen. If you can break it, it's already broken"
Marillion, Interior Lulu

"A wise man once said a flower is only a sexual organ, beauty is cruelty and evolution. A wise man once said that everything can be explained with mathematics. He had denied his feminine side, now where is the wisdom in that?"
Marillion, This Is The 21st Century

I don't agree with Marillion's views on science, but I still think this is a great lyric.


"And it is as it is, and we take as we find, always next season's buds on the bough, but I'll never find a better time, hard though it is to allow, no I'll never find a better time to be alive than now"
Peter Hammill, A Better Time

I don't actually own this, my brother played it to me years ago and it left a big impression.


"I can see we are pilgrims and so must walk this road, unknown in our purpose, alone but not worthless and home ever calling us on. We've been waiting here for so long, all of our hands joined in hope, holding the weight on the rope, all of us pilgrims"
Van der Graaf Generator, Pilgrims

I can't type those words without hearing the music and... just, WOW! I don't normally go in for uplifting music, but this one creeps in under the radar and then nukes you. Repeatedly.


"The wall on which the prophets wrote is cracking at the seams. Upon the instruments of death the sunlight brightly gleams. Knowledge is a deadly friend if no-one sets the rules. The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools"
King Crimson, Epitaph

As true now as it was then.


"Confusion will be my epitaph, as I crawl a cracked and broken path. If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh, but I fear tomorrow we'll be crying, yes I fear tomorrow we'll be crying"
King Crimson, Epitaph

"Sundown, dazzling day, gold through my eyes. But my eyes turned within only see starless and bible black"
King Crimson, Starless


"The dream machine's on speed, my head's up in the clouds. We met up on the ledge and I could read your mind. And though things fall asleep, nothing ever dies. I caught it on the bound and now we float—hands outstretched–along the river"
Anekdoten, Ricochet

Thanks to whoever it was who quoted this in their review of the album here on PA for opening my ears to this one.


Finally, for the time being, the one below in my signature, Kung Bore by Änglagård. According to anglagard.net, this translates as, "In the light from my lantern I see that shadow of sorrow, in dreams that have been extinguished from a life that has had it's time. I cannot stand and watch while we flee realities and truths where morality is fantasy". But I prefer hearing them in Swedish.

As I said in another thread, lyrics are as important to me as the music.


Edited by Jorvik - January 22 2008 at 11:24

"Kick me Hardy.
Without one sweet push from your shine covered boot,
I don't think, I just know I'll be grounded forever
More over turn me. You can hardly miss me,
I'm the one face down in the mud on the ground.
I'll be stuck here forever, unless you come over and
Kick me Hardy."

Team Spirit, Robert Wyatt


"What is left of your dream ?
Just the words on your stone
A man who learned how to teach
Then forgot how to learn"

White Man, Queen

"You are afraid--embarrassed too
No one has ever said such a thing to you
Your mother's ghost stands at your shoulder
Face like ice--a little bit colder
Saying to you--"you can not do that, it breaks
All the rules you learned in school"
I don't really see
Why can't we go on as three"

Triad, Jefferson Airplane

"Can't get out, even for a moment:
might be hit by a passing car."

Orthenthian St. Pt. II, Van Der Graaf Generator