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Prompted by the wonderful Callisto, who in turn was prompted by a shite poll by VH1, who themselves were prompted by the need to be vacuous commercial weasels, I have been thinking about song lyrics lately.

Here are some of my favourites. A mix of the good, the quirkily bad and the plain odd.

I love TV and I love T.Rex
I can see through your skirt, I got X-ray specs

I came from the sky like a 747
I am bad boy baby, I fell out of heaven

Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction

What am I supposed to do
Now that love has gone away?
Take my breath, take my air
Release me from this body, I'll go anywhere

The Boo Radleys

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime

Al Stewart

To die for his mother country
Isn't every father's wish
But if you're ever feeling hungry
Feast your eyes on this
Bullied beat up cabbaged kids
To be patched up by the nurse
Who's carrying the baggage in
For the private patients first
And the doctor's praying to Buddha,
"Send me to another town!"
A shovelful of sugar
Won't help that medicine go down
As the actress said to the bishop
I stand accused your Grace
Of the seven deadly cynicisms
And a total lack of faith

Carter USM

She danced on my heart like Arthur Murray

Richard Thompson

Fashion crisis hits New York
I saw a blind man, he was eating his fork
He said, "that's what you have to do to be cool,
Eat your cutlery instead of your food"

The Frank & Walters

But I won't fight, and I won't hate
Well, not today

The House of Love

The sun shone down like marmalade
and covered us like glue

The Wonderstuff

You're an american girl
red headed, eyes blank
living in a freckle on the face of the world
another dying kid that learned too much too soon
you're not as good as your mom
but you're as good as dead
you're as good as dead
new jersey ain't the whole world

The Red House Painter

And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.

Jethro Tull

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces

Janis Ian

People’s knees and trunks of trees smile at me

The Lemonheads

You can't say it doesn't really matter
This isn't TV, he isn't William Shatner

The Wedding Present