Song Lyric of the Day (Paul Simon, on The Lord, ‘My Engineer’)

“The Lord is my engineer
The Lord is the earth I ride on
The Lord is the face in the atmosphere
The path I slip and slide on.”—Grammy winning American singer-songwriter Paul Simon, “The Lord,” in his Seven Psalms CD (2023)

The image of Paul Simon that accompanies this post was taken of him performing live in Mainz, Germany, on July 25, 2008, by Miho.

Song Lyric of the Day (Dolly Parton, on the Indignity of ‘Working 9 to 5’)

“Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living
Barely getting by, it's all taking and no giving.”—American Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, actress, and philanthropist Dolly Parton (1946-2026), “9 to 5,” from her studio LP 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs (1980)
 
Last week, almost immediately after the death of Dolly Parton, ABC ran in prime time the most successful of her few movies, 9 to 5.
 
As I mulled over the lyrics of the title tune, I thought the network could have waited another week, because this 1980 farce was more appropriate for Labor Day and the memory of the star was so vivid, even overwhelming, that people won’t forget her any time soon.
 
So I thought of reproducing a small sample of her lyrics. Which of my readers hasn’t identified, at one point or another in their careers, the sentiment in these verses?
 
(The image accompanying this post, of Dolly Parton accepting the Liseberg Applause Award 2010, was created on Nov. 16, 2010, by Curtis Hilbun.)

Song Lyric of the Day (Dolly Parton, on Her ‘Coat of Many Colors’)

“My coat of many colors that my mama made for me,
Made only from rags, but I wore it so proudly.
Now I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be.
In my coat of many colors my mama made for me.”—Grammy-winning country-music singer-songwriter Dolly Parton (1946-2026), title tune from her Coat of Many Colors LP (1971)
 
There’s a reason why Dolly Parton was remembered not just with respect for her talent, but even with love for her personality: she was so transparently down to earth. She never forgot where she came from: Locust Ridge, TN, in a tiny log cabin with her parents and 11 siblings, but without electricity or running water.
 
There will certainly be those who say that she achieved success through hard work. No argument from me there. But I think it’s also fair to say that, despite what some cynics say, you don’t have to step on other people’s toes to get ahead in life. Her career proved that, too, in abundance.

(The image accompanying this post, of Dolly Parton accepting the Liseberg Applause Award 2010, was created on Nov. 16, 2010, by Curtis Hilbun.)

Song Lyric of the Day (Ray Davies, on ‘Lazin’ on a Sunny Afternoon’)

“I love to live so pleasantly
Live this life of luxury
Lazin' on a sunny afternoon
In the summertime.”—British rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriter Ray Davies, “Sunny Afternoon,” performed by the Kinks on their Face to Face LP (1966)
 
For years, this song has evoked for me the dog days of summer, when it’s too hot and humid to do much of anything. Lots of people feel similarly, I bet, because the tune seems to get more airplay this time of year—including at my local Starbucks.
 
This month 60 years ago, “Sunny Afternoon” was climbing the UK charts, and before long it gave the Kinks a hit on this side of the Atlantic, too. So much of its success, I think, derived from an oom-pah melody that seduced listeners into not paying all that much attention to its lyrics.
 
That “life of luxury” was the least of it: that decadent aristocrat moaning about the tax man chasing him also admits, without much regret, to “drunkenness and cruelty” aimed at the girlfriend who, understandably, has left him.
 
It’s a counterpart to a user in another song on the Face to Face LP released that fall, “Dandy,” a playboy who is warned, “you're moving much too fast…you can’t escape the past.”

“Sunny Afternoon” has had a life beyond vinyl, also giving its name and forming the centerpiece of a British musical that premiered in 2014. Centering on the rise to prominence of The Kinks, it featured music and lyrics by Ray Davies with a book by Joe Penhall. It finally made its North American premiere at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater a year and a half ago for a month-long run.

Song Lyric of the Day (Classics IV, With an Appropriate Tune for Recent Turbulent Weather)

“You were the sunshine, baby, whenever you smiled
But I call you 'Stormy' today.”—James Cobb and Buddy Buie, “Stormy,” performed by Classics IV on their Mamas and Papas/Soul Train LP (1968)
 
The image accompanying this post, The Storm (1881), was created by American painter Edward Mitchell Bannister and hangs in the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum.

