| Of Monsters And Men – Dirty Paws Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Nanna said in an interview 3 months ago that the band's NAME "became a big part of the way that we write LYRICS." The band's name contains two key ideas. The first idea is that human plans go wrong and end badly (ie "the best made plans of mice and men"). The second idea is from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, who suggested that "man was more monstrous" than the monsters he creates. So the band's prime lyrical thrust may be that man's monstrous arrogance will bring him down. With that in mind, the dragonfly can be seen as the enslaved pet of a man, man's cruel harnessing of another species that should fly free. Man is depicted with an animal head because he is in fact an animal too, though he may be in denial about this. In the dragonfly's story, the "bees" are a metaphor for man, who seeks to dominate the earth with "killing machines." The dragonfly's story looks forward to a rebellion and overturning of the power of the bees. That is, it looks forward to a time when man will cease to dominate the earth and live in harmony with it instead. The fertile metaphor of "the birds and the bees" is used to emphasise how species, that should work together to make an abundant earth, do not because of the betrayal of nature by those busy machine building mechanical "bees," that is, us. The "beast with the 4 dirty paws" is, in turn, a metaphor for nature fighting back against man's arrogance. "Dirty Paws" is a parable seeking harmony in nature, which has been disrupted by man's arrogance. |
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| Anaïs Mitchell – Shenandoah Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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In the old folk song, "Oh Shenendoah," a rover has left a daughter of Shenendoah, who he loves and has not seen for 7 years, and he yearns to return to Shenendoah to find her across the great Missouri. So the man suffers for the love of a woman. In this sequel, he has returned to Shenendoah, found his love, and she has sung him love songs. Then she betrays their love and leaves him (which is sort of karma, since he left her in the original song, and then wanted her back years later). Now he's toiling on the land of Shenendoah yearning for his love to return to him. The man suffers for the love of a woman again. Nothing much changes, I guess. :) |
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| Lana Del Rey – Off to the Races Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Another classic Lana love song, even more perverse than her other songs. She wants to be loved the possessive way Humbert Humbert loves Lolita, a twisted love of ownership and worship, where Lover Sugar Daddy owns her like a possession and worships her sexually. As per usual with Lana, the spending of money on her equates to love, because Lana likes the masochistic delight of being owned and bought by another person. Giving herself up to be owned by another is the declaration of the greatest possible love for Lana. | |
| Lana Del Rey – Dark Paradise Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Absolute love again. He's gone forever, most likely dead, and only in dreams can she have him back, a paradise that is dark because it is not real, and she wants to sleep forever, and not live a waking life any more. She wants to die to be with him on the other side, but she lives in terror that after death they won't be together. Lana Del Rey is a success because she writes of a love that is deeper, harder and more twisted than anyone else does. Love it! :) |
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| Lana Del Rey – National Anthem Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| This is about equating money and love. He is loaded and worships money, she presents herself to him like his property, a money equivalent. She wants to be worshipped by this money worshipping clown just as much as he worships money. If money is the anthem of success, then she wants to be his National anthem, his most important possession. She wants him to owned and worshipped at the same time, like money is. | |
| Lana Del Rey – Without You Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Another statement of the absolute love Lana cannon: "I am nothing without you." She gets it all, everything she wanted, but without the person she loves it means NOTHING. She loves him so much, she's willing to let him smash her to pieces, the way a china doll smashes to pieces when it falls. His love is deadly because she is so masochistic, she will willingly die for him. Total absolute sick and twisted love the Lana way. :) |
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| Lana Del Rey – Summertime Sadness Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Total obsessional love, the Lana Del Rey all-in masochistic approach to relationships. Her guy leaves her as the Summer begins. Since she's addicted to him like a drug, her Summer (which should be a good time of year) isn't. She sings "I think I'll miss you forever." She will never get over him. With him, she could die happy. Without him, she just wants to die. That's her summertime sadness. |
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| Laura Marling – I Was Just A Card Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| The cards could be tarot or something like that (aren't those covered in symbols like planets and stars?), so it's like until you get to know someone, to them you are just a card in their hand, one they might play or discard. And tarot is fortune telling, so you don't know how it's gonna turn out. But he's got another "card" in his hand too, another woman he might play and get to know instead, and she's thinking about you (Laura) "Who is she?" And of course, this guy is a card in the hand of both Laura AND the otehr girl. it's about how we all circle each other. | |
