| Allo, Darlin' – Some People Say Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Most people believe that you wish on shooting stars rather than satellites for your dreams, I wonder whether this is a reference to Billy Bragg's "A New England" which features the line "I saw two shooting stars last night, I wished on them but they were only satellites- is it wrong to wish on space hardware?" The first words of the three lines after "It has a hidden meaning" are "you and I" - which is neat, if not exactly a hidden meaning. |
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| Dry The River – Weights & Measures Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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I think this song is about chivalry, being prepared to love someone and never ask anything of them. The arthurian resonance runs through most of it - the spirit left Camelot and had to be recovered through a great quest for the grail- which lead to a perilous chapel in the forest, the black knight, the sword in the lake. I wonder if the familiar sting of the woodcutter's swing could also related to the story of Gawain and the green knight. In the end, chivalry is not love, it is its own thing. If you love someone and never ask anything of them, you're living in an idealised world, not a real relationship. I think that is part of what this song is all about. |
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| Emmy the Great – History Of Britain Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I have yet to hear this song, but my goodness me what a truly astounding lyric! When you can be moved by a lyric as poetry without ever having heard the tune you know you have found something special... |
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| Emmy the Great – Bad Things Coming, We Are Safe Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Jericho and St Giles are certainly Oxford references, but of course Jericho is also a middle eastern city mentioned in the bible and so a connection with the Salome references in the previous verses. "That if I could/I'd string a cord/Right from my stomach/Into yours" is almost a motherly image, an umbilicus between them. Then in "City Song" she sings "They took a human from my waist..." and it's about abortion but it also connects to this one I think. It seems as if in this story Edward is going travelling to the far east for Christmas 2006. |
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| Emmy the Great – The Easter Parade Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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This is the song that first got me into Emmy The Great. It's pure genius from start to finish. I think that "We're listening to some old man/Say he came back to life with a hole in his head" may be mistranscribed, to my ear it sounds like "a hole in his hand" which would rhyme better and fit the Easter imagery better. The "Gloria in excelsis Deo" ( translates from the latin as "Glory To God In The Highest" ) is what the angels sang when Christ was born in the new testament and has been incorporated into many hymns going back at least as far as the third century. Subtle and brilliant this is one of the finest lyrics I have ever read/heard. |
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| Emmy the Great – City Song Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I didn't think "We Almost Had A Baby" is about an abortion, more a bit of carelessness and then uncertainty that came to nothing. | |
| Emmy the Great – War Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I love this song, but like the relationship it describes, I kind of feel that it ends a little too soon. I want there to be more of it. | |
| Emmy the Great – MIA Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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The song is about disorientation for me, the way that the mind goes into shock to protect itself from a terrible incident. I notice that although there is a lot of duration in the song "feels like a lifetime sitting alone", "how many hours till i'm home" the whole story happens in the duration of a single MIA song, which suggests the time dilation that often accompanies a crisis experience. |
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| Emmy the Great – We Almost Had a Baby Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| When she talks about "the one and five in four" she's referring to the standard country bass line, which leads me to wonder whether the person she is addressing is maybe a bass player. Certainly not many other instrumentalists would talk about playing that. You can hear this type of line on a couple of songs on the album, noticeably at the start of "Dylan". | |
| Emmy the Great – We Almost Had a Baby Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| When she talks about "the one and five in four" she's referring to the standard country bass line, which leads me to wonder whether the person she is addressing is maybe a bass player. Certainly not many other instrumentalists would talk about playing that. You can hear this type of line on a couple of songs on the album, noticeably at the start of "Dylan". | |
| Emmy the Great – First Love Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I notice that the introductory tune is a bit like "I Remember" by Damien Rice, and of course the song is about Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Like most of her songs it is all full of references in addition to the story it has to tell. | |
| Emmy the Great – First Love Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I notice that the introductory tune is a bit like "I Remember" by Damien Rice, and of course the song is about Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Like most of her songs it is all full of references in addition to the story it has to tell. | |
| The Sisters of Mercy – Under The Gun Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I really like the way the count in works between the other lines- "I've lost and I've won two three forget the many steps to heaven..." | |
| Belle & Sebastian – Mornington Crescent Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I think that it is connected to the game. It's certainly full of surreal images, which fits well. It also has the feel of a classic english song, the guitar sound is very reminiscent of something like "Who Knows Where The Time Goes" or similar from the early days of Fairport Convention. |
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| Fairport Convention – Who knows where the time goes Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Just one of the most poignant and beautiful songs anywhere. Sandy Denny's finest moment and Fairport's as well. The end of summer and the passing of time all wrapped up into one song. |
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| Strangelove – Beautiful Alone Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| This is a true indie pop classic, I find inexplicable that Strangelove weren't hugely more successful. | |
