| Joy Division – Shadowplay Lyrics | 10 months ago |
| I don't agree with many of the other comments, other than agreeing it's certainly sinister but think it may be more literal than some people are making out. I think in the song he's been employed to lure someone to a darkened room in a city centre at night by assassins to rape and kill the person and is reflecting on what's happened. | |
| Interpol – Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| I think the song is about a dream (especially given the lines 'Try to detect you when I'm sleeping, In a wave you say goodbye'), very likely a drug-induced one, in which the singer is being given oral sex by a loose, insecure and passive lover who has fallen through a manhole down to the bottom of the ocean and is being kept alive by sea being 'airtight'. | |
| Supergrass – Lose It Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| Maybe about a girl who wants him to come round to his house, but he doesn't want to as she's not been familiar enough with him (say by holding his hand) and just wants to be friends. Then she gets annoyed with him and he tells her not to 'lose it'. A banging tune, but the lyrics are a bit vague! | |
| The Charlatans – Then Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| I've always liked the tune, but I've never really thought about the lyrics before. A bit like the lyrics in I am the resurrection, bigging yourself up and putting down a difficult ex. | |
| Genesis – Supper's Ready Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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I think in a nutshell Supper's Ready is a powerful love song, saying that romantic love in a domestic setting can have the force of spiritual love and contrasting it favourably to the temptations of salesman selling you needless gimmicks, oversimplified and trite traditional family values, narcissism, needless rivalry resulting in war and to ones fears (the dragon). At the end (note his name) Gabriel is, I consider, suggesting he is the angel leading his 'children' (fans) to the new Jerusalem with this concept, which unfortunately seems somewhat narcissistic in itself, though the song is so spectacularly good overall, I can forgive him this indulgence! |
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| Aztec Camera – The Boy Wonders Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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I've always greatly enjoyed this great tune as indeed I do the LP which it's off, but the meaning is not easy. I think it's basically about Roddy and his friends having a great time at Hogmanay - he's making resolutions but he's drunk and slurring so he is saying they mean nothing and are actually those of his young girlfriend, but he's also 'wondering' about more sensual and artistic matters like words - and the weather - I think rain is used as a metaphor for inspiration in the LP as whole. 'Pastel paper pink over grey' may be a reference to his preference for colourful clothes, not the dullness of grey. The 'travelling chest' has two meanings in the song I think, one where he has got his money (francs) from for the girl at the party, one his own chest which he will let the innocent girl who is not yet sixteen and to whom he's saying 'you will learn that you haven't a clue' see when he seduces her. The 'boy wonders' also has two meanings - one the sporty crowd who 'sold their medals when they saw this train', i.e. they were impressed at Roddy and his wild party going train of friends and I think they are ones who have the 'poor excuse they peddle as their prose' - but it also refers to his own meditations on the rain etc. |
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| Interpol – Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| I think the whole song is an idealised dream or fantasy, maybe drug-induced, about the singer having what he would see as a great sexual relationship, especially oral sex, at the bottom of the ocean, with a paranoic and passive girl. | |
| The Districts – Young Blood Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| I'm really surprised there's no comments on this when they have a substantial following and their live performance of this is so impassioned. His woman has broken his heart by straying and she's obviously in a total state too. He still believes in love but he knows it's a long way away. | |
| Interpol – Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| This some can't possibly be taken literally! I think this is a sexual dream, possibly brought on by drugs, about a woman falling through a manhole to an exotic and erotic place at the bottom of the ocean where she performs oral and other sex on the singer, which is a fantasy he is really enjoying. | |
| Prefab Sprout – Billy Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| Further to my comment, I meant of course 'Prefab Sprout fan' rather than 'Prefab Sprout song'. | |
| Prefab Sprout – Billy Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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Not the easiest to interpret but as my name is Bill and I'm a big Prefab Sprout song I thought I would give it a go. The lyrics are deliberately 'off the wall' and suggestive, in the same way that some of Morrissey's are. The trumpet in the snow is a symbol for things appearing randomly. I think there is an element here of 'blowing your own trumpet' from Billy, possibly because Susan is his or may be on her way to being his and he is proud of this. This is likely to be why the singer, who is in love with Susan himself, wants to know his secrets, though he does it in a way that is undeliberate, like something being left out in the snow. 'Music' could be a symbol for love here - the singer may be aware of some inadequacies of his own here as he says he has no gift for music. Billy merely gives an evasive and dismissive answer here - but Billy has 'practiced long and hard' himself at music/ love, which may be why he may have or be more likely to get Susan. |
