| The Shins – Kissing the Lipless Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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Okay, this is definitely a gay song. Hear me out. "Called to see if your back was still aligned And your sheets were growing grass out of the corners of your bed" -- The narrator is blatantly obviously asking if the subject of the song is getting laid. Is anyone railing you hard enough that you need a chiropractor? Are your sheets getting all messed up or are they growing weeds from disuse? We've all had that inquiry with an ex or ex-crush, right? Casually just saying hey, how have you been, are you seeing anyone? And even though they're an ex and we definitely don't still care we're crossing our fingers that the answer is no. "But you've got too much to wear on your sleeves That has too much to do with me" -- Here's the glaring admission of queerness, to me. And yeah, I first heard this as a gay/questioning teen who was madly in love with their same-gender bestie and I made some associations but I swear there's merit to this argument. I will never not hear "too much to wear on your sleeves" as anything other than a reference to Nazi germany. I know they're probably just referencing "wearing your heart on your sleeve" but partnered with "it has too much to do with me" and "the grey remains of a friendship scarred"... it just sounds/feels/has the vibe of the subject realizing they're gay, or at least not straight, becuase they fall for the narrator, and messing up their friendship by acting on their feelings, and then having to live with that knowledge about themselves even if they don’t want to be out. Except, conveniently, no they don't have to live with it. Luckily they've got a "new life" with "someone coming 'round" and "gluing tinsel to [their] crown.” They don't have to be queer. They've got a new opposite-gender beau, they're having all the straight sex (no grass on those bed sheets) and everything is totally fine and normal don't you worry. Do you think the subject is "talking pretty loud" because they're so enamored, or because they doth protest too much...? "Berate, remember your ailing heart and your criminal eyes" – HOW is this line not talking about someone grappling with a kind of love that huge portions of the world still deems as sinful? That's all it can possibly be in my mind. The narrator is saying I know that you think looking at me that way is a crime. It’s not, but I can’t change your mind. I can just remind you how much your heart hurts without me. "You say you're still in love/ if it's true what can be done" – Sounds to me 100% like a drunken confession that the subject still loves the narrator. But the narrator is saying if you're still pretending to be straight, we can't be together, so what does it matter? Why are you telling me this, what can be done? "It's hard to leave all these moments behind" is just the narrator admitting that they still love the subject too. There are all these memories of love, of passion, of connection, of something true, and they can't just throw them away. "You tested your mettle of doe's skin and petals" I don't know what this symbolism is. Maybe something that only the Shins know. But it feels very faun/forest/changeling. Feels very… becoming a wild and untamed creature. Testing your mettle, seeing if you can really live that way, totally free and unencumbered, as your true self. "Kissing the lipless and bleed all the sweetness away." Have you ever kissed someone who loved you, but couldn't? Not didn't, but COULDN'T. I'm asking you, the reader of this comment. Have you ever kissed someone, and felt them kiss you back, and known that you were both in love, and then they won't speak to you in public? Won't answer your calls, won't acknowledge the way you both feel? Can't be that version of themselves, because it's not just falling in love with someone, it's a whole identity, it's a lifestyle, it's coming out and changing and they just... can't? You're kissing the lipless. They're there, they're kissing you back, but the kiss has nowhere to go, it just bleeds away. This song is about unrequited/ star-crossed gueer love. Case closed. |
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| The New Pornographers – Crash Years Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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Loving the stock market interpretations, I think that fits really well. This is niche, but I just have to add my take: As someone who was a complete fuck up for a few years, kept burning bridges and disappointing people, that time in my life felt like there was a spotlight on everything I did wrong. Especially when the biggest fuckup was running my sedan into a semi, totalling it. This song is at least a little bit literal for me. But more broadly, everyone goes through periods where it feels they can't do anything right. It's "Crash Years" because whatever you're doing is a messy, totally obvious disaster and you're crashing and burning. But it's also because it's a phase. It's the crash years, not the crash forever, and you just have to live through them. Because next up will be the flight years or the love letter years or the suncatcher years. The Crash Years, as I interpret them, are the thing you survive. |
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| Sufjan Stevens – The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us! Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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It's been a while since anyone touched this, but we've been arguing about it since 2005, so let me throw in my two cents. For anyone who isn't precisely heterosexual, one of the most poignant experiences of your young life is when you have that one friend you feel... differently about, and I feel that here Sufjan is telling us a story of an experience he had with someone who was "different" to him, and confusing. Sufjan has already told us on multiple occasions that there was an actual occurrence with a friend of his at a summer camp where they invented a predatory wasp-bird creature to scare each other. To me, based on my experiences, there are simply too many lines to ignore, that suggest a homo-questioning undertone. I don't know Sufjan's orientation and he may well be straight as an arrow. But this is obviously something that happened when he was young and that can be a really confusing time of figuring things out and having conflicting feelings for those close to you. The beginning of the song, he is writing "in cursive" in a cold room. When he sees a wasp on the wall, his memory drifts back to this specific experience at summer camp. He was swimming in a park in Michigan (yes, a real place) and his best friend at the camp was stung by a wasp, multiple times. He reaches to tease him about the creature they created, and perhaps to pretend to bite him, and it turns into a kiss. By the way, just because he's wearing his brother's hat, that doesn't mean that it's his brother he kisses. AND for those who would attempt to rationalize this into something else, he does say very clearly that he kissed his friend. Then he "sees the wasp on the length of his arm" and the wasp becomes this recurring metaphor for the repressed, forbidden and extremely confusing thing that is happening between the two of them. The rest of the repetitive verses after the chorus of "we were in love, I can wait" (how does that not seem like someone lovestruck and heartsick?) seem to convey their continued struggle with their feelings. They like each other, love each other, but they're not sure if they are gay or even questioning. "I can't explain the state that I'm in. The state of my heart, he was my best friend." In some ways he's still shocked at what has happened. He was his best friend, but this thing has come between them. "Into the car, from the backseat. Oh, admiration in falling asleep" This is either directly afterward, and they end up back in the car, or they see each other again for a while afterward. It's just that end of the day exhaustion after swimming and being in the sun, and as he's falling asleep he feels this love and admiration for his friend, despite what has happened. "All of my powers, day after day I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed Deep in the tower, the prairies below I can tell you, the telling gets old" They both swaggered and swayed, they both wrestled with their feelings. What he says here is so powerful. He fights against his feelings, they both do, and from the top of the mountain to the prairies (this all happened in a park, remember) they keep coming back to the same conclusion. They do have feelings for each other. When he says the telling gets old, he just means he has gone over the story so many times in his memory it's drudgery. "Terrible sting and terrible storm I can tell you the day we were born" I might have believed any theory other than two men kissing each other and having conflicting feelings for each other, if not for these two lines. Continuing the wasp metaphor, in that moment of the kiss they are both stung with something new and unknown and perplexing, and it creates a storm of emotion within them. They are born again in that moment as they begin to question their respective identities. "My friend is gone, he ran away I can tell you, I love him each day Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged I can tell you, I love him each day Terrible sting and terrible storm" Keep in mind that he's writing and reflecting on all this years later, possibly decades. He's remembering this event, and the strong feelings of love and devotion that he had towards his friend, and how this crush changed his life, but they eventually went their separate ways. As so many of these things do, the love dissolved as they grew up. It was a terrible sting and terrible storm at the time, but he has grown and changed away from who he was then. He still loves him each day, but not actively. Sorry for the length, but it just seemed like so many people were missing the mark on this one, or trying to come up with outlandish things to avoid the possibility that he was discussing a male-male crush. |
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