Did you ever hear a song whose first verse just grabbed you with its imagery?

[DFW]

This one just has the perfect melody to enhance the lyrics, too.
i heard it again recently, after something like 20 years.

From Bruce Hornsby's "Til The Dreaming's Done"

Well I saw her one day
At the corner cafe
Everybody there knew she's a wonder
I sat there all night
Too shy to say
Honey you could keep me from going under

Oh my my when she walks on by
It's hard not to get lost in the view
How can you know if the feeling's a lie
When love comes out of the blue?

North, south, east, west
Up, down, all around and all the rest
I'll go anywhere that she wants me to go
Of all the girls I've loved she's the best
She's the one
Till the dreaming's done

[undeterred]

1. Luther Vandross' "Dance with my Father"

Back when I was a child
Before life removed all the innocence
My father would lift me high
And dance with my mother and me and then

Spin me around till I fell asleep
Then up the stairs he would carry me
And I knew for sure
I was loved

If I could get another chance
Another walk, another dance with him
I’d play a song that would never, ever end
How I’d love, love, love to dance with my father again

Ooh, ooh

When I and my mother would disagree
To get my way I would run from her to him
He’d make me laugh just to comfort me, yeah, yeah
Then finally make me do just what my mama said

Later that night when I was asleep
He left a dollar under my sheet
Never dreamed that he
Would be gone from me

If I could steal one final glance
One final step, one final dance with him
I’d play a song that would never, ever end
‘Cause I’d love, love, love to dance with my father again

Sometimes I’d listen outside her door
And I’d hear her, mama cryin’ for him
I pray for her even more than me
I pray for her even more than me

I know I’m prayin’ for much too much
But could You send back the only man she loved
I know You don’t do it usually
But Lord, she’s dyin’ to dance with my father again
Every night I fall asleep
And this is all I ever dream

[DFW]

2. Long first verse!

But I agree, powerful stuff.

[undeterred]

4. The first time I heard it was waking up to a clockradio at 5:30am

and it just blew me away. It had been many years since my father died, but he really captured it.

[Dr Morbius]

3. Tom Waits, Invitation to the Blues

Well she's up against the register with
an apron and a spatula,
Yesterday's deliveries, tickets for the bachelors
She's a moving violation from her conk down to her shoes,
Well, it's just an invitation to the blues

from Small Change. But it has as much to do with the style as the lyrics.

[MrCoffee]

5. Weird. My first thought was Tom Traubert's Blues

Tom can write, that's for sure.

[elehhhhna]

6. first time i heard it, i thought lady gaga's "alejandro" first verse was

"she's got gonads,
in her pocket..."


does that count ?

[mix]

7. The Band - King Harvest (Has Surely Come)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_hsp4SBwO4

[Capn Sunshine]

35. oh yeah....

Deep. Love that song.

[abq e streeter]

8. 2 by Springsteen-Promised Land, and Darkness on the Edge of Town

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I'm just killing time
Working all day in my daddy's garage
Driving all night, chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I'm gonna take charge...



They're still racing out at the Trestles,
But that blood it never burned in her veins,
Now I hear she's got a house up in Fairview,
And a style she's trying to maintain.
Well, if she wants to see me,
You can tell her that I'm easily found,
Tell her there's a spot out 'neath Abram's Bridge,
And tell her, there's a darkness on the edge of town.



Also -- couldn't agree more with Tom Waits songs posted above; probably would have posted those myself if someone else hadn't already.

[LeftyFingerPop]

9. Caledonia Mission

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0JaSwnXYF8

[lazarus]

10. Capercaille - "The Miracle Of Being"

I'm not a fan of the religion mention, but I ignore it because the song's so beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyTGa6s2ybI
Welcome Mother Nature
Welcome to your home
Welcome to the place you used to own
Decorations fading
The writing on the wall
Illusions of an era free for all

Your eyes will need a shelter
A shelter from the pain
Soaring smoke and burning drops of rain
And all around society
Is living on a prayer
Religion holding fort from despair

The heat wave of a thousand fears
Rainbows from a million tears
Echoes of a symphony playing on your mind
And even when the morning's clear
Its hard to find a reason for
The miracle of you and me
The miracle of being

Reflection on the water
Your face is still as night
Staring like a curse in the frozen light
The prince of hidden treasure
He's kissed the green above
And realised a ripple of your love.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

11. I always thought this was a great example;

It was the third of September.
That day I'll always remember, yes I will.
'Cause that was the day that my daddy died.
I never got a chance to see him.
Never heard nothing but bad things about him.
Mama, I'm depending on you to tell me the truth.

