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Sam Phillips - Baby, I Can't Please You

Sam Phillips - Baby, I Can't Please You Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Martinis and Bikinis
Released: 1994

Baby, I Can't Please You Lyrics

Baby I can't please you I can't please you

Every time you start to criticize
I can see the misery in your eyes
You say I make your pain
You're trying to turn the blame all around you

You take the words I say and make them mean
Everything they don't baby you're obscene
You don't listen you don't hear
You're blinded by the fear that surrounds you

I know you say love when you mean control
You buy the truth and your heart is cold
So you live in shadows

You try to tell the world how it should spin
But you live in terror with the hollow men
Who stun you with their lies
With fever in their eyes as they drown you

Writer/s: SAM PHILLIPS
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Baby, I Can't Please You

The meaning behind this song has caused a bit of confusion over the years. With its politically charged video that alternates the breakdown of a right wing spy with flashes of Rush Limbaugh's face on a TV screen, most fans assume the song was aimed at the conservative radio host. The lyrics even seem to accuse Limbaugh and his contemporaries of a fear-mongering agenda: "You try to tell the world how it should spin, But you live in terror with the hollow men, Who stun you with their lies, With fever in their eyes as they drown you."

But, according to Phillips, the possibility of a political interpretation is just that - a possibility. She said in our interview: "It's not specifically about Rush Limbaugh, but it might be about what's wrong with Rush Limbaugh. But that might also be what's wrong with somebody else who's liberal. I try to make them a little bit more human than specific in that sense, so that 'Baby I Can't Please You' is a broader concept. It could be in a love relationship. It could be in a political relationship. Hopefully there are many levels you can take any of my songs on. That is always my aim."

The music video for this song ends with a quote by Christian author C.S. Lewis: "People in fear are always attempting to gain power... People in love are always willing to give up power."

This song was used in the 1999 TV movie It Came From the Sky (starring Christopher Lloyd, John Ritter and Jo Beth Williams) and also appeared on the Melrose Place: The Music soundtrack in 1994.

Sam Phillips - Pretty Time Bomb

Sam Phillips - Pretty Time Bomb Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Press Any Button
Released: 2013

Pretty Time Bomb Lyrics

Pretty Time Bomb

Sam Phillips was "taking a swing at celebrity culture" with this song, trying to get people to connect with something other than their television sets. She explained in an interview with Patheos.com:

"I think one of the things that I've felt strongly about is not to preach, but to inspire and offer an alternative instead—to say: 'There's something else. Look over here, you might find something else.' Because our culture is so success- and money-oriented, and the music business is, too. I think we all know this in a sense, but we're still on the hamster wheel even though money doesn't guarantee abundance or happiness or joy.

I think art reminds us of this. Being inspired by and lost in a song, painting, poem, story, or performance can be one of the richest experiences in life. It's such a release from all the push for us to buy things and to be what we're not."

The Push Any Button album, inspired by the '50s and '60s era of Pop music, was nearly named after this song until the tragic Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013 prompted Phillips to change her mind. She told Examiner.com about the inspiration behind the current album title: "I was trying to connect it to the 20th Century - when you think about it, there aren't many mechanical buttons to 'push' anymore, as we're living in the electronic age. I feel like these songs were pulled from the jukebox in my mind."

Sam Phillips - Lying

Sam Phillips - Lying Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Cruel Inventions
Released: 1991

Lying Lyrics

If I said I believe my eyes
And science can move my soul
If I said I'm not afraid to die
And I don't need you

I'd be Lying

If I said the way he looks at me
Doesn't make me want to undress
If I said I could leave you now
And go where I could forget

I'd be lying

I've been lying all my life with silence
And I need to find the words to tell you

If I said I don't want what I don't have
And all the answers are enough
If I said I believe in myself
And that's enough

I'd be lying

Writer/s: SAM PHILLIPS
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Lying

In this song, Sam Phillips tries to tell her lover how she feels in a roundabout way: "If I said I could leave you now and go where I could forget, I'd be lying." In our interview with Phillips , she talked about the nuts and bolts of the song: "There were some philosophies going around and some self help that I didn't agree with, so I put that in a song. It was a hodgepodge of that, but more of what the Tin Pan Alley writers call the classic laundry list song: you put a lot of different things in a list. That was an unusual way to say it: 'I'd be lying if I said this, this, this, this, this, and this.' So I guess that would be the craft part of it, the 'behind the machine' part of it."

