Best lyricists

[drillkicker]

I was just reading some lyrics by David Tibet, which is a bad idea because it tends to make me feel awful about my own writings. So to make myself feel better, I'd like you all to tell me your own favorites, because there have to be others out there who are as good as him. Post your favorite lyrics by them as well, if you want to. There really isn't enough talk about lyrics on this forum, anyway.

[Ivan Ooze]

uterus - debone the babies

 

lyrics:

debone the babies (x5)

[drillkicker]

debone the babies (x5)

Well that makes "Black Flowers Please" look like shit. Thank you, it's just what I needed.

[doublename]

"Always new women, gotta keep a balance / the girl of yo dreams to me is prolly not a challenge" - Drake (?)

 

 

Edit:

On a more serious note, It Ain't Hard to Tell by Nas is my all time rap song:

 

It ain't hard to tell, I excel, then prevail

The mic is contacted, I attract clientele

My mic check is life or death, breathing a sniper's death

I exhale the yellow smoke of buddha through righteous steps

Deep like The Shinin', sparkle like a diamond

Sneak a uzi on the island in my army jacket lining

Hit the Earth like a comet, invasion

Nas is like the Afrocentric Asian, half-man, half-amazing

Cause in my physical, I can express through song

Delete stress like Motrin, then extend strong

I drank Moet with Medusa, give her shotguns in hell

From the spliff that I lift and inhale, it ain't hard to tell

The buddha monk's in your trunk, turn the bass up

Nas, stories by Aesop, place your loot up, parties I shoot up

Nas, I analyze, drop a Jewel

Inhale from the L, school a fool well, you feel it like braille

It ain't hard to tell, I kick the skill like Shaquille holds a pill

Vocabulary spills I'm Ill

Plus Matic, I freak beats slam it like Iron Shiek

Jam like a tech with correct techniques

So analyze me, surprise me, but can't magnetize me

Scanning while you're planning ways to sabotage me

I leave em froze like her-on in your nose

Nas'll rock well, it ain't hard to tell

This rhythmatic explosion, is what your frame of mind has chosen

I'll leave your brain stimulated, niggas is frozen

Speak with criminal slang, begin like a violin

End like Leviathan, it's deep well let me try again

Wisdom be leaking out my grapefruit troop

I dominate break loops, giving mics men-e-straul cycles

Street's disciple, I rock beats that's mega trifle

And groovy but smoother than moves by Villanova

Yet still a soldier, I'm like Sly Stallone in Cobra

Packing like a rasta in the weed spot

Vocals'll squeeze glocks, MC's eavesdrop

Though they need not to sneak

My poetry's deep, I never fell

Nas's raps should be locked in a cell

It ain't hard to tell

[ghOsty]

^That's a good one...

 

I've always been a bit partial to Aesop Rock's outsider appeal:

[Zephyr_Nova]

There are some good examples in the Great Lyrics thread: http://forum.watmm.com/topic/71687-the-great-lyrics-thread/

[nickthefish]

http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/its-alright-ma-im-only-bleeding

http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/last-thoughts-woody-guthrie

http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/i-and-i

[QQQ]

Second by Bear vs. Shark (Marc Paffi)

 

And I'll take what is given to me

And I'll realize I'm not going home

And after a while, when all of your currency's gone

And after a while, when all your mistakes have been made

And you've tasted the carbon dioxide

 

https://youtu.be/zesMy5qdK7A

[usagi]

the only songwriter who has ever really hit me with every word.

 

[usagi]

To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you
I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you
In a room with a window in the corner I found truth

In the shadowplay, acting out your own death, knowing no more
As the assassins all grouped in four lines, dancing on the floor
And with cold steel, odour on their bodies made a move to connect
But I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds turned back

I did everything, everything I wanted to
I let them use you for their own ends
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juD4ayBbHdY

[perunamuusi]

I'm afraid of the dark

Especially when I'm in a park
And there's no one else around
Ooh, I get the shivers

I don't want to see a ghost
It's a sight that I fear most
I'd rather have a piece of toast
And watch the evening news

Life, oh life, oh life, oh life
Doo, doo doo doo
Life, oh life, oh life, oh life
Doo, doo doo doo

 

 

Des'ree - Life

[Goiter Sanchez]

I'm afraid of the dark

Especially when I'm in a park

And there's no one else around

Ooh, I get the shivers

 

I don't want to see a ghost

It's a sight that I fear most

I'd rather have a piece of toast

And watch the evening news

 

Life, oh life, oh life, oh life

Doo, doo doo doo

Life, oh life, oh life, oh life

Doo, doo doo doo

 

 

Des'ree - Life

 

 

 

[KovalainenFanBoy]

Why you coming home five in the morn'

Somethings going on can i smell yo dick??

