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Lyrics that represent us all: 12 song lines we can all relate to

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Song lyrics can be as bad or as good as talent, inspiration, and craft allow. From a superficial line to a profound and touching idea, and everything in between. Take a look at the following 12 lines taken from songs you know and songs you don’t know. Which one is your favorite?

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"I’m losing my edge. To all the kids in Tokyo and Berlin. I’m losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties."

This song reflects on aging and coming to terms with who you’re becoming. It captures that uneasy shift from feeling current to feeling left behind. Years before "hipster" was a trend, James Murphy, in his 30s, sang about younger, cooler kids with beards and trucker hats catching up to him.

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"I don’t believe in an interventionist God. But I know, darling, that you do. But if I did, I would kneel down and ask Him. Not to intervene when it came to you."

Nick Cave, known for his dark intensity, had shown emotion before, but here he stood fully exposed, expressing deep affection without his usual armor.

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"A skinny man died of a big disease with a little name. By chance, his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same."

Prince’s lyrics often reflected his sensual, otherworldly persona, seemingly detached from real-world struggles. That changed with this track, which tackled gang violence, AIDS, political unrest, and natural disasters.

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"There she stood in the doorway, I heard the mission bell. And I was thinking to myself. This could be Heaven or this could be Hell."

"Hotel California" is the biggest hit from the Eagles, soft rock giants of the '70s. By decade’s end, they were weary of fame and each other. The fictional hotel symbolizes the trap of rock stardom—enticing but inescapable. Its surreal lyrics were inspired by an eerie, late-night drive through deserted Los Angeles streets.

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"If I had a box just for wishes and dreams that had never come true, the box would be empty, except for the memory of how they were answered by you."

Jim Croce was a master craftsman of words, and this line is a superb example. The first line hints at a sad story, only to be proven wrong by the second one, filled with love and optimism.

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"I see friends shaking hands, saying, 'How do you do.' They're really saying, 'I love you.'"

This song, made famous by Louis Armstrong, was penned by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss. It expresses a cheerful vision of life, and it has been used as a gentle mood uplifter since.

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"Did you ever know that you're my hero? You're everything I wish I could be. I could fly higher than an eagle, for you are the wind beneath my wings."

We have seen a couple of love declarations in the list so far, and Bette Midler knows how to deliver one, being the queen of musicals and romantic movies that she is.

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"You can't always get what you want. But, if you try sometime, you find you get what you need."

A song with a philosophical message that often makes an appearance in movies where a character ends up in a situation that was not the ideal one, but it is a good one, still.

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"There are places I'll remember all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better. Some have gone, and some remain. All these places had their moments with lovers and friends, I still can recall. Some are dead, and some are living. In my life, I've loved them all."

An ode to aging, written by young men who didn’t know at the time that they were writing a piece of history.

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"It's got to be more than flesh and bone. All that you've loved is all that you own."

"Take It With Me" may be the greatest song by one of the greatest songwriters. In just five minutes, it describes the entire spectrum of human experience.

Equally fitting for weddings or funerals, its message resonates deeply. At its core is a line credited to Waits’ wife, Kathleen Brennan—a simple truth that gives the song its soul.

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"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans"

The second Lennon entry on the list also captures life’s truths with disarming simplicity. He wrote what everyone feels, but few could express so clearly.

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"She coulda turned out to be almost anyone, almost anyone. With the possible exception of who I wanted her to be"

Jackson Browne, a leading voice of the ’70s singer-songwriter era, crafted this line that strikes a unique emotional chord. In it, he transformed a personal story into a shared sense of longing and emptiness that we've all experienced.

Changing names takes courage

For better or for worse? 10 brands that changed their names

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Building a brand takes time, effort, money, and a lot of other things. That’s why, when someone throws everything overboard and starts again with a new name, more than a few eyebrows are raised. Sometimes these kinds of decisions are reversed. Prince changed his by-then household name to a symbol that no one knew how to pronounce—and later returned to being Prince. But sometimes, these name changes are successful. Take a look at the following ten examples of now-famous brands and their previously, often not-so-great, names. Did you know any of them?

