Bouncing Off Clouds

A good artist takes his/her fan base and challenges them. A la Talking Heads..."So you like Talking Heads? Let's see if you can handle a South American Latin Jazz Album." The Beekeeper? The focal point of her music was an organ rather than her piano. Now she has a more electric album. It would be great to hear a more instrumental album and one with more strings--a full orchestra. When you say "Maybe she's back," she's never gone anywhere...she's just evolved. Every album speaks, is unique, and wonderful in its own way. Thank god she's not putting out the same sounds she did 15 years ago.

Aside from what I just wrote, I think this song is about keeping it simple, stupid (KISS). Whether it's friendship or a relationship, it can be taken either way, really, but it's simply about keeping whatever you have with someone, that dynamic, and keeping it simple and easy, so you can be "bouncing off clouds" i.e. happy.

She's asking ~ why does it have to be difficult? Why can't it just be "easy like Sunday morning", easy? Why must it come to this?

Personally, I think people, as a whole, read too much into things. Everyone wants to know the meaning of whatever. Sometimes there is no meaning. Sometimes it is what it is. Sometimes it really is THAT simple, and you're just happy. Why do you have to have a reason to be happy? Can't you just be happy for the sake of being happy; because you WANT to be, or you just ARE??

Love the song. Great comeback from the Beekerper album. :-)

i think beekeeper was one of her best albums. i haven't been dissappointed in one yet. actually. but this song is amazing.

But I think we decide I think we decide Where we take our lives

i would have to agree.

My interpretation of this song is that it's about the planet as a whole and the war. Why can't we just make it easy? Why does everything need to be made difficult? I think the "you can stare all day at the sky but that won't bring him back" lyric is a woman coping with losing her husband in the war and the "wrapped in metal, wrapped in ivy, painted in mint ice cream" is about how everything is sugarcoated by the government and we're told everything is under control. I could be completely wrong but that's just my idea of it. I think it fits. peace out x

I think that the Bouncing off Clouds is about music industry. The whole taste I have is that this "bouncing", this lightness, is referred to pop music and in particular to songs that can reach the mainstream, hit parade miracles.

"Bouncing off clouds we were" begins a sort of reference to Tori's golden age. In this very moment, Tori is still known worldwide, by those that don't have interests in her or in other musical styles above pop, for "Cornflake girl" (before she became famous, Tori appeared in a commercial for Kellogg's "Just Right" cereal).

"Is there a love lost and found?" It's not a statement, it's a question. Maybe she talks, in general, about mainstream love to her?

Then:

"Make it easy, make this easy, is not as heavy as it seems"

I think that those words are quotes, not Clyde/Tori speaking, but others that tell her that's not so difficult to make an "easy" listening song.

"Wrapped in metal wrapped in ivy"

A grave? Maybe talking about the pop-success Tori? It sounds as she or those who are talking to her are pointing their fingers to a metaphorycal grave where that hit parade promise lies and then say to her (or she says to them, with an ironical feeling) "paint it in mint ice cream" that's something cool, fresh, things that smell mint smell as "new", revitalized.

Then the line go on "We could be bouncing off the top of this cloud"... I find it really sarcastic, like Tori saying: "yes, we could do it, I'll put together a plain C melody, some gorgeous bass line, six guitar strings, I'll shake and the song is there: serve cold, please."

"Failure to respond I did but did you listen?"

So she says "I tried my best over the years and I'm aware I've done some very good stuff, maybe better than the kellog song. If you evaluate MY production only on the money that it gave you, then I have to think that your ear are full of what, by nature, has to be located some inches under. And as you and my previous record company did very a little to promote me, I don't really know what you want still".

That's why, maybe, in the chorus she says "About what you said, has it come to this?"

Bouncing off Clouds is the most pop song on the album, so my image is of Tori letting this listen to those Epic guys and telling them: "This is what you wanted, unless you want also an arm or a leg, something else?"

The bridge to me is also a reference to the "dead" Tori:

"You can stare all day at the sky but that won't bring her back"

Well, Tori is still a star, but she has her little entourage of devoted fans, few new ones at any subsequent album. In the early 90's she was a music strike, from the YKTR flop, up to the first places in the charts with loads of fabulous critics on her. So maybe "they" (the music company) is described, nose high, gazing the sky looking for her lost star (or "love"?).

"You say you're waiting on fate"

ah.. many jokes have been made about artists that give their best in tragedies, hm?

"But I think fate is now waiting on us"

This line makes me feel some kind of need of changing things, maybe the way in which many artists are underestimated only because they are able to reach only a strict number of listeners.

What about this "blue umbrellas smiling"?

I don't think that the word "blue" here is used as a color. It's the substitute of the "ice-cream" line that gives the chorus a total different feeling. When someone's sad, sometimes smiles because things are getting better. Other times a sad person smiles because doesn't want to show the sadness: a contraddiction. I think that this is the meaning of "blue umbrellas smiling", the contraddiction of making art only on the basis of the money that it rewards. It's so sad.

Generally speaking, I think that BOC is sarcastic, it's kind of a joke. It's more like: "Now I give you what you requested, bitches, but I do it MY way".

I actually like this.

I agree with missblackeyeliner...

At first, I wasn't exactly wild about this song, but the more I hear it, the more I love it!

initially this song describes to me a love, like sunny days, bright and sparkling in it's baby stages, bouncing joyfully. later i feel it speaks of bouncing off and above a rain cloud in pursuit to break free from our hurt and pain in a love, lost. wishing for it to be easier than the burdens of a heavy heart. it paints a picture of sunshowers to me and bittersweet memories.

I think the KISS thing is very true, and a good reading. but my thought of the song lyrics was about finally getting over a relationship, and joyfully realising the pair were "bouncing off of clouds". And now its over, you can experience the pain, then time will allow you to get over it, making it easy, easy. That the lost-n-found is useful cus its gone. I don't know, that how i like 2 read the song, which is better and more aesthetic than my pathetic intrepretation.

Agreed, Beekeeper seemed pretty awful, while I know every other album pretty much cover to cover.