| Neil Young – Powderfinger Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| As dollarbill pointed out, it is indeed "big waves." And, it's not referring to the gun, it's referring to the boat. The boat's got a gun AND it's making big waves. | |
| Neil Young – Powderfinger Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| Exactly! | |
| Neil Young – Powderfinger Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| Except Louis Riel died in 1885. There weren't too many big, white boats with red lights and numbers on the side "making big waves" going up rivers in 1885. It's clearly a relatively modern police boat. | |
| Jason Segel – Dracula's Lament Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Lyric corrections: Line 3 – "I've been living too long to believe..." should be "I've been living too hard to believe..." Line 7 – "I've been trying to shake off the pain..." should be "I'm still trying to shake off the pain..." Line 15 – "Blood, will run down his neck..." should be "Blood, will run down his face..." Line 18 – "His head on my mantle is how I will let this one go..." should be "His head on my mantle is how I will let this world know..." |
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| Yazoo – Goodbye Seventies Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Awesome song off an awesome album. This is one of those iconic albums where there's literally not one bad song. The lyrics are pretty self-explanatory. Song was written in 1982 (maybe 1981). A lot of people were sick of the vapid self-absorption of the 1970s and hoping the '80s brought about a change of consciousness. Too bad they didn't... |
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| Ben Folds – Jesusland Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| The third line of the first verse is, "past DOLLAR stores and wig shops," not "past all the stores"... | |
| Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Look, the PSBs are from London. London famously has an East End and West End. The West End is high-rent, full of theatre, tourist attractions, and businesses. The East End is working-class, the home of cockney and most of London's most famous gangsters. Hence, the famous show "EastEnders." This song is nothing more than the old tale of lovers (or potential lovers) from different sides of the tracks, inner-city pressure,* and alienation of being young in a modern world. PSBs themselves used this phrase, and it's funny that Flight of the Conchords' "Inner City Pressure" is a clear homage to "West End Girls." |
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| Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| No it's not. | |
| Billy Joel – Only The Good Die Young Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Hey, ExSinner... go back to Utah and blow a sheep. No one here needs your preaching. | |
| Billy Joel – Only The Good Die Young Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| You are completely full of shit. | |
| Billy Joel – Only The Good Die Young Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| It's clever wording, but it's not a double meaning. | |
| Billy Joel – Captain Jack Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Did you even read the above comments? As if it's not obvious enough from the lyrics of the song, Joel has admitted multiple times that Captain Jack was the name of a drug dealer in a housing project in Long Island where wealthy suburban kids would come to buy drugs. | |
| Billy Joel – Captain Jack Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| And you're definitely wrong. | |
| Billy Joel – Captain Jack Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| First of all, rhyming slang is from London, not Long Island. Second, crack didn't come out until the '80s; this song was written in 1972. | |
| Billy Joel – Captain Jack Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Uh, no dude. | |
| Billy Joel – Scenes From An Italian Restaurant Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Wow, people really do hear what they want to hear and refuse to hear the truth. I am 100 percent, absolutely positive that he's saying "redS" and "whiteS" at the end. If you really can't hear it, get a good, clear copy of the song and listen to it with (good) headphones. If your subconscious desires were blocking it out before, you'll hear it then. The lyrics around it change as well. In the beginning of the song, the wine goes along with appetite. At the end of the song when the reference has changed to pills, the reds and whites go along with mood. This makes perfect sense as reds are downers, and whites are uppers, so which one you wanted to take would depend on your mood. The reason behind this is clear if you really listen to the song. It's about the rise and fall of a young couple's relationship and, hence, even their lives. What began as romance sank into failure and depression. How people see this as a happy, nostalgic song is beyond me. I suppose those folks think "The River" by Springsteen is a love song... |
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| The Ting Tings – That's Not My Name Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| You are correct. If you watch the second video made for the song (the one filmed outside at night with blacklights), the background dancers are holding up signs of all the names. Mary, Jo, and Lisa are among them. | |
| Ray LaMontagne – Jolene Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I sort of know how you feel, but it doesn't bother me as much in this song (but I'm not from Spokane!). There is some history of taking poetic license with pronunciation so that words rhyme, so that could be excused a bit here. It's also possible that it's deliberate on Ray's part in that he's singing as a traveler from afar who's just arrived in a new city that he doesn't even know how to pronounce. | |
