Best opening lines

does it get much better than this:
"Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?" dylan - like a rolling stone, from highway 61.

another contender, still makes a big impact on me:
"when you have no one, no one can hurt you" - palace brothers - you will miss me when i burn, from self titled (days in the wake).

"We like driving on a Saturday night
Past the leisure centre, left at the lights"

"Two scientists were racing for the good of all Mankind
Both of them side by side
So determined"

and perhaps my all-time favourite:

"It's raining today
And I'm just about to forget
The train window girl
That wonderful day we met
She smiles through the smoke
From my cigarette"

Opening line of "Coldest Day of the Year" by Cop $hoot Cop, a song about huffin' carbon monoxide as a means of suicide.

alex chilton
"tennis bum"
officially unreleased

"I don't have to sell my soul
He's already in me"
- I Wanna Be Adored, Stone Roses

"Images of perfection, suntan, and napalm"
- Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart, Manic Street Preachers

"Who are you? Who who, who who?"
Who are you - The Who

"Hello there ladies and gentlemen
Are you ready to rock?!"
- Hello There, Cheap Trick

Also a great opening line for the Butthole Surfers, in Cannonball.

I remember losing my shit when an utter idiot friend of mine at a party of the era announced at a party that he'd heard easily the dumbest worst song ever on the radio about some chick being bitten by a snake.

“Can I have the key to the medicine cabinet?
I’VE GOTTA GET SOME DRUGS”

(Volcano Suns - Farced)

Song opener:

“I woke up alarmed”

(Liz Phair “Fuck and Run”)

"Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine" - Van Morrison

"All of your friends are cunts" - Mclusky

"When you have no one no one can hurt you" - Will Oldham

- Felt, Declaration.

Guns'n'Roses, Use Your Illusion 1

isn't that patti smith?

from 'you've really got a hold on me

for albums, the start of 'searching for the young soul rebels' is pretty hard to beat

crackly radio montage of holiday in the sun/smoke on the water/rat race/a couple of other things, then

rowland "[incomprehensible shout]"

dexys blokes "YEAH!"

rowland "[another incomprehensible shout]"

dexys blokes "YEAH!"

rowland (sounding spectacularly brummie) "for god's sakes burn it down"

oh wait...

uh-oh! i hereby report you to your local misheard lyric thread!

but the actual meat puppets lyric is indeed a classic opening line:

a long time ago
i looked at myself
and said, "you, you are my daughter"

"When I was back there in seminary school
There was a person there
Who put forth the proposition
That you can petition the Lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
Petition the lord with prayer
You cannot petition the lord with prayer!"

The Doors - Soft Parade

I used to wake and run with the moon
I lived like a rake and a young man

Out of town, my work takes me out of town.
I empty villages, I burn their houses down.
I set up factories, lay out plantations,
And bring prosperity to the poorer nations.

ha this thread starts with a misquote of that Meat Puppets lyric

a lot of these are frankly more like opening verses

A single opening line is one thing, opening lines is another. I guess it depends on if you read the question as 'what are the best lines that open a song' or 'I want multiple people to give me their favourite line that opens a song'.

This may be a poetry-reader's bias, but when I think of 'great opening lines' I tend to focus on the fragmentary or obviously incomplete lines that put the listener in suspense from the get-go. Obviously this metric tends to favor storytelling songwriters ("After three nights in jail..." is a personal favorite for its economy, along with "Maybe we could break your ankle, clean & un-suspiciously?") but straightforward pop lyrics benefit just as much from a compressed opening: "I used to say 'I love you...'" — "Rally up my friends & stand by my bedside!" — "I'm never going back to Jackson."

I don't necessarily disagree, but equally would point out that that's your focus, and some people prefer longer lines that make a more complete picture. Also, I think for a lot of people they're choosing things that have a great instant hook but that also follow up well - mine, I think, would work with your criteria with just the first line (What work? Where? What's happening here? Where's the story going?) but maintains a consistently interesting tone throughout.

yeah, I dunno, I swear I don't *want to* be difficult, it's just that I have a different mental filing cabinet for "songs that open with a string of good lines, each building on the one(s) that came before" and I would put your example (which I am actually not familiar with so who cares what I think really) there, alongside something like this perfectly-paced Silver Jews throwaway I recently rediscovered

MC5 win this forever, right?

