Neil's best lyrics / your favourites...

[Sandy Shaw]

I think Neil's "best" outweigh his "worst" by some considerable margin.

There's just so much good stuff, some already listed here.

Have at it everyone, but I can't even begin.

It's tricky isn't it?

Typing or pasting them here also takes away context at times of course, as well as the whole musical bed for them made so expertly by Chris with others.

It is brilliant how, reading them as complete lyrics, Neil's book works so well - with some artists a book of lyrics wouldn't necessarily provide a good read!

[the8thark]

If you’ve done nothing wrong
you’ve got nothing to fear
If you’ve something to hide
you shouldn’t even be here

This was relevant when it was first written and will forever be relevant. Not just politically but in all aspects of life.

PS. Someone should make a companion topic to this - Chris' best lyrics.
Based on everything Chris has sung or spoken in PSB songs.

[Vintage Youth]

PS. Someone should make a companion topic to this - Chris' best lyrics.
Based on everything Chris has sung or spoken in PSB songs.

'Who do you think you are, Captain Britain?'

[Sandy Shaw]

Maybe he's Captain Birdseye...

When I go fishing with my rod
I often get that urge
To fall asleep,
A sleep so deep
That no one notices me

[petshopgrrl]

I think Neil's "best" outweigh his "worst" by some considerable margin.

There's just so much good stuff, some already listed here.

Have at it everyone, but I can't even begin.

I know... it's hard. So hard!

I also know I'm not supposed to read "100 Lyrics" as poetry because the songs are meant to be sung, but it does meet my definition of poetry. I appreciate the storytelling, the evocative imagery, the history lessons, the cheeky asides, the vocabulary and wordplay, and listening to someone who obviously relishes plying his craft. OK, if you want examples:

The resurrectionist is my go-to example: history, rhymes, morbid puns. All of it, really, but these lines in particular:

Crossing Blackfriar’s Bridge to Guy’s / then back to Bart’s for a better price
Our goods are dear but they’re never shoddy
Tell me: anybody need a body

We had a drink then a couple more / at the King of Denmark and the Fortune of War
A handsome lad lay in a Hansom cab / soon to be a stiff ‘un on the slab

The lost room - tragic history (still pertinent to today?) but set to a beautiful tune. Again, all of it but good grief, these lines:

Sent away to school / we were taught to march and shoot and take our discipline in teams
They trained us to be hard / for cruelty and manhood are synonymous it seems

we would play the strangest games that any boy might like to play...
candles flickered casting shadows on the monsters and their prey

Mother, I wrote to you but your answers only said that it’s important to be brave
Father was far away in a corner of the empire where we never shall be slaves

In the lost room a boy could see / how survival of the fittest meant destruction of the weak
In the lost room a tyranny / was imposed by those who crowed they’d never turn the other cheek
In the future as time would tell / running riot under orders would create a living hell

Can you forgive her? A great story full of juicy lines:

she’s made you some kind of laughing stock / because you dance to disco and you don’t like rock

Remember when you were more easily led / behind the cricket pavilion and the bicycle shed

It’s bad enough she knows how you feel / but she’s not prepared to share you with a memory

Bet she’s not your girlfriend - great use of internal rhyme:

Well that’s as maybe in a way / but it’s okay, we laugh, touché / while they stare in front of us
Then draw away as if to say / “Who are these people anyway? / How dare they confront us?”

I’d rather die than satisfy their curiosity
I’m kind of shy and dry and verging on ugly
They wonder what that I have got that they have not

Y'know, I'm even going to give a shout out to Metamorphosis, whose music usually makes me cringe and it's a little too personal for my tastes but has some of my favorite lines and delivery:

’cause when you start to feel / increasingly forlorner (!!)
— woomph! — love comes / right around the corner
It may not last / but here am I
once a caterpillar / now a butterfly

So that's a few tracks from off the beaten path. (Yes, of course I love Being Boring too!) We're spoilt for choice. I could go on but that's enough from me tonight!

[Vintage Youth]

My little tiny teenage brain was blown by Can You Forgive Her?
I was raised on The Beatles and Orbison and Leonard Cohen and everything in the charts in 1993 seemed to be either 'I love you, you love me, la la la' or *boshboshboshbosh*

[markus]

When I heard Can you forgive her? on the radio I thought they were over with: not those It's A Sin synths again it's 1993! A journalist wrote in his end of the year review it grew to became a guilty pleasure and he had played it in his car all summer long. I nowdays think it's the highlight of their career.

Intresting in the 90's they were always just warming up a bit with the first single, then bang! Go west! I guess same thinking with Before/Se a vida é (That’s the Way Life Is) and I don't know what you want but I can't give it any more/New york city boy. Hard to tell now which single they try push the hardest. I miss the heavy rotation on MTV aspect, the choice of a huge comeback.

