worst stevie lyrics evahhhhhh!!!

[all the same]

As much as I love Rhiannon, when she sings it live and says "Will you ever win? Wellllllll... I don't think you do!", that is a change of tense and it really isn't particularly good writing. But holy crap! Does it ever sound good! Listened to Rhiannon from the Rosebud Film and Live at the House of Blues in 1994 tonight. Nearly had a stoke they were both so good!

[welcomechris]

"Can you write this for me?"
He says "No, you write your songs yourself"
That made me stronger
It made me hold on to me

from That Made Me Stronger

"What's faster then a fast car
A beating heart"

from Cheaper then Free

"Well, this is the first thing
That I've written
Since I wrote about freedom"

from Desert Angel

"Well, I talked to my famous friend last night
My third day up...well, his second nighter"

from Two Kinds Of Love

"Do not enter inside this circle
This man is sleeping"

from Stay Away

"They say your life is wild
Compared to what lifestyle?"

from Love Is Like A River

"A Charles Dickens character
With your top hat and your scarf
When you pull me through the rainbow
I thought you'd stop"

from Street Angel

[MoonSister75]

^^^ Thanks for posting these welcomechris - they're hilarious

Still, it just makes her more endearing......

[PenguinHead]

Stevie is not the most intelligent writer, but she is a very emotionally vested writer. Her songs are like children to her; children who belong in the special needs classes.

I've learned to gloss over the inexplicable change of tenses, awkward phrases, odd or pedestrian word choices, over reliance on iterations, incomprehensible and oblique references, etc. I still find enjoyment in her music, including her most questionable songs and lyrics, especially if I don't analyze them too much.

I think one of her issues is her ego. Because she has so much conviction in what she writes, she doesn't edit herself; everything is too precious. And while I believe she has an artistic intelligence, I can't expect her to be cohesive writer. Just listen to the disjointed way in which she speaks; it's the same way she writes.

Rock music gives writers an allowance to twist and mangle language/syntax to a certain extent. Stevie, without even realizing it, takes full liberty of that allowance.
There is no one like Stevie, and this is one of the many reasons why.

To counter this thread, perhaps we should start a thread on lyrics, verses and phrases that highlight her brightest lyrical moments.

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by all the same

"I remember him
He was very young
No one spoke like him
He was someone"

I really don't see anything wrong with it.

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by ontheEdgeof17

"I am a cliff dweller, from the old school" is fairly bad, but it fits so well into the song that I have grown to love that line!

Actually many critics consider that to be a great line.

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by GypsySorcerer

"It's just like a river, it's never ending" is pretty bad, as is the "you can't have him" stuff in EFO.

Ok, you selecting this is really baffling. Stevie is talking about the grief caused by 9/11, comparing it to a river, which, since it has no obvious beginning or end, "doesn't end."

Frankly I think "it's just like a river, it's never ending" is on par with U2's line "stuck in a moment you can't get out of"....both talk about the continuing reverbations of the 9/11 tragedy.

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by ChrystalGypsey

There's a line from ghosts that I don't make any sense out of:
of course I looked it up, and I was singing it wrong for years...that always happens-- you sing whatever lyrics you thing she's saying, although....

To feel the empty spaces she's feeling
She depends on her music like a husband

Makes little sense...why feel what she's already feeling?

Isn't the line actually "to fill the empty spaces she's feeling"?

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by cliffdweller

Even though I love The Blue Lamp (and make no mistake, I do LOVE this song) I find it a bit odd that she wrote a whole song about a lamp. I mean...it's a lamp...come on. Lamps are not interesting, they're not romantic, and I don't care if it's a Tiffany lamp, it's downright silly. Not to diss Stevie or anything but the lamp inspiration has always struck me as a bit strange.

If you take it THAT literally, my guess is you basically don't really get the song. The imagery is a blue lamp but obviously the song is actually about a breakup from someone, not a song about a lamp.

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by cliffdweller

Flash in the pan? Hmmm....Natalie's been around for a while now and I don't think the Dixie Chicks are going anywhere any time soon so...

Yeah. How in the hell is an artist with multiple platinum albums a "flash in the pan"?

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by dissention

How's about the entire song Thousand Days? It makes me embarrassed.

Quiet now, songbird, just for one night
Well, I know that you love to sing
Oh, baby, well I know that you love to write
Well, you live by the light of the moon
I live by the light of desire
Oooh, says words to her over the phone
Just how many people are there with you now?

That song made question whether or not she was nucking futs.

