Songs that Do Not Repeat lines...

.. not just "no chorus", but have no repeating lines in them.

For example, they only one I managed to come up with was "Up the Junction", Squeeze. No lines in it are repeated.

Bohemian Rhapsody came close, if you excuse the middle "Bismillah" bit, until the last line "Any way the wind blows" repeats an earlier one.

I think You Never Give Me Your Money qualifies until the '1 2 3 4 5 6 7' fade-out.

Syd Barrett, "Word Song", I imagine. And "It's Obvious".

Also a shit load of rap surely.

Propagandhi. Maybe other political bands who just write essays and try to wrap a them around a tune.

Man, this is way harder than I would've thought. "Lady Godiva's Operation" is the one I can think of right now. Even most other songs like "Up The Junction" that don't mention the title until the end (or at all) have some sort of repetitive lyrics.

I reckon the Minutemen had a bunch of these but I'm too lazy to work out which ones

Beefheart

88 Lines About 44 Women

Van der Graaf Generator, "Childlike Faith in Childhood's End". Probably a load of other PH lyrics too.

xxpost

Yeah.."The Wind Blows Forward And The Wind Blows Back" counts, but going through even his weirder songs in my head, there's a lot of repetition.

A lot of pre-rock songs would qualify, I think. For example: "Strange Fruit", "Mack the Knife", "The Christmas Song" (aka "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire"), etc. I don't think the idea that the chorus of a song should repeat the same lines became the norm until the 1950s.

Most of those don't qualify. "Strange Fruit" is certainly repeated..

"The Last Time I Saw Richard"

But "strange fruit" isn't a full line in the song; the two lines go "Southern trees bear a strange fruit", and "strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees". Or are you looking for songs that don't repeat any words or phrases?

(x-post)

fair enough, there are three verses and nothing repeats. Unless you sing a verse twice, etc.

"Reuters" by Wire, if you ignore the one-word outro backing chant, which admittedly is quite a big thing to be ignoring

Several Jacques Brel songs also do this, I think. "Tango funèbre", "Les timides", and "J'aimais", for example.

Feel like some of Destroyer's recent output must do this, but I'd have to check individual songs.

Squeeze "Up the junction" is my favourite example of this

"El Paso" by Marty Robbins almost does this, if you allow for a variant of the opening line ("Out in the West Texas town of El Paso") to "just as fast as I could from the West Texas town of El Paso."

Lotsa Dylan, like "Positively 4th Street" and "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"

bad night at the whiskey - the byrds

Face of the Earth by Dismemberment Plan.

If not for a brief bridge, The Beatles' "If I Fell" would qualify here.

Just quickly flipped through the Kaputt lyrics, and ther are athe odd semi-repeated phrases, but very seldom a full line except in a couple of songs.

The Descendents, "All"

"Second language" by Disco Inferno.

Does "Positively 4th street" count? Surely the phrases "You've got a lot of nerve" and "I wish that for just one time" are repeated?

slick rick - children's story

subterranean homesick blues

"Look out kid" says no.

"Lullaby" - The Cure based on a technicality ("me" vs "you")

Dylan's "Hurricane" would otherwise count, but the last two lines are repeated from the beginning of the song.

Napalm Death - You Suffer

The gold stereo
Stretches out the sound
Turns the plates until they're rounded
The whole that you know
Gets closer to the ground
Closer to that thing you found

For all our massive brains
To call on choked remains
It's painful, it's certain
That something's bound to break
(Inside)

This house is not alone
I'm kicking 'round here somewhere
So check behind the ancient speaker
Like painful southern bliss pured upon like caramel
And garnished with some crushed pecans

To grow is not to grind
To mope is not to mind
The old cap, the geezer
The 15 second teaser

Behold and you know everyone's a ringer
He's not even a very good singer
The dirt on the tracks
Has hardened into clusters
Earthen legs and honey mustard

A storm is closing in
Our leaves start to spin
It's getting much later
I wish I heard your radio
(Tonight)

The people in the rain
Are staring through our backs
Wishing you had half a brain
For all our little pain
Tender is the mangle
The science diet the ivory tangle

The world goes away
Each every stinking day
I'm getting much better
This night's little up-setter

The kids out in the street
Take their toys and break them
Look at them, then walk away
The guy on the cross is holier than I
But then again he's made from plastic

For all our massive brains
To call on choked remains
It's painful, it's certain
That something's bound to break
(Inside)

There's cattle tied with a a chain
Pinch the weeping Willie
I know it's dumb but sometimes I'm silly
I crawl out of the rain

Think of me as fetal
Think of me as the fifth Beatle

aaaah fuck

Thunder Road

'Laura Hadley' by Daniel Johnston

Dylan's "Masters of War"

actually almost every song on the Anthology of American Folk Music and People Take Warning fits this.

