Favorite opening lines

[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.