| Florence + the Machine – All This and Heaven Too Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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There's always one song on any masterpiece album that isn't like the others, in Sesame Street parlance. The chorus on this one sounds like it was written by Katy Perry to be sung by Avril Lavigne. Florence, the greatest gothic romantic songwriter out there, should stick to the path less trodden. |
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| Florence + the Machine – Heartlines Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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prophetessofdoom, yes, and find your destiny not by making a plan and executing it, as that would be following your headlines, but find your destiny by following your "heartlines," which are your passions and your loves. Heartlines drown you completely, unlike headlines, which would consider following your heart a bit reckless and dangerous. Florence say embrace the danger, and she suggests a mutual destination between herself and the person she's singing to, as "your heart is the only place that I call home." Maybe the passion "against the wall on a Wednesday afternoon" is one they once shared and one they may return to if they both follow their hearts. |
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| Florence + the Machine – No Light, No Light Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Bethie09, yes, you are right. Thanks. :) The lack of light she perceives in her lover's eyes is actually a lack of light in her own heart. It's HER who has stopped feeling the relationship, and she can't explain it to her lover. Maybe it's beyond words. |
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| Florence + the Machine – Spectrum Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Love makes you shine like a star, exposing the full spectrum of your feelings and personality, in a way greater than you ever dreamed. You call out to your love to "Say my name" as a request to be fully seen and fully acknowleged. And then you both shine together, bringing out the best in one another. Just as white light contains within it all the colours of the rainbow, love brings out all your colours and potential, the full realisation of everything good that is you. And for Florence, that love can last forever, as even after death, dressed in black, as if mourners at your own funeral, your loved one screams out your name to light you up again, as you both drag your resurrected bodies from the ground. |
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| Florence + the Machine – Seven Devils Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I think this is about a RECKONING at the end of a relationship. Jesus cast seven devils out of Mary Magdalene, but Florence doesn't want her devils cast out, she doesn't want to be pacified by holy water (reasonableness/goodness/Jesus), she doesn't want to be bought off by money, she doesn't want to share in the chattels and goods of the relationship: her goal is to tear her lover's world to pieces, to give full rein to her "seven devils," of bitterness and fury and anger and hurt, to burn him down completely in revenge. But also in purification, because when she's done, he will be excorised, his lies exposed, the contradictions (paradoxes) in what he said laid bare, and his heart may ultimately be saved by this (for a future relationship, not this one, for what has been done "cannot be undone)" She is already dead because she woke up to realise the foundation of her life, her relationship, was dead, and now the day is about roasting her lover on hot coals until the devils of their relationship consume them both. |
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| Florence + the Machine – Never Let Me Go Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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This song seems to be about SURRENDER. Not giving up (an act of despair) but giving in (an act of embrace and devotion). This is about the pleasure of being overwhelmed, something akin to masochistic delight. Ostensibly, the singer surrenders to the ocean, and lets it pull her to the bottom. All her concerns and prayers are as nothing any more because the all-encompassing sea reduces her to nothing. But this is more metaphor, than reality, as the refrain "Never let me go," suggests that life continues after the surrender, and the willing victim desires to be overwhelmed forever. It's like the moment of orgasm, where you barely exist as a thinking person, and want to stay there forever. It's the decision to surrender to a passion or desire, that others may question (branding you a sinner), but you don't care, and beg that desire to embrace you foreve, to NEVER LET YOU GO. |
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| Florence + the Machine – Only If for a Night Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Florence's long dead Grandma comes back as a ghost in a dream to give Florence practical advice, against the backdrop of her old school (she was a schoolgirl when her gran passed away). For Florence, it is as if her Grandma is alive again, if only for a night, and in the dream, Florence celebrates by doing cartwheels. Sad and beautiful. This song is about loving and remembering the dead, | |