[Vintage Youth]

We also had a massive bike shed in school, even though no one came to school on a bike, that people used to go behind to smoke, snog and **CENSORED** and I loved that bit of relatability. No cricket pavilion though (my much posher primary school did, though).
Also the Smash Hits effect, all the other stars of the day were wearing leather jackets/jeans/tracksuits and there they were on the cover in their conical hats and jumpsuits. It was just the whole package.

[markus]

Also the Smash Hits effect, all the other stars of the day were wearing leather jackets/jeans/tracksuits and there they were on the cover in their conical hats and jumpsuits. It was just the whole package.

It was probably required they put them back on for the 2012 Olympics.

[petshopgrrl]

everything in the charts in 1993 seemed to be either 'I love you, you love me, la la la' or *boshboshboshbosh*

Nothing wrong with "I love you, you love me, la la la, *boshboshboshbosh*" - Chris, probably.

Today's listening matter was presented by Agenda and while I still want to know what we're going to do about the rich, in the meantime I'll settle for enjoying the wordplay and the way it all bounces along:

They’re avoiding paying taxes / while the welfare state collapses
Their extravagance and arrogance / Their lack of tact to balance this
Their lawyers and their attitude / The scale of their ingratitude
They only give to charity / for maximum publicity

Neil might have missed a calling writing finale songs for Spitting Image or Not The Nine O'Clock News.

[DopeFiend]

I Want A Dog.
I used to think it was just a silly song about dogs, but after hearing Neil describe in an interview that it's a song about loneliness it has struck me how meaningful it is. It's just under the surface.

The song starts, "I want a dog..." and goes through conversation about why and what type etc.
After a few lines, it slips out "oh, you can get lonely" the lyrics peek at an underlying sadness before quickly changing the subject to talk about cats, elaborating on it to perhaps distract from the vulnerability that just slipped out.

The refrain, "oh, you can get lonely" is one of those every-day phrases that you don't expect to hear in a song.
It feels real. It feels relatable. It's not directly about the subject matter themselves, but speaking in general.
I like how it's indirect. The line ties together the whole song, and is sung so wonderfully.

I just like how the song is about suppressed sorrow and how it unfolds. The whole reason he's talking about the size of his flat and how the dog will bark at passers by is because there's something under the surface he wants to express. This theme is touched on in many PSB songs such as Only The Wind which also uses indirect conversational phrasing to address trauma.
It's lyric writing like this that make PSB the artist I resonate with the most.

[CroMagnon]

So many to choose from!

Neil's lyrics are very under-appreciated by the wider listening public, as so many of his best are not found in PSB singles:

A nervous boy from another town
with a nervous laugh and a concentrated frown
I spoke too fast with watchful eyes
of a recent past and some nostalgic surprise

We don’t talk of love
we’re much too shy
but nervously we wonder when and smile
knowing why I approved of you
right from the moment you turned to face me
a nervous boy

--------------

Every day is a warning
Evening might forget
Then the following morning has
The sweet smell of regret
I'm always in love
I'm easily led
My life is a mess
Like an unmade bed

--------------

Such happy days spent in idleness
Now the sea is warm and the wine is young
The evening brings the action
And the main attraction
Love is a mood
And a slip of the tongue

--------------

Into thin air
Clouds floating by
Into thin air
A painterly sky

----------------

Who issued the instruction
for this mad act of destruction?
An end to equilibrium
Fate laughs, "Look what we’ve done to him"

-------------

.... and many, many more.

[Pod]

Love Is The Law:

Love is the law
but you can’t regulate it
The desire is so strong
and you won’t moderate it
That one’s a gambler
This one’s a thief
Both make it easy
and that’s a relief

King’s Cross:

The man at the back of the queue was sent
To feel the smack of firm government
Linger by the flyposter, for a fight
It's the same story every night
I've been hurt and we've been had
You leave home, and you don't go back

So many though, but these 2 spring to mind

[Cot3]

That extra line from A New Bohemia demo version:

Making it look so easy is always a big mistake / nobody gives you credit for all the risks you take


I've been obsessed with it since the first moment I heard it. Sounds like my internal monologue.

[lalolalo]

There are a lot of supreme lyrics, so I'll just focus on one of the last ones that made me think, wow!

I'm just a figment of my own imagination every night
But if someone gives me adoration, I won't put up a fight
You may have guessed I'm not depressed, I'm different from the rest
Giddy up now, join the party and I'll put you to the test

I mean... C'mon. How you come up with that "Giddy up" right there?
"A figment of my own imagination"!!!!!!!!!!!!

I may be partial of course, but I think Neil is the greatest lyricist of modern times.