submissions
| Alabama Shakes – You Ain't Alone Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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This song is about a transgender female (genetically male) telling the straight young man who has fallen in love with her that he seems scared to be in love with her. "Are you scared what somebody's gonna think? Are you scared to wear your heart out on your sleeve?" |
submissions
| Jens Lekman – Black Cab Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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In the line, "They might be psycho killers" there is a thinly-veiled reference to the song "Psycho Killer" (probably) as performed by the Talking Heads, which was released in 1977. |
submissions
| Vampire Weekend – Worship You Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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The "In foreign soil / In foreign land" seems reminiscent of Psalm 137, "How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?" Incidentally the Psalm was adapted into a Rastafari song, "By the Rivers of Babylon," by the Melodians 1970. |
submissions
| Killer Mike – Reagan Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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Oh, I missed the pun of the best line, "Reagan was an actor, not a real factor." Mike means that Reagan, like all presidents, is a puppet to larger corporate interests. The double-meaning of course lies in the fact that Reagan *was* an actor. |
submissions
| Killer Mike – Reagan Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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A smart track with some incisive criticism of both the rap industry and the state of US politics.
The "we" in the first half of the song seems to refer to the all the gangsta rappers who flaunt the (seemingly) easy money of the industry but create nothing of real value for the communities that they come from. Instead, those artists are harmful because they glorify "death" and "pain." Mike even goes so far as to suggest that rappers who fill the heads of the youth with romanticized visions of gang life are in fact no different from those who introduced drugs ("cocaine") a few decades ago.
Mike uses theme of drugs to pivot to national politics, discussing Reagan's War on Drugs and the havoc it wreaked on urban youth, "And they would beat us up if we had diamonds on our watches."
Mike uses the remaining third of the song to detail his interpretation of the causality of urban policy: the War on Drugs is a viable economic policy, since it generates so much free labor in the form of incarcerated workers ("prisons turned to profits"). He then posits that all the presidents since Reagan, including Obama, are simply marionettes to an overarching military-corporate agenda, "Taking countries is a hobby paid for by the oil lobby."
Mike concludes on a darkly comic note, whereby presumedly armed personnel appear outside his window just as he is finishing this rap. The four powerful last words tie the whole song together thematically while the ominous, fast paced background tune and a voice droning Reagan's name interspersed with "666" decrescendo for another minute. |
submissions
| The Magnetic Fields – Andrew In Drag Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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There a lot of other subtleties in this song, though. Notice the speaker talks about giving away his "trust fund" and "sign away the jag."
It's clearly a young man's song, and so it reminds me of a student production at (for example) Yale, before there were women, and men had to dress up to play the part of the women. It all seems very 1960's Ivy League hush-hush queer.
Great song. |
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