| Alanis Morissette – Thank U Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
I agree with the previous commentators, that this song is in some ways the Omega to the Alpha of "You Oughta Know." Yet I can't help but interpret the first stanza literally as a reference to overcoming an eating disorder. The "transparent dangling carrots" sound to me like hospital IV bags for patients with very serious anorexia or bulemia, and certainly many of the emotions she expresses are related to the path that many with eating disorders experience on the way to recovery. Of course, this song works quite well without that literal read, but I was curious if anyone else agrees with this interpretation. |
|
| U2 – City of Blinding Lights Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Montrose - thanks for the background on Bono's wife Ali and her home fashioning. I interpreted that line as another reference to New York, being one of the fahion capitals of the world, but the double meaning is even more appealing. "Advertising in the skies" makes me think of Times Square and, futuristically, Blade Runner. |
|
| U2 – Yahweh Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Here's what I wrote about this on my blog in November: The final track, the audaciously named "Yahweh," caught my attention immediately. U2 is well-known not just as a rock band, but as a Christian rock band, and quite possibly the only commercially successful "liberal" Christian rock band. A song titled "Yahweh" is a presumptive statement of their faith, and in fact it doesn't disappoint. [Biblically], the lyrics are fairly transparent. (The overall mood is much like Christmas eve, a prayerful waiting). To me the part that leaped out was the last verse of the song and of the album, the first half of which reads... Take this city A city should be shining on a hill Take this city If it be your will What no man can own, no man can take ... if only because there has been so much news recently about U.S. armed forces "taking" the city of Falluja. Certainly Falluja is no city on a hill, and if it is a rebuke to say that it "should be," the question of who ought be responsible is an open one. Yet if it is not our right to "take" the city, it's also true that neither did the insurgents "own" it. The actual city of Falluja itself is not its buildings but rather the huddled homeless refugees. Take this heart Take this heart Take this heart And make it break The song's final plea is not the usual one for world peace, but rather something both simpler yet equally impossible. Bono prays not for our hearts to heal but to break. To love our neighbors and indeed our enemies is to hurt that they hurt, whoever or whatever may be responsible for the pain. It is not a prayer for compassion, though compassion is implied; it is not a prayer for love, though love is necessary; it is not a prayer for justice, though justice would result. It asks us just the simple question: do our hearts break for the city of Falluja? |
|
| U2 – Acrobat Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
FullDevilSoccer: The phrase is better known in its pseudo-Latin translation, "Non illegitimus carborundum." See http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxillegi.html, "The phrase seems to have originated with British army intelligence early in World War II. It was popularized when U.S. general Joseph W. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell (1883-1946) adopted it as his motto. Various variant forms are in circulation." |
|
| U2 – Bullet The Blue Sky Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Thanks to U2Babe for pointing out the significance of the line, "Into the arms of America." My initial reading of that line was pretty much at the figurative level -- that the women and children are running for the comfort of the United States. Of course, I now see that the line is a bitter one, intended to be interpreted literally: these women are children are running into the ARMS -- the WEAPONS -- of America -- weapons we have sold around the world. The imagery throughout this song is of civilian casualties: "And I can see those fighter planes / Across the mud huts where the children sleep." That the last line should have two entirely opposite meanings -- the less obvious one conjuring a horrible image -- is brilliant. |
|
| Paul Simon – Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
