Two songs stuffed with bagfuls of clichés

A bag full of clichés can be a humorous way to tell a story. The Missing Years is a 1991 folk album by John Prine containing a song titled It’s a Big Old Goofy World that has a whole stack of similes beginning with:

“Up in the morning, work like a dog

Is better than sitting like a bump on a log

Mind all your manners, be quiet as a mouse

Someday you’ll own a home that’s as big as a house

I know a fella, he eats like a horse

Knocks his old balls round the old golf course

You oughta see his wife, she’s a cute little dish

She smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish

There’s a big old goofy man

Dancing with a big old goofy girl

Ooh baby, it’s a big old goofy world”

In June 2017 the country single All the Pretty Girls sung by Kenny Chesney was released. That song begins:

“All the pretty girls said pick me up at eight

All the pretty girls said I’m going to L.A.

All the pretty girls said I hate my hair

Talking to the mirror in their underwear

All the lost boys said I just got paid

All the lost boys said I wanna get laid

When the town goes blue and the lights blink red

All the lost boys do what the pretty girls said

I’m home for the summer, shoot out the lights

Don’t blow my cover, oh I’m free tonight

I’m coming over, call all your friends

Somebody hold me, all the pretty girls said

All of the whiskey went to my head

Shut up and kiss me, all the pretty girls said”

Shut up and kiss me also is the title of a 1994 country song by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

The cartoon was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.