| Florence + the Machine – No Light, No Light Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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The light goes out on a relationship, and there's NOTHING you can do to keep the other person. You look in to the other person's eyes looking for the light of their love for you, but it's NOT THERE. You'll say anything, you'll beg them to tell you what to say to get them to love you again, but then you see it in their eyes, there is NOTHING you can say to get them back - You are already dead to them. This is the violence of your revelation of the breaking of this new day without their love. They are a hole in your head, it's like they SHOT you. Now all you have is the empty space in your bed next to you, and the hell of knowing it was your words on your tongue that made them silent, it was your inability to express your love to them (as opposed to singing about love to audiences) that ultimately killed their love for you. This is Florence at her most hopeless, desperate and poetic, and if you haven't known pain like this, you're lucky. |
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| Adele – Set Fire to the Rain Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Ha ha, I think you're very close. At Hammersmith Apollo, Adele said this was inspired when she was fighting with her boyfriend in the rain outside a restaurant, and her boyfriend said she'd never light her cigarette because the lighter was wet, but Adele ignored him and tried and tried, and eventually the lighter worked, and she laughed in the boyfriend's face. | |
| Adele – Rumour Has It Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| At Hammersmith Apollo tonight, Adele said this song is about how rumours that are untrue are believed. She said even her best friends believed she was in a relationship, with someone she had never even met, on the basis of rumours. This is a "sarcastic" (Adele's word) song dealing with how rumours can spread total garbage about people. | |
| Adele – One and Only Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Tonight at Hammersmith Apollo, Adele said she has realised the guy she wrote this song about is a "complete dickhead." She said this is the only song on 21 NOT about her ex-boyfriend, and their relationship. Adele said that although she always pictures the ex-boyfriend when singing the other songs, she can't bring herself to think of the "dickhead" when she sings this song, so she dedicated this song to all the people in the audience who really love someone. At the end, she admitted she did think of the dickhead after all, but she was thinking about punching him in the face. :) | |
| Adele – My Same Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Yes, this song is for Laura, Adele's friend since childhood, who went to the Brit School with her. They are very much still great friends. Laura was at the show at the Hammersmith Apollo tonight, and Adele dedicated the song to her, explaing that Laura is "crazy" and "I am sane." They are totally different but their friendship works. :) | |
| Sufjan Stevens – Vesuvius Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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This song is about Sufjan belatedly giving in to the fire of his id: ie. "Vesuvius!" He said last night at Royal Festival Hall that he had been a planner when he was 15, everything meticulous, well-behaved and in it's place, but at 30 he has decided to give in to all his impulses and feelings, to give in to his desire to become a creature of the body instead of the creature of the mind he has been in the past. He said he was trying brave new things like stamp-collecting, and he (jokingly) told us to quit school and take drugs. From a Christian perspective, you'd say that Sufjan has fallen, and is risking fire and brimstone (and the song worries about this - "article of eminent death," "why do things have to be so hard"). I'd say Sufjan's belatedly finding himself. Best wishes, Sufjan! Awesome concert, eruption of joy and dancing at the end - everything I think this song is about! :) |
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| Alexi Murdoch – Slow Revolution Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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"All of this matter soon won't matter much anymore!" I feel this line is genius. I love the dual use of the word matter, the noun and then the verb. It's certainly true. After we all die, all the things that we think are really important, won't be. As to the meaning of the whole song, I think NomadGal was closest. I do think Alexi wants it ambiguous whether the "true word" is that of Martin Luther King, Syvia Plath and/or environmentalism, or GOD himself/herself. After all, ask most people what "the Word" meanss and they would say the word of God, and ask what the "true word" is and that would be the word of the true God, which since Alexi isn't sure what it is, he doesn't pin it down. All Alexi is saying, he is seeing a time in the future, when we are all dead, when the truth will have shown itself. The slow revolution is us slowly aging and dying, approaching that truth, whatever it is. For Alexi, death would seem to be more certain than taxes, and I think we know he's right. |
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| Alexi Murdoch – Orange Sky Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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"Brothers," "Sisters," "Salvation" - this seems to be about religion, that God's love is the ultimate home, the ultimate salvation. However, it could equally be about the love of actual home, the love of an actual person or people. The importance of LOVE is key, whether it is the love of God, or the love of others, as being the only thing of any real worth - it is this love that is the HOME of the heart, when we discard material goals and ambitions. Alexi clearly intends the source of the love and salvation to be ambiguous as he states it is all only a DREAM. And not any dream, but one under an orange sky, which denotes that it is a realisation that comes at the end of the day, just before the sun sets when the light turns orange; a metaphor for the most important realisation that comes at the end of life itself: that LOVE is our salvation. |
