45. My Favourite Lines In Music

Years ago, I had a healthy debate with a friend of mine about which was harder – writing a novel, or writing a short story.

My argument was writing a short story must be harder because the constraints of the form make it more difficult to tell the whole story, whereas a novel allows the author room to explore the plot, characters and environment.

(My friend disagreed, arguing – persuasively – that the sheer effort that goes into writing a novel makes it immeasurably more difficult. These were the kind of honey vodka-fuelled conversations I was having on a Wednesday back in my uni days.)

But I stand by my position – honing a single line of text is so devilishly hard that anybody that tries deserves support.

And anybody that masters it deserves our awe.

Here are a few lines that leave me in awe every time I hear them.

1.       One Crowded Hour - Augie March

If love is a bolt from the blue,
Then what is that bolt but a glorified screw
That doesn't hold nothing together?

It’s a masterpiece, a beautiful piece of music carefully pacing beneath those lyrics, lyrics so good it makes you feel like giving up writing completely.

This line makes me smile every damned time I hear it; every single time. Taking a cliché, twisting it into a bitter double entendre and ending it with a lamentation takes skill.

But this is an example of true skill, the type that makes it look easy. Because masters of any craft make it look easy.

Yet what we don’t see (hear) is the hard graft involved in getting this line down on paper.

Perhaps there was the sheer frustration that comes with the brow-furrowing pursuit of an idea down dead-end alleys filled with red herrings and bad rhymes.

Still – what a damned line.

2.       Why? (The King of Love Is Dead) [Live] – Nina Simone

Did Martin Luther King just die in vain?

This line does not make me smile.

For a long time, this was the saddest version of the saddest song I’d ever heard. Recorded only days after Martin Luther King was shot, the flammable reality of that context transforms this song into something more.

The unimaginable sorrow people must have felt when he was gunned down is heaped onto this line by a singer achingly tired of carrying this burden.

And the reason this line still breaks my heart (as does her entire, incredible, forceful performance) is that Simone knows the answer to this question.

She can’t openly admit it, because to admit it is to accept defeat.

And to accept defeat when you’re simply arguing for your own humanity and existence to be acknowledged is too awful to bear.

But she knows. We know.

3.       Speed Trap Town - Jason Isbell

It's a boy's last dream and a man's first loss

I’ve really tried to avoid flooding this blog with Isbell songs, but I can’t have a post about my favourite lines without including this.

This line, about how aging kills the dreams of youth, is, on its own, a razor blade bookmark between the stages of life.

But nestled a song about the necrotic hold a hometown can have, it’s sad, poignant, matter of fact and painful.

It is, to my thinking, a perfect line. Entirely unimprovable.

4.       From the Ritz to the Rubble – The Arctic Monkeys

And one of 'em's alright, the other one's the scary one
His way or no way, to-tal-i-tarian

The Kaiser Chiefs were far from my only guide to the British approach to nightlife – the Arctic Monkeys were bigger, brasher and much, much better.

Alex Turner is a master of the lyrical form. He winds English vernacular around universal tales, with his ears always spinning around for a great rhyme.

And making ‘totalitarian’ rhyme with ‘the scary one’ is one of his many, many gifts to listeners. His delivery is fantastic, the story he’s telling is – to a certain cadre of no-longer-young-men – universal.

They have better songs, those Arctic Monkeys, but this line gets me every time.

5.       I Dream a Highway – Gillian Welch

I'm an indisguisable shade of twilight

Another thing I’ve realised in writing this series is that I don’t listen to enough music by women.

This has never been a deliberate thing, but it’s inescapable – the majority of these pieces have been about songs by men. I’ve not finished this list yet, but I bet this unfortunate habit is replicated here too.

But this song – this fifteen minute masterpiece – has been part of my life ever since I discovered it during my time at the call centre. It’s kept me company on long drives, cold train trips, sunny winter afternoon’s reading and any number of moments in between.

I love this song, but it hasn’t attached itself to any specific moment or meaning. So I’m very glad to be able to talk about it now.

Because this line, this romantic line of lingering darkness and personality, makes me reel whenever I hear it.

Her delivery doesn’t hurt – she wraps it in velvet then wrangles it into the rhythm – but it’s the pure poetry of the image that sticks to your soul.  

