| Bruce Springsteen – Stolen Car Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| I agree the stolen car is a metaphor which suggests a split between the day to day persona and who a person really feels they are, the things they say and do alongside the things they never expressed, the stolen car is the urge to escape what it is they've become, like a midlife crisis or something. | |
| Ed Sheeran – All Of The Stars Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| Nice words, made me think of another song which brings back memories..."look out the left the captain said, those lights down there that's where we'll land, I saw a shooting star burn up, high above the Las Vegas sand.....drinking sweet Champagne, got the headphones up high, can numb you out of my mind, they're singing goodbye baby, baby bye bye, ooh love is blind.... | |
| The Kinks – Days Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[BoHo:33106] I agree with caleb. It's not a competition. | |
| The Kinks – Days Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[NWNmoon:33105] The lyrics have now been edited and are now correctly those belonging to the song 'Days' (at the time of writing). | |
| The Hollies – He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[131copano:33088] It's about universal love for all mankind, taking on the burden of those less fortunate than ourselves in their hour of need, being strong to help the weak. Using your reference to Vietnam as a metaphor, there was a code of conduct that no man should be left behind on the battlefield. However, many do get left behind in the battles of everyday life. This song says speaks of that, no one left behind: altruism. This song is about an every day war, a soldier carrying his buddy. As the saying goes "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle". | |
| The Kinks – Days Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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This isn't 'Days'. It's called 'Till The End of The Day'. Confusingly, many of the comments do seem to refer to those of 'Days', so I'm thinking they were the original content which has been edited to contain those now in place (at the time of writing). The lyrics to Days are also posted in The Kinks section but have been listed as 'Dias'. Sadly, there isn't a single comment to it so far. |
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| Strawberry Switchblade – Since Yesterday Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| The song is based around one of the most beautiful pieces of music from the 20th Century, all time even: The Swan motif which closes Sibelius' 5th Symphony. | |
| Andrew Lloyd Webber – Any Dream Will Do Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| I think the lyrics can mean something different to us all, like our dreams. We all dream, when we sleep, when we wake, different sort of dreams but we live in our dreams. So my take is part of my own dream. It does have a religious overtone, I think, it follows a biblical story, but the meaning, I think, is more general. It's about all of us, as we live our dream and our longing to feel completed by something we feel inside us but which escapes us on the outside. You can call it a longing for God if you like, or home base. Drawing back the curtain is a sort of inverted meaning to me. The curtain is what's on the outside, the things we clutter our lives with, cars, houses, jobs, day to day selves. Pulling back the curtain is to look inside not out. Far far away someone is weeping, Again this could be our distant selves, the one we've lost; it could be a connection we've lost. I can relate to the poster above, in that this has to be the connection to our true self, God, somewhere along those lines. Wore my coat with golden lining: coming into the world, dawn breaking, , the idea is maybe as pure. Crash of drums, flash of light, experiences of the world to which we're subject, our human nature, we all no is imperfect. So yeah, I don't think it's religious but is a very spiritual song. | |
| Bruce Springsteen – Jersey Girl Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| @[NWNmoon:7778] seems an age ago (it was) when I wrote that. I think i used to drink back then too :) I still like The Boss and he made some nice snapshots of ordinary life, but despite what the other guy says he does tend to paint them with a romantic brush...Tom Waits roughed them up with sandpaper so you could see the beauty underneath the surface... | |
| Bruce Springsteen – Jersey Girl Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| @[NWNmoon:7777] seems an age ago (it was) when I wrote that. I think i used to drink back then too :) I still like The Boss and he made some nice snapshots of ordinary life, but despite what the other guy says he does tend to paint them with a romantic brush...Tom Waits roughed them up with sandpaper so you could see the beauty underneath the surface... | |
| Bruce Springsteen – Jersey Girl Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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@[suckmykiss:7776] yeah, exactly, he's always romanticizing the tough love of working class life and expressing some emotion through it...go in the bathroom and put your make up on...it's infusing femininity (in a very male, please me way) into her tiredness...we're going to go out dancing...I know a little place...I'm going to make life better for you, etc... Tom Wait's is simply expressing how good it is to be with the girl he loves (and married). Bruce doesn't intend to romanticize but inevitably does...racing cars, family ties, run down towns, drowning in a river, crashing a car he makes operas out of them, sometimes beautiful ones, but romantic none the less. |
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| Kris Kristofferson – Here Comes That Rainbow Again Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| I agree with the previous poster: a lovely song which says a lot in a simple story. Small acts of kindness go a long way. These are like a rainbow in this world we live in. | |
| Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Closer to Believing Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| A very beautiful song about love and how its something inside us which needs something, or someone, from outside us to complete it. The longing is something which belongs to our humanity, the will to be, to express, to understand and importantly, to share. Like children we need love. We grow and often forget this, made numb by the "opium of custom", falling into the habits we then call us and sometimes our need to know ourselves takes us to "the ledges of extremes" which can distance us. Because sharing ourselves is an important part of knowing ourselves when the whole world is sitting on the ledges of extremes, full of strangers in a strange land, it's the lonely place we see today. To dream and share the dreams of others, the child in others: "unless you become like a little child you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven"; and guess what, it's inside you. | |
| Echo and the Bunnymen – Ocean Rain Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| The melody is haunting; the lyrics seems full of contrasts, tender, bitter sweet, yearning, accepting, personal and impersonal. For the singer life seems an ocean upon which his small ship sails and the ocean is sometimes rough; the tender frame screams from beneath the waves. The tender frame is his inner self. At the beginning of the song it's his (own) hurricanes (choices, decisions, emotions) which have brought down the ocean rain. Later in the song it's the ocean itself (time, nature, the choices aren't all his). All hands on deck is simply the way we deal with things and at the same time we look for a port, a place of safety. This could be the love of another person or it could be in the idea of something greater than ourselves, a reaching out for something spiritual is one way to put it. In either case, it's a place of safety. It 'harbours' the blackest thoughts. There's an idea (for me) that in keeping with the bitter sweet the rain is somehow refreshing, like Grace. For me that's it's a song about God. Ian McCulloch's lyrics often have a religious theme. It's like he has this inner sense of the holy or spiritual, which is quite beautiful and at odds with the beer swigging, cig smoking, football supporting, tell it how he sees it type of bloke he is. | |
| Anne Briggs – Living by the Water Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| Free, at home with nature, seasons and time passing by. I always think this song has an 'eastern' feel to it. A song for young folks I think. | |
| Anne Briggs – Thorneymoor Woods Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| Hunting with dogs and taking game is rightly frowned on in our modern world. The meat on the tables of those who eat it (I'm practically vegetarian these days) is killed humanely, if there's such a thing. The song though tells of a time when poaching was away of life for some folks and maybe kept them from starvation. The woods in the song were well known for poachers and I read somewhere in the 1860s (I think) there was a lot of trouble between the locals and the gamekeepers that resulted in musket fire and deportation to Australia. I think the three young lads were probably very lucky the magistrate let them free. We hear of the bond between the lad and his dog, the brutality of the hunt, of the keeper who shot the dog and of the revenge the lad would like to take. The butchers would have known the meat was illegal. The old lady who sold bad ale took the meat and turned them in because she didn't want to pay for it. Maybe the magistrate let them go with a promise? It tells a story and paints a picture of what life was like in the mid 19th century. Anne Briggs had a pretty good voice and was highly rated in the folks clubs with a promising career when she just gave it up and went to work in a factory. She never even told her kids she had been a singer, when one day her daughter found a record sleeve with her picture on it. Worth checking for anyone who likes a song to tell a good story. | |
| The Killers – Mr. Brightside Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| Jealousy, manic depressive, obsessive: we are all prisoners of ourselves and yet we also hold the key to freedom. Nothing ever stays the same and yet we make ourselves prisoners to the idea it can. When you realise the Kingdom of Heaven is inside you then what's on the outside becomes it. Every day is important and it exists through you, a sip of water and a sip of wine are the same, a great victory and a big disappointment are the same. As Rudyard Kipling wrote, "If you can dream and not make dreams your master, if you can think and not make thoughts your aim; if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same" ....embrace, let go, laugh and cry. We never dip our foot in the same stream twice... | |
| Billy Bragg – The Red Flag Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| Alistair Hulett made a superb version of this song. | |
| Echo and the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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Haunting vocals, romantic melody, cryptic lyrics make this a song which makes us think of the mysteries of life without being able to put our finger on what they are. This, according to Ian MCulloch is exactly the way the song came to be written, through wondering, firstly what the opening chords to Space Oddity would sound like played backwards and then about a phrase that was in his mind when he woke up one morning, "Fate up against your will, he will wait until...etc" Maybe fate can wear many disguises and how it's dressed is in some ways down to us, but other things just happen, are destiny, growing older, slower, failing eyesight, etc. At the same time we're swept along by big events outside our control for most of us, economic crash, second world war, the Russian Revolution; think of Dr Zhivagpo, Doris Day, Que Sara and maybe this song fits in quite neatly. Really it all comes down to that one verse in his thoughts when he woke up: "It was like God wrote it"... The great thing is other readings can be read into as part of the same scheme, the way we look for relationships because its our nature but not always our will. |
