Nonsensical Song Lyrics, Gordon Lightfoot
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Don Quixote album at Amazon.com
Pickin' up the pieces of my sweet shattered dream
I wonder how the old folks are tonight
Her name was Ann and I'll be damned if I recall her face
She left me not knowin' what to do
Most of Gordon Lightfoot's songs, though musically wonderful to listen to, sound like he must have put random lines together to arrive at his song lyrics. This is one of the most shining examples.
Submitted by: Lisa
Beware of strange faces and dark dingy places
Be careful while bending the law
And the house you live in will never fall down
If you pity the stranger who stands at your door.
So, which is it, Gordon? Do we fear the stranger or pity him?
Submitted by: Carolee
And the mountains and Maryann
will greet me there as only she can do
I like a lot of Gordon Lightfoot's songs, including this one. But he had to be just not thinking when he wrote this line. Who is capable of greeting him there as as only Maryann can do? By definition, only Maryann. So the line is a contradiction in terms. Only Maryanne can greet him in the manner that he says both the mountains and Maryann will do. The mountains CANNOT greet him as only she can do. If they could, it wouldn't BE as only she can do.
Submitted by: Penelope Beckinsale
Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
This is a nice little verse, but I have no clue what it has to do with the rest of the song. It's just kind of randomly stuck in there in the middle of a whole bunch of verses about a shipwreck and its aftermath.
Submitted by: Carolee
The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
If there were 29 men on the ship, and the bell rang '29 times for each man,' that means the bell was rung 841 times altogether. That bellringer must have had some headache!
Submitted by: Scot Penslar
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early.
Given that the tragedy he's talking about took place in November, I would say the "gales of November" were not early, but rather right on time.
Submitted by: Michael S.
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