Powderfinger

The Clash -The Card Cheat

^ the first verse repeats at the end

Yeah you're right. Just clicked back to correct myself but you guys are too fast lol

Early Bruce has a lot of these. One of my favorites is Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?

tom's diner

tim buckley - anonymous proposition

Was all amped to add "September" by Sylvian and DMX's "School Street," only to find they each repeat one stupid line.

Harder than I thought this would be!

sonic youth - in the kingdom #19

The Descendents, "All"

― 5-Hour Enmity (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, October 29, 2012 3:40 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OP said: .. not just "no chorus", but have no repeating lines in them.

Up the Junction

oops, just realised it was the first suggestion!

Thought of Dylan immediately--a bunch of songs, some of which have already been mentioned.

And "Ambulance Blues." (But not Flipper's "Sex Bomb.") This thread could stretch out forever with any thought.

A Dream by John Cale and Lou Reed does this. i think.

Roots Manuva - The Falling

Which contains the topical line 'Meantime I unravel/Calling Jimmy Savile'.

Sun kil moon songs do this too right? The ones without a lyrical hook.

The Monkees "Mr. Webster." The first line of each verse ends in Mr. Webster, but other than that nothing repeats. Genius little piece of short story in song from Boyce and Hart. Never heard the "slow version" before today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXz2j8oaUPw

"Early Morning Blues and Greens" does this too! Two of my favorite Monkees songs right there.

"For The Benefit of Mr. Kite"

that one song off the HAIR soundtrack....

^ "Frank Mills"?

yeah, that's the one....

Such a cute song. Love Streisand's version.

had no idea. just youtubed the babz version. good stuff. thanks j...

Roxy Music: Virginia Plain, Pyjamarama, Just Like You, Sunset.

100 hip hop singles with NO HOOKS

rufus wainwright must have one or two....

The Beatles - I Will

neutral milk hotel - "song against sex"

Cusswords by Too Short is like 8 minutes long and doesn't repeat any entire line iirc

he does say the word "bitch" more than once tbf

"Colour My World" by Chicago. Granted, it doesn't have too many lines to begin with, but it does get extra points for not rhyming.

yeah, "Frank Mills" doesn't have any rhymes either, I wonder how many of these songs do that....

Some internal rhymes (Waverley, unfortunately) though..

The updated version of that song would replace Waverly with "IFC Center"

"but unfortunatelybenter"

lol

Nick Drake - Man in a Shed
Shuggie Otis - Strawberry Letter 23

(note - the hit Brothers Johnson cover of the latter repeats the chorus twice, but that's not in the original song)

but the chorus is "oooh ooh wooo ooh ooh" isnit?

no, that's the bridge!

Pink Floyd, "One Of My Turns." (Lots of songs on The Wall, really, but some are so short it seems wrong to count them.)

Wait does Jobim's waters of march count? He repeats some items but not whole lines iirc

"it's the" is repeated about 1,000,000 times and "waters of march" is repeated at the start and the end (allowing for translation issues)

Almost every song on Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle qualifies.

America by Simon and Garfunkel is in blank verse and only the last line of the song is repeated.

Waters of March may not quite work but it was a worthy attempt. It has a interesting structure where the chords vary and don't quite repeat exactly the same way each time it cycles around. I once requested it at the gig of a guitarist who is very well-versed in Brazilian and he refused to play it because, as a perfectionist, he would be spending a ton of mental energy just getting the chords right and wouldn't have any extra brainpower left for some other stuff. Also found an academic paper about it once, but will have to go looking again.

Think it was the one called "Complexity, Simplicity and Poetic Invention in Antonio Carlos Jobim's 'Aguas de marco (Waters of March)'" by PhilPeter Freeman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O3ECjCrbWc

just noticed that prince's "dirty mind" comes damn close to this. the only two phrases that repeat anywhere in the song are the verse fragments "in my daddy's car / it's you i really wanna drive" and "i really get a dirty mind / whenever you're around," which return one time each near the end.

Mr Bungle - The Holy Filament

Would a song with a one word chorus count? Technically not a repeated line.

King Missile - Ed

Husker Di-New Day Rising

kidding

this is the first and only one (so far) that came to my mind ~ an all kinds of wonderful song from an all kinds of wonderful album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQkyRlASI90

has a couple of lyric echoes (word repeats) but otherwise...