So - you clearly don't know "Thousand Days" is about her friendship with Prince. What's crazy about about this lyric? I think it's pretty obvious that its in essence a translated conversation between her and Prince: "you love to sing", "you love to write", "you live by the light of the moon, I live by the light of desire". "Just how many people are there with you now?" probably was a direct quote of Prince, since he sometimes criticized her indulgent lifestyle.

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by xxxmx

"yesterday i was fascinated by somebody else"
i love this lyric, very singable.

I always liked that line too, from "Paper Doll," because basically its a one line indictment of how fickle the public can be. It's akin to the Eagle's line "There's a new kid in town".

[tabruns]

I've found this thread baffling because most of the quoted lyrics actually aren't bad or embarrassing, and some of them are actually very good! It's confusing to me to see Nicks fans posting that seem to think everything she writes is trite.

I've always figured Nicks lyrics are wordy and vague snapshots of what was happening in her life at the time. If you don't have the context, as most of the time we don't, I can see that sometimes they'd be baffling if you were trying to read them as being literal. So she's often verbose and not totally clear, but that doesn't mean she's bad.....somehow people still connect to her songs even though they're really basically personal mythology from her life.

The only lyrics of hers that I dislike (and not saying they are bad lyrics, just that I don't personally like them) are where she ties a song way too closely to a particular event/time. "Desert Angel" doesn't work for me because it's too specific. "Illume" and "Soldier's Angel" are better because the lyrics are disassociated enough to make them more universal. I can listen to the latter two anytime and connect with the loss and tragedy they are communicating; I listen to "Desert Angel" and the shout outs to "Operation Desert Angel!" at the end just totally blows it for me.

And many of her lines are really great:

He was singing, and undoing the laces...undoing the laces "Sara"
To survive the distance everyone fights...everyone fights...and the fire flies "Fireflies"
I've shaken your faith in me...No, you've shaken my faith in everything else "Thrown Down"
Must secret loves secretly die? "Secret Love"
Long nets of white cloud my memory "Rooms On Fire" (startling, when you consider she was basically subconsciously reflecting on what Klonopin was doing to her before she consciously realized it!)

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by PenguinHead

Stevie is not the most intelligent writer, but she is a very emotionally vested writer. Her songs are like children to her; children who belong in the special needs classes.

I've learned to gloss over the inexplicable change of tenses, awkward phrases, odd or pedestrian word choices, over reliance on iterations, incomprehensible and oblique references, etc. I still find enjoyment in her music, including her most questionable songs and lyrics, especially if I don't analyze them too much.

I think one of her issues is her ego. Because she has so much conviction in what she writes, she doesn't edit herself; everything is too precious. And while I believe she has an artistic intelligence, I can't expect her to be cohesive writer. Just listen to the disjointed way in which she speaks; it's the same way she writes.

Rock music gives writers an allowance to twist and mangle language/syntax to a certain extent. Stevie, without even realizing it, takes full liberty of that allowance.
There is no one like Stevie, and this is one of the many reasons why.

To counter this thread, perhaps we should start a thread on lyrics, verses and phrases that highlight her brightest lyrical moments.

I agree with a lot of this. I think Nicks is something of an "Id" type writer....there's a lot of emotion coming out in her writing, and it can *seem* at first glance to be incomprehensible.

But let's take Lindsey's criticism of the verses in "Thrown Down". The first verse is third person, the second verse shifts to first person. It doesn't throw me off at all, because the effect (to me) is that Nicks basically steps closer to the listener and gets more personal in the second verse. In the first verse she's observing from a distance - "this happened, that happened", in the second verse she's confronting Lindsey directly. It would actually have detracted from the song to put all the verses in the same tense - Nicks' artistry comes through on it.

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by tabruns

I agree with a lot of this. I think Nicks is something of an "Id" type writer....there's a lot of emotion coming out in her writing, and it can *seem* at first glance to be incomprehensible.

But let's take Lindsey's criticism of the verses in "Thrown Down". The first verse is third person, the second verse shifts to first person. It doesn't throw me off at all, because the effect (to me) is that Nicks basically steps closer to the listener and gets more personal in the second verse. In the first verse she's observing from a distance - "this happened, that happened", in the second verse she's confronting Lindsey directly. It would actually have detracted from the song to put all the verses in the same tense - Nicks' artistry comes through on it.

Well it threw me off. Great production and I can't even listen to it because of the lyrics. She can't take any criticism from Lindsey no matter how truthful it is.