From JTA’s version of this, at which I did particularly badly.
1. Put your music player on random.
2. Post the first line from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
3. Let everyone guess what song and artist (or musical) the lines come from.
4. Embolden the songs when someone guesses correctly.
Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
I’m using my last.fm library for this. Who knows what weirdness will come up? Some of these I am very familiar with, others I was hearing for the first time (not the band, but the specific song).
- I’m playing the game with earthquakes around me
- Just breathe in the air / But don’t be afraid
- I was talkin’ to Chuck in his Genghis Khan suit
- Baby’s getting anxious, the hours getting late
- Shade, stay, know / but they communicate
- I took my love, I took it down / I climbed a mountain and I turned around
- What I want, you’ve got / And it might be hard to handle
- Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans –> Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode
- Look at them all on the inside, look at them wasting away
- Here they come with their make-up on
- In the here and the now I wait / down among the young and the old
- Leading everything along / never far from being wrong
- People / They don’t mean a thing to you
- San Francisco Bay / Past pier thirty nine
- We’re no strangers to love / You know the rules and so do i
- I’m just mad about Saffron, Saffron’s mad about me –> Donovan - Mellow Yellow
- What gives you the right? / To fuck with our lives?
- Old world underground, where are you now? –> Metric - IOU
- On the corner of main street / Just tryin’ to keep it in line –> The Killers - Read My Mind
- Maybe we’re all different / But we’re still the same
What interested me most is that taken out of context, it is often quite hard to determine the genre / mood of the music given the lyrics. I bet this would be a lot better if a genre was given with it, or if the tune was given instead of the words. Memory is funny like that.
EDIT: Full answers below:
1. Colours Run - On My Side
2. The Verve - Numbness
3. Lou Reed - Wild Child
4. Kiss - Plaster Caster
5. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Leverage of Space
6. The Smashing Pumpkins - Landslide
7. Hall & Oates - You Make My Dreams
8. Chuck Berry - Johnny B Goode
9. Suede - Lazy
10. AudioSlave - sound of a gun
11. Foo Fighters - X-static
12. The Bravery - Honest Mistake
13. Stereophonics - Have a Nice Day
14. Gotthard - Human Zoo
15. Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up
16. Donovan - Mellow Yellow
17. Stars - He Lied About Death
18. Metric - IOU
19. The Killers - Read My Mind
20. Bon Jovi - Welcome To Wherever You Are
Jimmy | 15-Oct-08 at 3:52 pm | Permalink
I’ll take the easy ones:
16: Mellow Yellow, by Donavon
18: Old World Underground, by Metric
19: I think that’s a killers song, but it isn’t the first line…
I didn’t get 8 I’m afraid, even though you said I should!
Eskoala | 15-Oct-08 at 4:15 pm | Permalink
16: Correct
18: Not actually the name of the song, but it’s too easy for anyone else now so I’ll give you that one. The first song on the album “Old World Underground” is actually called “IOU”.
19: The version that came up on last.fm was a dance remix… and it did begin like that. Perhaps I should have found the original instead. I’ll fix it now.
EVERYONE should get number 8. But perhaps you are a bit too young for the film I’m thinking of where I first heard it.
DC | 17-Oct-08 at 1:34 pm | Permalink
2. is Breathe by Pink Floyd, from Dark Side of the Moon.
(I also recognised one of the ones Jimmy got, too.)
DC | 17-Oct-08 at 1:35 pm | Permalink
Oh, number 8., of course, is Johnny B. Goode.
DC | 17-Oct-08 at 1:37 pm | Permalink
Sorry, I didn’t mention an artist for Johnny B. Goode. Original was Chuck Berry, of course, but it’s been recorded by many, many people including the Beatles - and wasn’t it sung by the lead in the film Back to the Future?
Eskoala | 17-Oct-08 at 3:39 pm | Permalink
DC: Correct about Johnny B. Goode, and yes, I first heard it in Back To The Future.
2 is not Pink Floyd — That would have begun “Breathe, breathe in the air /
Dont be afraid to care” which is very very similar to the lyrics of the song that actually played. Interesting that they are so similar. Different artist, different track!
Sarah | 18-Oct-08 at 8:00 am | Permalink
19 is ‘Read my Mind’ by ‘The Killers’
Eskoala | 20-Oct-08 at 9:40 am | Permalink
Sarah: Correct.
I think 14 and 15 are now the most obvious unsolved ones.
DC | 20-Oct-08 at 2:33 pm | Permalink
Wow. I’m very curious about track 2 now.
DC | 29-Oct-08 at 5:20 pm | Permalink
I have done this meme on my LJ now…