Quiz Time: Obscure Lyrics from Famous Songs #2

by jmgariepy · August 27, 2014

Like Quiz #1, I’m taking ten famous songs and pulling forward verses and bridges from them. Your job is to guess the artist or the song. Simple? Simple.

Unlike the first quiz, I culled these ten from Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Technically, these songs all graced the top 150. A word of warning: There isn’t a song in the top 150 from 1995 or after. Don’t complain to me; I didn’t make the list. All right, let’s go!

“You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat,
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat.
Ain’t it hard when you discover that he really wasn’t where it’s at,
After he took from you everything he could steal?”

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“Like a Rolling Stone” – Bob Dylan Rolling Stones Magazine began their list with Bob Dylan’s eponymous song, so I felt it was only right to do the same. Seems like a biased decision on Rolling Stone’s part. They named their magazine after this song, so it must be the best song ever. Yes? Wikipedia also fields a List of Songs Considered the Best, which is a compilation of other lists by “reliable source[s] who independently affirm the creditability of the survey, poll, or critique that was used.” According to Wikipedia, the song that most commonly appears in the top ten of all the lists? Smells Like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana popped up six times. ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ only appears twice, in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and Rate Your Music’s 250 Best Singles of the ’60s. Sorry Dylan fans. I’m not saying he didn’t single-handedly change the way we look at the music industry. He just isn’t the only artist to do that. Let’s put it another way: I started this quiz off with Dylan’s lyrics because I considered it an easy challenge, but still a challenge to recognize the song. I couldn’t use any of the Beatles’ lyrics. It would be too obvious if I did. There’s probably a reason for that.

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“Since you’ve gone, I’ve been lost without a trace.
I dream at night, I can only see your face.
I look around, but it’s you I can’t replace.
I feel so cold and I long for your embrace.
I keep crying baby, baby, please.”

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“Every Breath You Take’ – The Police Those five lines are the bridge to a creepy, creepy song that’s been masquerading as a love song for decades. Sting told the BBC that he “thinks the song is very, very sinister and ugly and people have actually misinterpreted it as being a gentle little love song, when it’s quite the opposite.” It seems that tradition continues in the Youtube comments I embedded this video from. The highest rated post reads “This is for […]. Ima miss you your such a nice and. kind person I swear I’m sad that your leaving so I dedicate his song too you I will always think about you as a very nice and a grateful person.” But even that post goes on to acknowledge his sentiment shouldn’t be taken “in a creepy way”. Keep skimming, and you’ll find posts about how the band is allowed to keep tabs on you, since they’re the Police. Another comment mentions that this song is set to continuously loop over the intercom at NSA headquarters. It seems almost everyone got the message by now, but still wants to blame everyone else for not getting the message. Is there a word for a piece of trivia that everyone already knows, but everybody doesn’t seem to know that everyone knows it? Because a “well known, little known fact” is a mouthful to say, and doesn’t convey the futility of it all…

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“Well, I said come along my baby. We got chicken in the barn.
Whose barn? What barn? My barn.
Come along my baby. Really got the bull by the horn.”

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“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” – Jerry Lee Lewis You can be forgiven if you missed this one. You don’t listen to Jerry Lee Lewis for the insightful lyrics. You watch him to see a man go mad while convulsing over a piano. Adults were appalled in ’64 when Peter Townshend of the Who smashed his first guitar at the Railway Hotel. But Jerry Lee was the original abuser of musical instruments, kicking over stools and stomping around on top of the piano. Despite rumors, he “never set fire to a piano. I’d like to have got away with it, though. I pushed a couple of them in the river. They wasn’t any good.”

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“All I needed was a friend to lend a guiding hand.
But you turned into a lover, and mother, what a lover.
You wore me out.
All you did was wreck my bed.
And in the morning kick me in the head.”

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“Maggie May” – Rod Stewart When this song first released, no one expected anything from it. The label tried to remove it from the album for ‘having no melody’. Stewart argued putting it back on the album, mostly because there wasn’t any better material and he didn’t want to go back to the studio to record something else. The recording patched together from two takes, using a drum without cymbals (the cymbals were added in in post.) And, since the guitar parts were half-baked, the band grabbed Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne to kind of throw together some mandolin on the fly. Martin Quinttenton, co-writer of the song, was quoted as saying “We didn’t think it was very good. Never in anyone’s wildest dreams was it a Pop standard.” The song is 5:15, running past normal radio standards, even though the (and I can’t stress this enough) improvised mandolin solo at the end could be whittled down if anyone maintained any faith in the song. Maggie May was slapped on the B-Side of “Reason to Believe”, and forgotten about. But radio DJs digged the song. They flipped Reason to Believe over, and played Maggie May over and over. Maybe because it sounded so different, but also so old. Maybe because the lyrics told the story of a young man trapped in the web of an older woman. It was racy, but somehow timeless. Whatever the reason, Maggie May went huge, giving Rod Stewart the distinction of being the first artist to hold a number one song and album in the United States and United Kingdom simultaneously.

