WHICH IS YOUR FAVORITE SONG LINE?

Tattoo-worthy: 10 powerful song lyrics that hit hard!

Published on December 10, 2024

Credit: Aaron Burden

A song can be great because of its music, its lyrics, or both. Maybe we heard a tune and a certain line spoke to us because it resonated with a particular situation, or because we found it to be funny or insightful. Some lyrics are celebrated since their birth, and some are discovered ages after the artist who penned them is long gone. The following 10 examples fit into the different categories listed above. Which one is which? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

I am the captain of my pain - Nick Cave

Credit: Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦

As with many artists on this list, it is virtually impossible to choose just one lyric. The legendary Australian singer-songwriter simply has too many great lines spread all over his long career as a member of The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, Grinderman, and The Bad Seeds.

Aside from the title lyric, taken from "Brother, My Cup is Empty", we could also mention "I look at you, you look at me and deep in our hearts babe we know it; you weren't much of muse but then I wasn't much of a poet", taken from "There She Goes My Beautiful World", as two examples of Cave’s penchant for self-contempt and masochistic nature.

There ain’t no devil, there’s just God when He’s drunk - Tom Waits

Credit: Nahir Giorgio

Another singer-songwriter with too many amazing lyrics to choose just one is Tom Waits. His stories about life on the streets, fringe characters, and relationships are filled with wisdom and humor.

Aside from the title lyric, taken from "Heartattack & Vine", another great line that comes to mind is "She’s a diamond who wants to stay coal", taken from "Black Market Baby", and "Come down from the cross, we can use the wood", from "Come up to the house". Waits’ poetry is filled with wit, insightful remarks, sorrow, and love in equal measure.

I am a loser at the top of my game - Tom Petty

Credit: Thomas Kelley

As we can see so far, self-deprecation is a theme among singer-songwriters, and Tom Petty was no exception to this rule. This brilliant songwriter started his career in the band Mudcrutch. One of this band’s hits, "Scare Easy", features the title lyrics.

Petty penned many classics during his career, both with the Heartbreakers, The Traveling Wilburies, and his solo albums. Out of the last group, we have selected these lines, taken from his song "Wildflowers": "You belong among the wildflowers. You belong in a boat out at sea. Sail away, kill off the hours. You belong somewhere you feel free".

Did you exchange a walk-on part in a war for a lead role in a cage? - Roger Waters

Credit: Marcela Vitória

As the main lyricist in the legendary prog-rock juggernaut Pink Floyd, Roger Waters created some iconic lines along the way. The 1975 album Wish You Were Here featured long, mainly instrumental songs and shorter, more standard tunes.

The lyric from the title is taken from the song "Wish You Were Here", which is supposed to be about Syd Barret, the original frontman and chief songwriter of Pink Floyd.

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return - Eden Azbez

Credit: Matt Botsford

This line is taken from "Nature Boy", a song written by Eden Azbez and popularized by Nat King Cole. It first appeared in 1948 and has since become a jazz standard.

The song references a Los Angeles sub-culture called the "Nature Boys", but the famous line showcased here transcends that moment and expresses a universal truth.

They’re sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone - Billy Joel

Credit: ian dooley

Billy Joel has written many hits over the years, but "Piano Man" remains a favorite, and for good reason. This song features strong melodies and great lyrics delivered by a young Joel full of wit and insightful stories about all the classic characters in a bar.

The song narrates the piano man’s experiences and observations at the bar where he works and its usual clients. And, as the line goes, "They’re sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone".

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose - Kris Kristofferson

Credit: Jordan McDonald

Kris Kristofferson wrote the song "Me and Bobby McGee", and Janis Joplin popularized it.

This inspiring tune, dealing with themes of love and loss, not only features the title line but also has the lyrics, "I'd trade all of my tomorrows, for one single yesterday".

Despite all my rage, I’m still just a rat in a cage - Billy Corgan

Credit: Bernie Almanzar

The Smashing Pumpkins are an alternative rock band from Chicago fronted by the brooding Billy Corgan. Many of their songs delve into themes of sadness, angst, and despair.

Their 1995 record, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, was a massive success and featured the song "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" as its first single. In it, Corgan wrote the iconic line, "Despite all my rage, I’m still just a rat in a cage".

There’s a justice in this world. And I know just what she’s called. She’s called Elaine - Robyn Hitchcock

Credit: Kelly Sikkema

Robyn Hitchcock is an English singer-songwriter who mixes psychedelic and folk rock with a high dose of absurd and ironic humor in his music. He’s been around since the early 1970s and released a string of albums that influenced a great deal of artists, from R.E.M. to Gillian Welch and more.

His lyrics often showcase insightful observations, absurd stories, and playful metaphors, like in the one we chose, "There’s a justice in this world. And I know just what she’s called. She’s called Elaine".

We can be heroes, just for one day - David Bowie

Credit: Gabriel Bassino

David Bowie was a chameleon with many faces that changed as he grew tired of the last one. In the mid-70s, he had grown tired of his Thin White Duke phase and decided to go to Berlin, where he created the so-called Berlin Trilogy, composed of Low, "Heroes", and Lodger.