Tin Pan Alley refers to the influential music publishers and songwriters based in large cities - usually New York - in the mid-19th to 20th centuries.

Elvis Costello was a guest performer - as guitarist - on the Cruel Inventions album.

Phillips re-recorded this song for her digitally released Long Play series. She told the Pop Matters website: "I was never really happy with my performance of it on Cruel Inventions, I thought my vocal was too strident. I wanted a softer approach, vocally, so I thought a stripped down version would be interesting, and I was really happy with how it turned out."

Sam Phillips - Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us

Sam Phillips - Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Don't Do Anything
Released: 2008

Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us Lyrics

Strange things are happening everyday
I hear the music up above my head
Oh the side of my heart has left me again
I hear music up above

Secrets are written in the sky
It looks like I've lost the love I've never found
Tho the sound of hope has left me again
I hear music up above

Standing in the my broken heart all night long
Dark and silky like a friend where love wore off
Looking for the land that's hidden in the cross
Find it's lost

I know, I love you too much
I'll go on alone, to get through

I hear Rosetta singing in the night
Echoes of light that shine like stars after they're gone
And tonight, she's my guide as I go on alone
With the music above

Writer/s: SAM PHILLIPS
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the inspiration for this song, was an influential guitarist and singer of the '30s and '40s who turned the Gospel genre on its head with her infusion of Blues and Jazz with traditional spiritual music. Some of her notable hits were "This Train," "Down By the Riverside" and "Strange Things Happening Every Day." The latter influenced the lyrics of Sam Phillips' song, as she explained in her Songfacts interview:

"'Up above my head, I hear music in the air, there's strange things happening every day.' I was using her to talk about the things that we can't see that happen all around us - the inspiration, the good things that happen to us all the time, and where do those things come from? I think through music and art is how we get to ecstatic experiences. There are other ways, too, but I think for us the familiar ways are through music and art."

Although Phillips penned the song, it was recorded by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss for their Raising Sand album in 2007, a year before Phillips' own version was released (the Plant/Krauss collaboration also won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year). As Phillips tells it, she had a conversation with Plant where he told her that Sister Rosetta Tharpe once asked him - in his pre-Zeppelin days - to join her on tour.

Sam Phillips - Reflecting Light

Sam Phillips - Reflecting Light Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Crazy Heart soundtrack
Released: 2009

Reflecting Light Lyrics

Now that I've worn out
I've worn out the world
I'm on my knees in fascination
Looking through the night
And the moon's never seen me before
But I'm Reflecting Light

I rode the pain down
Got off and looked up
Looked into your eyes
The lost open windows
All around
My dark heart lit up the skies

Now that I've worn out
I've worn out the world
I'm on my knees in fascination
Looking through the night
And the moon's never seen me before
But I'm reflecting light

Give up the ground
Under your feet
Hold on to nothing for good
Turn and run at the mean dogs
Chasing you
Stand-alone and misunderstood

Now that I've worn out
I've worn out the world
I'm on my knees in fascination
Looking through the night
And the moon's never seen me before
But I'm reflecting light

Writer/s: SAM PHILLIPS
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Reflecting Light

Sam Phillips is a huge fan of Jeff Bridges' performance in The Big Lebowski, so she jumped at the chance to write a song for his turn as an aging, alcoholic singer in Crazy Heart, a film co-produced by her longtime collaborator and former husband T Bone Burnett. She sought inspiration from '60s-era ballads to fit the pace of the slow-burning drama. "I was very proud to have a song in it," she told Magnet Magazine. "I wouldn't have called that one, I've gotta tell you. But T Bone fought hard for that. He felt that [Maggie Gyllenhaal's character's] moment needed to be more tender and not like the rest of the score. It was her moment, not his moment. For that, it worked well."

T Bone also co-composed music for the film and won a Grammy, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Weary Kind" (along with Ryan Bingham).