Favorite opening lines

[PenguinHead]

Originally Posted by fairydust75

Your hands held mine......so few hours....but I'm not a child anymore...I'm not a child...oh no..

Nice lyric, but not an opening line.

[PenguinHead]

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night

Meet me down by the railway station

Loving you isn't the right thing to do

Could you ever need me, and would you know how?

Listen to the wind on the water

It's not home, and it's not Tara

So I'm back to the velvet underground

New York, open your eyes to me

All the saints and sinners, they pay handsomely

When the sun goes down and the moon shines bright

Dim and wavering on a wind-blown night

You can take me to paradise, then again, you can be cold as ice

Sliding down the karma slide

Step into the velvet of the morning

Sanity, we long to see you

[shackin'up]

tarantula.... Yes, Michelej !

For some reason, I've always liked:

Countin' on my fingers / Countin' on my toes / Slippin' thru your fingers / Watchin' how it grows.

[Ulpian]

"There's no use in crying, it's all over"

"Have mercy baby on a poor girl like me"

"Now there you go again you say you want your freedom"

"Loving you isn't the right thing to do"

"Listen to the wind on the water"

"Where are you darlin' when my moon is rising and your sun is shining down?"

[michelej1]

In the beginning I believed in love and things. It happened like a hurricane. I could never really tell you what this did to me. I could never make it better for you, anyway.


I was just that old, that August dark, dark day. Swear that you never saw her face. Swear that you never heard her say.

[redbird]

Originally Posted by fairydust75

Your hands held mine......so few hours....

Not an opening line but indeed very beautiful. Not a natural way of structuring the sentence but the best way to achieve the right effect.

Originally Posted by PenguinHead

Listen to the wind on the water

I forgot about this one, for me Tango in the Night doesn't quite come together but I think Lindsey pulls off a lot of very evocative imagery, reminds me of a later Fitzgerald novel.

Originally Posted by shackin'up

Countin' on my fingers / Countin' on my toes / Slippin' thru your fingers / Watchin' how it grows.

Very quirky, although I could never tell if my favorite part of this opening was the words or the manic weird-ass chords.

Originally Posted by Ulpian

"There's no use in crying, it's all over"

[chiliD]

"I can't help about the shape I'm in."

"Now when the day goes to sleep & the full moon looks." (kind of appropriate for this past weekend's "Super Moon")

"Don't look for no worries, worries & trouble come around"

"Let me tell you about my life, they say I'm a man of the world"

"Tell me anybody, now do you really give a damn for me?"

"Baby, if you wanna rock, I'll be your rockin' horse"

"Watch out for me, woman & don't mind nobody else"

Oh, and my favorite:

"............................"

(What do you mean, 'what's that?'....it's "Albatross" you ninny! )

[michelej1]

I got a bad complication. I keep it to myself. I got some strange information. I can't think of nothin' else.

The lyrics that make you want to probe further for an explanation are the best openers.

Michele

[WildHearted]

I think "Sara" wins overall for me... it just kind of sets the mood, and I like it because you get the sense that the entire purpose of those lines is to draw you into the song - that section, musically, is never repeated again.

[Sleepless-Child]

Originally Posted by WildHearted

I think "Sara" wins overall for me... it just kind of sets the mood, and I like it because you get the sense that the entire purpose of those lines is to draw you into the song - that section, musically, is never repeated again.

Absolutely. That's what i was going to say.
I remember when i first heard "Sara" and "Gypsy", i hated these songs, because i was too much into "Rhiannon" to hear anything else. But i remember that after a few days, these opening lines were stuck in my head (and "Gypsy"'s guitar riff). It is mysterious and beautiful, but i wonder if it's not the way Stevie sings those lyrics or the piano melody that make these opening lines unforgettable, instead of the lines themselves.

[WildHearted]

Originally Posted by Sleepless-Child

Absolutely. That's what i was going to say.
I remember when i first heard "Sara" and "Gypsy", i hated these songs, because i was too much into "Rhiannon" to hear anything else. But i remember that after a few days, these opening lines were stuck in my head (and "Gypsy"'s guitar riff). It is mysterious and beautiful, but i wonder if it's not the way Stevie sings those lyrics or the piano melody that make these opening lines unforgettable, instead of the lines themselves.

I definitely think it's a combination of the melody and the lyrics (as well as the various instrumental parts) that give it the mood that makes it so unforgettable. Especially in Sara. As Lindsey would say, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts..

[redbird]

I think "Wait a minute baby, stay with me a while" is a line that does a lot of work for its song, whereas "Said you'd give me life but you never told me about the fire" or "Drowning in a sea of love where everyone would love to drown" are more easy to isolate as poetic turns of phrases. "Wait a minute baby, stay with me a while" is not as overtly poetic, but it accomplishes a lot, it establishes a speaker and an audience, it invokes loneliness and fascination, it somehow for me evokes a very clear image of a woman reaching out, almost getting up from her position on the floor but not quite, because the person has stopped right in time (she's sure) to let her settle back in for the rest of the song. I can imagine when she's looking at this person and when she's looking elsewhere back in to her own ruminations. I'm not sure how but it strikes me as a deceptively hard-working opening line, I find it kind of remarkable.

The vocals and the instrumentation have a lot to do with why it's a great song but I think they take their cues from the relatively formless and free-flowing lyrics. I always thought it was a brilliant marriage of lyrics and sound.

[Sleepless-Child]

Originally Posted by WildHearted

I definitely think it's a combination of the melody and the lyrics (as well as the various instrumental parts) that give it the mood that makes it so unforgettable. Especially in Sara. As Lindsey would say, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts..

Absolutely, again.

Originally Posted by redbird

I think "Wait a minute baby, stay with me a while" is a line that does a lot of work for its song, whereas "Said you'd give me life but you never told me about the fire" or "Drowning in a sea of love where everyone would love to drown" are more easy to isolate as poetic turns of phrases. "Wait a minute baby, stay with me a while" is not as overtly poetic, but it accomplishes a lot, it establishes a speaker and an audience, it invokes loneliness and fascination, it somehow for me evokes a very clear image of a woman reaching out, almost getting up from her position on the floor but not quite, because the person has stopped right in time (she's sure) to let her settle back in for the rest of the song. I can imagine when she's looking at this person and when she's looking elsewhere back in to her own ruminations. I'm not sure how but it strikes me as a deceptively hard-working opening line, I find it kind of remarkable.

The vocals and the instrumentation have a lot to do with why it's a great song but I think they take their cues from the relatively formless and free-flowing lyrics. I always thought it was a brilliant marriage of lyrics and sound.

That was beautiful. Yes, "wait a minute baby, stay with me a while" also implies that she is going to tell us a secret story. It makes the song very...intimate?
Plus everytime i say "wait a minute" to someone i'm tempted to add "baby, stay with me a while". It'sb a very effective opening line.

[mitzo]

I may be in the minority, but in Love Is I find "do you know what this is? No, I don't" to be really compelling.

And, although it is technically the second line of Goodbye Baby: "Was I who was the hourglass and the sands of time like shattering glass went past me like a tunnel to the sea."

And, OK shoot me: "When I see you again, will it be the same?"

[aleuzzi]

Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise

Rock on gold dust woman, take your silver spoon, dig your grave

Have mercy baby, on a poor girl like me

Why don't you tell me what's going on?

Wait a minute baby, stay with me a while...

Can you understand me, baby don't you hand me a line

Meet me down by the railway station...

Blue blue days, long dark nights, lonesome tears you're gonna' cry for me

It's the same kind of story that seems to come down from long ago

If I could turn the page, the time that I'd rearrange