This is my favorite Paul Simon song because of its incredibly beautiful music, but I feel the words are also magical. As already mentioned, the "diamonds" refer to South Africa's diamond mining industry, but the specific term is an ironic one: the (literally) dirt-poor miners walked around with the dust of diamonds on the soles of their shoes. That would imply that the woman in this song isn't actually rich, or that she's rich in the same way as those miners were rich, but I think Simon found the term itself amusing and took it out of its context, since it's clear that the woman is financially wealthy. It's also quite possible that the rich girl is really poor in a spiritual sense, especially since diamonds are both a hard and "cold" precious stone. It would be hard to walk around and not notice those diamonds on your feet; it is the curse of wealth that sets rich people apart. Thinking about it that way, "wearing diamonds on the soles of your shoes" is the very inverse of the phrase "wearing your heart on your sleeve." I agree with JForsythe62's analysis of the switch to "THEIR shoes," a lyrical device that Simon uses very often. |
|
| Paul Simon – Graceland Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Even if the word "Graceland" is a "fill word" (I was surprised to learn from the article I cited above that Simon wrote the melody and lyrics of "Graceland" and "Rhythm of the Saints" after all the other song elements were in place), I think the word choice is both deliberate and apt. "Graceland" is a marvelous synonym for "Heaven," the place of reunion with God's grace. The use of the word "pilgrims" reinforces the idea of a spiritual journey to rededemption. Indeed, the entire album Graceland is concerned primarily with the climb to redemption from a middle-aged crisis of faith. ("I'm looking at ghosts and empties." "I want a shot at redepmtion." "Somebody could walk into this room and say your life is on fire"). Yet the narrator here expresses a (surprisingly Christian) faith in the possibility of redemption, that God will forgive his sins and heal the wounds that the world inflicts. |
|
| Paul Simon – Graceland Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| An echo of "As if I never noticed / the way she brushed her hair from her forehead" in wife Edie Brickell's Lost in the Moment, another song about loss: "She wanted him to see this / She wanted him there / She wanted to kiss him / and brush back his hair." | |
| Paul Simon – Graceland Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| An echo of "As if I never noticed / the way she brushed her hair from her forehead" in wife Edie Brickell's Lost in the Moment, another song about loss: "She wanted him to see this / She wanted him there / She wanted to kiss him / and brush back his hair." | |
| Paul Simon – Graceland Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
From the New York Times's Stephen J. Dubner ( http://www.stephenjdubner.com/journalism/110997.html ) ''I don't think I would have worked with anybody but Paul Simon,'' Walcott says. ''Before I met him, I always thought he was a very fine poet. I mean, the first line of 'Graceland' is a great line of verse: 'The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar/ I am following the river down a highway through the cradle of the Civil War.' That's Whitmanesque, or even Hart Crane. What I also like very much is how Jewish his writing is: it's ethnically very provincial, deliberate. In other words, here's someone who has never lost his identity totally. He can go to South Africa, or to the Caribbean, and he remains a Jewish singer.'' |
|
| U2 – City of Blinding Lights Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
This is a beautiful song with only one musical misstep, IMHO (the awkward bridge of "Time... time won't leave me as I am..."). It takes the classic circular structure that I particularly love, starting with a three-line stanza beginning with "The more you see the less you know" and ending with a three-line stanza beginning with "The more you know the less you feel." The final message is classic U2 in both its religious and ecumenical thrust, reminding us that God loves us all, even the unfaithful. It's also classic U2 in its earnestness, emerging from faith that love and reason will see us through troubled times. The stanzas "Neon heart dayglo eyes / A city lit by fireflies" remind me of "In God's Country": "Sad eyes, crooked crosses / In God's Country." Many of the reviews of this album dwelled on U2's era of irony / self-awareness / self-indulgence (Achtung-Pop). If this song is indeed a paean to NYC, it's also a word of encouragement and advice to not let self-awareness become self-doubt, as these critical lines tell: "Don’t look before you laugh / Look ugly in a photograph." These words are painful, evocative of a teenager whose sudden realization of identity leads her to mug for the camera to avoid the reality of her true beauty. If, like that girl we all know, NYC is waking up to itself, it needs the reassurance that "Oh you look so beautiful tonight." Audaciously, unashamedly, U2 offers it that assurance. Those same lyrics also evoke, for me, U2's era of pretentious facadism. In confessing "All that you can't leave behind," U2 acknowledged that the act of remaking yourself is both impossible and inherently self-indulgent. Personally I feel like they are coming to peace with the realization that "The more you know the less you feel." |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.