Outside another yellow moon has punched a hole in the night-time mist.

- Tom Waits - Downtown Train

"Ain't thou watchin' my film"

i'm with bernard, i guess, but it's apples and oranges.

"it's so hard... somebody's gonna be evicted"

argh i think i mean that somebody's GOTTA be evicted

from eno's "no one receiving":

"It will shine and it will shudder as I guide it with my rudder"

so awesome

i guess i'm thinking of this in terms of the opening lines of *albums*, like, lines that really set a tone or somehow leave you in awe from the get go.

Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools

My first name Angelene,
prettiest mess you've ever seen

All of your friends are cunts
and your mother was a ballpoint pen thief

*was=is

Why would you run ?
I beg stars above
A thing of such beauty
Must be called love

I am an American aquarium drinker
I assassin down the line
I'm hiding out in the big city blinking
What was I thinking when I let go of you?

backwater -- we're sailing at the edges of time

"won't say I love you, babe"

(Won't say I need you, babe
But I'm gonna get you, babe
And I will not do you wrong)

From "to live is to fly" by tvz

I don't get it but it's remarkable anyway.

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back

who is Jack?

Jack Palance

I was born the day they shot JFK,
the way you look at me sucks me down the sidewalk,
somebody please tell this machine I'm not a machine

Ahhh....

I love the colorful clothes she wears

^ yup

I always assumed Jack was shorthand for a state or smth, like Memphis, Tennessee, but I guess that doesn't make any sense, and instead the opening line is setting the scene of the song as a dialogue between narrator and interlocutor Jack?

can't help but feel this is lazy songwriting, that Jack is only there for the rhyme

the next line is all killer though

He is not your run of the mill garden variety Alabama country fare

every night i tell myself i am the cosmos
i am the wind
but that don't get you back again

Feels like I've been through a washing machine

There were 87 Advil in the bottle now there's 30 left, I ate 47 so what happened to the other 10?

it's not music but the opening line to Forrest McNeil's Review is one of the best:

"Life...it's literally all we have. But is it any good?"

Son, I'm 30
I only went with your mother 'cause she's dirty

Teenage angst has paid off well
Now I'm bored and old

life's a nightmare,
i can't stand it

Jens Lekman isn't on my mind or radar all that much, but he certainly his regarding the question of best opening lines:

Yeah I got busted.
So I used my one phone call
to dedicate
a song to you on the radio

(he certainly is)

I love that Jens song, but David Berman should get most of the credit there, and for the chorus too, because those lyrics are based on this bit of Berman's poem "Governors on Sominex":

P.K. was in the precinct house, using his one phone call
to dedicate a song to Tammy, for she was the light
by which he traveled into this and that

iirc one of Jens's friends had included these lines (uncredited) in a letter to him, and Jens paraphrased them in the song thinking his friend had written them.

jens has plenty of candidates for the thread to be fair

It has often been my dream
To live with one who wasn't there

Life is dull, life is gray
At its best it's just OK
But I'm happy to report:
Life is also short

I like opening lines that set the scene.

"You opened my mail apart at the seams / Now you know I live beyond my means"

"The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68 and he told me / all romantics meet the same fate some day / Cynical and drink and boring someone in some dark café"

"I got a letter from the government the other day / I opened and read it / It said they were suckers / They wanted me for their army or whatever"

I like second lines that are critiques of opening lines, like in "Lovergirl" by Teena Marie:

Coffee, tea, or me, baby? Touché au lait
My openin' line might be a bit passé, yes

God knows you ain’t pretty, God knows its true

I think the first 5 seconds of Destroyer's Streethawk are some of the best opening seconds of any album. You could turn it off right there and have a clear idea of what the next 40 minutes are going to entail.