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Liz Phair – Fuck And Run Lyrics	17 years ago
No one has mentioned that if Exile in Guysville is a song for song response to The Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street, as Liz claimed, then this track is Keith's Happy told from the female perspective. Where that song is about a guy looking for love, Fuck and Run portrays a female character so accustomed to being used that she dismisses her bedmate's possibly good intentions.

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Art Garfunkel – Watermark Lyrics	17 years ago
The painting interpretation is likely the correct one. Glaringly obvious come to think about it. I just enjoyed the idea of Art Garfunkel singing something a touch more menacing than usual. Perhaps I was listening to too much Randy Newman when I wrote that. One of Webb's many classic songs about longing nonetheless. Oh and yeah, love Elvis. Probably my favorite songwriter.

submissions

Randy Newman – Pretty Boy Lyrics

18 years ago

This song seems to be Newman’s response to the corporate exploitation of street kids in the late seventies, from Saturday Night Fever (Travolta is presumably the “dancing wop”) to punk to the slew of gang films of that time (The Warriors, Boulevard Nights, Walk Proud, etc). The song is told from the perspective of a wealthy businessman (possibly a record executive) who condescends to a tough Jersey punk for the amusement of his rich pals, all set to one of Newman’s most ominous melodies. Overlooked, but one of my favourite songs of his.

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Randy Newman – Pants Lyrics

18 years ago

Born Again was the album where Newman’s targets became more skewed and his lyrics became far nastier and darker. Pants is yet another of the songwriter’s portraits of a deviant loner battling society, and is very similar to Naked Man from Good Old Boys in terms of subject matter. Yet whereas that song was clever and well-constructed, Pants is simply crass and played for laughs, but that doesn’t stop it from being a great song. The line where he pathetically poses the question “Will you take off my pants?” is one of the funniest moments in his entire catalogue. Why didn’t Joe Cocker cover this one?

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Randy Newman – The Blues Lyrics	18 years ago
A nasty yet very funny parody of confessional singer/songwriters, made all the more scathing by having it done as a duet with none other than Paul Simon. Allegedly one of the few songs Newman regrets writing.

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Randy Newman – Same Girl Lyrics	18 years ago
A devastatingly sparse and haunting song told from the perspective of a pimp, who sadly attempts to convince one of his prostitutes, now a junkie, that she hasn’t changed, that she’s still the happy sweet girl she was before she met him. He promises her “just a few more nights on a street” then “a few more years”, bleakly suggesting there is no way out. Besides death.

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Randy Newman – Bad News from Home Lyrics	18 years ago
A chilling, noir-ish song, as the other posts states, told from the perspective of a man whose wife has left him and who has followed her and her new lover to Mexico to murder them. The song ends with him standing on a road near “where they both lie sleeping on a feather bed”, ominously suggesting what is to follow.

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Randy Newman – Davy The Fat Boy Lyrics

18 years ago

The character sketch at the tail end of Newman’s first album where one can hear his dark, sardonic brand of song writing coming into full bloom for the first time. Over Van Dyke Park’s elaborate arrangement, Newman sings from the perspective of a man, who, in the first verse, describes promising Davy’s parents that he will take care of him following their death. He is, as they state, “the only friend he ever will have”. In a marvellously black twist, it is revealed the narrator is now exploiting Davy in a carnival sideshow, where Davy undertakes the tragic “fat boy dance” for passers-by. Yet the tone of the music soon changes, the music swells to a sombre climax, where the narrator repeats the question previously posed to the crowd, however this time it is sullen and empty, “Isn’t he round?”. The morose strings suggest the narrator’s regret, yet soon they vanish, the rolling piano refrain reappears. The show must go on...

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Randy Newman – Rosemary Lyrics

18 years ago

Perhaps the most troubling song on Newman’s 12 Songs, in that the lyrics are too superficially benign to be on an album populated with stalkers, women being run over by beach sweepers, racists, rednecks, mama’s boys and lonely gas station attendants. Not to mention Uncle Bob, who decides to tie up a goat in his front yard for all his “so-called friends to see”. Yet in the midst of all this is Rosemary, a plea from the narrator to the title character to take a walk with him in a park. Is it simply a portrait of a randy teenager? Is the narrator another demented stalker like the narrator of Suzanne? Does he wish to take the girl to “a place where it’s nice and dark” for sex or something more sinister? In the context of any other album, one would not think twice about what the lyrics mean. In the context of 12 Songs, it’s downright menacing.

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Randy Newman – Suzanne Lyrics

18 years ago

While I’ve seen this song alternately referred to as a “gorgeous ballad...a tale of heartbreak and longing” (Allmusic.com) and a retort to Leonard Cohen’s song of the same name, it is clearly neither. Like most of the songs on Newman’s brilliant 12 Songs LP, Suzanne is an unsettling portrait of a dysfunctional loner, in this case a narrator who comes across the title character’s name in a telephone booth and begins stalking her. The song builds to its quietly terrifying climax where the narrator proclaims “You won't know it but I'll be behind you/ Don't try and run away from me, little girl/Wherever you go I'll find you”. A love song in the most demented sense, but more bone-chilling than heartbreaking, infused with the songwriter’s typically warped black humour. Apart from In Germany Before the War and Bad News from Home, this is probably his most unnerving song.

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Art Garfunkel – Watermark Lyrics

18 years ago

Probably Jimmy Webb’s creepiest song, originally penned for Richard Harris’s second LP. Beyond Webb’s typically oblique and poetic imagery seems to be a rather chilling tale told from a man who has murdered his “child lover” and sits watching her body decay into nothingness. Art Garfunkel’s version is the definitive one, eerily sparse with his angelic voice making the lyrics all the more haunting.

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Lou Reed – Sally Can't Dance Lyrics

18 years ago

It’s allegedly about the late Edie Sedgwick who was a “big model” that used to “ball folk singers” (Bob Dylan), though some suggest Nico is another candidate. Yet since Sedgwick was dead from a drug overdose when the song was penned, and certainly couldn’t dance no more, it’s likely to be about her. One of Reed’s nastiest songs, yet a classic nonetheless. It should be noted that the single version removes any references to drug addiction, rape and murder, meaning most listeners will simply presume the song is about a chick that dances badly. Reed’s ‘Femme Fatale’ is also supposedly about Sedgwick.

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Warren Zevon – The French Inhaler Lyrics

18 years ago

The song is told from the perspective of a lowlife pimp, Norman, attempting to convince a failed actress to put herself “up for sale”. He lies to her, tells her she’ll be famous. Later, he sombrely observes what she has become a broken drug addict, looking like “something death brought with him in his suitcase”. As another poster stated, it's a character study of Hollywood dreams gone awry. One of Zevon’s very best songs.

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