I'm an alligator, I'm a mama-papa coming for you!
These are the first song lyrics (from Bowie's Moonage Daydream') which sprung to mind when I thought of starting up a topic on surreal, impressionistic, or nonsense lyrics in popular music, as a result of Garth making a distinction between 'intelligent' lyrics and 'impressionistic' ones, the other day, elsewhere on this forum.
Whether they are surreal, impressionistic or nonsensical, really depends as much on personal opinion as it does on critical concessus. And the reasons a particular lyric appeals can be as obscure as the lyric itself. It might be the sound of the words and the way they rub up against each other, it may be the images they conjure, or maybe it's that indefinable frisson which thrills or amuses you, every time you hear Captain Beefheart growl:
There's ole Gray with 'er dove-winged hat
Threre's ole Green with her sewing machine
Where's the bobbin at?
Tote'n old grain in uh printed sack
The dust blows forward 'n dust blows back
And the wind blows black thru the sky
And the smokestack blows up in suns eye
I've always preferred the emotive lyric to the straight narrative one, because music itself is essentially an emotive, abstract language, and whenever I've heard a long 'story song' or a political diatribe song, I nearly always get the sense that the lyric has been shoehorned into the music rather than being a natural offshoot of it.
But most importantly the surreal flight-of-fancy lyric is an escape from the omniscient love song. Paul McCartney may not be able to get enough of silly love songs, but the rest of us need the occasional journey to somewhere other than a lover's arms. McCartney's nemesis knew this only too well, which maybe partly why he started manifesting Dadaist lyrics like they were going out of fashion (of course the drugs may have had something to do with it too - but that's another story).
When McCartney let his subconscious be his muse, the result was 'scrambled eggs', which after a nano second's consideration he changed to 'Yesterday'. But Lennon - the realist and the humourist - was in his element when he went off on one, such as in 'I Am the Walrus:
Sitting on a cornflake waiting for the van to come
Corporation teeshirt, stupid bloody Tuesday
Man you been a naughty boy. You let your face grow long
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen
I am the walrus, goo goo goo joob
I personally find such Beatle's lyrics overrated and over-read into. They have a Goons-like affected eccentricity but very little literary merit.
Slightly better - as it's less selfconciously wacky - is Strawberry Fields:
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me
Let me take you down, cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever
But, before this posting turns into a book, let me mention some personal favourites in the freeform stylee. Bowie was one of the first rock writers to come out of the closet and own up to his use of William Burrough's cutup technique of writing, whereby a page of prose is cut into strips and then randomly reassembled. For me, one of the most resonant Bowie lyrics comes from 'Candidate' on 'Diamond Dogs'. The scene is literally set with the opening lines:
I'll make you a deal, like any other candidate
We'll pretend we're walking home 'cause your future's at stake
My set is amazing, it even smells like a street
There's a bar at the end where I can meet you and your friend
Someone scrawled on the wall "I smell the blood of les tricoteuses"
Who wrote up scandals in other bars
Then later, as the song goes into overdrive, this great couplet:
On another floor, in the back of a car
In the cellar of a church with the door ajar
We get tantalising hints of a narrative and vividly conjured scenes, but then the lyric cuts to something else - a different perspective or another striking Baconesk image. Sense is only in the eye of the beholder.
But with my other teen hero - Marc Bolan - words are merely playthings for stringing together like pretty necklaces - whimsically chosen at random to emote rather than to describe. This is from the 1968 track 'Seal of Seasons:
Her night it came and then she hooked her head
Unto the fleeing sun and then she fled
And flew woo!
Just like a dancer, - a gypsy dancer
A salty shimmered shell of foam
...I love that salty shimmered shell of foam! Bolan just delighted in words, and with sweet naivety just made them serve his purpose. He really didn't care if they made sense or not. Sense would somehow, on some level, manifest itself through melody and delivery.
So that's enough from me for the moment. Let's have your favourite surreal Dylan or Beefheart, crazy lyric. Or Little Richard, or Lou Reed, or Brian Eno, or Kate Bush, or...