And Mama just hung her head and said,
"Son, Papa was a rolling stone.
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
(And when he died) All he left us was alone."
"Papa was a rolling stone, my son.
Wherever he laid his hat was his home.
(And when he died) All he left us was alone."

Well, well

Hey Mama, is it true what they say,
that Papa never worked a day in his life?
And Mama, some bad talk going around town
saying that Papa had three outside children and another wife.
And that ain't right.
Hey, talk about Papa doing some store front preaching.
Talked about saving souls and all the time leeching.
Dealing in debt and stealing in the name of the Lord.

[jotsy]

20. hope you don't mind

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A2QkgMvTtM>

[cloudbase]

12. Shades of Gray

Robert Earl Keen.

The whole thing grabs you, and you don't know what the hell it's about until the end.

[Swede]

13. Neil Young - Pocahontas

What an image those first few words invoke.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHPZuQTNoCo

Aurora borealis
The icy sky at night
Paddles cut the water
In a long and hurried flight
From the white man
to the fields of green
And the homeland
we've never seen.

They killed us in our tepee
And they cut our women down
They might have left some babies
Cryin' on the ground
But the firesticks
and the wagons come
And the night falls
on the setting sun.

They massacred the buffalo
Kitty corner from the bank
The taxis run across my feet
And my eyes have turned to blanks
In my little box
at the top of the stairs
With my Indian rug
and a pipe to share.

I wish a was a trapper
I would give thousand pelts
To sleep with Pocahontas
And find out how she felt
In the mornin'
on the fields of green
In the homeland
we've never seen.

And maybe Marlon Brando
Will be there by the fire
We'll sit and talk of Hollywood
And the good things there for hire
And the Astrodome
and the first tepee
Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me
Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me
Pocahontas.

[av8rdave]

26. +10 One of my all time favorites. The lyrics are a masterpiece of poetry

[rurallib]

14. Lennon's 'Across the Universe'

Words are flowing out like
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly
as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me
========================================

[Rabrrrrrr]

15. Zappa's "briefcase boogie"

[Bennyboy]

16. Springsteen...Jungleland

The Rangers had a homecoming

in Harlem late last night

The whole song is like a little movie...

[abq e streeter]

18. in '76, not long after that album was released, I lived 'neath a giant Exxon sign

played that incessantly on my turntable till I got a bootleg of , as I think we've talked about before, his show at the Roxy, and then played that incessantly.

[Bennyboy]

19. And as you know..

I was at the Roxy show (or one of them)

[abq e streeter]

21. Yep, you won front row tickets, right?

It was 35 years ago, and yet I remain insanely jealous.

[Bennyboy]

28. Wow, someone remembers my stories!

Won em off KRQR. Never knowingly heard one second of his music and went expecting to hate it due to all the hype. The guy danced on my table for three hours...

[Twillig]

17. Flying in a Blue Dream -- Joe Satriani

I've been semi-indifferent about lyrics ever since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SINl5JY7LhI

[Orrex]

22. That one by Ke$ha about brushing her teeth with a bottle of jack.

The sheer poetry of it brings tears to my eyes even now. :cry:

[jotsy]

23. Annie Lennox

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI0gdIWJ4-w&feature=related>

I look up to the little bird that glides across the sky
He sings the clearest melody it makes me want to cry


I walk along the city streets so dark with rage and fear
And I wish that I could be that bird and fly away from here

[MiddleFingerMom]

24. My life has not been the same since.

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Uno, dos, one, two, tres, quatro!!!
.
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Hatty told Matty
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about a thing she saw:
.
had two big horns
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and a wooly Jaw.