6.       Pack Up - Lyrics Born

Rappel down the skyscraper, kicking in the plexiglass

I was obsessed with this album back in the early 2000s.

Hip-hop focused on the craft, not the baubles, with great rhymes and wordplay, all atop some damned fine beats.

There are a stack of great tracks on this album, each of them with tremendous lines.

The delivery of line-after-line hooked around the ‘ah’ syllable in the middle of Do That There is just showing off. That he did it again in the remix around the ‘ur’ sound just blows my mind - but this is the pick for me.

In 14 syllables across 8 words he plants an image of unadulterated kinetic energy in the front of your mind, recruiting the same scene from an untold number of action films to smash his point home.

It’s embedded in a verse that doesn’t have the rhyme, doesn’t have the internal cadence but he still nails it by drilling down on the delivery.

I’m far from an expert in the hip-hop arts, but this line leaves me feeling like I’m witnessing mastery.

7.       Dwight Yoakam – Sarah Shook & The Disarmers

She said he likes to make love when he’s smokin’
And he don’t walk around like he’s broken
And he sings just like Dwight Yoakam

As might be apparent from this list, I rather like (good) country music. It’s hard to put an original spin on the classic country storyline, but the unwaveringly cool Sarah Shook nails it.

That she does it by referencing a famous country singer makes it even better.

And that she does it by rhyming that surname with ‘smokin’ and ‘broken’…well, damn, that’s just amazing.

(If you’ve not listened to the album, well, you really, really should give it a try. This isn’t even the best song on the album!)

8.       Brick – Ben Folds Five

Up the stairs to her apartment
She is balled up on the couch
Her mom and dad went down to Charlotte
They're not home to find us out

I’m also rather partial to a sad song.

It’s tough, I think, to write a sad song without hitting the twin triggers labelled ‘cliché’ and ‘lame’. The most effective way to avoid triggering those two song-killers is to root the song in real-life.

Done properly, it takes something universal, lifts it up to the sky, turns it around slightly and shows you a face you weren’t previously aware of before.

This stanza could describe several different events – a romantic rendezvous, a conspiratorial discussion, the prelude to a movie-level party.

It is, instead, about the toll abortion can take on a person.  

Perhaps the hottest of hot-button issues, the arguments and dot points around abortion dehumanise such an intensely personal moment.

Ben Folds runs – screaming, crying, powerless – in the other direction, telling an incredibly personal story in a way both tragic and universal.  

These lines are where it turns, where the song goes from piano exploration to everyday sadness.

It’s also the moment where listeners might start to realise that a hard decision made for the right reasons can still make someone irretrievably sad.  

9.       2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted – 2Pac feat. Snoop Dogg*

But my dream's to own a fly casino
Like Bugsy Siegel, and do it all legal

It feels good to you baby-bubba
You see, this is for the G's in the keys, mother-f*cka

Well, this is not a sad song. This is an old-school classic starring two of the biggest names from the gangsta scene.

I listened to a lot of rap back in the day. Still do, but the misogyny, tacky consumerism and glorification of violence of this style has really lost me as I’ve gotten older.

But this verse, this whole track, leaves me smiling. A bit more guiltily now than it used to, but still smiling.

Combining the curiously overt masculinity of Pac’s delivery – menacing and beat-perfect – with the laidback smoky vibe of Messr Dogg shouldn’t work. Their styles should clash and make this track annoying.

Instead, somehow Dillinger crafted the perfect beat to sync up with both styles.

But this is about those lines, and these two couplets make me happier than is reasonable for a kid from the burbs.

The bombast of his dream – own a casino – with the modesty of the aim – do it all legal – gel to leave us wondering what he’s doing now, because it clearly ain’t legal.

While you’re rolling through that clover, back he comes with the most enjoyably bouncy rhyme in the whole song.

I’m a little embarrassed about how often I’ve bounced along with his exquisitely laidback delivery of that line.

 A little. Not a lot, though.

*This is the ‘clean’ version, dropping ‘young hustler’ in place of the more interesting original line. 

Pursuing a great line must be a tough, damned long, walk uphill. Throw in the added complexity of making it fit the tune under it and, I’ll confess, I have no idea how they do it.

Hats off to anybody out there giving it a shot.