lyrics meme

[clauclauclaudia]

(cuz all the HRSFen are doing it, and I don't think I've ever done a lyrics meme)

1. Put your playlist on shuffle.
2. Post the first lines to the first 30 songs to come up (along with these instructions).
3. Have people guess the songs and artists in comments to the post.
4. Post the answers to the ones people guessed correctly. A couple of days later, post the first two lines of the ones no one got and get people to guess again.
5. Repeat, adding the next line to the unguessed songs each time, until they're all guessed/you've posted the whole song/you've gotten bored/no-one's going to get the damn thing if you don't tell them.


Unlike occultatio I'm not excluding non-English. But then the Japanese isn't on this playlist. ;-)

Adding second lines/more context to unguessed songs
1. You dug a well
2. Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd (hey, that's what shuffled up, rmd)
3. You think you're denying me of something / well, i've got plenty
4. Roy rode into Houston on the 15th of July / they brought him in to help clean up the town
5. Shall I shy down? / that's boring. snoring.
6. People pointing / Finger-painting the world
7. As I was going over the Cork and Kerry mountains
8. Thursday afternoon you cast a shadow 'round my room. / The breeze moved the curtains and lifted my perfume into the air
9. One song
10. Swaz hie gat umbe / daz sint allez megede
11. Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
12. Well you like what you're given /
13. I don't care what shirt you wear / And I don't want you to know my show
14. Rik-kik-kik-kik!
15. Dear Prudence
16. Little children, did I tell you how the mockingbird / Called the animals together, tried to say a few words
17. I took a ferry to the Statue of Liberty
18. The journey home is never too long / Your heart arrives before the train
19. I'm John, Hinkley (remind me to post lyrics for you who haven't heard it who need to)
20. Sweet dreams are made of this
21. Well I tried to make it Sunday
22. Doors locked (doors locked) / blinds pulled (blinds pulled)
23. Look at all your faces
24. Jerry's got a squeeze box / Johnny got a big drum
25. Hats off, here they come
26. It's a crime to fall in love / Heart and mind, and soul in love
27. You're sweet (you're sweet) as a honey bee / but like a honey bee stings, you've gone and left my heart in pain
28. Lumina, come and wrap around me / Lumina, take me through the snow
29. 4:15 Friday afternoon (Friday afternoon) / I took a trip on a train (Took a trip on a train)
30. I guess I'm fortunate / For you to be on my mind

I'm doing an extra one for every lyric that *was* or contained the song title, because that's just lame.

31. The water is wide
32. Some folks like to get away
33. Open mine eyes that I may see / Glimpses of truth thou hast for me
34. Mademoiselles!
35. Paradise / is exactly like
36. Got a call from an old friend
37. When we wore a heart of stone / we wandered to the sea
38. In a forest pitch dark / Glowed the tiniest spark

I predict the hardest/most obscure ones are 5, 6, 12, 13, 16, 24, 29, 30, 33. If I had to guess, 12, 16, 30, and 33 will be unguessed longest. But perhaps my readers will surprise me!


#1. "Cedar Tree", Indigo Girls.
#2. "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", Sweeney Todd
#7 "Whiskey in the Jar" (as recorded by Tempest)
#9 "One Song Glory" from Rent.
#11. "Suzanne", Leonard Cohen.
#14. The Frogs, The Frogs (a la Sondheim)
#15. "Dear Prudence", The Beatles.
#17. "A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing", Schoolhouse Rock
#18: the journey home, "bombay dreams"
#19 is "Forbidden Assassins", from Forbidden Broadway: SVU
#20 is "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics.
#21 Sister Golden Hair -- America
#22: walking in space, "hair"
#23. "Let Me Walk Among You", Bat Boy
#25: "Beautiful Girls," from Follies
#31 The water is wide (Lucie Blue Tremblay, as it happens)
#32 is "New York State of Mind" by Billy Joel.
#34 is "Finishing the Hat" from Sunday in the Park with George
#35: language is a virus, laurie anderson
#36 is My Life by Billy Joel

Comments

[saxikath]

#31 is, or at least could be, "Waly Waly."

[clauclauclaudia]

Thank you for being creative with it! :)

[saxikath]

Well, the song goes by a couple of names, so I figured I'd go with the one that wasn't the same as the lyric. :)

[griffen.livejournal.com]

#7 is "Whiskey in the Jar," but I don't know if you listen to the Poxy Boggards or not.

#9 is "One Song Glory" from Rent.

#20 is "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics.

#32 is "New York State of Mind" by Billy Joel.

#34 - is that from "The Day Off" in Sunday in the Park with George?

Those are all the ones I know. How'd I do?

[clauclauclaudia]

Correct on all but 34 (on which you are very close).

The recording of #7 is in fact by Tempest, a celtic rock band.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Ooo. I'll have to look them up.

By the way, hi. Found you last week through a mutual friend, liked what I saw, added you.

Re #34: It's from Sunday in the Park, right? I just can't place the song. Oh, is it George's song where he's reviewing the drawings? That would be "Finishing the Hat," then.

