Lyrical crimes committed by Beatles members

I LIKE this song, but:
-----------------------
Big Barn Bed

Who's that coming round that corner
Who's that coming round that bend
Who's that coming round that corner, Will it
Will it be my friend

Keep on sleeping in a big barn bed
Keep on sleeping in a big barn bed
Keep on sleeping in a big barn bed
Keep on sleeping in a big barn bed

Who you gonna weep on?
Who you gonna sleep on?
Who you gonna creep on next?

Weeping on a willow
Sleeping on a pillow
Leaping armadillo, yes.

Keep on sleeping in a big barn bed
Keep on sleeping in a big barn bed
Keep on sleeping in a big barn bed
Keep on sleeping in a big barn bed

Re Let's Work-style self righteousness may I humbly
present
"so this is Christmas AND WHAT HAVE *YOU* DONE?"

"Leaping armadillo, yes." That's the sound of a man who's gone beyond having nothing to say and just rhyming nonsensically.

"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" has always been a conundrum: it vaguely sounds like an accusatory protest song in the vein of Some Time In NYC...but other than the "war is over if you want it" chant, really isn't. Who doesn't want the next year to be "a good one without any fear?"

John and George had some kind of mind meld on the accusatory lyrics. "Look at you all" "are you one of them?" from 2 of George's sermons.

"All You Need is Love" is the weirdest one because it's nothing but downs with this phony uplift chorus.

"All You Need is Love" isn't all downs. it's realistic

"No way you can sell as many records as we do" should have been included

it's all tautological faux-profundities:

"nothing you can do that can't be done"... REALLY???

it's like yellow submarine or we can work it out, perfect kids song

someone in my hs used Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé as his yearbook quote. a football player, too.

"if you fall on the concrete, that's your asphalt" - George Harrison

I think more than a few lyrics from Lennon's Some Time In New York City could go in this thread!

no wait John is singing all those lines in "All You Need is Love" directly to Paul. Paul gets nervous, starts singing "She Loves You".

kinda surprised that people are overlooking how narcissistic songwriters can be - "you" in a song can be the songwriter/internal monologue etc. Neil Young's pointed this out explicitly, I'm pretty sure John did too

I don't hear George criticizing himself a bit on those Beatle songs. John's self-criticism is kind of explicitly first person.

(was kidding about the addressed-to-Paul thing, that would come later)

I said on some other thread that in general John writes about himself, Paul writes about made-up people, George writes about everybody

tmi, Paul:

Like gravy, down to the last drop,
I keep mopping her up
Oh yeah, she's my baby.

ugh what is that from?

'She's My Baby' from Wings At The Speed Of Sound

Yes, Sir, That's My Gravy, No Sir, Don't Mean Maybe

I wanted to hear about Paul's sex life about as much as I wanted to know about Prince Charles's

I think more than a few lyrics from Lennon's Some Time In New York City could go in this thread!

If we could make chains with the morning dew
The world would be like Galway Bay
Let's walk over rainbows like leprechauns
The world would be one big Blarney stone

I know I was a crazy fool for treating you the way I did
but something took a hold of me and I acted like a dustbin lid

― You’re being too simplistic and you’re insulting my poor heart (Turrican),
>
that's rhyming slang isn't it?
He's saying he was acting like a kid.
I think there's normally a more shortened form of that in the slang though, as language tends to take something that rhymes then shorten it so you don't normally immediately get the source until you find the longer original version. I can't think what dustbin lid normally gets shortened to though.

Maybe even then it's not great.

You're probably right but I thought the rhyming slang was saucepan lid rather than dustbin lid? Do they have rhyming slang in Liverpool?

there's a lot of slang rather than rhyming slang iirc.

'dustbin lid' features here too if you can bear it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7_viW_lc98

I know I was a crazy fool for treating you the way I did
but something took a hold of me and I acted like a dustbin lid

― You’re being too simplistic and you’re insulting my poor heart (Turrican),
>
that's rhyming slang isn't it?
He's saying he was acting like a kid.
I think there's normally a more shortened form of that in the slang though, as language tends to take something that rhymes then shorten it so you don't normally immediately get the source until you find the longer original version. I can't think what dustbin lid normally gets shortened to though.

Maybe even then it's not great.

― Stevolende, Friday, January 30, 2015 11:38 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh yeah, it's definitely slang, but for me it just ruins the entire song in the first two lines, especially given the subject matter of the song. With a tweak here and there it could have been so much more than it is.

Well I'm talking to a former engine driver (DRI-VER!)
Trying to find out what he used to do

Uh... drive an engine?

Ummmm, what's wrong with that?

Faster than a bullet from a gun
He is faster than everyone
Quicker than the blinking of an eye
Like a flash you could miss him going by
No one knows quite how he does it but it's true they say
He's the master of going faster.

I remember winning third place in an elementary school poetry contest with some similar lines.

haaaa, yes, "Faster" owns this thread IMO, especially for "People became his friend."

The entirety of "Spies Like Us" (the ultimate "Fuck it! I'm Paul McCartney!" song), but especially,

We get there by hook or by crook
We don't do a thing by the book
Never needed special clothes
How we did it no one knows
I guess we must have had what it took

Great Britain you are tremendous / and nobody knows like me
but really, what are you doing / in that land across the sea