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| Alexi Murdoch – Towards The Sun Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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If you can't get a grip on who you are, or why you're here, it's hard to get motivation to do anything. This song seems to be about this kind of existential crisis and the feelings of pointlessness and indirection that go along with that. The clouds creeping towards the sun and the ice unfreezing in Spring are signs that time is running out. The second verse shows that there is hope in love, which is why the protagonist dreams of walking alongside his love, but because he is so confused about life and what to do, he prioritizes the symbol (the "rose") over the love ("you") herself, and loses her. Time is running out and unless Alexi figures out who he is, his life will end without ever committing to any purpose, and he'll be burned up by the approaching sun without figuring out his life's meaning. |
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| Alexi Murdoch – All My Days Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Yes, I think at the time of writing this song, the solution Alexi finds to the emptiness of the days and nights we all go through is God. Only God (if he/she exists) is guaranteed to continue with you ALL of your days. I don't believe in God, but I see the beauty of the concept. Still, I think this song has enough ambiguity that you can apply it to whichever person is the most important to you in your life, which is nice. :) |
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| Alexi Murdoch – Dream About Flying Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| This song feels very pessimistic and very true to me. At 5 years old (or thereabouts) you realise you're not invulnerable, and from there on it's all loss, decay and death. But in your dreams you remember the fantasy of invulnerability you used to have: you dream of flying. Then you wake up crying because the fantasy is so beautiful it touches you, and also because you realise it's unattainable in real life, so yopu feel the sense of disillusionment and loss you felt at five years of age all over again. | |
| Lykke Li – Get Some Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| This is about the power of a woman over a man. She's in control of his pants, not him. He must shut up. She doesn't take demands, all he can do is pray. His sexual needs are his weakness, which means he's wrapped literally and metaphorically around her finger. She performs oral as an act of power to reduce his mind to jelly. | |
| Warpaint – Elephants Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| To say there is "an elephant in the room" is to say there is a massive thing that affects everything but which noone talks about. The damaged girl pushes away her perfect lover to protect him from the damage ("I'm on my way down") inside of her ("I'll break your heart to keep you far from where all dangers start"), but never speaks about why she breaks his heart, never allows anyone close to her troubles, the elephants in the rooms of her mind that make the relationship impossible. She hopes her discarded lover will find the happiness he sought in her inside himself ("I hope that you find all there is that you want is inside you now.") | |
| Warpaint – Stars Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Babies/kids are stars to their mothers - the wonder of life that comes out of you, that's a copy of you but not you. And kids sometimes have stars on their ceilings to soothe and amuse them as they go to sleep. So on the surface, it's about the connection and wonder (the "glow") that a parent feels watching their child fall asleep. But it's much deeper too, because it's not only the baby that glows (mysteriously with a unique life) in the darkness, but the song says all of us do too ("glow in the darkness, that's how WE do it"). The song expresses wonder in how we are all shining stars, all different and all alive, glowing in the darkness of an inexplicably enormous and dark universe. | |
| The Pretty Reckless – Light Me Up Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I'm probably wrong, but I hear "There's plenty of white to go around" which to me makes this about smoking crack cocaine. Her boyfriend (drug-dealer) seems to be someone she can't relate to except through drugs. Hey, light me up when I'm down. |
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| Marina and the Diamonds – Seventeen Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Any idea why Marina didn't include "Seventeen" on the UK release of "Family Jewels?" Did she feel it didn't fit with the other songs, or was it because the "Crown Jewels" EP was aready out? | |
| Lissie – In Sleep Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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The person dreamed about is a man, but the song is no more specific, so the song can have many different nuances: If it's about a lost lover, the emotional resonance is negative, in the sense that he's moved on, and she hasn't. If it's about an estranged father, then the impact of dreaming about him could bring father and daughter back together, which has a more positive resonance. Most poignantly, it's about a dead person, maybe a dead grandfather, in which case there's a poetic beauty to the song, where the living grand-daughter brings him back to life in her dreams, sustaining the memory of him long after he's gone. This is the affecting meaning that means the most to me. |