Don't play me like a fool cause dat ain't cool

So what you need to do is let me smell yo dick

Its four o'clock and I'm sleepin'

and its late night and you creeping

you could've told me I'm leavin'

now I know you out there cheatin'

why you got to do me like dat

when I call you don't call me back

I'm texting you now nigga where you at

that's fucked up why you do me like dat

I'm dead sleep and you trickin'

In the club wit dirty foot bitches

My gurl was there she witness

She had a camera phone she took pictures

You was on the dance flo grindin'

With a stripper hoe named Diamond

You was flossin' hard you was shinning

Everything she drink you was buyin' it

Fuck nigga you need to stop lien' foe I get mad and pull out my nine

You want a new bitch to fuck that's fine but don't fuck hers and try to fuck mines

You keep tellin me you ain't touch her

but some keep tellin me you dun fucked her

and I ain't that bitch you want to play wit

nigga drop them boxers and let me smell yo dick

Why you coming home five in the morn'

Somethings going on can I smell yo dick??

Don't play me like a fool cause dat ain't cool

So what you need to do is let me smell yo dick

Riskay - Smell Yo Dick

[Audioblysk]

Cedric Bixler Zavala from The Mars Volta always had really well done lyrics. Deloused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute really changed my idea of what lyrics can be in a song. They venture between metaphors and pure nonsense, but paint such a vivid picture.

[drillkicker]

It ain't hard to tell, I excel, then prevail

The mic is contacted, I attract clientele

My mic check is life or death, breathing a sniper's death

I exhale the yellow smoke of buddha through righteous steps

Deep like The Shinin', sparkle like a diamond

Sneak a uzi on the island in my army jacket lining

Hit the Earth like a comet, invasion

Nas is like the Afrocentric Asian, half-man, half-amazing

Cause in my physical, I can express through song

Delete stress like Motrin, then extend strong

I drank Moet with Medusa, give her shotguns in hell

From the spliff that I lift and inhale, it ain't hard to tell

The buddha monk's in your trunk, turn the bass up

Nas, stories by Aesop, place your loot up, parties I shoot up

Nas, I analyze, drop a Jewel

Inhale from the L, school a fool well, you feel it like braille

It ain't hard to tell, I kick the skill like Shaquille holds a pill

Vocabulary spills I'm Ill

Plus Matic, I freak beats slam it like Iron Shiek

Jam like a tech with correct techniques

So analyze me, surprise me, but can't magnetize me

Scanning while you're planning ways to sabotage me

I leave em froze like her-on in your nose

Nas'll rock well, it ain't hard to tell

This rhythmatic explosion, is what your frame of mind has chosen

I'll leave your brain stimulated, niggas is frozen

Speak with criminal slang, begin like a violin

End like Leviathan, it's deep well let me try again

Wisdom be leaking out my grapefruit troop

I dominate break loops, giving mics men-e-straul cycles

Street's disciple, I rock beats that's mega trifle

And groovy but smoother than moves by Villanova

Yet still a soldier, I'm like Sly Stallone in Cobra

Packing like a rasta in the weed spot

Vocals'll squeeze glocks, MC's eavesdrop

Though they need not to sneak

My poetry's deep, I never fell

Nas's raps should be locked in a cell

It ain't hard to tell

Well the words sound pretty together, but it doesn't seem to be saying anything at all. The whole thing seems to be made up of lines that could easily be removed and the song wouldn't be affected.

 

 

There are some good examples in the Great Lyrics thread: http://forum.watmm.com/topic/71687-the-great-lyrics-thread/

Considering that the thread starts with Nick Cave, I'm going to say that it's probably a promising thread. I need to look through that on another day. I've been travelling all day, so I'm too tired at the moment.

 

 

the only songwriter who has ever really hit me with every word.

 

Joy Division has always been about the powerful delivery to me. I've never really had an urge to analyze the lyrics, but maybe I should.

 

 

Cedric Bixler Zavala from The Mars Volta always had really well done lyrics. Deloused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute really changed my idea of what lyrics can be in a song. They venture between metaphors and pure nonsense, but paint such a vivid picture.

That description makes me think of Captain Beefheart. I really like that kind of lyricism.

