Most cynical song...

[leeroysphitz]

My vote "Seven Seas" by Echo And The Bunnymen.

It DRIPS and DRIPS.

Your thoughts?

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. Liar by Henry Rollins.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fxrd_jZJxkg

[leeroysphitz]

2. Good call! What was I thinking?

But then I just remembered a song by a famous American artist that probably couldn't EVER bet be beat in terms of cynicism. His associates included the late Andy Warhol. I wonder if anyone knows what I'm talking about?

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. Is William S. Burroughs involved? He's an absolute master at truthful cynicism.

[leeroysphitz]

4. Not Burroughs but REED. I know where you are coming from but ...

Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" just, all of the sudden, tops the all time cynicism charts for me...

Can't believe I left that out.

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. I don't know that one. I'll search it out!

[leeroysphitz]

6. Cool. Bring some tissue. N/T

[taterguy]

12. This all-star version is really cool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8OfKdOFR_c

[Fire Walk With Me]

17. Laurie Anderson and Shane McGowan. Neat.

And sometimes you don't reap what you sow. Sometimes it's just assholes. Does America deserve, did it create George Bush and friends?

[leeroysphitz]

26. Wow what a great way to ruin one of the most emotionally honest and

profoundly touching songs I've ever heard. JMO.

[harmonicon]

7. I love "Seven Seas", but never thought of it as being horrible cynical..

... now, "the disease", or most of the "heaven up here" album on the other hand is rather cynical. I think The Cure's "100 Years" may be up there at the top. First line: "it doesn't matter if we all die".

[OzarkDem]

8. Baker Street

by Gerry Rafferty

A story of a musician who was a busker in London, made money then lost it...beautiful song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOu2qgnO_n8

Didn't Foo Fighters do a cover of this?

[CreekDog]

9. Los Lobos' "One Time One Night in America"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qmgfLI1NBe8

A wise man was telling stories to me
about the places he had been to and the things that he had seen

A quiet voice is singing something to me
An age old song 'bout the home of the brave and this land here of the free,
One time one night in America

...

The sunlight plays upon my window pane
I wake up to a world that's still the same
My father said to be strong
That a good man could never do wrong
In a dream I had last night in America

(this is that song that opens the movie "Colors")

[Inchworm]

10. Unfortunatly, I see cynicism in many songs

Heres the song and lyrics though.
____________________

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzYQZqOz8mM

Seven Seas
Stab a sorry heart
With your favourite finger
Paint the whole world blue
And stop your tears from stinging
Hear the cavemen singing
Good news they're bringing

Seven seas
Swimming them so well
Glad to see
My face among them
Kissing the tortoise shell

A longing for
Some fresher feeling
Belonging
Or just forever kneeling
Where is the sense in stealing
Without the grace to be it

Seven seas
Swimming them so well
Glad to see
My face among them
Kissing the tortoise shell

Burning my bridges
And smashing my mirrors
Turning to see if you're cowardly
Burning the witches with mother religious
You'll strike the matches and shower me
In water games
Washing the rocks below
Taught and tamed
In time with tear flow

Seven seas
Swimming them so well
Glad to see
My face among them
Kissing the tortoise shell

Seven seas
Swimming them so well
Glad to see
My face among them
Kissing the tortoise

Seven seas
Swimming them so well
Glad to see
My face among them
Kissing the tortoise shell
_____________________

:hi:

[Pale Blue Dot]

11. Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"

What a great song.

[PassingFair]

22. "the poet laureate of pessimism"

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,,1305765,00.html

"the poet laureate of pessimism", "the grocer of despair", "the godfather of gloom" and "the prince of bummers".