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| Heart – Sweet Darlin' Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| Yes, I agree so big in meaning yet put simply. A real woman's song, from the heart. A woman loves with the whole of her being, literally humming throughout her whole body both in the emotional and physical sense. Also the highs and lows of human emotions, fear, "you stopped runnin"; again, everything seems perfect when love calls "an angel called my name" and as with the humming the ecstatic feeling. In the end though is separation, we can borrow from but never completly be what another gives us....all in a beautiful love song. | |
| Heart – Sand Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| A beautiful song. The lyrics reflect on the truth of our existence, the passage of time, the coming and passing of all we experience, the passage of those we love and know. Taken on face value this might be a cause of sadness but the melody in which the words are set in a melody which is bright and optimistic, yet not overstated. It has a hint of regret but also one of thanks for what was.....goodbye, goodbye, my friend, keeps the value of the friendship/love even where it's lost. In a world where everything passes the only thing real is love for those who share it. | |
| Paul Simon – Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Also the radical priest someone mentions is social commentary. This was a time when old norms were being challenged and a radical priest might be questioning whether the criminal justice system might be doing more harm than good to the boy. That was the times which were a changing and PS sticks a note to them in the song.... | |
| Paul Simon – Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| That's an interesting observation. It sort of fits in with my idea what the mama saw could have just as likely been drinking as sex...if your reading is right me and Julio down by the schoolyard would be a teenager with a bottle...what the mama saw is a teenager against the world type thing... | |
| Paul Simon – Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Some interesting comments. I don't think it's about any particular focus so much as teenage rebellion. What the mama actually saw doesn't really matter as much as it was against the law. The two kids could have been messing around, drinking, handling stolen goods (petty theft is sometimes a teenage dare), but they were pushing the boundaries and breaking the law. Mama spits because the narrator, in here eyes, has corrupted her child (in reality they might have been equal partners). Every parent knows someday children lose innocence and adolescence is that period where the children themselves begin to force the issue with experiment. To the parents it can seem like the Apocalypse, they just hope no harm is done during the transition. Of the narrator, he knows he crossed the boundaries and is about to pay; papa wants to put him in a house of detention and he's on his way to one, "taking his time", serving his sentence, ruefully looking back at the familiar, the place and friends he's leaving, "goodbye Rosie, Julio, the schoolyard". In general the song is pretty upbeat so I'm guessing the sentence is a pretty short one in a juvenile correction center. It's like a rite of passage in someways where innocent world of the child, the rebellious one of the teens is bent back into shape and the conformity of adulthood. Back in the day it was written that conformity would have probably shaped as a blue collar job, a wife, family of his own, the world Springsteen paints in My Hometown before the factory shuts.... Not claiming that's definitive, just a few ideas. |
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| The Mamas & the Papas – Make Your Own Kind Of Music Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| It was the 60s when our generation was shaking off the shackles of conformity and finding voice through music, politics, expressive fashions. before the war, what was before the war? The great depression and dust bowls in the USA, mass unemployment in the UK, the rise of fascism in Europe. Then came the war, huge loss of life and suffering. After that came peace, a new optimistic politics, high unemployment and a desire to shake off all the bad things that went before. the baby boomers were perhaps the luckiest generation in history. | |
| Patty Griffin – Railroad Wings Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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"...most everything means nothing, except some things, that mean everything" The song always had a haunting feel to me; like we're haunted by the shadows of our own dreams and longings. It's a travelling song; she's travelling away from the past and towards the future; away from herself, but she can't ever outrun who she is; not even on railroad wings. There's a lot we dismiss as unimportant, they come and go, but some things really do mean everything and it's those things we find most difficult to display or speak of, when that is just what we should do: take the train to ourselves on railroad wings....not a literal interpretation of the song, just some impressions....it has a dreamy feel, like we're almost carried along in this dream with just those things which mean everything holding it together... |
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| Electric Light Orchestra – Hold On Tight Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Your dreams are you; whatever you're doing, whoever you're with, whether it's being realised or buried under the litter of every day stuff, we still dream. I read a great book about realising our dreams. It's a sort of modern fairy tale/fable that somehow clears away some of the litter. “Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” The boy asked, when they had made camp that day. “Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.” “But my heart is agitated,” the boy said. “It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it’s become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights when I’m thinking about her.” “Well, that’s good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist |