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| Blur – Bugman Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| This song has a futuristic sci-fi horror film feel to it, I think it's about an alienated guy who's come out of prison on another planet trying to get away from an evil powerful guy, the bugman, who's unleashed killer insects on a big city (which might explain the repeated coda, not mentioned here, of "Space is the place" - or it may be it's on this planet and the situation's so bad here he'd just like to move to outer space). The "nodding dogs" may be people who've just resigned themselves to the ways of the bugman - the alienated ex-con has no sense of why these people would want to exist and the situation is so bad he feels like he's coming out of a coma. The loud discordant unworldly feel of the music supports my theory. | |
| The Clash – Tommy Gun Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| I think it's just about someone who thinks he's a hero just because he's a soldier going around shooting people, but it's all just for his own self-glorification. | |
| Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| It's hard to make perfect sense of this famous tune, but it's pervaded with a sense of self-deprecating sarcasm - "I feel stupid and contagious, here we are now, entertain us" and "I'm worse at what I do best" being obvious examples - and defeatism - "it's fun to lose and to pretend" "well, whatever, never mind" but there's also a pride in the group "our little group has always been and always will until the end". Loud, battered but proud, self-contradictory, incongruous, tough on themselves, laced with dark humour, clumsy but somehow well-meaning - these characteristics have rung bells with a lot of people, and obviously those big, hard-hittingly tuneful but also ugly and discordant riffs helped too. | |
| Villagers – Passing A Message Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I really like this song, particularly the sense of tension and the interesting imagery, but the meaning as a whole is not easy. One of the things he appears to be saying is that losing normal literal sense or a linear mindset gives you freedom, and that freedom of expression may make what he says more meaningful than a factual pronouncement by a TV presenter, and I think the reference to atrophy being at the end of the evolution chain is likely to cross-refer to the TV comments. I think the words about the animals and the sequoia tree conjure up his wonder and amazement at the extraordinariness of evolution ("easy as ABC" is being sarcastic) and nature. The Burj Khalifa is in Dubai and is apparently the tallest building in the world according to Wikipedia. Maybe he is comparing this man-made structure unfavourably to the wonders of the sequoia tree - though he does make it sound rather exotic. Maybe the overall meaning of the song is: the amazing wonders of nature and being freed from literal sense - good, the blandness of TV and artificiality and coldness of modern buildings - bad. |
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| Foster the People – Helena Beat Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Great tune, my favourite this year, with brilliant dynamics from both Foster's vocal and the instrumentation. The lyrics I agree with many are about the ups and downs of living a hedonistic life and probably strong drugs (don't think alcohol. when did a drinker last tie themselves to a chair, then again the tying to a chair might be a metaphor for deliberately tying yourself to something comforting when you're really out of it). There's a disparity between the uptempo nature of the tune and the very angsty lyrics, but I think the idea is to play this to people while they're living the high life (so maybe not heroin, not usually a party drug) but to say to them something they may recognise about the rest of their lives while they're on that high. | |
| Sweet – Blockbuster Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| It's taken me the best part of 40 years to realise that this is a song about a guy called Buster who goes around stealing other people's women and so must be "blocked"! Still, I was only 10 when it first came out. | |
| Duran Duran – The Reflex Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I always thought previously that the lyrics sounded a complete load of nonsense when hearing the song, but reading them, I think there is a deliberate meaning, even if Simon le Bon didn't think about the song for too long: the "reflex" is about his inspiration, muse or philosophy, which is based on living for today, optimism (the lucky clover), taking risks, mystery (hiding all the cards), living the high life (he needed to sell the Renoir and the TV set), sex (treasure in the dark), some bright-eyed innocence (the only child in the park) and relying on reflex action rather than dwelling too long on things or being cautious. | |
| The Jam – Eton Rifles Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| It's obvious why David Cameron likes this - because in the song, the Eton boys win the fight! | |
