Sometimes through the
morass of most
popular music, there's a
couplet or a few lines in the
lyrics that are very
clever, very
amusing, very
thought-provoking or just very
cool. The thing is that because it's from a song, it sometimes
rhymes or has
rhythm, which makes it easy to remember and can have a
disproportionately important effect on someone's life or
thinking.
This is kind of scary, because the lines are sometimes a result of the randomness of the language, in the sense of which particular words rhyme with other ones, or the rhythm of a sequence of words. I mean just because it sounds good doesn't make it true, but there's a tendency for things that sound good to be more accepted than things that may have equivalent intellectual merit, but just happen not to sound good.
These are inherently personal, but it's still fun to share them. So here are some of my favourites. I'd love to see other people's (by the way, you might want to consider using blockquote in HTML:
And anyway, who needs love when you're going away
That word, gets so battered it gets in the way
-- Glide, Water falls.
She was one in a million
That means there's five more just in New South Wales.
-- The Whitlams.
And you kill what you fear,
And you fear what you hate,
And you hate what you don't understand.
-- Genesis, Duke.
Our deeds have travelled far,
What we have been is what we are.
-- Dream Theater, Beyond This Life.
Life's short and hard, like a body-building elf.
-- Bloodhound Gang.
There are more, but I'd like to hear others' ...