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| R.E.M. – Losing My Religion Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[Lyrics2Deep:6959] I Agree with what you say, whether the band "meant it" or not, and isn't that some of the purpose of art - to cause a true response of self-reflection in the viewer/listener? Your interpretation fits with what I have been thinking about lately, (that God has lost control of his creation, The World, or never had control, or doesn't exist at all, or not in the way people want to believe he does, and that "trusting him" to award strength he doesn't have the ability to give would be dangerously niaeve) and I woke up today with this song on my mind, couldn't figure out why, until I read your words here. |
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| Mos Def – Got Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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This is what I like about Mos Def: He can't help but show his human practical side. Here he's telling people, "Don't be naieve, the World is big bad place full of desperate and dangerous people, it will take you down permanently if you're flashing expensive stuff around. You think you're big, but there is always someone bigger."
But the track on the album before this one, he's saying something close to "Come get me! I'll take you all!", perhaps out of frustration at the way things are. He might be scared, but he's not going down without a fight. It's human, it's honest, it's courageous, it's true, it's real.
On another level, I think he's grappling with his own ambitions: which way to go with his talent and music... either into the Ganster Rap bling'n'bang World, or somewhere else, and he's torn, because he knows he could do either really well and his ego is battling with his good sense looking for reconciliation. A common human problem, told honestly. |
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| Mike And The Mechanics – The Living Years Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[Coasterman72:6608] I think you're spot on here. I too always hated this song, couldn't figure out the contradiction between the tone of the music which sounds like "forgive everyone and just get along with your parents because they are owed it" and the actual lyrics which point to what you say. I've also done as you've done but still don't understand what Mike n the Mechanics are pointing at. Why is it necessary to end bad relationships "violently" instead of just let them slip away? Seems like six of one half a dozen of the other. |
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| Cold Chisel – One Long Day Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[Sunnyhill:5868] Agreed, one of the best Cold Chisel songs. While everyone else is thinking of Forever Now or Khe Sanh, this tune is always playing in my head. |
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| Juliana Hatfield – Feelin' Massachussetts Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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"I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose burning mouth is pressed
Against the earth's sweet flowin' breast."
A perfect portrait of someone, maybe her, maybe not, but perfect. The one we all occasionally meet, and no one really knows. |
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| Sugar – Explode And Make Up Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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This song has quite possibly the most tortured guitar solo I've heard. A lesson in how to scream without turning up the volume. |
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| Buffalo Tom – Taillights Fade Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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"...Lost my life in cheap wine, now it's quiet time. Cappy Dick nor Jesus Christ, could not help my fate..."
hahah! I love how he's vehemently spitting in the face of his World and the attitudes of the culture he was born into, but sings it like a gentle reflective regret. Rock on! |
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| Buffalo Tom – Soda Jerk Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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Yeah sure there's imagery of jerking off, masturbation, but the metaphors don't end there. There are also images of lost innocence, good intentions and betrayal - of himself by himself. How many people stand in line surrounded by people, to jerk off? No, I think he's recollecting his first major gig, and how when he was a boy in his room as a kid, singing soft words of innocence, dangling his legs, he told himself he'd not get into the indulgent traps of showbiz, and now he's waiting in line to go on at some three-headed gig wondering that maybe if he closes his eyes and shuts out the audience and their expectations, it'll hide him from himself, becasue what he feels about the World can't be contained using the format he's forced to use. All his good intentions are dangling like so much of something else.