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| Bob Dylan – Alberta #1 Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Is this based on an old Leadbelly song? He himself did about 3 different versions of it... | |
| Bob Dylan – Girl from the North Country Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Wrote this in reply below but will leave it post it as a general take on the song. Someone remarked that in England a fair is like a carnival. That's true and the song is based on an old English folk song 'Scarborough Fair', which would be like some country market with entertainment. However, I think Dylan has made reference to the original song but given the word one of its other meanings, beautiful, or comely. The song is one of fond recollection with a hint of sadness. The 'North Country' is remembered as 'fair', it makes the setting for his 'true love' who we can assume is pretty and makes up part of the loveliness he remembers. It also hints of the seasons; when he was with her was a greener more pleasant time; now the wind hits heavy on the border line. He remembers just how fair she was, her hanging down to her breast, now he imagines the snow and wishes her well in "a coat so warm". The contrast between 'fair' and 'bleak' is what makes the song, for me at least. |
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| Bob Dylan – Girl from the North Country Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| The song is based on an old English folk song 'Scarborough Fair', which is as you describe, a carnival gathering. However, I think Dylan has made reference to the original song but given the word one of its other meanings, beautiful, or comely. The song is one of fond recollection with a hint of sadness. The 'North Country' is remembered as 'fair', it makes the setting for his 'true love' who we can assume is pretty and makes up part of the loveliness he remembers. It also hints of the seasons; when he was with her was a greener more pleasant time; now the wind hits heavy on the border line. He remembers just how fair she was, her hanging down to her breast, now he imagines the snow and wishes her well in "a coat so warm". The contrast between 'fair' and 'bleak' is what makes the song, for me at least. | |
| Nazareth – This Flight Tonight Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Manny is a great rock guitarist, no doubt about that. I'm not even sure about how much merit the Rolling Stone List should have; there are some pretty strange inclusions in it. However, Joni is not one of them. I began by saying that Manny is a very great rock guitarist but there are more styles of guitar than rock. Joni is admired within the industry for her experimentation with tunings and harmonies. She produces sounds which add unusual colour and to her lyrics. She messes about with the tunings to get just the sound she wants. Now go tune your guitar. EADGBE do some runs, make some chord shapes. You spent hours practicing those right? In each different tuning the chord and scale shapes are going to be different. It's not a matter of that's a D chord that's a G chord but where's a G Chord where's a D chord. She's a great guitarist with a superb sense of rhythm and timing in her playing. Pretty good pianist too. Incidently, Jimmy Page, in an interview which can be found on the net somewhere (can't remember where) was talking about the struggle to be creatively consistent and said something like, "only one person gets it right every time, Joni Mitchell"...she was 70 last year and been writing great songs and performing them for somewhere like 50+ years...Led Zeppelin mention her in a song, Graham Nash wrote 'Our House' for her, Neil Young wrote 'Sweet Joni' for her. I guess she deserves a place on the rolling stone list! | |
| Nazareth – This Flight Tonight Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| No Joni Mitchell song has inconsequential lyrics: she's Joni Mitchell. | |
| Nazareth – This Flight Tonight Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Manny is a great rock guitarist, no doubt about that. I'm not even sure about how much merit the Rolling Stone List should have; there are some pretty strange inclusions in it. However, Joni is not one of them. I began by saying that Manny is a very great rock guitarist but there are more styles of guitar than rock. Joni is admired within the industry for her experimentation with tunings and harmonies. She produces sounds which add unusual colour and to her lyrics. She messes about with the tunings to get just the sound she wants. Now go tune your guitar. EADGBE do some runs, make some chord shapes. You spent hours practicing those right? In each different tuning the chord and scale shapes are going to be different. It's not a matter of that's a D chord that's a G chord but where's a G Chord where's a D chord. She's a great guitarist with a superb sense of rhythm and timing in her playing. Pretty good pianist too. | |
| Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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The link to the previous comment didn't posts so i'll post again http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr8tffNHJno |
