| Lou Reed – Street Hassle Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I Like how, in the section spoken by Bruce Springsteen, the line from Bruce's "Born to Run" are tweaked to say, "tramps like us, we were born to pay." This kind of puts a cynical twist on the original line. | |
| Modest Mouse – History Sticks to Your Feet Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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A couple of things I guess I wanted to mention: History is a cycle that the speaker is a part of, if not stuck in. The repeated stanza suggests this most clearly. This stanza sounds to me like the speaker is literally walking "sideways" through the aisle ("gutter") of a movie theatre, his feet literally sticking to the floor. This reminds him of history, I suppose, because it suggests all the people who were there before him, who spilt soda, popcorn, candy, etc on the floor, making it sticky. It also suggests an undeniable connection to those people who came before him and those people who will come after him, supposing he adds to the mess. What it ultimately signifies is his place in the cycle of history. The song is obviously about history, but the story of history is the story of change, and change is the ultimate theme of the song. But Brock, or the speaker, is ambivalent to the thought of change. He is in awe of it, and the mysteries of life, specifically how we got here, and how things develop. At the same time, he feels trapped in this cycle of change, and regrets the fact that he too is an organic, transforming, thing. Although he is in awe of exterior changes, he is terrified by interior changes, and regrets that he is also changing. He alludes to the old adage "a rolling stone gathers no moss," but flips it, because for him, he'd rather be a moss-gathering stone if it means it would break him out of this cycle of change. The snake is the central metaphor of the whole song. The image of the snake eating its own tail is called the ouroboros, and is an ancient symbol of cyclicality, self-recreation, and eternal return. But instead of being a symbol of tranquility, it is a symbol of anxiety for the speaker, because change ultimately means death, and death (not change in its own right) is what the speaker fears most; he fears being "history." |
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| Animal Collective – Bees Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I agree with Kubala, and I believe that what alice (and I) hear as 'beast,' is not a "mishear." The 's' sounds at the end of the two words 'bees' and 'beast' are different, the former being a voiced 's' sound, as in 'beez.' When they sing 'bees' several times in a row, the 's' is non-voiced and sounds just like an 's' not a 'z.' That, and the "garbled sounds" that follow (beast-like sounds you may say) suggest to me that they are saying 'beast' not 'bees,' or are at least suggesting the word 'beast.' This may not be very important, but is interesting nonetheless. | |
| Animal Collective – I Remember Learning How to Dive Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Anyone else think they chose the word 'dive' because it sounds like 'die,' especially the way they draw out that long 'i' sound? Plus 'die' rhymes better with 'high.' I think this song is more than just what it literally says. It could be a song about death, comparing it to the first time diving off a diving board. The mood of the song makes sense in both cases as well. A bunch of their songs seem to address death directly or indirectly. | |
| Flake Music – Mieke Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I accidentally added this as a reply to the previous comment. Oh well, here I go again. This is what I hear: I want you on my side To take the hard shots with me. You make it easy to decide. You show all your feathers to me. There's a trail that ends tonight Within the walls of this living room. All of my thoughts that weren't so right Blow and thunder loudly. Like two strays in a terminal Floating ciders in the sky Drifting leaves while stoned aside. This is the race we're meant to run. |
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| Flake Music – Mieke Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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This is what I hear: I want you on my side To take the hard shots with me. You make it easy to decide. You show all your feathers to me. There's a trail that ends tonight Within the walls of this living room. All of my thoughts that weren't so right Blow and thunder loudly. Like two strays in a terminal Floating ciders in the sky Drifting leaves while stoned aside. This is the race we're meant to run. |
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| Modest Mouse – Missed the Boat Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Ok, I'm gonna try to interpret this song from a more philosophical standpoint - something I haven't noticed in the comments I've read. lines 1-4: implied breakdown in communication. Someone wants to change the subject, and one person isn't giving the other person's comments serious thought. But why? 5-8: nostalgic longing for the past, specifically a desire for something that lasts. Maybe the stubbornness from before reflects our human resistance to change. Stuck in a life where everything around us is changing, don't we try to remain constant? 11-12: instead of directing our own lives, we often follow in other's footsteps. This is understandably easier, but we shouldn't accept things blindly for the sake of simplicity. 15-16: Although there's sometimes no substance to our ideas/beliefs we manage to use them as defense mechanisms, warding off ideas that challenge our own beliefs. 17-18: We convince ourselves that our ideas are unique, and not inherited/accepted 19-21: ironic blindness of the direction our beliefs are taking us 24-25: our position is "injured" but we use our accepted beliefs to keep it propped up 26-29: We deny life's uncertainties as we cling to our dogmas ("God dam"/"pillar" are probably attacking religion in particular) 30-32: Assumption that what you "know" about yourself must apply to everyone else 33-34: More attention paid to death/after-life than life 35-36: Are our pursuits really significant? 