This whole album is one of the best of the period, and like so many others, sorta went under the radar from a wider audience. The lyrics and feeling from the music in the songs are sublime. Big Red Letter Day - go buy it if you haven't. |
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| Soundgarden – Rusty Cage Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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"I'll take the river down to still water
And ride a pack of dogs"
Possibly the greatest lyrical description of ressurrection I've heard. Most of the effect is in how he says it, you can hear the contempt of fear and death in his voice. "Badmotorfinger" is one way of putting it, and Rusty Cage is the perfect poetic manifesto for the album. |
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| Babylon Zoo – Spaceman Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[Ralph26:4280] "The sun and zenith rising
Trying to take us all"
This is an imprtant part of the story, too. He's anti-heroic. The sun at it's highest point is a traditonal symbol of the masculine hero before falling into mythical death. He doesn't want anything to do with the ready-made myths and "sun worship" of the past. Maybe he's already been down that road, or can see it's a deadend. So not only is he against cultural/gender roles, he's pretty sure that god is a woman, too. |
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| Babylon Zoo – Spaceman Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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The narrator in the song has a couple of problems, one is his abhorrence of the outside world, the second the frustration of being unable to explore his inner self without a direction, map or compass.
The song starts with his admission that he gets high as fuck to escape the hell of what he sees around him. He's trying to get high to escape, but the wrong kind of high - he was to be "beamed up" type of high, and not have the come-down of drugs. On the come down now, he's blaming his grilfriend for his emptyness - "there's fire between us, so where is your god?" and at the same time he's removed from the meaning of a Christian "Christ" by a "fire" - his own disgust at what it's become by colluding with a meaningless world. He's discovering that his soul, while alive, doesn't know which way to go, so he's trying to contact "other worlds" or "his god" with a medium that can travel distances without leaving Earth - presumeably music in this case. |
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| The Cranberries – Disappointment Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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Its hard to say what the Cranberries had in mind specifically when they used the words they did. The lyrics could be about finding out a flask of coffee went cold in the night, as far as they're concerned. The music is spectacular, though.
But for the past twenty years, this song for me has outlined the way certain (good) people will believe a relationship exists far past the capacity for it to exist, or grow, and when they finally reach that point of seeing it clearly, they feel deep disappointment that they lied to themselves for so long.
The lies of the other person pale by comparison, it's the realising you've been simple, naieve, or "unsophisticated" that hurts. I think the lines that talk about "I lied, you're right" and "I hope you find your way again", is the good-natured person admitting that what she did was as big a "lie" as the person who played along, and she is taking more blame for the situation than is right (because of her personality type), which adds to and entrenches the sense of disappointment in the way life is.
It's unclear which lines are accusations, and which are painful moments of self-awareness, because both fit and are interchangeable, and I think it's meant to be that way. Not only does she wish her partner the best, but she hopes that she'll find her way again, back to the person she naturally was, after all the disappointment. |
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| Nirvana – Dive Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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The hollow conformity of society. Kiss this, kiss that, everyone's waiting, you can even pay them... he'd rather dive into himself, painful as it might be. |
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| Gin Wigmore – Too Late For Lovers Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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Imagine knowing who you are well enough, early enough, to know you had one thing, one trick, you could use to escape a hostile place you couldn't be a part of and you bet everything you had on it. It took you where you had to be, to be what you were - you craved the movement - then it faded away, leaving you stranded around people and things as dead-ended (but not as violent) as those you were trying to escape in the first place. What do you do now? |
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| Queens of the Stone Age – Smooth Sailing Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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I'd like to know why the music video contradicts the song. Tired of this shit happening. It's like iggy pop said: "...old rockers don't rock anymore, they just collect their cash. It takes cash to live like a king". Josh is selling out. He should take his own advice in Smooth Sailing, or Henry Rollins advice, which even Henry can't take himself, and say fuck it to the big business of making music, and just make music. |