| The Standells – Dirty Water Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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It's always amused me to no end that Bostonians look at this as a paean to their city. I suppose there's a history of places and people adopting songs critical of them — a la "Yankee Doodle" —Â as their own. But, it still strikes me as ridiculously ignorant. This song is written in pure irony. The composer of the song — the Standells' producer Ed Cobb —Â after he was mugged in Boston. This song is NOT about the Boston Strangler (although the Stones' Midnight Rambler is); he's just one of the many negative references to Boston that's thrown in there. This song is NOT an "anthem of pride" for the city of Boston. Neither Cobb nor any of the Standells was from Boston, nor even had any real connection to the city. That should be the first hint right there that the song is tongue-in-cheek. The song is irony, folks. It's talking about what a shithole Boston was at the time the song was written. The harbor was polluted, it was rife with crime, it wasn't even safe for college girls to be out past midnight. And, the ultimate jab in the eye at Boston was that the narrator of the song — which is NOT to be confused with the author of the song, as this song is clearly written where the singer is voicing a character — takes misguided pride in all his city's problems. It reminds me of how republicans and redneck conservatives latched onto Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" when it was released as if it were an anthem of patriotic pride. Don't these people ever listen to the lyrics? "Born in the USA" was a song about the American Dream being completely derailed and what a mess the US was in in the '80s. All of the tobacco-chewing yahoos with "love it or leave it" bumper stickers who blasted this song out of their 4X4 trucks completely missed the point. Likewise, all the Red Sox and Patriots fans who sing along to this song at games and bars are oblivious to the fact that the meaning of the song is swiftly whooshing over their heads faster than an A10 from Hanscom Air Force Base. In short: the song is talking about how much Boston sucks. |
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| Warren Zevon – Carmelita Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Ensenada is a reference to the city in Mexico, not a street in LA. The narrator is talking about "being" in two places at once: he's literally down-and-out in Echo Park, but in his mind he's also "there with her in Ensenada." Whether Carmelita has left him and gone back to Ensenada or that it just represents a better ideal place where they'd both like to be is not clear. The pearl-handled deck that he's "playing solitaire" with is a handgun. The obvious interpretation is that he's playing Russian Roulette, but he could just be holding the gun and mulling over thoughts of suicide. |
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| The Clash – The Guns of Brixton Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I like Nouvelle Vague, and their cover of "Guns of Brixton" is pretty good. But, what really, really, really bugs me is that the singer mispronounces "Black Maria." Simonon pronounces it (of course...) correctly, so that it sounds the same as Mariah Carey. In the NV version, the singer pronounces it like Maria Bello. Ugh. Just so wrong and ruins their rendition. | |
| Misfits – She Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Um, pretty sure that George Shearing didn't write this song! | |
| Elton John – Rocket Man Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Wow, some people really like to read WAAAAY too much into songs! Just as sometimes a cigar is just a cigar... sometimes a song about a "rocket man" is really just about a guy going into space. And that's all this is. Seriously. I promise. You can look it up. | |
| Misfits – Horror Business Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| This song is not about Sid Vicious/Nancy Spungen, nor is it about Glenn and a "fag" following him into the bathroom, nor is it about Doyle stabbing a redneck trucker in the bathroom of a truck stop (another urban-legend rumor that was prevalent in the Misfits scene "back in the day"). All it's about is the film "Psycho." Nothing more, nothing less. Glenn Danzig was a huge film buff. The very name of the band came from Marilyn Monroe's last film, and there are other references to MM in their music and album art. Their record label was Plan 9 (after the famous Ed Wood B Movie "Plan 9 from Outer Space"). "Where Eagles Dare" was another film. "Psycho '78" just refers to the setting being updated to the current day (the song was written in 1978, released in '79). The protagonist in the song is just Norman Bates, or an imitator of him; a psycho who will stab you in the bathroom. You can't read too much into Misfits songs. There's not much hidden meaning, they're generally about exactly what they say. Just good old fashioned, campy horror fun. | |
| The Police – Roxanne Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| mikxx is sort of right, in that Roxanne is a prostitute, but it doesn't necessarily (and likely) have anything to do with Amsterdam. "Red light district" is a general term that comes from brothels having red lights. To "put on the red light" is just a general term for turning tricks. | |
| Eric Clapton – I Shot The Sheriff Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Why is this listed under Clapton??? This is a Bob Marley song! I have nothing against covers and renditions, but this is a *song meaning* site! It's about interpreting lyrics, not discussing which version of a song sounds best. Unless an artist *significantly* changes the lyrics in his cover so that the meaning of the song actually changes, why on earth would anyone make redundant entries of the same song? Clapton's lyrics are almost identical to the original. So, aren't the meanings the same? On a site like this, there should be one entry per song, on the original artist's section. Or did someone enter this in Clapton's section being too ignorant to realize that it was actually a cover? | |
| The Clash – This Is England Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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The lyrics still aren't correct. Verse 1, Line 1: I hear a gang *fight* on a human factory farm Verse 2: Time on his hands the freezing mohawk strolls He won't go for the carrot, been beaten by the pole Some sunny day, confronted by his soul His eyes will see how fast you can grow old Verse 4: Hey, British boots go kick Bengali in the head Police sit watchin', the newspaper's being read All deaf to protest and after the attacker fled Out came the batons and the biggest one then said, "This is England" Land of illegal dances This is England Land of one thousand stances This is England This knife of Sheffield steel This is England This is how we feel This is England This is England |
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| Steely Dan – Hey Nineteen Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I am as confident as I can be that you are correct. I am old enough to remember partying in the 70's and "Colombian" would have most likely referred to pot, not coke, at the time. Plus, in the context of the song, he's trying to get mellow and forget his problems, to which people usually turn to drugs like alcohol and pot, not coke. If it were a song about getting amped-up, a reference to coke might be in order, but pot fits the theme of the song. | |
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