What a legacy he will leave!
A realist. A GREAT person.
He is not ashamed to show how
he wrestles with eternal truths.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

13. Perhaps this one is rather cynical

STRAIGHT TO HELL
By: Drivin n’ Cryin
I grew up just west of the tracks
holding me to hold you back,
around your door she's calling out my name
She said son won't you go outside,
I've got a man coming over tonight
the seventh one in seven days
So I walk on down to the parking lot,
hang around with all my friends,
and roam the streets til dawn breaks again
I come in at five a.m. and she is waiting for me
She said where have you been, I said I was out,
She said you're no good cause you're running without love

Cause I'm going straight to hell
Just like my momma said
I'm going straight to hell
I'm going straight to hell
Just like my momma said
I'm going straight to hell

The black widow and the ladies man
Met down at the laundrmat and tried to make me understand
The neighbors were all in a stir
about what they might have heard
and running down and shouted out it seemed

Next door a girl she lives about the same age as me
and asked me to come upstairs for a see
Just then her mother burst in said your
that son of a bitch in the wind
Get out of my house and hit the road
and I kept fallin like a Rolling Stones song

The stars came out and warned me so
As I walked on down the road
Fifty bucks and a suitcase steered me clear
She took my hand as we walked into the sun
A new days promise had begun
We'll make it alone whether you like it or not
I turned around and shouted help me mother

[6000eliot]

14. "Cynical Girl" by Marshall Crenshaw

[taterguy]

20. I think of that as a very optimistic song

The guy hasn't given up hope. He's out looking for someone that he'll know right away by the look in her eyes that she's the one he's been the one that he's been missing; and they'll be lost in love together.

La la la la la

I used to play that song on the juke box at my favorite dive bar, hoping that someone's ears perked up. They never did.

[rug]

15. Boots of Spanish Leather

[nutsnberries]

32. ouch! hurts just thinking about it

:(

[Perry Logan]

16. Magazine: "Shot by Both Sides"

[KitchenWitch]

18. "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda"

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive
In a mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?

[graywarrior]

19. Creep

[PassingFair]

21. This one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Vzw366UwM

But I like Creep, too!

[sarge43]

23. "Is That All There Is?" Peggy Lee n/t

[stuntcat]

31. yes

This song says it all :headbang:

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

24. you're so vain

[darkstar]

25. Dylan's "Positively 4th Street"

"You'd know what a drag it is to see you...."

[redwitch]

27. Wasteland of the Free Iris DeMent

Living in the wasteland of the free...

We got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines
and their speech is growing increasingly unkind
They say they are Christ's disciples
but they don't look like Jesus to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got politicians running races on corporate cash
Now don't tell me they don't turn around and kiss them peoples' ass
You may call me old-fashioned
but that don't fit my picture of a true democracy
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got CEO's making two hundred times the workers' pay
but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
and If you don't like it, mister, they'll ship your job
to some third-world country 'cross the sea
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

We got little kids with guns fighting inner city wars
So what do we do, we put these little kids behind prison doors
and we call ourselves the advanced civilization
that sounds like crap to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got high-school kids running 'round in Calvin Klein and Guess
who cannot pass a sixth-grade reading test
but if you ask them, they can tell you
the name of every crotch on mTV
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We kill for oil, then we throw a party when we win
Some guy refuses to fight, and we call that the sin
but he's standing up for what he believes in
and that seems pretty damned American to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let's blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free
Living in the wasteland of the free

[redwitch]

28. Or this one by James McMurtry

Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore

That big ol' building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can't make it here anymore

See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They're just gonna set there till they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore

The bar's still open but man it's slow
The tip jar's light and the register's low
The bartender don't have much to say
The regular crowd gets thinner each day

Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won't pay for a roof, won't pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far 5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can't make it here anymore

High school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what'll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith? live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it's way too late to just say no
You can't make it here anymore

Now I'm stocking shirts in the Wal-Mart store
Just like the ones we made before
'Cept this one came from Singapore
I guess we can't make it here anymore

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their sh@# don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the da$% little war
And we can't make it here anymore

Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat sh$%, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore

And that's how it is
That's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you're listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why

In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That's done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore

Music and lyrics © 2004 by James McMurtry

[Deja Q]

29. "That's Good" - Devo, 1982

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__GK9srwQcQ

[pokerfan]

30. I've had the blues

The reds and the pinks
One thing for sure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GluCM_ggMvw