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| Paramore – Ain't It Fun Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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As I recall it, the concept of this song was mostly created by Taylor York. It's not what it seems. I think it is about their/his self-deprecating reaction to the messy dissolution and continuance of "the band" and surrounding difficulties and wondering if he/they hadn't got themselves into more than they can handle and sort of sneering at themselves to harden up, even though they have no chance in hell of becoming the hardened monsters they say they have to be. It just doesn't sit right that this song could be about "giving someone a reality check" and talking about their privileged postion, when Hayley et. al. know damn well how privileged their position is. It would be a level of ignorance the rest of the songs on the album wouldn't allow. People can live in bubbles of privilege they can't see, but the idea of Paramore ragging on them and telling them to grow up doesn't make sense, since they know that the world will beat down and keep down anyone it likes. "Ain't it fun" isn't about becoming more brutal to vulnerable people hwo can't cope. If this song is about advocating sociopathy, then it is a moment of extreme hyypocrisy in the same way that "Still into you" is a moment of extreme vulnerabilitly. |
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| Radiohead – Black Star Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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It's not about mental issues, or a girl/woman/wife. It's about feeling like you come from another planet because the people around you, and your own lifestyle, are reality that is so far out of sync with who you know you are, and how you feel about life, it "slowly kills you" and leads to a breakdown. The person has an "outlet" for the irreconciable life in the line "58 hours since I slept with you", but it's becoming more and more difficult to reach that point. |
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| Grant Lee Buffalo – Fuzzy Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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From my point of view, I'd say you're spot-on ampersan. The line of "We water like a dead bouquet, does no good does it dear." Is as you say the most optimistic - though still dark - perspective of the song. It sums up everything said in the song about the past, and then plants the person solidly in the present looking forwards with just a little bit of mature courage. |
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| New Order – Primitive Notion Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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Though I'm sure it relates to something more mundane, I like to think this is the voice of a soul who misses being part of the connected totality of everything, misses how things were "at the start", before creation makes a soul human or even a soul a soul. Now it's stuck in a human body. It is the voice of a young simple soul - being a soul is simple - so it doesn't take a lot to confuse it, and the confusion and craziness of human life makes it sad, angry and frantic to escape. |
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| Juliana Hatfield – My Sister Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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"But I am only talking to myself 'cause she isn't there."
There is no sister, it's the storyteller describing what she gave up and what was taken from her by external forces and who she is now (or was then, since the song is so old) i.e. not all that happy about it. She "misses" what she might have been, "an easy life" and how the grass would have seemed greener had things not turned out the way they did. |
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| CHVRCHES – Night Sky Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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It's the imprint of the persons early experiences/childhood haunting them. It's their true identity calling, but distorted in some way. It calls to the adult to come collect what was left behind and repair it. The middle chorus is an argument (alternating lines) between the child left behind and the adult saying they never forgot. Neither perspective is resolved. One must move forward, the other looks back, both has benefits and neither has the answer. The final verses describe the appearance of the individual without resolution to this arrangement. |
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| Lana Del Rey – West Coast Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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Girl likes to drink, but knows it isn't safe and gets her into deep serious trouble. She really really wants a drink, and has to leave the company of certain people and places to avoid the temptation. Her only vice is cigarettes and she chains smokes. What saves her from alcohol, makes her feel like she doesn't need it, is music. |
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| Interpol – Obstacle 1 Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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There is no girl. The girl is a metaphor for the emotional life of a guy that "went through the wringer" and now he realises he can't go back to the optimistic happy-ish youth that he was, but can't go forward to "serious conforming adult" either. He has emotional tendencies and scars, some he likes, some attack him at the worst moments. He's trying to make logical arguments about what he should or can do to fix it, but finally just has to go with whatever happens next because he gets overwhelmed. |
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| Gorillaz – Doncamatic (All Played Out) Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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Whatever Damon says he was trying to do, it's uncanny how the lyrics match another theme - refinding your way after you exit a culture.
