Pre-poll: Wittiest song lyrics?

[rhu]

I've been listening to --- well, I'm not going to tell you just yet --- and it made me wonder: what do you, gentle readers, think are the songs with the wittiest lyrics ever?

In this thread, please nominate your favorites; next week I'll set up some sort of poll and we can vote.

Comments

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

A couple to start things off:

1) Vatican Rag-- Tom Lehrer: "Step into that small confessional/There the guy who's got religion'll/Tell you if your sin's ... original"

2) Why don't you like me?-- Frank Zappa (as Michael Jackson): "I hate my father/I hate my mother/I am my sister/And Jermaine is a negro!"

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

I would have nominated the same Lehrer tune and quoted the same rhyme.

[tablesaw]

I've always preferred the more ambitious, "Everybody say his own / Kyrie Eleison."

[jangler-npl.livejournal.com]

My favorite Lehrer line is

And you may have thought it tragic
Not to mention other adjec-
Tives to think of all the weeping they will do...

(We Will All Go Together)

[tinhorn2.livejournal.com]

Many things from They Might Be Giants, such as:

Purple Toupee, where the singer jumbles together memories from his youth. Example:

I remember the year I went to camp
I heard about some lady named Selma and some blacks
Somebody put their fingers in the President's ears
It wasn't too much later they came out with Johnson's wax
I remember the book depository where they crowned the king of Cuba
Now that's all I can think of, but I'm sure there's something else
Way down inside me I can feel it coming back . . .


Clever lines (not necessarily whole songs) from TMBG are:

Standing in my yard
Where they tore down the garage
To make room for the torn-down garage.
(A Self Called Nowhere)

As I think
I'm using up
The time left to think.
(It's Not My Birthday)

When I made a shadow on my window shade
They called the police and testified.
But they're like the people chained up in the cave
In the allegory of the people in the cave by that Greek guy.
(No One Knows My Plan)

And for a group and song that wasn't overtly trying to be clever, I've always quite liked the line:

I've been one poor correspondent,
And I've been too, too hard to find,
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind.
(Sister Golden Hair, by America)

[toonhead-npl.livejournal.com]

Hmmm I wonder if it's a Sondheim tune ...

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

What sort of witty are you seeking? The sort that is clearly joke-funny when read flat? The kind in which the structure or style or pacing set you up for a surprise turn? The wry? The use of clever metaphor? I mean, I can read Lehrer's lyrics and see that they would officially be funny, but I feel as if there are several other varieties of "witty". I think my question boils down to: novelty songs or "real" songs with witty content?

Because if you're open to novelty songs, or if you're really only considering novelty songs, there should be plenty. Al Yankovic alone would take ages. Anything else that can be found on a Dr. Demento collection probably would fit.

But there are different (more subtle?) forms of wit in sngs that I wouldn't term novelties. Take "Midwestern Saturday Night" by Susan Werner, which has the form of a typical folk/light country song and begins
Thanks for the concert, it was quite enlightening
Although Mahler does tend to make me wanna do myself in

There's "God Shuffled His Feet" by Crash Test Dummies, for which the mild wit is apparent in the written lyrics; there's "Song for the Dumped" by Ben Folds Five, for which the crude wit has far more to do with the presentation than with the printed lyrics alone. There's the idiosyncracy of They Might Be Giants or The Magnetic Fields; there's the joke-and-punchline of Jim Infantino's "Someday Cafe". There's Susan Werner's "Rubber Glove Blues".

I suspect you're seeking suggestions closer to novelty than non-novelty, but since you're being all coy, I thought I'd bring it up ....

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

Keying off the "what do you mean by witty" discussion, I think a strong candidate for Best Wittily Executed Jab (or something) is the ending to Dylan's "Positively 4th Street":

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

Oh totally! I forgot about that one, but I used to quote it all the time.