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No one would argue that a name like AuctionWeb is more descriptive than eBay, right? Still, the online auction juggernaut’s founder, Pierre Omidyar, decided that eBay was a better fit. In 1997, he officially changed the company’s name and began advertising the website on a massive scale.

For some reason, Omidyar initially wanted to buy the echobay.com domain, but it was already registered by a Canadian mining company. Dropping the "cho" led to the name eBay.com.

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Everybody knows Nike, the global sportswear giant. But in its humble origins, it went by a different name: Blue Ribbon Sports. The brand had a distribution deal with Onitsuka (now Asics), a Japanese company. When that partnership ended, Blue Ribbon Sports changed its name to Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory.

Its famous "swoosh" logo was introduced at the same time. Carolyn Davidson, a design student, charged $35 for the logo, although Knight eventually gave her 500 shares of stock in 1983.

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Confinity was founded in 1998, originally aiming to develop security software for handheld devices, but it quickly transitioned to the digital payments market. The team began developing a digital wallet, which allowed users to store and transfer money electronically.

After merging with Elon Musk’s online bank, X.com, in 2000, the company was rebranded as X for a short time and later became PayPal.

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Early internet users will remember the days when Yahoo! was the go-to search engine before Google. But even before that, founders Jerry Yang and David Filo—then students at Stanford University—created a website called Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web. It served as a directory of websites organized hierarchically, rather than as a searchable index of pages.

Thinking the name was too long to remember, they renamed the site Yahoo. Since the word "Yahoo" was already trademarked, they added an exclamation mark, creating Yahoo!.

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In case you haven’t noticed, the full Kentucky Fried Chicken name hasn’t appeared in the brand’s official identity for quite some time. Founded by Colonel Harland Sanders in Corbin, Kentucky, the company became a fast-food behemoth that popularized fried chicken worldwide.

In 1991, the brand officially adopted the shorter KFC, a name it was already widely known by. Kyle Craig, president of KFC U.S., admitted the change was partly an attempt to distance the chain from the unhealthy connotations of the word "fried."

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Different name, same concept—that could sum up MatchBox’s rebranding as Tinder. The original app launched at a hackathon in 2012, but the team soon realized the name was too similar to Match.com. They rebranded as Tinder, shifting the imagery from a box of matches to the small pieces of wood used to start a fire.

The company’s flame-themed logo remained consistent throughout the change.

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Noah Glass developed a startup called Odeo as a platform for podcasting, but the venture hit a major setback when Apple announced that iTunes would include its own podcasting service. One of the employees then proposed an idea focused on "status"—short updates about what people were doing at a given moment.

This idea became Twitter, initially called Twttr, a service where you could text one number and have the message broadcast to all your friends. Years later, after acquiring the company, Elon Musk rebranded it simply as X.

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Every day, a sandwich shop is born somewhere in the world. In 1965, 17-year-old Fred DeLuca opened a sandwich shop to help pay for medical school, using a loan from Dr. Peter Buck, a family friend. In gratitude, he named it "Pete’s Super Submarines."

As the brand grew, the name was shortened to Pete’s Subway, and by the 1970s, the "Pete’s" was dropped altogether. According to one theory, the change was partly because "Pete’s Submarines" sounded a lot like "Pizza Marines" when advertised on the radio.

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Before settling on Amazon, Jeff Bezos toyed with several names for his online bookstore, including "Cadabra" and "Relentless." He even registered Relentless.com, which still redirects to Amazon today.

Bezos wanted a name starting with "A" to appear early in alphabetical listings, and he was drawn to the Amazon River—vast, powerful, and world-famous. The choice was made, and the rest is history.

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Everybody knows Instagram, the ubiquitous photo-sharing app that invaded every nook and cranny of the Earth with smartphones and selfie sticks. But before it became the photo-sharing giant we know today, Instagram started life as Burbn—a check-in app inspired by Foursquare, with extras like gaming and photo sharing

Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger noticed that users overwhelmingly favored the photo feature. They stripped away the rest, rebranding as Instagram—a blend of "instant" and "telegram."