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Wilco lines you can't stand hearing


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"Don't let anyone change your bag"

 

Really? I love that line.

 

The only line on SBS that bugs me a little is "I believe in locomotion." I don't hate it though, I just think YAMF would have been a little more perfect with a different line there. It's still the best song on the album.

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I have a few that make me cringe:

 

"when you perform it's so intense" from The Lonely 1 (although style points for rhyming with "defense").

 

"The greatest singer in rock and roll

Would have to be Romeo

His vocal chords are made of gold

He just looks a little too old"

the old/gold lines really bug me - just seems, well, kind of lame (imho).

 

also, the "drunks were ricocheting" line from sky blue sky.

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I think that line is perfect. Everything about it, the way he says it, the image it invokes. It's beautiful. Such a great metaphor.

 

i agree -- it's one of my favorite lines on SBS.

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i agree -- it's one of my favorite lines on SBS.

oh, well... it's just that "ricocheting" is a little too clever for my taste (can't really explain it much more beyond that). I do really like the song, though.

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I am an American aquarium drinker

 

 

:ninja

 

Wow, I didn't know you could be a Wilco fan and not LOVE that line! It's such a classic.

 

Ah well, different strokes..

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i agree -- it's one of my favorite lines on SBS.

"the drunks / were ricocheting"

 

but that's what drunks do, inside and out, and no one says it like jeff does here. it's a picture. it's a snapshot taken by someone who sees (and remembers from a more innocent time), of someone who most people for god knows how long have ignored, or dismissed, or not paid attention to in some way that they themselves maybe would even have benefited from. (maybe.) a metaphor of one of thousands of versions of past or present reality, you know? i mean, it doesn't even necessarily have to be a drunk person. it could also be a person in the middle of a panic attack. drunks and/or panicked people bounce off buildings (or people, if they're in the way!). i know, because in the middle of a panic attack many years ago i saw a father on the sidewalk actually pull his children close to his body to "protect" them from me, a sort of waif but person not in control, not walking the straight line, "ricocheting." different reasons, but the same effect. i think it's a brilliant word-put-to-image.

 

anyway, aside from all that, it IS one of my favorite images from SBS -- i never saw it painted quite that way before. it's true-to-life and poetry at the same time.

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"Don't let anyone change your bag"

okay, i'm not particularly fond of this thread (although i think it's proving to have not much power), but that is the Only Line i can think of that has made me cringe a bit. i'm not sure why. it sounds kind of late '60s or early '70s, which personally i'd expect to relate to due to the time of my coming of age. and it wouldn't bother me, except that it reminds me a little of the small slice of that era that embarrasses for reasons i don't know so far, and also somehow it doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the song. most of the song seems to me to be topical in a universal, timeless kind of way, and the only part getting in the way of the timelessness is that line. i love the song, except for that line.

 

it gives me the impression that if jeff had spent only a little more time, he probably would have found a better way to say it. just speculation. who knows?

 

but you know, it's very easy to forgive. with his history, with all he has put out there (and here), "cringe-worthy" terms or lines are few and very far between. and so they're not my focus. i had to reply here, though, because when i read the question of the thread, that's the one and only line that popped up and stuck in my mind! and then here it was, pointed out by somebody else.

 

well, so. i've been a very long time on the music scene, and jeff tweedy, by himself or compared to others, easily overcomes and outlives whatever small discomforts appear in the midst of what i think of as great human perspective, poetry, beautiful ordinariness and universality.

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