| Crowded House – Nails in My Feet Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Well of course the name of this band is Crowded House and this tune, in my view their finest, is, I think, about the contrast between his usual life which is like a confusing, untidy, dream-like house which at times gets him down and what his girlfriend does for him which makes him lose his inhibitions and brings him "relief"! | |
| R.E.M. – Supernatural Superserious Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| It sounds from the lines "If you call out safe then I'll stop right away, if the premise buckles and the ropes start to shake" that the sexual deviance to which Michael Stipe refers is some kind of bondage/ S and M scenario. How this related to the seance, I don't know - did the words on the ouija board spell out something of a similar kinky nature, maybe personal to Stipe, which embarrassed and frightened him, even made him afraid for his life (he cried, he's alive, he's alive)? Not into ouija boards or bondage myself, but one of REM's finest tunes ever. | |
| Saint Etienne – Action Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Fun song about the new for vibrant and exciting people in your life. | |
| Wild Swans – The Revolutionary Spirit Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| A Peelie favourite of mine this from the 80s, from one of many good Liverpool bands around at the time. Not that I'm from there, but must have been an exciting place for music at the time. Wistful like China Crisis but a bit more uptempo. Very poetic lyrics with a Biblical/ historical feel as well as a revolutionary one. | |
| Wire – Outdoor Miner Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Great tune, but the lyrics have me seriously baffled - a dream maybe? | |
| Comsat Angels – Independence Day Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| A favourite of mine at the time when I was 17 and songs like this and other post-punk tunes from this band and the Cure, New Order, Teardrop Explodes, Aztec Camera etc. got me listening to John Peel for a long while afterwards. An ironic song about whether breaking up a relationship could almost be something to celebrate like a nation declaring its independence - parallels are made throughout - but in reality it's not and it's only bringing tension and stress. | |
| The Associates – Skipping Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| The LP Sulk was a student favourite of mine and this track had one of the most bizarre lyrics I've ever come across, so I had to comment on it. I can only imagine it was about a dream or he was on something, a hallucinogen like LSD maybe (try one too might be a clue here, and that once you've tried one you feel like skipping but might feel both marvellous and lousy). Whatever strange mental state he was in, Belgian waterways seems to feature prominently in it, as we have Belgian wharves and a Griffon Bruxellois (not a Beauxillois griffin, though that's the lyric) is a type of Belgian barge dog. I always liked the idea of roads that just happened to be there - a wonderfully surreal concept. | |
| Duffy – Warwick Avenue Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| One of the most moving songs ever! | |
| Deacon Blue – Chocolate Girl Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Brilliant lyric about a stiff, rich man who doesn't understand emotions and his spoilt but unhappy lover - Deacon Blue were always really underrated by the critics. | |
| Muse – Plug In Baby Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I think this is a tricky one and the only way to make sense of it is that there are two "plug-in babies" in the chorus - one is his guitar (first three lines) or maybe a computer game he's good at which makes him feel invincible, so "crucifies his enemies" and the second is his girlfriend or a girl who he's after who he'd like to be able to "plug in" for a thrill but is actually an "unbroken virgin" and "tired of living" and she's been playing games with him and he now wants her to forget their love. Sounds like a really dysfunctional relationship, so it;s best that it's going to be over! | |
| Spearmint – A Week Away Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| This appears to be about a week away in Whitby (Whitby has Dracula conections, Bagdale Hall is a hotel there, Staithes is close by). The Manchester reference is, I think, about an incident in which members of the Animal Liberation Front targeted fish businesses there. | |
| Joy Division – Shadowplay Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I don't think it's about suicide because he's referring to "you", i.e. another person. But the scenario that the song depicts is a very grim one. I think he's gone to a club, possibly a porn club, in the centre of the city, where he's waiting for a particular person, probably a woman, to appear, but the person gets used, maybe sexually assaulted, and killed. Especially worrying are the lines "I did everything, everything I wanted to, I let them use you for their own ends" which imply to me that although he has said in the previous line that he reacted with "disbelief" at what has happened, which might mean that he did not expect this, in some shape or form he was part of the plan or complicit in what happened. Possibly he has even been asked to lure that particular person to that particular place, which was doing everything he wanted to (though if this is the case, "needed" might have been a more suitable word than "wanted"), but when that person arrives, they are used and murdered. Or that the person has taken part in a pornographic performance which he is shocked that he has in some way enjoyed despite the fact that the person has ended up being killed. The shadows and the notion of "moving through the silence without motion" add to the sinister, surreal, frightening atmosphere of the song. |