37-42: these line could be looked at positively or negatively. Missing plane/boat could be a decision against following a group. Death could be symbolic rather than literal - death of stubborn dogmatic self. The tone is pretty positive. 44-46: Death is end of play. Actors/audience all diminutive. We ask ourselves deep questions and project significance onto life. But, panning out, we see we're just little creatures. The "we" of the song become gods to these little creatures, but human, imperfect, erring gods. 47-51: humans are regrettably imperfect, and its hard to build a firm platform to stand on with confidence. But a platform admitting instability is better than one posing as a dogma |
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| Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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When I listen to this song, I imagine a sort of town hall meeting amongst elder generations that has been gathered to discuss the status of the current youth of America. The meeting begins when the spokesperson declares that the people no longer have anything to fear, bigfoot having been captured. A question is raised, however, regarding the youth of society, and a propasal made suggesting that there is something to be feared about the way in which these youths behave Next, they discuss what to do about this reckless generation which they cannot understand nor control. One person comes up with a conclusion. First however, he tells the people that they cannot be afraid of making decisions and carrying out actions that may seem inhuman, though some people may disagree. The decision made is to send these children to war, thus guaranteeing their own self-preservation. They are "calling from a tower", suggestion superiority, but at the same time carrying the connotation that they are disconnected with the rest of the world, being so high up and seperated from the people below. Their opinion is one which they arrogantly believe is the opinion of all, and is one which no one is allowed to disagree with. The youth are described like creatures of folklore who one person attests to have seen, with his own eyes, going out to bars, and getting into cars. The repetition of the phrase "they are child stars" purposefully lacks annunciation so that the phrase begins to sound like the word "chastised", which is how these children of a misunderstood generation are treated. |
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| The Shins – Know Your Onion! Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song is about a kid who is trying to become somebody, but he can't do so in the place where he's living so he has to leave. The kid tries to make himself by listening to music and reading books, but one can't become their own person by just listening to how other people live. This leads us to the "parking their cars on your chest" stanza. The whole stanza is a metaphor for being prevented from accomplishing something. The kid can see his goals ("still got a view of the summer sky"), but the car that's parked on his chest prevents him from flying. The metaphor is for his hometown, which doesn't allow him to be himself, so he makes the choice to move somewhere else. You know he moves because he leaves his friends at the bus stop. This clearly implies that he got on a bus and left town. |
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| The Shins – My Seventh Rib Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| This seems to me to be a coming of age song, where Mercer begins to lose his innocence as he comes to discover all the lies he was told when he was young (the "rotten tomatoes" that lie in what many people say). Partly, Mercer wishes he never found out about these things ("these weren't meant for us to know"). At the same time, however, he recognizes that this ignorance is what gives bad people the power to do bad things ("we've all got our own knives, sold to the worst of the devils we know"). By believing the lies of what people tell us, we hand over our power to do something good to these "devils". Mercer wishes that he could live an innocent life like he did as a child, but he is torn because he also realizes that this innocence is exploited by bad people. | |
| The Shins – One By One All Day Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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The song may not necessarily be about believing in God, but it seems to me to be at least about fate, and the doubt of its existence that comes as one gets older. In the second stanza, the narrator hears the creaking of the elm floor panels of the silo that have begun to rot. Once the floor rots all the way through, they will no longer be able to support the narrator. This seems to me to be a metaphor for the beginning of doubt; The character's belief in fate is rotting too, and soon he will lose his belief in fate completely. The narrator then reflects on his childhood, when he gathered snails and carried them to different places, thereby directing the paths of the snails. This stanza ties with the last, where he reveals his doubt that human beings are like snails in a innocent child's hands, and his doubt that the paths of human lives are in any way governed by another being. The first few lines of the final stanza are the most confusing to me. The shift to second person is random. Perhaps the narrator is talking to himself. The interpretation that I came up with for these lines is that the narrator is reflecting on his past love for a girl whom he thought he was destined to be with forever. Their relationship doesn't work out, however, and this is the event that causes him to lose his belief in fate. It may be a stretch but it works for me. |
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