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| Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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I posted this first as a reply to another post but decided to post for the main section. The reason is not to compare Whitney's version with Dolly's but because the comments are about song meanings. The song was Dolly Parton's way of telling Porter Wagoner she had to move on from their joint career and his show. They had been arguing about it for some time when she thought the best way she could sum it up was in a song youtube.com/… years later she sang it to him again on stage as part of a celebration of his own career in the industry. As she did this a tear began to roll down his cheek which she wiped away with the back of her hand and the meaning of the words became crystal in that moment. The words have a very clear meaning. When we move away, for whatever reason, from the folks we grow close to, someone always gets hurt, part of us, part of them. The only thing is to keep loving and keep hoping. Letting someone go because you need to is hard, letting someone go because they need to is harder still. To do so with love can be unbearable but also the seed that will help healing and growth. |
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| Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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The song was Dolly Parton's way of telling Porter Wagoner she had to move on from their joint career and his show. They had been arguing about it for some time when she thought the best way she could sum it up was in a song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr8tffNHJno years later she sang it to him again on stage as part of a celebration of his own career in the industry. As she did this a tear began to roll down his cheek which she wiped away with the back of her hand and the meaning of the words became crystal in that moment. The words have a very clear meaning. When we move away, for whatever reason, from the folks we grow close to, someone always gets hurt, part of us, part of them. The only thing is to keep loving and keep hoping. Letting someone go because you need to is hard, letting someone go because they need to is harder still. To do so with love can be unbearable but also the seed that will help healing and growth. |
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| Joni Mitchell – Sex Kills Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Joni Mitchell was one of the big things of my teen years and then other things came and happened. Over the years while these things were happening a compartment held all the books and records of earlier times and every now and again they'd play through, but other things were happening and gradually they'd get forgotten. There were new things happening too, new songs, new books. In some ways I'm glad about that because as we get older and maybe slow down, we begin to unpack the compartments we left stored with our things and are able to look at the stuff in them with new eyes. Just lately I've been listening to a lot of Joni's older stuff, watching interviews and hearing some I hadn't heard, like this. It's amazing the level of consistency she kept in her work across her whole career. The song itself is a snapshot of our world today. It doesn't really explore any of these things but frames them, the way we do when stacking them up in our minds while feeling powerless in the face of it. It's the way many of us listening to the radio while driving. We're frozen in a moment of knowing of piled up truth. Then, as we pass some bushes, fake ones painted on a billboard trying to sell us some deal, the news comes over about some kid taking a gun into a nursery and we know for sure something terrible is lurking behind the faked up leaves. |
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| Joni Mitchell – A Strange Boy Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| I'm not sure, but she has a great imagination and a great eye for the things which take place around her. Maybe one day she saw a muscled guy weaving his way through the crowds and traffic and fleshed him out, gave him a history and a lover, weaving a few threads of her own experience into it. | |
| Joni Mitchell – A Strange Boy Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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"We got high on travel And we got drunk on alcohol And on love the strongest poison and medicine of all" She pulls them like stars from the sky and studs them in songs that illuminate our own experience. As we sometimes do when we get older I've been looking back (via YouTube) at the music which lit the journey thus far. I watched so many concerts and interviews, charting her own transformations and came to one conclusion, that the consistency, quantity and quality of her output is amazing. Jimmy page, describing his own search for a muse said something like only one person gets it right every time, Joni Mitchell. |
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| Donovan – Hurdy Gurdy Man Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| It might be, or it could be Jimmy Page's Auntie who went round for tea because she heard Jimmy was there. Jeff beck had to drive her home when she found out he wasn't. :) | |
| Donovan – Hurdy Gurdy Man Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| The mystery of who played guitar is, as others said already, one big mystery and it's driving me nuts, lol. Donovan says it was Jimmy and even tells a long story, Donovan style about how there was a big Jim and a little Jim and little Jim followed big Jim around doing session work. When it was a big job big Jim would do it and when it was a little job little Jim would do it. that must be the first time Donovan ever suggested he was a little job, lol. So he sat little Jimmy Page down and says look this is how I want you to play it and produced majestic power chords from his guitar. Jimmy listened and was inspired; ever since then people wanted to play guitar like that. The most incredible thing about this is Jimmy Page says he wasn't there but while in the USA heard he had been. According to him Jeff Beck played guitar on it, which you might sometimes hear said, but it was wiped because they didn't like it. They then wanted Jimmy Page but as said, he was in the USA. So they asked Alan Parker played guitar on it. That is supported by others who were there. So why does Donovan say Jimmy Page played on it? Back to the beginning. Maybe it's his fantastic imagination, which gave us so many great songs. Or maybe he just knows good business? How many music magazines bring this up? keeps the story going. Maybe but, maybe not. | |