The story is about a person leaving one culture, and just before they enter another mind state. They're trying to reclaim what they were before all the popular ideas swamped them as children. The challenge is fighting through the isolation and fear as they do it. The singer says step out of the game of doing what people want you to and tell you is good or right, forget religions and philosophy (all the White Books) and slowly let go and watch everything fall away. Your memories become irelevent to who you really are, because they were simply plays in a wider game, and you're all played out. Now the songs will be different, it won't sound the same - your perspective on motivations will change dramatically - compared to before you unplugged from the culture game. You'll have reached your "plastic beach". |
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| Interpol – The Heinrich Maneuver Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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Fake celebrity worship/pop culture mentality vs. the private true world of the individual for the individual. The first is seductive like an opiate and tries to squash who the person is, and they don't entirely resist, but like a violent dislodgement unblocking the throat, their natural ways burst out again anyway. |
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| Interpol – All the Rage Back Home Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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Frustrated anger messing up his creative ambitions? Source of anger is memory of the distant past, coming to realisation that his lovers didn't really love him, then rejects rational thought to ease the sense of loneliness and lost hope, goes back to a romantic picture of the past. Can't get what he wants the way he wants it; stuck between wanting the truth to feel dissolved and free from the concepts of either/or, and his fear that such a state would dissolve love too and that it might not be such a good idea even if it ends various troubles, and an inescapable overall need for love. Finally, he can't tell what's what and decides he came at it all wrong, blaming his propensity for anger. Great tune, whatever it means. |
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| Lady GaGa – Telephone (feat. Beyonce) Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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Sounds like she found out he cheated on her with someone he met at a club and she's taunting him with subtle sarcasm that she's doing the same i.e. coldly forgetting whoever it is she's with and getting some "50 cent In Da Club style". She's too busy holding her drink to answer calls and she's at Grand Central Station, where people go for a fast ride. The Beyoncé verse means she isn't going to go through with it, she's too hurt, but she isn't going back to him either. |
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| Sneaker Pimps – Spin Spin Sugar Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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On the album version the woman isn't crying like she's hurt. She cries then laughs like she's nuts or being cruelly sarcastic and she says something in Italian. I've since found that it is "a sample from an old Luciano Berio record". |
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| Sneaker Pimps – Spin Spin Sugar Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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On the album version the woman isn't crying like she's hurt. She's crying and then starts laughing like she's nuts or being cruelly sarcastic and she says something in Italian. I've since found out that it's "a sample from an old Luciano Berio record". |
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| Sneaker Pimps – Low Place Like Home Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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Consider the era this was written. The lyrics have two characters: one is a young man, late teens early twenties. He is out of work or in contract jobs in manual labour or service. "Blunder stones" is a play on the brand name or a pair of work boots. So he is wandering around working, getting hired and getting fired. He has dreams of fame and fortune, but no real idea of why or how, he has problems and is overwhelmed by them, but he has a friend worse than him.
Compared to this friend he is a king. The one-armed man is a symbol from a remake of The Fugitive, which was released about the time this song was written. The one armed man is both himself, a fugitive from his true identity, and the condescencion of his own ambition towards anyone else.
The second character is a young woman who drinks heavily and tarts herself up to forget about her never-was-or-will-be future. If the tune was American, it'd be called teen angst, but this was the UK - the future really was stolen.
She's a symbol of everything he has to let go to move forward and the destructive way young kids form relationships designed to push themselves apart and forward to something else. She "crucifies" herself for him and her and the dream of anything. |
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| U2 – The Wanderer Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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"The word of God lay heavy on my heart
I was sure I was the one
Now Jesus, don't you wait up
Jesus, I'll be home soon
Yeah I went out for the papers
Told her I'd be back by noon "
This part doesn't mean he left his wife. It means he thought finding a righteous man would be easy, he was sure it would take no more time than going for the papers because he felt guided by god. But what happened was he is still searching, his whole life later. |
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| Led Zeppelin – No Quarter Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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I think it's more a case of Led Zep creating a thematic feel to the song, rather than a literal reference to historical events, using their (by 1973) characteristic Celtic mythical content. The song seems to be about a small group of people, or an individual, that is being pursued by something that would wipe out everything in order to stop the message they carry - "a dream for me and you". Other commenters are right that it fits with historical moments of religious upheaval and change, but I think that's simply co-incidental.
