| Steely Dan – Charlie Freak Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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One question: "When I heard I grabbed a cab to where he lay" Why would he have heard? Did somebody tell him? Why? Maybe the narrator and Charlie were related? |
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| Steely Dan – Almost Gothic Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| @[AstroLogic:27595] Not only that, but also, the protagonist is us, and the dominatrix is Steely Dan themselves. We're hanging on their every word, then they hit us with the cryptic stuff. | |
| Steely Dan – The Royal Scam Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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I saw on another site somebody mentioned that this might be about the Poor Palatines, so I looked into it and it seems to hold up. The titular "Royal Scam" is that Queen Anne promised to send them to the Americas but very few ever made it. Most were sent back where they came from or dispersed around England and Ireland. The "red and green colours" are from the flags of Rhineland and Westphalia where many of these people originated. I think the 'Dan are drawing a comparison between the plight of these people with the later Puerto Rican immigrants, swapping the imagery back and forth both to show the similarities between the two stories, and so they could feel superior to all the people who couldn't figure out the weird non-PR references in the song. |
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| Steely Dan – The Caves of Altamira Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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For a while I was confused about the seeming contradiction between "wasn't even any Hollywood", implying he thinks Hollywood is a good thing, and "before the fall" implying the opposite. What I just now figured out is that he's contrasting art done for its own sake, before the fall, and art done for profit, Hollywood. In the last verse he's pointing out that the quality of the Hollywood stuff is often better, at least from a craft point of view. But the tone of the rest of the song - even the fact the song exists at all - suggests that the shiny hollywood-quality art isn't all that matters. |
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