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| Prefab Sprout – Green Isaac Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Most of the LP Swoon is cryptic, not least this song. Isaac is a leading Old Testament figure, maybe someone Paddy MacAloon admired when he was training to take Holy Orders, as he did before becoming a singer, and there are other references in this song to religion - Stella Mater is refers to a religious song, and Joan of Arc like Isaac was a martyr. It would seem that person Paddy is singing about (which may or may not be himself, this is not entirely clear, as at times he talks in the first person, at times the second or third) is a green (meaning inexperienced here - "wet behind the ears") martyr to his muse, which is singing and speaking or praying "straight from the heart". The stairway on which he goes up and down is presumably the stairway to heaven, maybe the ups and downs of being an artist. The feat of walking "backwards through the room" and not being seen might seem to imply that the person even has some supernatural powers! | |
| New Order – Everyone Everywhere Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| i think this excellent song is about a girl who the songwriter used to be the boyfriend of ("you were once the main attraction, but that's all in the past") and he goes to meet her one evening for old times sake and they get carried away and start getting physical again - the references to "we beg and we steal" may indicate she now has another partner. Despite the romantic tone, there's a slight air of menace and melancholy about the song. the feeling that he's getting into something dangerous, which he will be if this risks breaking up current relationships. It may be called Everyone Everywhere because anyone who's been in a relationship may always be tempted back to their former partner. | |
| Aztec Camera – Still On Fire Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| It's the song that inspired me to leave Law College in 1984, when I was bored out of my mind. | |
| The Teardrop Explodes – Sleeping Gas Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Interesting as I've long been a fan of "Kilimanjaro" and have never known this myself. The answer is at http://www.headheritage.co.uk/headtohead/unsung/topic/16381/threaded/176712 . | |
| The Stone Roses – I Am The Resurrection Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Extreme sarcasm about some woman who the songwriter's being going out with but is now absolutely sick of, but also being very deliberately aware of his own arrogance and deeply irreverent about religion (which as someone who doesn't believe in a Christian God, I find very funny!) at the same time. Possibly also cocking a snook at men who put women on a pedestal too and think they can do no wrong (compare this with something like Scritti Politti's Absolute, only a few years earlier, which expresses precisely that emotion), as this song says totally the opposite. The coda at the end is in part a reaction at the 80s emphasis on the 3-minute pop song and maybe a prelude to the more Rockist second LP. | |
| The Stone Roses – I Wanna Be Adored Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I think there needs to be some context here. There had just been the C86 movement in British indie which was full of deliberately amateurish bands playing fairly incompetently as a reaction against corporacy. This song was a reaction against that - the Roses also wanted to be independent but also to be adored and famous as well, not to be losers. There is a clear reference to not selling your soul and so having the devil inside you, but I've never thought that was meant to be taken too seriously in that there's a desire to trash sacred cows like religion and the traditional love song (in "I am the Resurrection") and the Queen (in "Elizabeth my Dear") throughout the LP - maybe it's mostly that the Christian faith advocates humility, so to want to be adored is a bit like having the devil inside you as it opposes that Christian ethos. | |
| Prefab Sprout – Faron Young Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I'm a huge Prefab Sprout fan, but have to say this is the most baffling of lyrics by a band who are not usually so oblique. Is this about a dream maybe? | |
| Spearmint – Sweeping The Nation Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Classic Spearmint song about bands that should have been big, but weren't, including the singer's former band, Laverne and Shirley. | |
| Spearmint – Isn't It Great To Be Alive Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| A sad but affecting song about having a woman who's long-term friends with you and who you're deeply attracted to and are able to see from time to time, but who has a boyfriend, and the feelings that causes. | |
| The Associates – Club Country Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| This song follows on from Party Fears Two with similar themes about mistrust and paranoia with regard to social events, also having a go at the pretensions of try to impress at "Country Clubs", with lyrics like "sad to see that you're suffering, worked hard at being a something." | |
| Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants to Rule the World Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I think it's about freedom of choice, enjoying yourself in your own way and standing up against people who only want power, conformism ("acting on your best behaviour") and the messages given in the media ("one headline why believe it"), even if it means you are persecuted for those beliefs ("holding hands while the walls come tumbling down"). He is annoyed at people who lack the decisiveness and vision to do this. I think his "remorse" is about the way the world is. "Everybody wants to rule the world" could refer not only to the people who only want power, but also that if he gets the freedom and pleasure he craves, he could also feel like he rules the world. | |
| New Order – Regret Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I'm afraid I don't think it's a song about living life with no regrets - in my view it's one where the writer has plenty of problems. It's clear he's had a bad time in the past (he was upset and on a short fuse). So he's got into a relationship, but it's still a difficult one - his partner is someone he wouldn't trust, he thinks is naive ("you may think I'm naive" but "I'm not you") and we're "dealing in the limits" so the relationship is pushing him to those. Furthermore there are practical difficulties caused by that relationship - he has nowhere he can call home, he can't have a telephone conversation and he can't get up in the morning. So maybe the relationship is actually that with his stardom, which would cause him to be rootless, and that would tie in with New Order's increasing popularity at the time and the Baywatch-set video, but how can stardom be "naive", so I think it would make more sense for it to be about a difficult relationship he is having with a woman, and I think she's been chiding him for forgetting "the name and the address of everyone I've ever met" and his excuse is his confused mindset (like a school exam where the kids have gone away). He's asking his partner to wait until tomorrow to sort out the problems, but is not optimistic ("that's what they all say before they fall apart"). | |
| Simple Minds – Speed Your Love To Me Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I think he's saying basically that the feelings he gets from his girlfriend are similar to those he gets from amphetamines. | |
| Elvis Costello – Pump It Up Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I think that "Pump it up" is a reference to erection OK but don't think it's about jerking off! There are so many references to a woman in the song, that to me, it's a reference to "pumping it up" to have sex with her when he "don't really need it", because she is such a difficult person (there's nothing underhand she wouldn't understand). However, his physical and psychological dependence on her is very intense, despite the dangers in the relationship, so he pretty much has to keep on having sex with her - which is what I take from the reference to her being "like a narcotic". | |
| Joy Division – Atmosphere Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I have never found this beautiful, deeply sombre, indeed atmospheric song, which also has an element of angry scorn, easy to interpret, but think that some very good attempts have been made here. This is my own: Verse 1: Ian Curtis is addressing a person he wants to be with him, but who he finds is too talkative and superficial. He realises his own self-destructive tendencies (their behaviour is "life rebuilding" but he doesn't like that) but would prefer the person to be silent, contemplative and melancholy like himself, which he finds a more genuine way of living. Verse 2: is, I think, by far the hardest to understand literally, although giving rise to intriguing imagery. What does "your confusion, my illusion, like a mask of self-hate confronts and then dies" mean? Ian accepts that the other person will be confused by his attitude, but his attitude is an illusion - although he says that this is "like a mask of self-hate confronts and then dies" I think that what he is most likely to mean is that his appearance of self-hate (which the other person may be trying to drag him out of) is actually effectively the illusion, not so real and will confront itself and then die - possibly when the other person takes the time to get to know him properly. This, however, would seem to be at odds with the view in Verse 1 of scorn at the other person's "life rebuilding' behaviour, which would make Ian's self-destructive behaviour all too real and not just a mask - maybe there is just a sarcasm about their behaviour being "life rebuilding" in that comment in verse 1, criticism of a phrase that they have used about what have been trying to do to Ian, which would make the two verses more consistent. Verse 3 - returns to the main themes of Verse 1 - the other person leads too superficially happy and hyperactive a life (walking on air, hunting by the rivers) and would be better leading a more reflective, quieter, self-denying lifestyle. This is a truer way of living from which they should not walk away, and from which Ian thinks, with considerable sarcasm considering the other person's apparently upbeat nature, that they have actually been "abandoned" from. There is deliberate irony too in the formal and legalistic nature of the phrase "set down with due care" - again, the person thinks that they are leading a wild and exciting life but there is a more real, more earnest way, which their behaviour has actually carefully removed them from. |
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