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Best opening lyrics of all time


Goredho

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Evocative, powerful, startling, moving, whatever.  What are the best opening lyrics of a song that set the tone for everything that follows.   Here are some from the top of my head:

”Hello, Darkness, my old friend...”

”FUCK THE POLICE...”

”Mama take this badge from me, I cant use it anymore”

”I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel”

”Hey, Joe!  Where you going with that gun in your hand?”

“Old man take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you were”

”If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?”

edit: tell me to fuck off if this has already been done.

 

 

Edited by Goredho
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Well the night that was high, we got into town.......(this after that funky pulse raising mood setting LF intro)
 

Was the night that the rain, it froze on the ground
Down the street I heard such a sorrowful tune
Comin' from the place they call the Spanish Moon

Edited by noharleyyet
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2 hours ago, Goredho said:

Evocative, powerful, startling, moving, whatever.  What are the best opening lyrics of a song that set the tone for everything that follows.   Here are some from the top of my head:

”Hello, Darkness, my old friend...”

”FUCK THE POLICE...”

”Mama take this badge from me, I cant use it anymore”

”I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel”

”Hey, Joe!  Where you going with that gun in your hand?”

“Old man take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you were”

”If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?”

edit: tell me to fuck off if this has already been done.

 

 

Correction Fuck the PO Lease

 

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Please allow me to introduce myself

It was a clear black night, a clear white moon 

Sherry was a waitress at the only joint in town

She was a level-headed dancer on the road to alcohol

I hear the train a comin

Busted flat in Baton Rouge

Ground control to Major Tom

Smoking long black Cadillac, engine's windin down

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The screen door slams/Mary's dress sways/like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays

We were born before the wind

Your baby doesn't love you anymore

I was born in a crossfire hurricane

Fat man sitting on a little stool/takes the money from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over you

Flatter than a tabletop/makes you wonder why they stopped here

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Got a wife and kid in Baltimore Jack, I went out for a ride and I never went back. 

We met as soulmates on Paris Island, we left as inmates, from an asylum. 

It’s Nine O’Clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in

It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside. 

I’m a running down the road trying to loosen my load, got seven women on my mind. 

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair, one smell of colitas rising up through the air

I can feel it coming in the air tonight..  oh lord.

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Babs and Clean Willie were in love they said
So in love the preacher's face turned red

This is the day of the expanding man

In the mornin' you go gunnin'
For the man who stole your water

In the corner of my eye
I saw you in Rudy's
You were very high

Your everlasting summer
You can see it fading fast

Lost in the Barrio I walk like an Injun
So Carlo won't suspect something's wrong here
 

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Got out of town on a boat goin' to Southern Islands
Sailing a reach before a followin' sea
She was makin' for the trades on the outside
And the downhill run to Papeete
 
Off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas
We got eighty feet of the waterline nicely making way
In a noisy bar in Avalon I tried to call you
But on a midnight watch I realized why twice you ran away
Edited by noharleyyet
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Living on the road my friend, is going to keep you free and clean, now you wear your skin like iron, your breath is hard as kerosene. 

I grew up a-dreamin' of bein' a cowboy
And lovin' the cowboy ways
Pursuin' the life of my high ridin' heroes
I burned up my childhood days

 

Well, I've got to run to keep from hiding
And I'm bound to keep on riding
And I've got one more silver dollar
But I'm not gonna let them catch me, no
Not gonna let 'em catch the midnight rider

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My name's John Lee Pettimore/Same as my daddy and his daddy before

Once upon a time you dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime in your prime...didn't you?

If I ventured in the slipstream/between the viaducts of your dream/where immobile steel rims crack/and the ditch in the backroads stop/would you fine me?would you kiss-a my eye

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2 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Sittin’ in the morning sun, I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ comes

Fun fact: the "whistling" part of that song was because Redding either forgot the next verse or didn't have one. They recorded it as such and it stuck.

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