I guess in modern terms, being "pursued mercilessly" might mean a moment of loss of identity as a group or individual, through illness or circumstances; or if you were in a modern band, being smothered by what society wanted from you and what you might want to do as an artist and you saw no compromise between the two. Ironically, the "pain" of watching everything you thought you were fall apart drives you forward to new artist creation. |
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| Pixies – Bagboy Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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It's about a guy who normally feels alternately capable and inferior, and he's been with a girl for a while that makes him feel increasingly inferior even though he is on the cusp of falling in love with her and his reaction is extreme to the point of barely restained violence, but he gets a hold of himself and merely becomes a vessel for her whims and wants while he suppresses his true personality and responses.
I loved the latest release from the Pixies. The album asked first what goes boom? This song goes boom, big pixie boom. I think it broke my brain. The guitars and drums are never more Pixie-ish, so who cares whether it's Kim or not on the backing vocals, sounds like something she'd do, so that's what I'll believe and it'll be just as good as ever. Santiago and Loveridge are ripping it up! |
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| Bryan Adams – Run To You Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Cheating on a woman... escape from reality to music... who can say. But those would be literal interpretations and as others have pointed out, making love to a guitar in a literal sense would be interesting.
It could also be that both literally and symbolically, the "woman whose love never dies" and "is always true" is his "mother". It's a common saying that a mother never stops loving her children and the person in this song has identified that, nine times out of ten, a man can't love his mother back "her love is cold" to him, he can't feel it. What he needs is the healthy healing love of a lover to complete him.
He also paints the picture that the relationhsip between him and his mother is dysfunctional, the stereotypical reasons would be self explanatory: single mother abandoned... young man fills the emotional gap... something like that.
So throughout this song there is descriptions of a few different kinds of love, and the opposite, and myths about what is and isn't conditional love and what kills love; and desperation and complication - and real ife in general. |
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| Radiohead – No Surprises Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Thom Yorke singing about poltical pity for aging boomers? That's a good one. You know he's English right? You know this was written in the nineties right? |
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| Radiohead – Airbag Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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It's a metaphor for how technology won't let people live or die when they should. It traps them in a closed cycle world that is hostile to human needs (emotionally and physically), so they have to make up hero myths to avoid cognitive dissonance or suicide.
The German Car: No one needs to travel so fast. It's dangerous and pointless. But the airbag "saved his life" thus allowing him to travel fast - something he doesn't need to do, taking him further away from himself and other people. |
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| The Verve – One Day Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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The song happens within a larger context that is never named, but we hear about the result: things now vary from vast emptiness to uncontrolled turmoil. There's no mid-range feeling, so something pretty serious happened earlier to damage his emotive responses.
"Tie yourself to the mast my friend" says he's lost proactive control of himself. When things go bad he just tries to get through the best way he knows how. It's a purposeful resolve, but in a totally passive way. He basically shuts down, stops noticing what his emotions feel like to him as they happen - like a dissociation type thing. |
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| Elastica – Waking Up Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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It's British self-loathing via comparison with mainstream values, mixed with a certain kind of artistic disinterest in her craft. Although she feels this way, judging herself as inadequate, it is clearly how she writes her songs. How would someone who never writes songs, write a song about not writing songs? That's how it works. Classic rock n roll music lifestyle. |
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| The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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It's a working class hymn, as the album title suggests: a grinding endless string of meaningless jobs, fear, sex and violence, until the average person can't tell who or what they are, but figures out they might as well just push on through. Life never let's up and music is the only momentary release, the only moment when someone else's will isn't more powerful than his own. |
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| The Breeders – Drivin' On 9 Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Yea I think so. It's a reversed sentiment song: you'd expect a guy to be doing a runner on his wedding day, hence the "shotgun wedding" reference, but in this version it's a woman... and she's pregnant.