Song Lyric of the Day (Francis Hopkinson, Sending Up Redcoat Readiness in the Revolution)

“A soldier stood on a log of wood,
               And saw a thing surprising.
 
              As in amaze he stood to gaze,
               The truth can't be denied, sir,
              He spied a score of kegs or more
               Come floating down the tide, sir.
 
              A sailor too in jerkin blue,
               This strange appearance viewing,
              First damned his eyes, in great surprise,
               Then said, ‘Some mischief's brewing.
 
              "These kegs, I'm told, the rebels hold,
               Packed up like pickled herring;
              And they're come down to attack the town,
               In this new way of ferrying.’ 
 
              The soldier flew, the sailor too,
               And scared almost to death, sir,
              Wore out their shoes, to spread the news,
               And ran till out of breath, sir.”— American polymath and signer of the Declaration of Independence Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), “The Battle of the Kegs,” originally published in 1778, reprinted in American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, edited by David S. Shields (2007)
 
Faithful reader, if you’ve been reading this blog long enough and frequently enough, you’ll notice that I open and close the workweek with a humorous quote, on the reasonable supposition that everybody needs a laugh as they start their jobs on Monday and once they make it to Friday. I find no reason to change that pattern as we begin celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
 
If you read anything at all about that document and the American Revolution in general (which I hope you will), nearly all of it will be very sober. And I’ll provide a bit of that over the weekend myself.
 
But human nature doesn’t change that much over the centuries, and the men and women who created this country liked to drink and laugh as much as we do. I think they would have nodded in agreement with a bibulous fellow writer on my college newspaper, when hearing a recent article described as “very sober,” remarked, “Gee, I hate anything sober!”
 
So did Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence whom I think you and I would have liked to hang with. A blog post of mine from 18 years ago described the general arc of the career of this witty Renaissance Man of the Revolution, but his part in depicting one incident in the war deserves a fuller explanation.
 
If the rhythm of his verses above sounds familiar, it should: they’re written to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” Modern Americans associate that tune with patriots playing it on fife and drum on the way into battle, but it began a few decades before the war, with British doctor Richard Schuckburg creating a straw man with a colonist who was both a provincial hick and a pretentious fop.
 
By the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord, according to this account of the song on the Website of The Kennedy Center, the colonists were throwing the insult back, singing the tune derisively at the fleeing redcoats.
 
Nearly three years later, Hopkinson decided to make further use of the tune’s melody. You can see from the verses I’ve quoted that the lyrics are in ballad form, as capable of being sung as read.
 
What he was doing was rather audacious: taking a failed patriot military operation and, instead of being defensive about it, using it to mock vaunted British heroics.
 
In my high school, if you mentioned “The Battle of the Kegs,” some rowdy classmates might have seen it as a dare to finish off libations at a party. 

But in the American Revolution, it referred to a real patriot tactic in January 1778: to float explosive barrels at British ships. The colonists needed to try something: the British had captured and made themselves comfortable in Philadelphia, the capital of the young republic.
 
The whole thing was a big dud: no British ships blew up. But Hopkinson used the opportunity to satirize the redcoats’ panic and overreaction to the unknown objects coming their way.
 
Ultimately, the American Revolution would have to be settled by other means. But then as now, satire directed at an enemy possessing overwhelming power was necessary to sustain the spirit for the larger contest.

Song Lyric of the Day (Bob Dylan, on When All Signs Point Away From Love)

“The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you.”—American singer-songwriter and Nobel Literature laureate Bob Dylan, “I Want You,” from his Blonde on Blonde LP (1966)
 
I’ve blogged before about Blonde on Blonde, but my special feeling for one single from the Bob Dylan double-album, “I Want You,” requires me to focus on that today, the 60^th anniversary of its first appearance on the U.S. Billboard “Hot 100 chart. (It peaked at #20.)
 
More than a few critics and academics have parsed its lyrics. I’m not going to pick one interpretation—many seem perfectly plausible and non-exclusive to others. That’s what happens with lyrics so quicksilver and elusive, much like the nature of love itself.
 
Variations exist as much in its performances as in interpretation.
 
The brisk, buoyant tempo of the original recording reminds me of a later Dylan song I cherish, “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” But a decade later, indulging his penchant for not settling for a single way to play his classics, he slowed it down to give it a torch-song feeling.
 
