submissions
| Jimmy Buffett – Margaritaville Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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The narrator of this song is a man with a toxic relationship and an alcohol habit. There's no clear indication of which is the cart and which is the horse, but they clearly feed into each other in a downward spiral. He and his girlfriend fight constantly, even when they're supposed to be away on vacation. One day in Mexico she catches him drunkenly oggling tourist girls on the beach, says she's leaving, and storms off. He waits for her there all season, but she never returns. He drowns his sorrows and tries to get over her, which is what his un-remembered tattoo is all about. Finally, his money and health run down, he returns home. His girlfriend is not there waiting for him, and is apparently really gone for good. But his alcohol habit is still right there with him wherever he goes.
I only recently noticed the double meaning of "my lost shaker of salt". He's referring, of course, to his girlfriend and her nagging and snippiness ("salt"). But he still misses her and wants her back, and finally realizes he might have been able to make it work with her if not for his drunken buffoonery. |
submissions
| Carl Carlton – She's a Bad Mama Jama Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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I'm pretty sure the correct lyrics are "all the curves that men [I]lack[/I]" in at least half of the instances that these lyrics have as "like". It rhymes better with "stacked", and still makes sense. |
submissions
| Phish – Theme From The Bottom Lyrics
| 4 years ago
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I think this is from the point of view of bottom feeding fish, singing to the fisherman fishing in a boat above him. He enjoys the scraps of chum the angler drops, but when there isn’t any, he’s tempted by the fisherman’s bait and gives in.
The last verse, I think, is the fish getting caught and struggling, but succumbing. The last two lines of the last verse are saying Now it’s time for the fisherman to dig for some more bait, since he’s found a good fishing spot. Or maybe just take a nap in his boat first, since he’s already got today’s catch. |
submissions
| Phish – Theme From The Bottom Lyrics
| 4 years ago
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@[Icculus716:34613] Yeah I could definitely picture this song being sung from the point of view of a street kid / lowlife with mental illness and/or a bad addiction, speaking to the well off “friend” who lets him stop by and mooch things off him, in exchange for having somebody to get blasted with. |
submissions
| Phish – Train Song Lyrics
| 4 years ago
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Very surreal lyrics, like someone writing a poem about a dream they had. Probably only meaningful personally to the person who wrote it. I feel like if Salvador Dali had been Phish's lyricist, he might have come up with a lot of songs with lyrics like this. I'm not much of a dream interpreter, but I think a helpful approach to a song like this might be: if someone had a dream that went like this, what might that say about them and what's going on in their life? |
submissions
| Beck – Broken Train Lyrics
| 5 years ago
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This song's lyrics are a stream of consciousness poem, following the inner monologue of a decadent, carefree billionaire in a collapsed, impoverished society that he looks down on. He travels through the slums in his nice suit, decides to try his luck at a gas station, and offers some desperately poor women working or hanging out there money for sexual favors. The "broken train" he takes ride on is the endless series of johns these women service to survive, and the broken society that this man's greed helps maintain. Notice the subtle shift from "they're out of control" to "we're out of control" in the second chorus. He reflects on what he is and what he's doing, but eventually decides "eff it, I love living like this. No one knows how low we'll go!" |
submissions
| Phish – Taste Lyrics
| 5 years ago
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This is a free-spirited guy who lives a very bohemian, unsettled life, speaking to a girl he's having a fling with, who lives a settled, more mainstream sort of lifestyle. He's expressing his reticence to get too close to her, not because he doesn't like her, but because he's not keen on absorb her values and way of life. On the contrary, he'd rather be the one to influence her to cut loose, and live more like he does. |
submissions
| Ween – Freedom of '76 Lyrics
| 5 years ago
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While I agree with the top comments about this song being all about Philly, I feel like everyone's missing the most important thing to be said about this song. Ween are musical hipsters and the kings of less-than-obvious spoofs, particularly of highly sentimental songs that few of us think to question or make fun of. This song is clearly a spoof of Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom". Fire up YouTube and listen to them one after the other, and tell me you don't hear it. |
submissions
| Harry Nilsson – Are You Sleeping? Lyrics
| 5 years ago
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This is a guy speaking to a girl he's in an on-again-off-again, or very casual relationship with. He's very much in love with her and wishes he could have more than this with her, but isn't at all sure she feels the same way, and wonders if she even notices or cares how smitten he is with her. The title / first line is like what you might say if you shook somebody to try to get them to notice something that's right in front of their face.
This is one of those songs that pairs lyrics and melody that pack very different emotional punches. The lyrics are bittersweet frustration. The melody is playful and gentle, and wouldn't sound out of place on a calliope at a circus, or in one of Nintendo's game scored by Koji Kondo. This could be a simple case of less depth for people who just want some cheerful background music, and more depth and darkness for anyone who cares to analyze the lyrics more closely, like a lot of Steely Dan's songs. Or it could just signify that the narrator is kind of playing around himself, and doesn't take his situation all that seriously after all. |
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