The second of these albums, "Heroes", featured the hit song by the same name, which contained the highly inspirational lyric that we chose to finish this list, "We can be heroes, just for one day".

DO YOU STILL REMEMBER YOUR GRANDPARENT'S PHONE NUMBER?

Remember these 10 things you don’t need to remember anymore?

Published on December 10, 2024

Credit: Eric Rothermel

If you were born more than 25 years ago you probably recall a time when you had to remember things like a phone number, an address, directions for going somewhere, birthdays, and many more things you don’t need to remember anymore. Technology helps us in a million different ways in our daily lives and one of the most frequent examples is the amount of things that it "memorizes" for us. Listed below you will find ten things that were once stored in our brains and have now been transferred to technological devices. Do you remember them?

Phone numbers

Credit: Wesley Hilario

There was a time when everybody knew the telephone numbers they used the most.

It was the most common thing, knowing your close family members, friends, or even work telephone numbers. Maybe you even remember some of those numbers to this day.

Nowadays, since cell phones have become a universal and integral part of our world, nobody knows anybody’s phone number. We just trade contacts and look for their names whenever we need to make a call.

Birthday and anniversary dates

Credit: Blessing Ri

Back in an age where with no social media, like Facebook, birthdays and anniversaries were dates usually remembered, or at least, marked in paper calendars. And, while we still remember the birthdays of our closest relatives and friends, most people rely on social media platforms like Facebook, to remind them of everybody else’s birthdays, or push notifications that simply pop up on our cell phone screens with the relevant information.

Addresses

Credit: Eric Prouzet

Knowing an address number was a common thing back in the day when contact information was not a standardized thing readily accessible on our cell phones. It may be hard to understand in a day and age when most addresses are forwarded to us on WhatsApp messages, sometimes with a location pin even, but it was very normal to have to write down addresses on a piece of paper until you remembered them.

Directions

Credit: Anna Pascale

Since we just mentioned addresses, there is no sense in beating around the bush with this and we must talk about another item on this list that is intrinsically connected with the former: directions.

There was a time when it was normal to carry around a city map if one was unfamiliar with the area or ask a stranger for directions. And, while some people still do those same things, most of us rely on the Maps location on our smartphone to guide us anywhere we go.

Who needs to memorize streets and corners beforehand when they can simply take their phone and ask to be guided with whichever voice they prefer?

Appointment dates

Credit: BENCE BOROS

Some people still use them. Maybe you do too. Do you remember schedule diaries? People wrote their appointments in those books or maybe used little Post-it notes on their freezer doors and bathroom mirrors to remind them. And, when the day of the appointment came, they had to remain vigilant of the time and remember what was that they had to do and where.

These days, your smartphone will send you one or more reminders during the day, with directions if needed, possible departure times, and several recommendations.

Passwords

Credit: rc.xyz NFT gallery

Granted, it was much more simpler to remember one or two passwords a couple of decades ago than the million ones we are required to create and remember these days. Back in the day, unless you were a spy or something of the sort, there weren’t that many passwords to recall. But the ones that we had, were usually stored in our heads, or maybe written down in little papers and folded into our wallets.

Nowadays, Google will recommend a password and offer the remember it, and auto-complete any instance when it is needed, so you don’t have to worry about it.

To-do lists

Credit: Torbjørn Helgesen

Those crumpled pieces of paper stored in our pockets, containing shopping lists and things to do were an ubiquitous item in our lives. And, if the list was tragically forgotten at home, we had to try and remember whatever was on that list.

Once again, smartphones have replaced such lists with a very convenient notepad application that even reminds us to check it once in a while.

Recipes and cooking times

Credit: Debby Hudson

Browsing through cookbooks, asking people for recipes, storing handwritten papers and magazine pages with recipes in notebooks, asking for the advice of more experienced cooks, and remembering quantities and procedures were common practices in an age before the internet and even more so, in an age before smartphones.

These days, all you have to do if you want to cook anything is look it up on your phone and a million different recipes, with detailed videos will pop up immediately. And, if you don’t have a kitchen timer, you can set up multiple simultaneous alarms on, again, your phone.

Weather conditions

Credit: Jordan Ladikos

Waiting for the weatherman on the TV, or looking up the forecast in the newspaper, or asking somebody for a rain prediction were pretty much the only ways to know how the weather was going to behave in the following days.

It seems like the smartphone has come to solve this situation too, since all you have to do now is look into its permanently updated forecast to know how the weather is going to be in the next 10 days.

Basic photographic camera operations

Credit: Alexander Andrews

In a day and age when a photographic camera was a separate device from a telephone, certain skills were necessary to handle it. Even an amateur aficionado needed to learn a thing or two about the focus, aperture, exposure, and a few other things before he or she was ready to go out into the world and take decent pictures.

These days, almost nobody owns a camera anymore. Most people just use the camera on their phones which requires a simple point-and-shoot attitude to the whole endeavor. Forget the ISO, composition, white balance, and all that. Your phone knows the procedure and will make sure all your pictures are perfect.