Three decades ago, in the tribute album A Nod to Bob, the folksinger Cliff Eberhardt delivered a plaintive, keening acoustic version that rends the heart without doing any violence to the spirit of the original.

Song Lyric of the Day (Cat Stevens, on ‘The Old Schoolyard’)

“Remember the days of the old schoolyard
When we had imaginings
And we had all kinds of things.”— British singer-songwriter and musician Yusuf/Cat Stevens, “(Remember the Days of the) Old Schoolyard,” from his Izitso LP (1977)
 
In the Seventies, I bought and listened incessantly to every Cat Stevens song I could, until the Izitso LP. I couldn’t imagine that by the end of the year, he’d convert to Islam, starting enormous changes in his life—and that this would turn out to be the last song collection of his that I’d own.
 
At the time of its release 49 years ago this week, “Old Schoolyard” represented something of a comeback for Stevens after the commercially disappointing Numbers collection. This song reached #33 on the Billboard Top 100, the last time to date he’s achieved that distinction.
 
Maybe to the extent that it was successful, it was because “Old Schoolyard” tapped into baby boomers’ wistfulness and nostalgia. That’s certainly why it, along with another tune from the LP, “Child for a Day,” made such an impression on me at this time, when I was looking forward to senior year of high school, wondering what college would bring—and thinking back to what really wasn’t so long ago, to my own elementary school days.
 
Now in my retirement years, it all feels so much longer and far away. With another June here and another age cohort saying goodbye to this environment, do the younger generations go through something of the same thought process—or, in this digital age, are they too caught up in the present moment to consider how they and the world have changed?
 
On his “From My Desk at Home” blog, Steven Pereira—a couple of years older than me—offers an especially thoughtful meditation on childhood as a life stage for both Stevens and himself.

Song Lyric of the Day (Mel Brooks, With Rediscovered Lines for ‘Springtime for Hitler’)

“Maybe other men have vigor and dash
But other men don't have that mustache.” —Oscar- and Tony-winning American comic actor-writer-director Mel Brooks, quoted by Jason Zinoman, “Mel Brooks Donates His Archives to Museum,” The New York Times, May 14, 2026

At some point before the film The Producers was released, Mel Brooks decided to discard the above lyrics for the tune that is its uproarious climax.

I’m not sure why he did so. The only reason I can come up with is that “Springtime for Hitler” already had so many hilarious lines that the audience would never remember this couplet for the ages.

These lines, by the way, were part of the first draft of his Oscar-winning screenplay, along with other treasures from his multi-decade career now given to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY—a wonderful museum that also contains contributions from George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, Lenny Bruce, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and Brooks’ longtime friend, Carl Reiner.

Song Lyric of the Day (The Rolling Stones, on a Line of Cars, ‘All Painted Black’)

“I see a line of cars and they're all painted black
With flowers and my love, both never to come back.”—English rock ‘n’ rollers Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, “Paint It Black,” from the Rolling Stones’ Aftermath LP (1966)

Sixty years ago today, “Paint It Black,” was released as a single in the U.S., eventually spending two weeks at number one during the summer and serving as the lead song of their fourth studio album, Aftermath.

Among the early hits of the Rolling Stones, this one remains distinctive to me. With “Satisfaction” in 1965, Mick Jagger was already well-launched on the misogyny that characterized so many of his subsequent lyrics, and he stayed stuck in the same mental groove in in two songs from this new collection, “Under My Thumb" and "Stupid Girl."

But “Paint It Black” gave evidence of something larger than dissatisfaction with “the birds” that so obsessed the Stones’ lead singer. It’s far more than the sweet, strings-laden melancholy of “Yesterday” by their compatriots in the British Invasion, the Beatles.

From Brian Jones’ unusual, even unnerving sitar opening, the Stones were evoking a severe depression with the potential to throw you off your axis, even locating it in something specific: grief (that “line of cars” suggesting a funeral procession).

“ ‘Paint It Black’—I wrote the melody, he [Jagger] wrote the lyrics,” Richards recalled in his 2010 autobiography, Life. “It’s not that you can say in one phrase he wrote that and he did that. But the musical riff is mostly coming from me. I’m the riff master.”

According to Simon Harper’s May 2025 account, the March 1966 recording session for the tune in RCA’s Los Angeles studio wasn’t jelling. Producer Andrew Loog Oldham had decided that, if no movement occurred in 10 minutes, they’d move on.