| The Incredible String Band – Little Cloud Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| A charming song about being yourself. In this case that involves looking on the brights side even when someone categorised your mission as being sad. In the end the cloud conforms, as we all must to some extent, but does this with their own individual touch. | |
| James – Sit Down Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| It could be about many things but centers on the negativity we embrace when things don't go the way we want, expectations don't come true, things that are dear to us are no longer there. It's about change, loss, expectation, disappointment in many degrees. In the end it's empathy for just being our human selves and the lows we all get. As I wrote in reply to someone else, it's quite optimistic. Sit down next to me, we'll come through. | |
| James – Sit Down Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| I can see where you're coming from but feel it to be a song of optimism, knowing the subject will come through. "I believe this wave will bear my weight so let it flow.." It's also about empathy, compassion, for all those who suffer from life's knocks and feel insecure about it. He's coming through it and please sit down next him, you'll come through it too. I believe we should all dream our dreams and hope they come true. Elenore Roosevelt said the future belongs to those who believe in their dreams. At the same time, we shouldn't expect them to. If we expect nothing we lose nothing. That might seem to contradict but not if you give it some thought. | |
| The Moody Blues – Blue Guitar Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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What about the song itself? very nice melodic line for a start, dreamy, tranquil. he's singing about music and what it means to him. It's his living, but also he makes a connection with it on a level of just being? What does it matter if you're a fool or a dreamer when you play the chords of a guitar and they sound just right? This then becomes about our day to day: what does it matter if we can't see the wood for the trees as long as what we do feels right and we're in tune? It's one way to look at it. |
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| Kate Rusby – The Recruited Collier Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| So Jimmy takes his little bit of pay and goes to the town, maybe for something for the home or her. It doesn't say to get drunk, it says while he was there the recruiting sergeant got him drunk and signed him to the colours. They try to get him out, her dad says he'll take the sting of a Guinea to claim him out, but the sergeant says he kissed the book (swore an oath on the Bible) so all's lost. poor Jimmy is off to fight the King's wars Maybe he was at Bunker Hill or Saratogo, maybe it was Waterloo. She poor lass is heartbroken. | |
| Kate Rusby – The Recruited Collier Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| In the late 18th Century the British army was made up of regiments who did their own recruiting. The recruiting sergeants would go around the towns of the area getting lads to join by persuasion, trickery. By the time of the American Revolutionary War, pressing was made legal, it already was for the navy. One way of pressing was to arrest men for being drunk. Others were on release from prison. They weren't exactly glad to be so far from home fighting against folks who fighting gladly for their own home. When you you reenact your battles and celebrate Independence think of the poor redcoat lads who had none. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Red River Valley Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Before the days of radio and TV this was one of the most travelled songs in the North of the American continent. The journey started in the late 19th Century in the provinces of Canada, made its way across the USA and became known as a Texas cowboy song. The lyrics altered a little but not much and some of the original would not be thought well of in todays politically correct world. The Red River in the song is in Manitoba and is sung by a native Canadian to her British sweetheart whose stay in the Red River Valley now over. In reality it is anyone in love whose partner must leave them with the warmth of love still in their heart. | |
| The Hollies – He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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That's a fine sentiment and many people read it that way. i did for a long time, but I think most folks concentrate on the chorus line "He ain't heavy, he's my brother" without really hearing the rest of the song. I did for years. I did listen but vaguely I suppose. I don't know why it suddenly clicked. I think the key line is this "If I'm laden at all I'm laden with sadness that everyone's heart isn't filled with the gladness of love for one another" read as a sentence and not as lines the rest of the song falls into place...he looks at you, at me, the folks struggling in the world, those with problems and says "he ain't heavy, he's my brother". It's typical of that era really. |
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| Billy Bragg – The Red Flag Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| bobkindles, I'm not struggling against the rule of the bourgeoisie. I just think they should share the proceeds a little more fairly. profit incentive is not a bad thing but an absolute incentive in the absence of social justice is a bad thing. A profit cut to maintain employment, a profit cut to maintain social standards when times are hard. As it stands the market don't reallocate resources to benefit society it reallocates finance to benefit finance. Long live the profit motive but tie it to democracy and social justice. | |
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