Now there is a character not often illustrated in pop or country music. She's pregnant and she doesn't care bout being alone, she'd rather start on her own than marry the guy. By the time she's in the car she's almost forgotten him, he's just a meaningless shadow. So he's either one distant guy emotionally or she's one cold fish herself.
On another level I think it's about leaving the illusion of the white picket fence, mainstream culture and security, existence behind and going out to find something personally meaningful. |
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| Oasis – Live Forever Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Apart from the literal images, the song is a recipe for learning to feel like every moment of your life is "living forever". Each verse is a metaphor for a way of freeing one's mind. |
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| Young the Giant – Eros Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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It's about, well, I would say a creative episode, or being just outside of one, but that doesn't really describe the effect it has on the larger reality of the person experiencing it.
The lyrics contain an argument between logic and reason, and the anxiety about what could happen next, and the overwhelming desire to leave it all behind because those things make the world such a crap place to live. The person singing almost gets there, bursts forward with, "Here I am!", then falls back to common reality, then pushes forward again and it goes on like that.
Just before the end he outlines the pointless souless contact he has with the physical world: the internet "tired nations, fake conversations" and cynical stuff that comes through his door as junk mail, bills and advertising on tv and media, "nobody cares, too many thoughts at the door".
The part that isn't obvious is how an experience like this twists what a person sees and thinks into something that both exists and doesn't. It makes life an attractive, potentially dangerous fantasy that is too real to not be real, and sometimes that can cause some really regretful and embarassing situations in hindsight. |
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| Fugazi – Waiting Room Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Read's like a personal manifesto: strip everything back to function. A admirable reaction to a dreary "normal" life, I'd say. |
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| The Bravery – Believe Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Whatever the lyrics might seem to be saying, the opening guitar of this song says he has found what he was looking for before he opens his mouth. Listen to that sound and tell me he hasn't just connected to a long history of something and to many others just like him. With that sound he has a future a past and a present. |
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| Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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If it's true that Kate Bush said it's about the difference betweeen men and women in society, it's ironic that her attitude in the song totally misunderstands what it is like for men in a hostile modern society. The idea that a man can be "running up hills" of social prejudice or expectation "with no problems", just because he's a man, is absurd. It is only a very specific kind of man that society wants, and they're so rare that everyone else try's to imitate them (including the women) so much so that even the authentic article becomes a parody of itself.
Great song, with some merit, if it addresses only the personal, spiritual aspects of femininity. But as a political idea, it's flawed. |
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| Biffy Clyro – Black Chandelier Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Sounds like it was inspired by the painting called The Absinthe Drinker by Edgas Degas - which at the time was a statement about social isolation in the face of rapid (industrial) change. Absinthe then was dripped into a glass of water and contained a poison that did in fact kill some people (a cute cup of cyanide). |
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| Arctic Monkeys – Snap Out Of It Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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It's a song written from a woman's perspective (a woman singing), sung by a man. The notes and tempo give away it's a "different voice" to the other tracks on the album. He's a drunk most of the time, she's asking him to give it up and she'll be waiting. They're at the point in the relationship where she still wants him, and will wait, and it goes back and forth, but he's dragging his feet thinking he can have both. |
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| Arctic Monkeys – Arabella Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Even if it was "can be sure" that line is sung in a way that suggests he's "sure" in the way anyone who is intoxicated can be sure, until they sober up. Either way, it sounds certainly uncertain. |
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| Arctic Monkeys – One For The Road Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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It's about a guy that goes to see a friend of his who can be really inspiring or totally destructive. She knows how to tap into his weaknesses and excesses in a way that could get seriously nasty for him for no reason. He goes there to get away from real life, which is also pretty rotten. He says, "You think it's dark outside? It's often worse in here". He's scared about how it might go this time, making sure he has a bit Dutch Courage before he begins. The person he meets is described in the next track on the album. |
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