Wooly Bully
Wooly Bully

Wooly Bully
Wooly Bully

Wooly Bully
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From spinner.com :
.
This Chicano-rock anthem was one of the first songs to get
yanked from radio because DJs had no clue what the lyrics
meant. Domingo "Sam the Sham" Samudio didn't offer much
insight, except to cop to the fact that he named the tune
after his cat, and to recall his insistence that producer
Sam Kessler edit out the Spanglish countdown intro. Kessler
ignored that edict, giving the Pharaohs the most memorable
opening count-off until U2's mathematically incorrect 'Vertigo.'
.
.
HILARIOUS how his voice breaks in the days of OBVIOUSLY actual live music.
.
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHF558u6Q_8&feature=related
.
.
And check out this mash-up of Sam the Sham's "Little Red Riding Hood"
with Betty Boop's "Dizzy Red Riding Hood".
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JOwxnVoG6Q&feature=related
.
.
Was it wrong for me to want her... want her BAD when I was growing up?
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Um...
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.
.
...y'know...
.
.
.
.
.
...she's STILL kinda hot.
.
.
.
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DON'T JUDGE ME!!!!!
.

[DFW]

25. But you might think I'm a big bad wolf, so I won't

I remember Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs--just barely!!

Great stuff, although it evokes a slightly different mood from the Hornsby song (for me anyway! LOL)

[Phentex]

27. He was born in the summer of his 27th year...

Comin' home to a place he'd never been before
He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
You might say he found a key for every door

[MissMillie]

29. The Year of the Cat

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat

[Mad_Dem_X]

32. That entire song is so beautifully descriptive

One of my all-time favorites.

[mia]

30. Strange Angels - Laurie Anderson

http://www.livevideo.com/video/60B5714ACDFB4753AA117FA2F1C1FC16/laurie-anderson-strange-ange.aspx

They say that heaven is like TV
A perfect little world
that doesn`t really need you
And everything there
is made of light
And the days keep going by
Here they come Here they come
Here they come.

Well it was one of those days larger than life
When your friends came to dinner
and they stayed the night
And then they cleaned out the refrigerator -
They ate everything in sight
And then they stayed up in the living room
And they cried all night

Strange angels - singing just for me
Old stories - they`re haunting me
This is nothing
like I thought it would be.

Well I was out in my four door
with the top down.
And I looked up and there they were:
Millions of tiny teardrops
just sort of hanging there
And I didn`t know whether to laugh or cry
And I said to myself:
What next big sky?

Strange angels - singing just for me
Their spare change falls on top of me
Rain falling Falling all over me
All over me
Strange angels - singing just for me
Old Stories - they`re haunting me
Big changes are coming
Here they come
Here they come.

[mitchum]

31. Caroline says as she gets up off the floor...

Why is it that you beat me
it isn't any fun

Caroline says
as she makes up her eyes
You ought to learn more about yourself
think more than just I

[RagAss]

33. Spingsteen "Incident on 57th Street"

[blue_roses_lib]

34. Two of them..

Well probably more, but these are my two favorites.

"Soul Driver" by The Boss. I've included the whole song because it's full of imagery for me:

Rode through forty nights of the gospels' rain
Black sky pourin' snakes frogs
And love in vain
You were down where the river grows wider
Baby let me be your soul driver

Well if something in the air feels a little unkind
Don't worry darlin'
It'll slip your mind
I'll be your gypsy joker your shotgun rider
Baby let me be your soul driver

Now no one knows which way love's wheel turns
Will we hit it rich
Or crash and burn
Does fortune wait or just the black hand of fate
This love potion's all we've got
One toast before it's too late

If the angels are unkind or the season is dark
Or if in the end
Love just falls apart
Then here's to our destruction
Baby let me be your soul driver

And the first verse of "Iris"

And I'd give up forever to touch you
Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now
And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
Cause sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight
And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

[Capn Sunshine]

36. Marvin Gaye- "What's Goin' On"

hauntingly beautiful
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KC7uhMY9s

[Lindsey]

37. She's leaving Home - The Beatles....

"Wednesday morning at 5:00 as the day begins....." And so many more Beatles songs.......