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| Lissie – Wedding Bells Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I wonder if this cover is merely a tribute to Hank Williams, or is Lissie singing it in tribute to a real woman (since traditionally only women change their name on marriage) she wanted to marry? | |
| Lissie – Record Collector Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I think this song is about how you repeat life's mistakes (getting "lost") over and over, until you take the time to learn from your past. After all, it is your "yesterdays" that bring you to the place you are now in life. Lissie suggests that her general approach to life is so short-sighted (irony implicit in Lissie's lyric) that she forgets that her own eyes are actually more green than the blue she generally considers them to be. Lissie confesses that she's always resolving "I won't get lost ever again," but of course, she does, because she hasn't "recorded" (ie fully appreciated and learned from) the reasons why she keeps getting lost. Metaphorically, she's always raking up leaves because she never realizes it would be better to cut down the tree. Her spontaneous way of life means her thoughts are like a "choir of bees" buzzing around her head, rather than a logical plan of getting from A to B, which is of course why she never gets anywhere ("I'm starting to think that I've been here before"). At the end of the song, Lissie asks God (a female God in her conception) for help in achieving life's "wonder" ("Won't you fill me up with it!?"), and she resolves to "keep records" of her actions, so that she can avoid repeating herself. This will allow her to stop going in circles, like a record (another intentional pun in Lissie's lyric), and finally move forward to achieve life's wonders. Lovely song. |
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| Perfume Genius – When Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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This is about the beauty of a nuclear bomb exploding, which is about to kill a watching family (and by extension) all life on earth. Coow, yes, and it's interesting that he doesn't sing the first line of Old's poem. The most pessimistic word in the poem is the "only" in the first line, which implies that the bomb WILL go off for sure. By leaving that part out, the "WHEN" of the title also becomes a question about whether the bomb will go off, rather than the straightforward assertion of the poem that it WILL go off. Slightly more ambiguous and open to possibility than the absolute miserableism of the Olds poem. |
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| Mumford & Sons – White Blank Page Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I think you got it. This is a man railing (with a "swelling rage") against a God who gives him sexual feelings, then bars him from acting on them (with the threat he will no longer be "clean" enough to bow before the "king" aka God, if he acts on them). The man feels God is punishing him for his faith: "where was my fault In loving you with all my heart?" If the man had never been religious, he would never have felt the unpleasant guilt, and could just have enjoyed his sexuality. He feels his love for the girl is beautiful and natural, and asks God to tell him the truth about the contradiction: "Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life." Implicit in this is that if God doesn't clarify his confusion soon, this man is going to turn atheist. |
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| Mumford & Sons – Thistle & Weeds Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| The narrator addresses his "darling," who has been "corrupted by the simple sniff of riches blown." He accuses her of suppressing her love for him ("you have felt much more love than you've shown") because of her wearisome dreams of wealth ("spare me your dreams"). As Jesus said, in the Parable of the Sower, only if you plant your seeds (aspirations/life/love) is good ground (rather than thorny ground aka thistle and weeds), will they grow successfully. Although the narrator has achieved a "winter clarity" (end of relationship realization) about his darling's bad priorities destroying their relationship (she's a Kanye West style "golddigger"), he intends to hand in there ("I will hold on") and suffer her cold heartedness ("rain down on me") in the hope she'll see that their love is more important than the material possessions she's so greedy for. | |
| Grinderman – Heathen Child Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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When you don't believe in a God, like Nick (aka "the abominable snowman" aka "the wolfman)," or like the babe in the bathtub ("the heathen child"), then SEX becomes your God, and fuck everything else (husbands, wives, children, government), it's time to leave the bathtub running and get it on. You become each others' Gods: nothing else matters. My favourite Grinderman song! So primal. :) |
