Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
If I had my way
I would move to another lifetime
I'd quit my job
Ride the train through the misty nighttime
I'll be ready when my feet touch ground
Wherever I come down
And if the folks will have me
Then they'll have me
Any world that I'm welcome to
Is better than the one I come from
I can hear your words
When you speak of what you are and have seen
I can see your hand
Reaching out through a shining daydream
Where the days and nights are not the same
Captured happy in a picture frame
Honey I will be there
Yes I'll be there
Any world that I'm welcome to
Is better than the one I come from
I got this thing inside me
That's got to find a place to hide me
I only know I must obey
This feeling I can't explain away
I think I'll go to the park
Watch the children playing
Perhaps I'll find in my head
What my heart is saying
A vision of a child returning
A kingdom where the sky is burning
Honey I will be there
Yes I'll be there
Any world that I'm welcome to
Is better than the one I come from
I would move to another lifetime
I'd quit my job
Ride the train through the misty nighttime
I'll be ready when my feet touch ground
Wherever I come down
And if the folks will have me
Then they'll have me
Any world that I'm welcome to
Is better than the one I come from
I can hear your words
When you speak of what you are and have seen
I can see your hand
Reaching out through a shining daydream
Where the days and nights are not the same
Captured happy in a picture frame
Honey I will be there
Yes I'll be there
Any world that I'm welcome to
Is better than the one I come from
I got this thing inside me
That's got to find a place to hide me
I only know I must obey
This feeling I can't explain away
I think I'll go to the park
Watch the children playing
Perhaps I'll find in my head
What my heart is saying
A vision of a child returning
A kingdom where the sky is burning
Honey I will be there
Yes I'll be there
Any world that I'm welcome to
Is better than the one I come from
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More Featured Meanings
Cajun Girl
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@[Diderik:33655] "Your a holiday!" Was a popular term used in the 50s/60s to compliment someone on their all around. For example, not only are they beautiful, but they are fun and kind too ... just an all around "holiday".
I think your first comment is closer to being accurate. The singer/song writers state "Millions of eyes can see, yet why am i so blind!? When the someone else is me, its unkind its unkind". I believe hes referring to the girl toying with him and using him. He wants something deeper with her, thats why he allows himself to be as a puppet (even though for her fun and games) as long as it makes her happy. But he knows deep down that she doesnt really want to be serious with him and thats what makes him.
Mountain Song
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Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
Page
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
I think this song is a rarity for SD - a straightforward song (or there's a double meaning which I don't get). Basically the singer is longing for a better place and a new start in life. Perhaps he wants to return to an imaginary family or community that he was never part of.
Beautiful song about searching for meaning in the face of alienation. The singer is determined to find happiness and believes it is possible, even though he has suffered. Maybe existentialist.
@tewnetnet Yes, yes and yes. I agree with everything you wrote.<br /> There's also some confort in the second verse "I can hear your words<br /> /When you speak of what you are and have seen..." and a coping strategy "I think I'll go to the park/Watch the children playing".<br /> This song has lately become very dear to me.
It's probably been thirty years since I first heard this music. I did not understand or pay much attention to the lyrics then. I just enjoyed the soothing communality of the music. And today the same music paints my memory of that time with color, and the lyrics have more meaning with the perspective that comes from living. No, things are never perfect or without pain, but it helps to get with the relativity of things. The larger picture's been definitely worth it for me, in many many ways.
the words of this song strike me to the very core; it makes me wonder why I'm still alive
Perhaps it was a song written earlier in his youth that was too painful to sing at the time. The Wikipedia page on DF talks about a traumatic family move from Passaic to Fair Lawn, NJ, which he hated. Definitely has an element of teen angst to it, certainly that I recall from those years...
I agree this is a very straight forward and poignant lyric
But It is so straight forward that I still think you guys are missing the thrust...this is a person despondent over the loss of their child
That’s why they have a vision of a child returning...that why their memory is contained as a vision in a picture frame...that’s why he wants to watch children playing to understand his feelings
I think this is really clear
The meaning is straightforward, a lonely man has a meaningless job and there is no fulfillment to be had for him anywhere in the area. He really doesn't have anywhere else special to go and starts out tentative, "if I had my way" and "if the folks will have me" yet we listen as he becomes resolved: "Honey I will be there" - and who's that? An unknown (or mythical) honey and friendly folks who are (maybe) out there. "I can see your hands reaching out through a shining daydream" is how come he knows. And he knows that's a totally flimsy reason to believe, but even though still "I must obey this feeling i can't explain away." Me, I believe he is now resolved to act but there could be a cynical interpretation here that he's deluded on so many levels. Why do I believe? Because the ending seems so sincere, in the unknown place he knows is out there, and with the unknown people he longs to have kinship with, his daydream is "a vision of a child returning". Not a return to anywhere he's been but a spiritual homecoming (that he also wrote about in the words to Sun Mountain - but in that song, by then when he's already made his move, it is "all the things I left behind" that if he needs them "they will be there" line emphasized right there! "a part of my mind").
Hipsters might be entirely justified if they see the singer moving back to his parent's place in Arizona. But that doesn't fit with the back story. It's recorded by the time Fagen's 23, maybe well earlier. He'd spent almost his whole life within 100 miles of NYC up to then and is at that point barking up all the wrong trees in Manhattan's fading music industry. He had to see a move to LA coming when he wrote this, or some part of him did. "A kingdom where the sky is burning."
Sure, most Steely Dan songs contain hella obscure references and in the end half of them are anyone's guess really, there are so many conflicting myths about them, and sure it's unusual but it's not unknown for them to just have a straightforward story line. I mean, there's no great mystery about Reeling in the Years either. More to the point relating to Any World - so is Fagen perfectly frank and straightforward about another personal crisis in his solo number On the Dunes maybe 20 years later.
I gotta get outta here....
If this song had somehow magically materialized in the discography of some sincere plodder like, oh, Bruce Springsteen, or Bob Seger, or Southside Johnny, or Bon Jovi, it would have reached iconic anthem status, the kind where a song is trotted out and sung along to for particular occasions like, um, graduations for people who didn't attend the graduation? Or, uh, the party kids throw the night before they run away from home? Hmm, maybe, uh, mass suicides? Ah, never mind. Great song, though, taken on its face, which nobody wants to do because nobody trusts the Dan.
I really like Steely Dan - this is a wonderful band, and this is one of their best songs. for a change, I think this song has more optimistic point of view. the singer is presenting his place in life( not necessarily a bad place) and say that whatever he is going to do, its going to be better. There is nothing more optimistic then that. Every choice that he is going that he is going to take, will be better choice than before, every move will be better than before - the writer is getting better, any reality that he is going choose by his decesion("any world that i am welcome too"), will make him a stronger, more experience man. Loooooove this song