| Nena – 99 Luftballons Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Don't know if anyone's interested, but I thought I'd have a go at writing a translation of the German lyrics in a slightly less literal manner, one that could be sung to the original tune. I prefer the German lyrics to the official English version that Nena sang, and have always wondered whether they could have done the English version better. What do people think? My version: If you have a little time Please listen to this song of mine Of ninety nine hot air balloons On their way, on the horizon It won’t be long before I’m through This little song I’ll sing for you Of ninety nine hot air balloons And how they brought the world to doom. Ninety nine hot air balloons On their way, on the horizon An air force general watched them go And thought they were a UFO He gave the word to all the jets And ordered them to intercept But it was ninety nine balloons On their way, on the horizon Ninety nine jet fighter aces Scrambling from the air force bases Each one felt like Captain Kirk The sky lit up like fireworks! The leaders of the neighbouring lands Saw but didn’t understand All the bombs and all the guns For ninety nine hot air ballons Ninety nine security ministers Loved the threat of something sinister Drew their maps and made their plans Took their matches and petrol cans And called their people out to war The sparks were lit, we never saw That everything could end so soon Because of ninety nine balloons Ninety nine long years of war There are no winners any more Not even one jet fighter ace Ministers gone without a trace Today I’m going on my rounds Over the scorched and barren ground Here I’ve found one last balloon Let it go and thought of you. |
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| The Magnetic Fields – Wi' Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Yes, yasai is right - this is the Magnetic Fields' take on an old folk song. The original, from memory, has him winning, if you could call it that, as she turns into a corpse and he turns into the shroud. I know Steeleye Span, the British folk-rock group, recorded a version years ago. | |
| Jimmy Webb – MacArthur Park Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| No, crombiegirl00, Jimmy Webb wrote it, Richard Harris performed the original version. Personally I think the Jimmy Webb piano version from "Ten Easy Pieces" kicks arse over the original. Much darker and more moody. | |
| Billy Joel – Say Goodbye To Hollywood Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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The song is indeed about Billy's loathing of Hollywood and its fake people - Bobby, driving down Sunset Boulevarde just to be seen in his hot new car, which he doesn't own, just rents... and Johnny, the agent for "troubadours" (like Billy himself) who's now got his back to the door because he owes so many favours to unsavoury people... all the phonies, in other words. And then "life is a series of hellos and goodbyes, I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again" - he's off home to NY. And lucky for us, too, or we wouldn't have The Stranger, 52nd Street, The Nylon Curtain... or any of his other masterpieces. |
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| Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Further to my last post, just been on wikipedia to check the facts about the assassination I referred to. It happened in November 1938. The diplomat was Ernst vom Rath, a Nazi. The assassin was Herschel Grynszpan, a German-Jewish refugee. Allegedly he was angry that his parents were deported to Poland by the Nazis, but there is also the suggestion that he had been in a homsexual relationship with vom Rath, which might tie in with Freddy Mercury's growing awareness of his sexual preferences around the time the song was written. Also, the assassination sparked off Kristallnacht, the first real open anti-Jewish pogrom of Nazi Germany - again, the suggestion of forces at work beyond the control of one mortal man. | |
| Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Okay, I admit I've only read the first three and the last three pages of posts on this one so maybe someone's said this already but I just wanted to raise this... Many many years ago I read somewhere (and I can't remember where, book or magazine) that part of the inspiration for this song was the man who shot the German ambassador to France in 1938 or 1939 (immediately before WWII). The assassin was I believe a Jewish refugee from central Europe (hence "Bohemian") and the link to the song is a man played with by titanic forces which control him. He was manipulated into the act ("Mama, just killed a man..."), and then toyed with by fate - the motif of the trial and "let him go... we will not let you go". Obviously the song is about much more than that, but that was the springboard if you like for the whole thing to take off. Wish I could remember the source for that explanation though. |
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| Bruce Springsteen – Cadillac Ranch Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Yes, I always thought the Cadillac in this song was meant to be a hearse, at least in the last stanza. The Cadillac ranch then becomes the cemetery. | |
| The The – Sweet Bird of Truth Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song was written during the Reagan era, with all the troubles between America and the countries around the Persian Gulf in mind. I think I remember reading an interview with Matt Johnson where he described it as the thoughts of a mercenary on a plane about to crash into the Persian Gulf. Funnily enough, it predates both the Gulf War of 1991 and the more recent American adventures in that area. I never had the album Infected in the '80s, but my best friend did, on vinyl. When I bought it on CD some years later, the version I found had three bonus tracks, 12" versions of Infected, Slow Train To Dawn and this song. The 12" version is even creepier than the album version with wailing pseudo-Arabic musical interludes and voices chanting "Hussein Hussein Hussein" (I think). |