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“Me see Jamaican moon above.
It won’t be long me see me love.
Me take her in my arms and then,
I tell her I’ll never leave again.”

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Louie Louie – The Kingsmen Using Louie Louie is almost cheating on my part. The song is famous for being an unrecognizable mess of lyrics, interrupted by a catchy hook. You certainly wouldn’t recognize these words from listening to the song. Go ahead. Feel free to make the rest out on your own. The FBI spent thirty-one months piecing together whether or not Louie Louie contained a subversive message. In the end they admitted they couldn’t make out a single word. The jumble that pours out of Jack Ely’s mouth, though, are far from the dirty lyrics teenagers of the 60s made them out to be. The verses are sung from the point of view of a Louie, a Jamaican sailor who speaks pidgin English and wants to return to his island to see his love again. But he’s a rambling drunk talking to a bartender named Louie. And he won’t shut up about how he’s got to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Beyond the story, there’s a pile of other reasons why the song is incomprehensible: This recording comes from after a 90 minute jam session, in which Jack Ely ruined his throat singing Louie Louie over and over again. The boom mic was too high and Ely is on his tip toes singing into it. Ely’s retainer is in his mouth, because no one thought this would be the final take of Louie Louie. The Kingsmen were screwing around before doing one last take. This is what stuck.

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“I… I wish you could swim like the dolphins–like dolphins can swim.
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together.
We can beat them forever and ever.”

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Heroes – David Bowie I’m skipping the trivia, and letting Bowie talk for this one. This comes from an interview with Performing Songwriter about singing ‘Heroes’ at the Berlin Wall in 1986: “I’ll never forget that. It was one of the most emotional performances I’ve ever done. I was in tears. They’d backed up the stage to the wall itself so that the wall was acting as our backdrop. We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realize in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I’d never done anything like that in my life, and I guess I never will again. “When we did ‘Heroes’ it really felt anthemic, almost like a prayer. However well we do it these days, it’s almost like walking through it compared to that night, because it meant so much more. That’s the town where it was written, and that’s the particular situation that it was written about. It was just extraordinary. “We did it in Berlin last year as well – ‘Heroes’ – and there’s no other city I can do that song in now that comes close to how it’s received. This time, what was so fantastic is that the audience – it was the Max Schmeling Hall, which holds about 10-15,000 – half the audience had been in East Berlin that time way before. So now I was face-to-face with the people I had been singing it to all those years ago. And we were all singing it together. Again, it was powerful. Things like that really give you a sense of what performance can do. They happen so rarely at that kind of magnitude. Most nights I find very enjoyable. These days, I really enjoy performing. But something like that doesn’t come along very often, and when it does, you kind of think, ‘Well, if I never do anything again, it won’t matter.'”

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Heroes – David Bowie

I’m skipping the trivia, and letting Bowie talk for this one. This comes from an interview with Performing Songwriter about singing ‘Heroes’ at the Berlin Wall in 1986:

“I’ll never forget that. It was one of the most emotional performances I’ve ever done. I was in tears. They’d backed up the stage to the wall itself so that the wall was acting as our backdrop. We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realize in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I’d never done anything like that in my life, and I guess I never will again.

“When we did ‘Heroes’ it really felt anthemic, almost like a prayer. However well we do it these days, it’s almost like walking through it compared to that night, because it meant so much more. That’s the town where it was written, and that’s the particular situation that it was written about. It was just extraordinary.

“We did it in Berlin last year as well – ‘Heroes’ – and there’s no other city I can do that song in now that comes close to how it’s received. This time, what was so fantastic is that the audience – it was the Max Schmeling Hall, which holds about 10-15,000 – half the audience had been in East Berlin that time way before. So now I was face-to-face with the people I had been singing it to all those years ago. And we were all singing it together. Again, it was powerful. Things like that really give you a sense of what performance can do. They happen so rarely at that kind of magnitude. Most nights I find very enjoyable. These days, I really enjoy performing. But something like that doesn’t come along very often, and when it does, you kind of think, ‘Well, if I never do anything again, it won’t matter.'”

“I knew you’d love me as long as you wanted.
And then, some day, you’d leave me for somebody new.
Worry? Why do I let myself worry?
Wondering what in the world did I do?”

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Crazy – Patsy Cline Sure, the critics think ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ are two of the greatest rock songs of all time. And music customers made ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ the best-selling singles of all time. But if you want the song with the most plays in jukeboxes the world over, that’s Crazy, by Patsy Cline. While the other top songs do a great job expressing an era of music, Crazy begs to be looped repeatedly, stirred in as a chaser to a cocktail fueled self-loathing haze. Redemption, outrage, nostalgia and grief are but moments in our lives. Dwelling over your own stupidity is timeless.

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“Sitting here eating my heart out waiting-
Waiting for some lover to call.
Dialed about a thousand numbers, lately.
Almost rang the phone off the wall.”