[Candiru]

Cedric Bixler Zavala from The Mars Volta always had really well done lyrics. Deloused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute really changed my idea of what lyrics can be in a song. They venture between metaphors and pure nonsense, but paint such a vivid picture.

Thank you! Two of my absolute favorite albums and honestly no music has been more slept on.

[beerwolf]

Neil Young and Bob Dylan for me. Maybe cliched but those two in their prime have always been unbeatable imo. Agree with Ian Curtis as well.

[Goiter Sanchez]

Fuckin Dead Can Dance:

 

Severance, the birds of leaving call to us

Yet here we stand endowed with the fear of flight

Over land the winds of change consume the land

While we remain in the shadow of summers now past

 

When all the leaves have fallen and turned to dust

Will we remain entrenched within our ways?

Indifferent the plague that moves throughout this land

Omen signs in the shapes of things to come.

 

*super lush hurdy gurdy melody, fade-out*

 

[Ivan Ooze]

Claiming my next victim for a filthy feast
Nauseating hunger for human feces
These lesion ridden cunts mean nothing to me
But their bowels possess the key to my nourishment
Unhealthy hunger escalating from the stench
Fortified fudge packed full of nutrients
Sexually abusing nursing home patients
As they shit themselves
I gorge on the caustic mess

Violently consuming shit

Pulverizing my fist in your fuckin' face
Postmortally - I feast on the wastes of the fuckin' elderly
Crusty fuckin' filthy beings, consuming their contaminants
Undying love for the blackened fluids of stiffs,
Boiling blood and brains of my victims, bleed.

Necrocopromaniac, pestilential being
The sight of feces rockets me into a fuckin' frenzy
Haemorrhoidal veins rupture slick secretions
Upon my tongue, sanguinary analingus.
Sucking on their cunts till they burst,
How I love it when they bleed on me.
Fist fucking diseased anal cavities
Plunging blades into their skin till they've died.
skin desclamates and slips right the fuck off of your bones
feeling no regard for the lives of these handicapped fucks
these hundred year old pigs produce my reward, their bodily wastes
Killing is what keeps me sane
so I think ill just rip your fucking head clean off
Coprophagia
I kill motherfuckers everyday
let these hordes of dead fucks unite
To mutilate the human species,
I take pride in killing

Nothing will ever stop me - from fucking murdering
Upheaving these human stockpiles of brown sediment
Extremely aroused by the sight of fucking pain
Masturbating feverishly to the rhythm of their prayers
cumming on their infected bed sores

Rectally (Rectally)
Bleeding, I sodomize the elderly
Spewing (Spewing)
Rapidly (Rapitly), A bed pan bon-appetite

despoiling, despoilment
raping these elderly pieces of shit
while slobbering sewage how sweet it is
toothless and sick swallowing cum
my blistering pecker seeps
Plunging my vile uncircumcised dick, enter the Alzheimer's wound
Now my dicks wrapped with disease
What the fuck, my cock now bleeds

Haemorrhaging - Blood drips on my feet
Sticking to your encrusted sheets
Wallowing - In pools of steaming shit
Inhaling the stench of filthiness

Bleed for me

Terrorizing me
The elderly have turned against me
Slowly
They creep to me like filthy zombies
Old bitches sliding sewing needles in my dick
Scraping at my bowels, smearing shit on their dirty clits
Chewing on my filthy meat within
lacerating every inch of my flesh
bleeding slow, my body bloats
pulverizing their fists in my fuckin' face.

[Rubin Farr]

I always go back to Lennon/Mcartney - they made a rock classic out of reading the fucking newspaper, a box of cereal, and the most famous crosswalk on Earth.

[perunamuusi]

those devourment lyrics are nice

[olo]

empty box by Morphine comes to mind. Nothing mind blowing, but it paints a picture for me lyrically/musically. Dark/humorous at the same time.

 

lyrics:

 

Tore open a package it was an empty box

No meaning to me just an empty box

Sender was a woman (x2)

She said she's sending me everything that I I I never gave her before

She said fill it up and send it back

Fill it up and send it back

So I send her back an empty box

A big mistake sent back an empty box

Half in the shadows half in the husky moonlight

And half insane just a sound

I crossed into a valley a valley so dark

That when I look back I can't see where I begin

I can't see my hands

I don't even know if my eyes are open

In the morning I was by the sea

And I swam out as far as I could swim

Until I was too tired to swim anymore

And then I floated and tried to get my strength back

And then an empty box came floating by

An empty box and I crawled inside

Half in the shadows half in the husky moonlight

And half insane just a sound in the night

Half in the shadows half in the husky moonlight

And half insane just a sound

[youtubehd]CLtc803QSAw[/youtubehd]

[perunamuusi]

(I want to see you naked...)