Just then, bassist Bill Wyman suggested Hammond organ pedals, with Jones—tiring of his normal six-string guitar and becoming the band’s de facto multi-instrumentalist—tried out sitar chords he’d been strumming, the byproduct of tutelage under virtuoso Harihar Rao.

The song had evolved into something far more mesmerizing and disturbing than what everyone in the studio had been hearing originally. The other Stones supposedly felt that their collective improvisational input entitled them to share songwriting credit on the band’s sixth single with Jagger and Richards.

In the end, it may not have mattered that much. In the early 1970s, to free themselves from their early, pugnacious manager Allen Klein, the Stones signed away rights to this and others up to 1971.

And that would be enough fill most ordinary people with the kind of depression associated with “Paint It Black”—except that the Stones have made so much more money, and been even more savvy about saving it, since then.

Oh, by the way: some audiophiles have their recordings of the song with a comma in the title: “Paint It, Black,” as seen in the image accompanying this post. Why?

Years later, Richards confirmed that it was the band’s intention not to include the comma. It was a mistake on the part of their record company, Decca, that produced the errant punctuation mark.

This reminds me of what happened with one of my favorite Supremes songs, “Stoned Love.” Writer Kenny Thomas had written it as “Stone Love,” intending to evoke the strength of amour with the lyrics. Yet when it came back from the Motown warehouse, the letter “d” had been tacked onto the first word of the title.

I couldn’t help but think that someone at the record plant had been stoned when he made that mistake—and that similarly, a mind-altering substance led someone at Decca to insert that idiotic, confusing, useless comma. If that was the case, it’s too bad that the Rolling Stones didn’t take the cue and quit drugs cold turkey.

Song Lyric of the Day (Don Henley, on ‘Armchair Warriors’)

“Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales.”—“The End of the Innocence” (1989), written by Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby, performed by Henley from his CD of the same name

Song Lyric of the Day (The Grateful Dead, on ‘Easy Street’)

“When life looks like Easy Street, there is danger at your door.”—American rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriters Robert Hunter (1941-2019) and Jerry Garcia (1942-1995), “Uncle John’s Band,” performed by the Grateful Dead on their Workingman's Dead LP (1970)

A thought that applies just as much to nations as to individuals.

Song Lyric of the Day (‘Eve of Destruction,’ on Returning From ‘Four Days in Space’)

“Ah, you may leave here for four days in space
But when you return, it's the same old place
The poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace.”—American rock ‘n’ roll songwriter P.F. Sloan (1945-2015), “Eve of Destruction” (1965), performed by Barry McGuire from the album of the same name

NASA’s successful launch of the Artemis II space program—marking America’s return to the moon for the first time in a half century—was rightly celebrated as a resumption of a scientific and technological marvel. 

But I was also struck by the conjunction of events in the above lyrics from Barry McGuire’s compelling protest song of the mid-Sixties, as well as a repetition of that today.

Even as the Gemini missions were taking the space program to another level six decades ago, tensions were rising in the Mideast, as Israel and its Arab neighbors confronted each other over control of water sources in the Jordan River drainage basin—or, as McGuire sang, “You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'?/And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'.”

Now, even as so many eyes are lifted to the skies, the focus of so much of the world remains on the Mideast, only this time shifting from the Jordan River to the Strait of Hormuz, where America’s current President is unabashedly engaging in “the poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace.”

Some may wonder if the current war actually represents “the Eve of Destruction.” But how else to interpret the current Oval Office occupant’s threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong”?

Song Lyric of the Day (Gilbert and Sullivan, on ‘Little Errands for the Ministers of State’)

“Oh, philosophers may sing
Of the troubles of a King;
Yet the duties are delightful, and the privileges great;
But the privilege and pleasure
That we treasure beyond measure
Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State.”— “Rising Early in the Morning," from The Gondoliers: or, The King of Barataria (1889), libretto by W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911), music by Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900)

The image accompanying this post shows Rutland Barrington and Courtice Pounds as Giuseppe and Marco, the title characters in the 1889 production of The Gondoliers. 

Times have changed greatly since then, but it seems like all over the world, there’s still no shortage of people ready to run “little errands for the Ministers of State.” Only they're called bureaucrats rather than gondoliers.