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| Linkin Park – Waiting For The End Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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This song perfectly captures that painful moment of denial when a relationship is ending. Because "It's hard to let you go," the singer pretends to himself that he's still got the love he used to have, but in fact he's deluding himself, "holding on to what I haven't got." "The hardest part of ending is starting again" because the pain of lost love is too heard to bear, the loneliness of an "empty room" makes it worse, the messiness of "so many things. . . left unsaid" makes it even worse, so it feels far less painful just to pretend it's all not happening. . . to delay and delay that moment when "we dead it, forget it, let it all disappear." And this song applies to all sorts of relationships, when you've got to say goodbye, but just can't bear it yet. . . So powerful, I love this bittersweet truthful song! |
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| Crystal Castles – Courtship Dating Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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The record label's account of the lyrics is censored to avoid controversy. This song is not only about having sex with your friend's dead body, it is also about KILLING them to do so. The correct lyric is: "Stove burns on my hands Show them kill my friend Make you participate" The serial killer (Alice) has murder in mind. She has an animal cage which busybodies will be imprisoned and murdered in: "The first to interfere Are culled before the deer When they wander into the cage" Her real business is killing her friend so she can have sex with his dead body: "Make you participate" "Seasoned to procreate" This song is Crystal Castles version of a serial killer story, where extreme love and obsession turns to murder and mayhem. |
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| Crystal Castles – Air War Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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In the Sirens episode of James Joyce's "Ulysses," Leopold Bloom gets morose and drunk listening to the lyrics of a song about a cheating wife, while he imagines his own wife is getting seduced by a lover. Except the song is not about a cheating wife, but a sleepwalking wife, mistaken for a cheat. So Bloom gets mixed up in his own drunken jealousy, confusion, misinterpreting lyrics carried along by the siren song of music and alcohol. The "Air War" lyrics (quoted from Sirens) reflect the jealousy ("War! War! The tympanum"), the music ("jingle jingle" "clack clack"), the confusion and drunkenness ("henev erheard inall" - ie he never heard it all) as Bloom mistakes his wife for a Siren Seductress ("A sail! A veil awave upon the waves"). |
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| The Brian Jonestown Massacre – B.S.A. Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| The (British) Birmingham Small Arms Company made motorcycles from 1909 - 1975. :) | |
| Reef – come back brighter Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Yes, that's right, when you've "been down," you mustn't mope, just get on with things, do stuff, and you will recover from misery naturally ("come back brighter"). If you wallow in misery, the "black hole inside ya" will delude you into thinking that everything, including good things, are pointless (ie even "the sun hurts" you if you have a depressive attitude). You gotta will yourself to "lighten up," and then you will "come back brighter!" Awesome upbeat positive song about the power of the mind! |
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| Ellie Goulding – Lights Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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The grown-up world can be a scary dispiriting place ("not keeping. . .the strength"), full of letdowns ("the Queen has been overthrown"), fear ("I'm not sleeping now"), failure ("losing it all") and depression ("the dark is too hard to beat"). But before you give in to despair ("turn to stone"), the "lights" of "home," your childhood recall of that safe haven ("when my brother and my sister slept in an unlocked place"), can guide your defeated spirit back towards hope. Answering the "call" to return "home," to the unconditional love of parents/family, can recharge resolve, keep alive your "lights" for "when I'm alone." |
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| Arctic Monkeys – Red Right Hand (Nick Cave cover) Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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The "Red Right Hand" is the hand of God, red on account of the way it strikes humans in punishing ways. Horace (23BC) wrote of the God Jupiter striking his own city and temple with his red right hand. Then, in 1667, in Milton's Paradise Lost, the fallen angel Baliol warns the other fallen angels not to go to war with God for fear of his "red right hand" striking them. In Nick Cave's version (1994), he depicts the contradictory nature of God, at once a ghost (holy), a guru (preacher), a man (Jesus) and yet still threatening us that with "red right hand" of punishment for our sins, even after promising to answer our prayers for money, self-respect, cars, etc. "God's plan," at once creating us all, and then punishing us all, is seen as bizarre and threatening: every human is merely "one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan Designed and directed by his red right hand." |
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| Why? – The Hollows Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Yoni is saying that it's a singer-songwriter's responsibility to tell the truth about things they often lack the guts to admit. The "underdone, under-tongue, lung long frontmen" are singers with big lungs but no tongues, loud mouthed rockers with nothing truthful to say ( and that includes Joanna Newsom's filthy left hand, which has been hiding not admitting it's indiscretions). Yoni feels he too has been gutless, his moustache a form of hiding, his very Wolf-ness wasting it's time howling at a "paper" moon, rather than the burning fiery moon of total truth. "The Hollows" are the parts of us we humans (aka children of the earth or "earth growths") don't like to fess up about. Yoni says "Shine a flashlight" in your dark "hat box" and "celebrate the hollow" truths of the universal human experience. Yoni's tale of being a gutless chump, fleeced by and fearful of "gypsies," is an example of how to wallow in the truth of hollow human exprerience. Truth, Yoni believes, will set us free, not posing BS, no matter how well sung. |