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| Paul Simon – You Can Call Me Al Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Okay, I have a slightly different take on this one. To me it was always about apartheid-era South Africa. The narrator is a black man from one of the "homelands". In the time when the song was written, black people were not generally counted as South African citizens, they were citizens of fictional "homelands" created by the apartheid state and were only allowed into South Africa proper to work and do the menial jobs. So the man comes from the homeland to the city (say, Johannesburg), a dark and dangerous place. He is soft in the middle, naive, innocent, facing the big, bad city. He walks past a white-owned business at night and the owner sets the dogs on him. But he has enough self-respect to say, 'I don't find this stuff amusing any more.' In the second verse, he talks about his nights being long as he is alone. His role-model, perhaps someone he knew at home who came to the city before him has become streetwise and abandoned him for prostitutes. The narrator is bailed up by the cops on a number of occasions - 'incidents and accidents, hints and allegations'. Then the last verse - the narrator, amid all the flith and chaos of the city can still see the thriving marketplace with its bustle and the magnificent public buildings and is still awed by them, despite the overwhelmingly negative experiences in the first two verses. I stress that this is always what the song meant to me - it may have nothing to do with what Paul Simon intended! At the time Graceland came out, I was in Fourth Form and we were studying Alan Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country, and the two seemed to resonate with one another. |
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| The Adventures – Broken Land Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Updating my last comment - I have since found out that this song was inspired by the Troubles in Ireland in the '70s and '80s... a fact which does not at all diminish the beauty of the song. | |
| Shawn Colvin – Suicide Alley Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I agree - I think Shawn Colvin is an underappreciated musician and that this is a really underappreciated track. It's a magnificent song, almost the highlight of a magnificent album. Now to the meaning... I don't know much about Shawn Colvin. I believe she suffered or suffers from depression. To me the song seems to be about support, her support for another sufferer who's in a worse place than her. The "you" in the song seems to be someone contemplating or at risk of suicide, and the singer is trying to encourage him or her not to do it. Lines like - 'let me be your wailing companion' 'You thought you were dreaming But you could wake up dead And you'll never know what's real All this damage is runnin' loose in your head And it really matters to me' 'But you don't have to be going down the dark hall You're not tied to the chair, you're not nailed to the wall' And of course the chorus - 'Oh, no, baby don't go Walking down suicide alley' seem to back up this interpretation. As for the last verse, I think the singer is saying, "Look, I'm doing it tough too, just like you (ie I'm not preaching to you from outside, I'm in here with you) and we can survive this". Not a very subtle reading of the song, but I think it might do for a start? |
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| Pink Floyd – When the Tigers Broke Free Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| For those interested, there's a re-release of The Final Cut which includes this track. | |
| The Magnetic Fields – Fear Of Trains Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I've always wondered about that line too. Maybe what Steve Merrit is saying is that white America as a whole (ie you, the listening audience) are all in a small part responsible for the violence done to the Blackfoot (and other) nations, for example by living off the gains from it but not acknowledging it. | |
| The Adventures – Broken Land Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| This is one of my all time favorite songs. I'd love to know what inspired it. Beyond the imagery of the broken land and the storm, I've never really understood what it's about. | |
| The Police – Message In A Bottle Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| The meaning seems to me to be in the last stanza. "Seems I'm not alone in being alone" The only commonality that people can have with one another is that we're all alone. | |
| Joe Jackson – Real Men Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I can offer another explanation for the rugby reference on the Live album. Joe was playing in Sydney at the time and the Wallabies had just won an important match. The song is about gender ambiguities ("See the nice boys... All the gays are macho...") It has often been said that rugby (and other team-based contact sports) are an outlet for the homosexual feelings of those macho types who absolutely cannot bear to even consider that they might have homosexual leanings. They can get close to one another, touch, hug (after scoring tries/goals). So Joe was basically taking the piss by dedicating this song to the Wallabies... a clever, ironic comment. I think mellisande is right about what the song is actually about - Joe isn't saying that society is changing for the worse, not exactly. He's simply saying that traditional roles are breaking down. The whole song is ironic - it is sung from the point of view of a super-straight, conservative man, at least initially. Hence the "us and them" and the "girls that wore pink, boys that wore blue" in the first verse. Then you have the disapproving-sounding second verse. But at the end, the sting in the tail comes - "Kill all the blacks, kill all the reds, and if it's war between the sexes then there'll be no people left". That's the real message - artificial, arbitrary divisions and categorisation (like man / woman, gay / bi / straight, black / white) will kill us all. This is a theme running through Joe Jackson's work - that we are all human beings, and we should try to get along as such, not put any other characteristic first. See also "It's different for girls" and "One to one", among others. |
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| Merril Bainbridge – Mouth Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Okay, you're probably all correct, and what I'm about to say is definitely NOT what the song's about (because the song predates the events) but I find it spookily predictive of the whole Clinton-Lewinsky affair... Lines like "would it be my fault if I could turn you on?" and the references to being famous on TV, and the fact the affair was all about oral sex... just a thought. | |
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