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Hot Stuff – Donna Summers In the spring of 1979, female sexuality dominated the airwaves. Donna Summers’ Hot Stuff peaked at number one, only to be toppled by Ring My Bell by Anita Ward for two weeks. Then the spot was reclaimed by Donna Summers again with Bad Girls. I know people love to point to Aretha Franklin’s Respect as an iconic song for the women’s liberation movement, and I’d be a fool to argue against that. But we should give some props to Hot Stuff, too. Donna Summer is calling Joes at random for a one night hook up. There’s no sentimentality. No desire to keep a man or make a home. She wants hot loving, and nightly. She needs a man, but only if he’s low maintenance, and he can always be replaced. And America was on board. Not only did Miss Summers reach number one on the charts in ’79, but she walked out of the Grammys with the first ever award for Best Solo Female Rock Performance.

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“I still remember, when you used to be 9 years old.
I was a fool for you, from the bottom of my soul.
Now that you’ve grown up–grown enough to know.
You wanna leave me.
You wanna let me go.”

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Shout – The Isley Brothers Nine years old, huh? I heard of childhood sweethearts growing up and getting married, but an infatuation with someone leading back to the fourth grade? Maybe you should date other people for a year? Do a rumspringa? It’s not… it’s not that I question your devotion. I just think maybe you should try a few other flavors before you stick with strawberry ice cream for the rest of your life.

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“I guess I should’ve known by the way you parked your car sideways that it wouldn’t last.
See, you’re the kinda person that believes in makin’ out once; love ’em and leave ’em fast.
I guess I must be dumb. ‘Cause you had a pocket full of horses: Trojan (and some of them used.)
But it was Saturday night.
I guess that makes it all right.
And you say, ‘What have I got to lose?'”

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Little Red Corvette – Prince I’m sorry about that video cutting out halfway through the song, but that’s all I can find on Youtube for Little Red Corvette. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that Prince is a prolific perfectionist, who creates entire universes, then locks them away because he’s not happy with the end result. No really. There’s an entire page on Wikipedia dedicated to Unrealeased Prince Projects. The vault contains hundreds of recordings with various bands, including at least fifty fully produced music videos, ready to ship out to MTV at any time. Except Prince has been sitting on the videos so long, the Music Television station doesn’t even play music any more. There’s also a couple of dropped documentaries (including one produced by Kevin Smith), rough cuts of a film based on his Appolonia 6 album, and another movie named ‘3121’ which remained a rumor until a trailer for it leaked out in 2011 with hints that the movie was coming soon. But later that year, Prince pulled the movie because he “felt Universal was not doing their part to promote 3121, […since] most of the promotion for 3121 was viral Internet based.” This would be around the time Prince was in the spotlight, acting as a judge for American Idol. He’s not in the spotlight now. I can understand the sentiment. When you make something you’re proud of, you want it to get the maximum exposure it deserves. But if you keep shelving your work, you’ll be forgotten. I don’t doubt that Prince is a marketing and musical genius. He knows how to get a message together and out. But I do doubt his mindset is the right one for this new age of entertainment. Today, there’s no such thing as oversaturating the market. Some of the world’s most public figures Twitter about their day on an hourly basis. There was a time when flooding the market with music would muddy your message. If you dropped a hundred well-produced music videos on Youtube today, however, it could only help your career. Your audience will crowd source your material and create your hits for you. Prince will never bounce back until he learns to cede some of that control.

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Little Red Corvette – Prince

I’m sorry about that video cutting out halfway through the song, but that’s all I can find on Youtube for Little Red Corvette. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that Prince is a prolific perfectionist, who creates entire universes, then locks them away because he’s not happy with the end result. No really. There’s an entire page on Wikipedia dedicated to Unrealeased Prince Projects.

The vault contains hundreds of recordings with various bands, including at least fifty fully produced music videos, ready to ship out to MTV at any time. Except Prince has been sitting on the videos so long, the Music Television station doesn’t even play music any more. There’s also a couple of dropped documentaries (including one produced by Kevin Smith), rough cuts of a film based on his Appolonia 6 album, and another movie named ‘3121’ which remained a rumor until a trailer for it leaked out in 2011 with hints that the movie was coming soon. But later that year, Prince pulled the movie because he “felt Universal was not doing their part to promote 3121, […since] most of the promotion for 3121 was viral Internet based.” This would be around the time Prince was in the spotlight, acting as a judge for American Idol. He’s not in the spotlight now.

I can understand the sentiment. When you make something you’re proud of, you want it to get the maximum exposure it deserves. But if you keep shelving your work, you’ll be forgotten. I don’t doubt that Prince is a marketing and musical genius. He knows how to get a message together and out. But I do doubt his mindset is the right one for this new age of entertainment. Today, there’s no such thing as oversaturating the market. Some of the world’s most public figures Twitter about their day on an hourly basis. There was a time when flooding the market with music would muddy your message. If you dropped a hundred well-produced music videos on Youtube today, however, it could only help your career. Your audience will crowd source your material and create your hits for you. Prince will never bounce back until he learns to cede some of that control.