 

I don't mean to be rude

I'm just curious to see you in the nude

I try not to be ashamed of my desire

My interest is something I could never tire

I want to see you naked

 

How can it be wrong

To contemplate when every stitch has gone

Beauty may be in the beholder's eyes

But nothing more is needed to make my spirit rise

I want to see you naked

CYLOB

[doublename]

Nas - NY State of Mind

Rappers I monkey flip em with the funky rhythm I be kicking

Musician, inflicting composition
Of pain I'm like Scarface sniffing cocaine
Holding a M-16, see with the pen I'm extreme, now
Bullet holes left in my peepholes
I'm suited up in street clothes
Hand me a nine and I'll defeat foes
Y'all know my steelo with or without the airplay
I keep some E&J, sitting bent up in the stairway
Or either on the corner betting Grants with the celo champs
Laughing at base-heads, trying to sell some broken amps
G-Packs get off quick, forever niggas talk shit
Reminiscing about the last time the Task Force flipped
Niggas be running through the block shooting
Time to start the revolution, catch a body head for Houston
Once they caught us off guard, the Mac-10 was in the grass and
I ran like a cheetah with thoughts of an assassin
Pick the Mac up, told brothers, "Back up," the Mac spit
Lead was hitting niggas one ran, I made him back flip
Heard a few chicks scream my arm shook, couldn't look
Gave another squeeze heard it click yo, my shit is stuck
Try to cock it, it wouldn't shoot now I'm in danger
Finally pulled it back and saw three bullets caught up in the chamber
So now I'm jetting to the building lobby
And it was filled with children probably couldn't see as high as I be
(So what you saying?) It's like the game ain't the same
Got younger niggas pulling the triggers bringing fame to they name
And claim some corners, crews without guns are goners
In broad daylight, stickup kids, they run up on us
Fo'-fives and gauges, Macs in fact
Same niggas'll catch a back to back, snatching yo' cracks in black
There was a snitch on the block getting niggas knocked
So hold your stash until the coke price drop
I know this crackhead, who said she gotta smoke nice rock
And if it's good she'll bring ya customers in measuring pots, but yo
You gotta slide on a vacation
Inside information keeps large niggas erasing and they wives basin
It drops deep as it does in my breath
I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death
Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined
I think of crime when I'm in a New York state of mind

New York state of mind
New York state of mind
New York state of mind
New York state of mind

Be having dreams that I'ma gangster, drinking Moets, holding Tecs
Making sure the cash came correct then I stepped
Investments in stocks, sewing up the blocks
To sell rocks, winning gunfights with mega cops
But just a nigga, walking with his finger on the trigger
Make enough figures until my pockets get bigger
I ain't the type of brother made for you to start testing
Give me a Smith and Wessun I'll have niggas undressing
Thinking of cash flow, Buddha and shelter
Whenever frustrated I'ma hijack Delta
In the P.J.'s, my blend tape plays, bullets are strays
Young bitches is grazed each block is like a maze
Full of black rats trapped, plus the Island is packed
From what I hear in all the stories when my peoples come back, black
I'm living where the nights is jet black
The fiends fight to get crack I just max, I dream I can sit back
And lamp like Capone, with drug scripts sewn
Or the legal luxury life, rings flooded with stones, homes
I got so many rhymes I don't think I'm too sane
Life is parallel to Hell but I must maintain
And be prosperous, though we live dangerous
Cops could just arrest me, blaming us, we're held like hostages
It's only right that I was born to use mics
And the stuff that I write, is even tougher than dice
I'm taking rappers to a new plateau, through rap slow
My rhyming is a vitamin, Hell without a capsule
The smooth criminal on beat breaks
Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes
The city never sleeps, full of villians and creeps
That's where I learned to do my hustle had to scuffle with freaks
I'ma addict for sneakers, twenties of Buddha and bitches with beepers
In the streets I can greet ya, about blunts I teach ya
Inhale deep like the words of my breath
I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death
I lay puzzle as I backtrack to earlier times
Nothing's equivalent, to the new york state of mind

New York state of mind
New York state of mind
New York state of mind
New York state of mind

 

[zkom]

Björk's (and Sjòn's) lyrics are pretty nice. Idk. Also Gilmour and Waters.