Powerful Lyrics

What are some powerful lyrics -- songs where the underlying theme always weighs in with the beat.

Janis Ian wrote:

I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens and high school girls with clear skinned smiles who married young and then retired. The valentines I never knew, the Friday night charades of youth were spent on one more beautiful. At seventeen, I learned the truth.

Time by Pink Floyd always hits me hard.

And you run and you run
To catch up with the sun
But it's sinking

Racing around
To come up behind you again

The sun is the same
In a relative way
But you're older

Shorter of breath
And one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines

Props for Pink Floyd, but there are so many better ones!

Comfortably Numb, classic quotes. I like Learning to Fly, though. "Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I."

Also, Almost Lover by A Fine Frenzy. Entire song is lyrical gold, but
I cannot go to the ocean. I cannot drive the streets at night. I cannot wake up in the morning without you on my mind. So you're gone, and I'm haunted, and I bet you are just fine. Did I make it that easy to walk right in and out of my life? Goodbye, my almost lover. Goodbye, my hopeless dream. I'm trying not to think about you. Can't you just let me be? So long, my luckless romance. My back is turned on you. I should've known you'd bring me heartache. Almost lovers always do.

In the words of Maynard Keenan

-"Why can't we not be sober?
I just want to start this over
Why can't we drink forever?
I just want to start this over"

GAMEchief wrote:

Props for Pink Floyd, but there are so many better ones!

Comfortably Numb, classic quotes. I like Learning to Fly, though. "Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I."

Also, Almost Lover by A Fine Frenzy. Entire song is lyrical gold, but
I cannot go to the ocean. I cannot drive the streets at night. I cannot wake up in the morning without you on my mind. So you're gone, and I'm haunted, and I bet you are just fine. Did I make it that easy to walk right in and out of my life? Goodbye, my almost lover. Goodbye, my hopeless dream. I'm trying not to think about you. Can't you just let me be? So long, my luckless romance. My back is turned on you. I should've known you'd bring me heartache. Almost lovers always do.

I think better is a personal preference. The whole of Dark Side gets me more often than not. The idea of the Wall gets me more than it's songs.

I also find Rush to be fantastic for this sort of thing.
Cast in this unlikely role,
Ill-equipped to act,
With insufficient tact,
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact.
...
I have no heart to lie,
I can't pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend.

Sometimes music makes my heart feel like it's bleeding inside.

Lyrics and the music itself.
Sometimes the lyrics are very connecting and you can empathize with what is being said.
Sometimes the music itself is very aggrieving, and it hits down into that dark shadowed part of your soul.

Johnny Cash wrote:

Early one morning
With time to kill
I see the gallows
Up on a hill
And out in the distance
A trick of the brain
I see a lone rider
Crossing the plain

And he'd come to fetch me
To see what they'd done
And we'd ride together
To kingdom come
I prayed for god's mercy
For soon I'd be dead
I hung my head
I hung my head

Really dependent on the actually tone of the song though.

Isonyx wrote:

Really dependent on the actually tone of the song though.

Being Cash it's not hard to figure the tone of the song

C0FFINCASE wrote:

Being Cash it's not hard to figure the tone of the song

Yeah, and in my opinion the lyrics are perfect for his lethargic style.
Really like it.

Also.

Earl Sweatshirt wrote:

Too Black for the White kids and too White for the Blacks
From honor roll to to cracking locks up off them bicycle racks
I'm indecisive, I'm scatterbrained and I'm frightened it's evident
And them eyes where he hiding all them icicles at

If any of you are into Earl Sweatshirt.

Also Greydon Square definitely has some great lyrics in my opinion.

Greydon Square wrote:

You can tell that hell and god are man made
They both want unquestioned authority and demand slaves
And any incarnation of slavery's not good,
So from here we can deduce Stockholm syndrome is not hood
But it gets deeper than this
Especially when people get pissed
When you point out their deity's nature and even intent
But I'll never worship anything with evil in it
Especially something who allows evil to even exist
I don't give a shit if he created me
That don't give him the right to commit genocide with pride and act crazily