marite

Hubert Parry put Blake's poem to music in 1916. The Labour Party has Methodist roots, so Jerusalem gets played at its meetings. We used to hear it quite often when we lived in Britain. But it is not exclusive to the Labour Party; in fact both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats also sing it as do non-political groups.

DontPanic1

Hank Williams Jr:

"I'd love to spit some beechnut in that dude's eye"

from Country Boy Can Survive

Treetopleaf

Favorite cheating lyric from Moe Bandy -

I just threw my last bottle at the jukebox
When I heard that woman singin' darling let's go all the way
I just found out my woman is the devil
I just started hatin' cheatin' songs today

lololu

With due respect to the OP:

Credit for the lyrics to "Me and Bobby Mcgee" goes to Kris Kristofferson, who really wrote some beautiful stuff including

Well I woke up Sunday morning
with no way to hold my head, that didn't hurt
and the beer I had for breakfast
wasn't bad so I had one more for dessert
then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes
and found my cleanest dirty shirt
it's the one I'm wearin'
and I shaved my face and combed my hair
and stumbled down the stairs to meet the day


Chorus:
On the Sunday morning sidewalks
wishing Lord that I was stoned
'cause there is something in a Sunday
that makes a body feel alone
and there's nothin' short of dyin'
half as lonesome as the sound
on the sleepin' city side walks
Sunday mornin' comin' down

Treetopleaf

Short and sweet - Merle Haggard the Great sang "that's the music God made" in THAT'S THE WAY LOVE GOES

I've been throwing horseshoes over my left shoulder
I've spent most all my life searching for that four leaf clover
Yet you run with me chasing my rainbows
Honey I love you too and that's the way love goes

That's the way love goes babe that's the music God made
For the whole wide world to sing it never gets old it grows
Losing makes me sorry you say honey now don't you worry
Don't you know I love you too and that's the way love goes

by Lefty Frizzel

mantori.suzuki

Roger Waters' lyrics to "Dogs" by Pink Floyd are deeply moving to me. I think that song should be required listening for anyone who thinks that corporate ladder-climbing and power-grabbing are their ticket to happiness.

MomofWildChild

I love so many lyrics that I could fill up this whole thread. I love Taylor Swift's writing and Alan Jackson's, too. And Neil Young. And on and on.

Jolynne Smyth

So cool to read these song lyrics that are poems to music!

UCLA Band Mom -- never saw the words to Soft Parade before -- knocked my socks off! Wow!

mamabear1234

Memories brought back by this thread - but I think I would add Jackson Browne's After the Deluge, For a Dancer, and Late for the Sky.

mathmom

I sang that at Girl Scout camp back in the 70s too! Lovely tune. The song I really like that we sang that you never hear any more is Phil Och's Power and Glory.

Come and take a walk with me thru this green and growing land
Walk thru the meadows and the mountains and the sand
Walk thru the valleys and the rivers and the plains
Walk thru the sun and walk thru the rain

Here is a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Her glory shall rest on us all (on us all)

From Colorado, Kansas, and the Carolinas too
Virginia and Alaska, from the old to the new
Texas and Ohio and the California shore
Tell me, who could ask for more?

Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of her poor
Only as free as the padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand

But our land is still troubled by men who have to hate
They twist away our freedom & they twist away our fate
Fear is their weapon and treason is their cry
We can stop them if we try

vballmom

Anything on Neil Young's After the Gold Rush album.

And in a different style, it's hard to imagine a more poetic songwriter than Leonard Cohen.

Hallelujah

I've heard there was a secret chord
that David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, Do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor Fall, The major lift,
The baffled king composing, hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne
she cut your hair and from your lips she drew the halleujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's real and going on below
but now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah…

paying3tuitions

^^Phil Ochs was wonderful. On Youtube I see young people rediscovering him. Leonard Cohen, oh yes.

I also like rousing sea songs by Stan Rogers, for example, Northwest Passage --

"Ah for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea
Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea..."

....and his softer side, as in "Lies"

"Is this the face that won for her the man
Whose amazed and clumsy fingers put that ring upon her hand?
No need to search that mirror for the years
The menace in their message shouts across the blur of tears
So this is Beauty's finish! Like Rodin's "Belle Heaulmiere"
The pretty maiden trapped inside the ranch wife's toil and care
Well, after seven kids, that's no surprise
But why cannot her mirror tell her lies?"

mantori.suzuki

If you like Phil Ochs, I'd like to recommend a cover of No More Songs by Henry Cow, led by the talented German singer Dagmar Krause. (You can find an interesting live performance on YouTube by searching for "Henry Cow No More Songs".)

BunsenBurner

vballmom, thank you for posting the Hallelujah lyrics. I second your selection.

coureur

For lyrics you can't do much better than Bob Dylan:

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.


More Dylan:

There's beauty in the silver, singin' river,
There's beauty in the rainbow in the sky,
But none of these and nothing else can touch the beauty
That I remember in my true love's eyes.


Neil Young had his moments too:

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver
Space ships flying in the yellow haze of the sun,
There were children crying
And colors flying all around the chosen ones.
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun.
They were flying Mother Nature's
Silver seed to a new home in the sun.