Song Lyric of the Day (World Party, on ‘Avarice and Greed’)

“Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless sea
They will leave you drifting in the shallows
Or drowning in the oceans of history.”—“Ship of Fools,” written by Welsh singer-songwriter Karl Wallinger (1957-2024) and performed by World Party on their Private Revolution CD (1987)

I have to tell you that when it came to this song, I was late to the party—World Party, that is. Since I didn’t have access to MTV in the Eighties, I didn’t see the video for this tune, and the local rock station that I had listened to for more than a decade had become less experimental and more frozen in a classic rock format that downplayed more experimental newer music.

But once in a blue moon in recent years I would hear this on my car radio, and the other day I listened to it again, only this time it struck me with full force. Nearly four decades after its release, Karl Wallinger’s dystopian vision feels more relevant than ever.

“The world is in such a state,” he said in a 2018 interview with Billboard upon release of a new video. “The situation is getting crazy, isn’t it? It’s so ridiculous, this whole situation, mind-blowingly unintelligible.”

Any rational observer could only admit that it’s gotten worse. The “avarice and greed” that Wallinger scored, along with sexual corruption (“Sodom”), lie at the heart of the mushrooming Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

And above all there is the specter of environmental catastrophe. Even the bipartisan agreement that once held sway on the necessity of saving outdoor spaces has vanished. As Stephen Lezac noted in a recent New York Times op-ed, with the rise of the MAGA movement, Donald Trump’s “inner circle consists almost exclusively of hyperonline MAGA ideologues, whose passion for American landscapes generally begins and ends at the golf course. The [Theodore] Roosevelt Republicans are in retreat. The indoor Republicans have arrived.”

Last year he worst of the tech tycoons, Elon Musk, severely hobbled the Environmental Protection Agency through his work at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Just as predictably, his cuts to the Forest Service left it about 38 percent behind its recent pace for forest-thinning, prescribed fire and other work to remove potential wildfire fuel, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group.

“You will pay tomorrow,” Wallinger (who, sadly, died two years ago) promised the oblivious officers of the “Ship of Fools” of the Eighties. Sadly, today’s equivalent seems likely to capsize all of us in their tech Armageddon.

(The image accompanying this post, of World Party performing at The Basement in Columbus, Ohio, was taken on May 26, 2015, by Bob Mateljan.)

Song Lyric of the Day (Bob Dylan, Evoking a Couple’s ‘Winterlude’)

“Come on, sit by the logs in the fire
The moonlight reflects from the window
Where the snowflakes, they cover the sand.”—American singer-songwriter and Nobel Literature laureate Bob Dylan, “Winterlude,” in the New Morning LP (1970)

A beautiful scene to think of as much of this country becomes snowbound…

Song Lyric of the Day (Elvis Costello, on ‘Lovers Laughing in Their Amateur Hour’)

“Lovers laughing in their amateur hour
Holding hands in the corridors of power.” —British singer-songwriter and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame member Elvis Costello, “High Fidelity,” performed by Elvis Costello and the Attractions on their Get Happy! LP (1980) 

If recent rumors are true, this is one current example.

Song Lyric of the Day (Patty Griffin, on ‘The Love You Leave’)

“The love you leave on earth goes round forever.”—American singer-songwriter Patty Griffin and David Pulkingham, “A Word,” from Griffin’s CD Crown of Roses (2025)

Congratulations to Ms. Griffin for her Best Folk Album Grammy nomination for Crown of Roses.

Song Lyric of the Day (Green Day, on Time and Making 'The Best of This Test’)

“Time grabs you by the wrist
Directs you where to go
So make the best of this test
And don't ask why.”— Billie Joe Armstrong, "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)," performed by alternative-rock band Green Day from its album Nimrod (1997)
 
The image accompanying this post, of Green Day performing in Caracas, Venezuela in October 2010, was posted May 12, 2012, by Ed Vill.

Song Lyric of the Day (Beth Orton, on Beautiful Weather)

“Almost makes me wanna cry
The weather′s so beautiful outside.” —British singer-songwriter Beth Orton, “Weather Alive," from the Weather Alive CD (2022)

As with all things in life, enjoy it while it lasts.

(I took the image accompanying this post three years ago this month in Pascack Brook County Park, roughly a half hour from where I live in Bergen County, NJ.)