| Strangelove – The Sea Of Black Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Apparently it was originally written on Swansea beach. There's a good reason you don't go swimming in Swansea bay... | |
| Bat for Lashes – What's A Girl To Do Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Her voice on this sounds so like Sarah Nixey of Black Box Recorder to me. That same cold, classy quality and there is a lot in the arrangement that is similar. | |
| Billy Bragg – St. Swithin's Day Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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St Swithin's day is 15th July and is traditionally an indicator of weather: "St Swithin’s Day, if it does rain Full forty days, it will remain St Swithin’s Day, if it be fair For forty days, t'will rain no more." Hence the weather in the middle verse. The battle of Agincourt was famously fought on St Crispin's day. |
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| Tori Amos – Hey Jupiter Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Jupiter as the planet ties in to Doughnut Song later in the album where she says "You told me last night you were a sun now with your very own devoted satellite..." |
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| Tori Amos – Pretty Good Year Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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This is a classic example of a song that has been changed by technology. These days everyone burns CDs on their computer, when it was written the only way to burn a CD was to throw it on a fire. |
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| Tori Amos – Josephine Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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When Napolean invaded Russia the Russians just retreated, hardly engaging him at all but burning fields and slaughtering cattle to stop them falling to the French. His supply lines were stretched further and further and his troops consequently reduced until he reached Moscow. There the Russians finally fought him, at the Battle of Borodino, one of the most bloody battles in history. The French won narrowly, and the Russians retreated beyond Moscow, but rather than surrendering they burned the city to the ground, so all Napolean won was a smoking ruin. He was forced to retreat across hundreds of miles of Russia as winter came, losing thousands upon thousands of his troops and marking the beginning of the end of the time when he was the most powerful man in the world. Josephine could not offer Napolean children, so they divorced in 1810. |
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| Tori Amos – Lust Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| To me this song is about the journey to the place where love is, through sex and conflict and the endless patience that people need sometimes. To me it is about the merging of bodies and memories and the drowning of individuality into space where everything is shared with one other person, coiled together and inseparable. The echo and roll of her voice and piano on the chorus are as much of the story as the lyric. | |
| The Decemberists – Of Angels and Angles Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| According to tradition, in the 6th century Pope Gregory I is supposed to have seen some beautiful blond-haired and blue-eyed children in a Roman slave market. He asked after their background and was told they were Angles (one of the northern germanic tribes who gave their names to England), his reply to this was "Non Angli, sed angeli" - "Not Angles but angels." | |
| Josh Ritter – Wings Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I believe this is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. The lyric is amazing and it has some of the rolling power of early Leonard Cohen songs. I can offer no higher accolade. | |
| British Sea Power – Remember Me Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I've heard it said that this song refers to the Monarchy. Did half of you pass away? - maybe a Diana reference? The people's princess that only a tiny fraction of the people cared about remotely. When did they begin to disappear? | |
| British Sea Power – Apologies to Insect Life Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| The Dostoyevsky reference is also given away by the fact that he is probably the only famous Fyodor. | |
| British Sea Power – Carrion Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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To me this song is the essence of what British Sea Power are- it is something timeless and powerful like the sea- stone and steel and horses heels images from the depths of history and to me this is a song about British and particularly English identity in the face of our long and dark history. An island is defined by the sea and so the sea is strong in this lyric. At the same time history is a dead thing, it is carrion, a weight that should be able to throw off if we are to build the new Jerusalem, something which the reference to this "corpus christic isle" in the final bridge seems to allude to. The bridge is missing from the above transcription: When this Corpus Christic isle became a land of ocean blue Again, she cried, you turned my eye, At mentions of, no matter why, And in the end, an August sun, And one by one we blew Until the devil screamed in the evermore In envy of the grace we saw Oh the heavy water how it enfolds The salt, the spray, the gorgeous undertow Always, always, always the sea Brilliantine mortality Brilliantine, as I understand it, is a hair styling product very popular during the second world war- an era that BSP refer to in various ways throughout The Decline Of... "The battle of evermore" is a track of Led Zeppelin's famous fourth album, which featured guest vocals from Sandy Denny, one of the greatest english folk singers of the last century. Scapa flow is in the Orkneys off the north of Scotland, it was the base of the Home Fleet in WW2 and a major naval base in WW1. Rotherhithe is one of the major areas of docks in london. Throughout the song we have the past and the present - the enfolding heavy water perhaps alludes to the fact that much of Britain's nuclear capability is in the form of submarines, deep beneath the sea. Through out the past and the present we have the fact that the British Isles have been preserved (or defeated) as a result, at least in part, of british sea power... |
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| Sufjan Stevens – Casimir Pulaski Day Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| There are two fathers in this songs, the father who drives to the navy yard and the Father who takes and he takes. Partly the song is about the similarities and differences between them. | |
| Sufjan Stevens – Casimir Pulaski Day Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| An illness can have complications as well. Body and spirit reflect one another. | |
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