submissions
| Billy Bragg – St. Swithin's Day Lyrics
| 1 year ago
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@[DavidODavidson:46679] the Dubstar version is what led me to Billy Bragg (along with Kirsty's version of ANE). I thought it was the best track on Dubstar's album and then realised they hadn't written it. |
submissions
| Billy Bragg – St. Swithin's Day Lyrics
| 1 year ago
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To me this is Billy remembering a relationship with someone who was more patriotic / nationalistic than he was (not to any great degree, just more than him). Maybe this difference caused the breakup as he didn't understand her patriotism? With the distance of time he's come to realise it was just her point of view and can't even remember the specifics (the weather or battle of Agincourt?).
Maybe I'm thinking too much about the Agincourt line though as I did think that that battle took place on St Swithin's day, but in fact it was St Crispin's day. St Swithin's day is often associated with the weather but apparently it can also be used to refer to something that never gets completed and perhaps that is what is meant here? |
submissions
| Simon and Garfunkel – Scarborough Fair/Canticle Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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@[crispin115:40494] You\'re pretty much right I think. I read, or have seen somewhere, that Canticle was an earlier Paul Simon song (called child on the hill, or something like that) that Art modified so it would go with Scarborough Fair. It was an anti-war song referring to a child accidentally shot by a soldier preparing for battle, and is now buried on the side of a hill.\r\nScarborough fair, being a folk song, will have changed over the centuries, but the earliest known versions are talking about elves (fairies), magical creatures that may have been able to do impossible tasks. The mystical sound of the song really suits that origin. |
submissions
| Simon and Garfunkel – A Most Peculiar Man Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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She probably tried to interact with him, as she would with anyone else, but he was unable to respond in a way people normally do. He didn\'t know how to be friendly, so people saw him as unfriendly. And most people will avoid someone they think is unfriendly. |
submissions
| Simon and Garfunkel – A Most Peculiar Man Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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I\'d say the guy was perhaps very shy, or maybe autistic. Either way, he struggles to interact with people in the way they expect and so they find him peculiar, unfriendly and don\'t engage with him for long. I wouldn\'t say society had made him that way, he was just born like that, but being away from his family and where he was brought up can\'t have helped. Though maybe even they struggled to relate to him. It is very sad. |
submissions
| New Order – Bizarre Love Triangle Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Maybe it's about trying to hold a relationship together whilst being in a band (being away on tour etc). So it's a love triangle, but it's bizarre because the third part is not a person, but music. |
submissions
| Joy Division – From Safety To Where Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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I don't see it as about society I see it as being about starting out in JD. His life's got direction, unlike earlier 'childlike ways', but he's not sure if he should really go forward with it as he thinks (correctly) that he might not like where it takes him. Trying to reassure himself that he's just passing through, but he knows he's not really in control. |
submissions
| Joy Division – Twenty Four Hours Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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I guess Ian had a bad day on realising his marriage was irretrievably ended. Seems to think that what he had been doing in Joy Division had taken him somewhere he hadn't expected and it wasn't doing him any good. |
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| The Smiths – How Soon Is Now? Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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I would have thought it was obvious to anyone and everyone that this song is about trying to form relationships whilst being shy, but apparently not. |
submissions
| The Cure – Charlotte Sometimes Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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It's clearly from the book as laurelinwyntre has demonstrated. But when I was in my teens and heavily into the cure, along with my mates, we thought it was about a prostitute. Reading the lyrics that does still kind of make sense, but only as some Hollywood romanticised version of a prostitute's existence. Nothing in there about shagging several strangers several times a night just to get money for heroin, for example. |
submissions
| New Order – True Faith Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Apparently, at the start of the Michael Jackson child abuse accusations, Bernard once changed the lyrics to 'when I was a very small boy Michael Jackson played with me'.
Song's about drugs though. |
submissions
| New Order – In A Lonely Place Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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According to 'Touching from a Distance' the 3rd line is 'the waste in the fever I heat', the 6th line is 'and shares that awful daylight', and in the last verse it's not gullet but cord.
The final line, as written in the book, does switch 'you' and 'we' and as I think these are taken from Ian's actual writings it probably isn't a New Order change.
No idea what the songs about really, but it always makes think of ancient Mayan cities hidden in the jungle - 'carressing the marble and stone', 'waste in the feverish heat' (which is what it sounds like to me regardless of what the book says). I'm sure it isn't really about that though. |
submissions
| New Order – Everything's Gone Green Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Oh yeah, and I read once the title came about just becuase they walked out of the studio after recording it and there was a greenish light about. Could mean everything's going well as well. |
submissions
| New Order – Everything's Gone Green Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I've never seen the full lyrics before. I thought the lines at the end were 'is this the way that you want us to go' or something, rather than what's written above. And on that basis I took it as Bernard asking Ian Curtis if he thought moving into electronic music was the direction to take. |
submissions
| New Order – 1963 Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I read somewhere years ago that this was about JFK and Marilyn Monroe, though I've interpreted it as being written from Marilyn's perspective. |
submissions
| New Order – Blue Monday Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I think it is about attitudes towards New Order's change of musical direction into dance and away from Joy Division.
The first verse is Bernard's response to fans who don't like the change of direction. They think the change of musical direction is a betrayal of JD / Ian, that Barney shouldn't feel the way he does about wanting to move on.
The second verse is a reference to Ian - how he was a genius lyricist, but Bernard cannot do that style of lyric.
The ship in the harbour is dance music. Not sure about lines 3 and 4 in verse 3 though - it's almost like he's saying that if Ian hadn't died then he would've himself, but that doesn't really fit (and I don't think Bernard was a suicidal type of person anyway).
Others above mentioned the beach being their first gig as New Order, which I didn't know, but fits with the rest of my interpretation. The heart growing cold belongs to the die hard JD fans that don't like the new direction.
I often think a lot of JD and NO songs are about their own relationships with their music. |
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