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| Why? – This Blackest Purse Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Yes, I think the "blackest purse" is the pose of being doomed and suicidal, that young people think is so cool. Yoni admits in verse 1 that he's never got as close to suicide as he's faked on previous lyrics on stage, suicide in fact being a "far off and abstracted" thought. He worries that by carrying on the pose (like the bowler hat and bow tie posers), he's "failing" his mom (setting a bad example), or "worse" (pandering to teens tendency to think suicidal nihilists are cool). Yoni denounces himself, and sets a new goal for his now "earnest" hands, no longer to carry that "blackest purse" of the poser death cult, but instead to focus on the TRUTH: the "sharpened steel of truth in every word." This song is a manifesto for honesty in art. |
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| Why? – These Few Presidents Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I suspect this is about how race and religion divides people, and defeats liberal morality. She's a nordic shiksa, and he's not: his "chinese fingers" a metaphor for Yoni's jewishness/otherness, which is the essence of why he CAN'T, and WON'T listen to her. He idolises her "perfect" waspishness, but won't let her in because he feels he's not a part of her perfect world. The metaphor of crushing the literal wasp reinforces the level of intrinsic callousness, which he feels in choking off her words and opinions, just because she's different from him. Liberal morality be damned: no wasp-ish white presidents' (whose images appear on notes in his pocket) preachy imaginary appeals to his liberal morality, gods, etc, have any hope of shifting the base racism that is the crux of the relationship divide. She will not be allowed "to talk" reason to him, and he will not 'let her off" her crime of being different from him. He is resolved that the closest he will ever get to her, emotionally, is when he shows up at her funeral. |
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| Beach House – Lover of Mine Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I think it's about the lure of cheating. A new lover "rushes" into the lives of you and your partner. "Parting your lips" for an illicit kiss makes you feel "awake and unreal, off to nowhere," so that your cheating affair feels like the only important thing in your life. But this temporary bliss really is "off to nowhere" good, it's all a delusion: "the only thing you've got, you know you're better off without." Still, you surrender to the passion anyway ("Youngest fire, you decide") and mess up your life: "Near yet so far, isn't it?" |
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| Jay-Z – Run This Town Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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This song is so brilliantly catchy, it proves it's point. The point of the song is simple: Jay-Z, and his "familia", his accolytes, Rihanna and Kanye West, are gonna dominate hip-hop: through their relentless originality and tunefulness, they're "gonna run this town tonight." Rihanna sets up the clash: she feels it "coming in the air," and it's a "thrill" to be a player in the conflict, but there's only ONE important question: "Who's gonna run this town tonight?" Jay-Z answers the question: "WE are!" He asks fans of his musical style to wear black, drive black cars, "black everything," implying he will be a better black role model than the "niggas" who he plans to "run circles round." He confesses he's not always been winning the battle, as he's been a "couple bands down" in the past, but now he says he's "squared up" (probably because of Rihanna and Kanye's phenomenal success). Rihanna then reveals the secret of their success: breaking "the rules," doing "my own thing," "walking tall in the rain:" that is ORIGINALITY in the face of criticism. Jay Z then pays homage to Eric B, who's musical sophistication, sampling and tunefulness, Jay identifies as "the leader" of the style of music he is "following." Jay proclaims himself the new "Caesar" of this merging of musical styles - a style which he declares will follow a "peace God," rather than the violent hatred at the heart of rival styles of hip-hop. Jay then boasts that these hip hop rivals are "jealous," denied "the banquet full of broads," Martin Margiela fashion, and millions that come with being bold, brilliant and successful. Finally, Kanye West, the greatest proponent of the style of hip hop Jay Z developed, comes in to confirm everything that Jay has said. But Kanye also suggests that there are costs to running the town: He bemoans the paparrazzi taking his picture "in church," the "girls" "who only want one thing," but at the end of the day, he celebrates the PIONEERING ORIGINALITY behind Jay Z's musical approach, telling even shoe company Reebok to try new things: "you need to drop some new things, have you ever had shoes without shoe strings?" I gotta say, with this song at number 1 in the UK, Jay and his pals really are gonna run this town tonight! :) |
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