[clauclauclaudia]

We've both been in Callahanian circles for a while, I think, though I drifted away years back. Hi!

34: Exactly!

[dumble.livejournal.com]

9) One Song Glory (Rent). Of course, this was on my list too...
20) It's called Sweet Dreams, right?
31) The water is wide (How about I just rack up all the ones with titles in their lyrics? =)
32) New York State of Mind (Billy Joel)

[clauclauclaudia]

How about I just rack up all the ones with titles in their lyrics? =)

Hey, it ain't over until somebody does. :)

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

33? What, is this a specific group singing it or something, that makes it difficult? Otherwise-- well, it's a good hymn. "Open my eyes that I may see... Glimpses of truth... Thou hast for me..." etc.

The Unitarian Church does have different words for it, so that's not the way I learned it, but I've sung it enough to know some of the various variations.

I'll probably come back to this and guess some more when I'm not at work.

[clauclauclaudia]

33 is in fact a trick lyric. :)

[clauclauclaudia]

... and I feel kind of guilty about it. But if anybody does know the track, and me, they'll be pretty sure they're right.

[wolfheart17.livejournal.com]

21 - Sister Golden Hair -- America
36 - Big Shot -- Billy Joel

[clauclauclaudia]

21 is right, but 36 is merely in the right ballpark. ;-)

[wolfheart17.livejournal.com]

36 is My Life

Do I lose all my Long Island Cred for getting it wrong?

[clauclauclaudia]

Hee. I don't think I am qualified to either impart or remove Long Island Cred, so you're safe as far as I'm concerned.

[khyros.livejournal.com]

No. Just some.

[ceo]

1. "Cedar Tree", Indigo Girls.
11. "Suzanne", Leonard Cohen (?).
15. "Dear Prudence", The Beatles.

[clauclauclaudia]

All correct! And yes, it's Leonard Cohen. I love that song, though I may love his Hallelujah more.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

The only version I have of 11 is by Judy Collins. And I'm totally in love with his Hallelujah. :)

[jessicac.livejournal.com]

11. Suzanne, Leonard Cohen

[clauclauclaudia]

But of course. :) I had to stop and listen to it while I was writing this up.

[dr_whom]

2. "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", Sweeney Todd
17. "A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing", Schoolhouse Rock
23. "Let Me Walk Among You", Bat Boy
36. "Movin' Out", Billy Joel

And I second griffen's guess of "Finishing the Hat" for 34.

[dr_whom]

Oops! Of course wolfheart17 is right; it's "My Life".

[clauclauclaudia]

Yup. You are otherwise entirely correct, of course. Although the track title for 17 is in fact "Schoolhouse Rock Medley", from an out of print Harvard a cappella album. ;-)

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

You have (to me) an awfully strange definition of "first line".

[clauclauclaudia]

In almost all cases, I have a web site to back me up. ;-) Sometimes it just matches the phrasing too well for me to give more words. :) And in the case of One Song Glory I just couldn't bring myself to give the entire song title.

The interweb knows all!

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Hey, now, phrases aren't the same as lines, and it's not the way I do it, but I see your point. :)

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

Posting from the road, so I can't dwell on the whole list, but #19 is from "Forbidden Assassins", from the new FB:SVU disk.

[clauclauclaudia]

Indeed!

Enjoy your travels.

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

25: "Beautiful Girls," from Follies

[clauclauclaudia]

Yes indeed!

[zdenka]

#10 is from Carmina Burana (Orff).

[(Anonymous)]

This is true.

I'm pretty sure someone will be able to give the individual song title, though, so I'll leave it open for a bit.

bah! anonymous in my own journal! reposting....

[clauclauclaudia]

This is true.

I'm pretty sure someone will be able to give the individual song title, though, so I'll leave it open for a bit.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

14 sounds to me like the croaking chorus of the Frogs of Aristophanes, but who on earth sings it?

[clauclauclaudia]

You so totally win!

Sondheim did a "Frogs". I think it was originally performed at Yale or something like that in the 70s, but this is from a brief-lived Broadway production starring (and rewritten by) Nathan Lane as Dionysus.

In this production, they read Shakespeare and Shaw for Aeschylus and Euripides. The setting is: "time: the present; place: ancient Greece". ;-)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

18: the journey home, "bombay dreams"
22: walking in space, "hair"
27: is this 'honey bee' by gloria gaynor?? (you have gloria gaynor on your ipod?)
35: language is a virus, laurie anderson

i'd guess wildly that 26 is magnetic fields, because odd and love song, but i can't name the song.

i thought 10 might be something from 'bandits', so i googled it to see and was surprised at the result.

[clauclauclaudia]

yes, yes, no (*checks* -- no!), yes, good guess, and hee!

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

#27 "Same Old Song" by the Four Tops?

[clauclauclaudia]

Yes indeed! Well spotted. :)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

isn't the first lyric of "sweet dreams" "sweet dreams are made of this", not "of these"? (since the song title is, i think, officially "sweet dreams (are made of this)"

[clauclauclaudia]

Oh, all right. ;-)