Tame

i just think it's funny and ironic how this song is called "tame" yet it's loud with screamed lyrics, and the next song is called "wave of mutilation" but is so much more chilled

ummm... Possibly about a girl who thinks/tries to be wild but is really just a nice girl at heart. it's hard to say since Frank was constantly smoking copious amounts of pot while writing.

Frank Black on "Tame":

"I don’t want to sound like a male chauvinist, but I have a male perspective, because I am male. ‘Tame’ is about women more than men. But the way some men treat their hair it’s incredible and I can[‘t] understand all that deodorant and stuff. I’ve never related to it. My family’s rather spartan. It’s about putting all that time into sexual presentation. I don’t mean it in a dirty kind of way. Where I live in the city, women spend time presenting themselves and still come out forever bland and mediocre."

I can see what he's getting at, but I don't care what he says, not wearing deodorant is kinda sick.

I think the song is pretty clear. A sexy women with Cinderella hips and high heels is sweet talking him, making good friends with him, dancing and shaking her sexy body next to him as if she wants something, but its a sham, a fake, a tease, she doesn't want what she she alludes to want, and he knows that ultimately she is full of shit, she is TAME. The "cookie" is cynical of the girls intentions cos they are misleading. The "TAME" is a frustration of the way she is and her contradictory actions, calling a spade a spade. So not only is the girl dull "talks about nothing", stupid/clumsy "falls on her face" but she isnt even good for the one thing she alludes to being good for, because she is frustratingly tame. I reckon Frank Black has had attention from a number of sexy girls for his stardom, his ability as a musician, his passion, perhaps his money but i reckon he has been lead astray and let down by many more than that number. I could sense the frustration in the scream, if you were rich, famous, an amazing musician of an amazing band, and you couldnt get a cool smart attractive girl or even a dull smart attractive girl, then you couldnt even get a dull, stupid, attractive girl despite her actions to the contrary. Perhaps.

King of hard to explain this song. The first part is how frank see her, his first impression about her and then what he really understand from it. She tamed to the society. The next part is how she keeping with her bad show while he keep acting like he is impressed from her in a sarcastic kind of way. The last tame part is the hardest part, my opinion that while frank moan with Kim its the part when he fucks this tamed girl and calls her "tamed", but this time he is more laughing that she is so into that society thing. And that she's actually went with him and became his "slave" for that night. And for it we get two "tame" parts.

But it's not Likely to be true though frank said in one interview that the song isn't sexual at All.

Btw when she fells it's a metaphor for her failing in her stupid act

Thinsparation.

I love that one line "hips like cinderella"

I think there are two possibilities for this song. He spends a great deal of time describing the b"raunchy" attributes of a woman that he has recently met ("Making good friends with you", I picture a bar situation). Black is probably talking about low down sexual women, his encounters with them and ultimately concluding they are "Tame" in comparison. You can see this from the say he sings the song. All the lines describing the woman are whispered and the tame parts have a guttural scream to them. Also the descriptions seem to come more from the mind and the repetition of tame is more animalistic. Also, tame and the descriptions of the woman might be a commentary how women are forced to shape themselves to men's standards.

This is such a great song. I love how he says "bad shoes"... haha.

I always thought it was about a stripper.

It is about Frank's feelings about some very specific women. He's referring to the proud students of UMass Amherst which was not far from his high school. Despite being perceived by the rest of society as intelligent and cultured intellectuals they are anything but "tame." The future doctors, CEOs, and lawyers walk around primped, permed, and prettied up, some who admittedly "could be sexy" or "interesting" except they go out to the bars get sloppily drunk, treat the people around them rudely, and by the end of the night "fall on their face in those bad shoes."

He eventually shared this in an interview when he admitted many of our songs have no direct reference to sex. "That song is just about all these f--kin' stupid ass students that live around this neighborhood. Man, oh man, they are the rudest motherf--kers in the world. They're all f--kin' rich, which is fine, I don't care, I wish I was totally rich, but they supposedly come from an upper middle-class background, they're educated, and they're going to private universities, and they are the rudest, most uncouth, most disrespectful people I've ever met on the face of the Earth! Law students are the worst f--kin' vermin in the world! These girls around here, what's wrong with them? They keep perming their hair! And they wear awful clothing and act awful. I hate to put them down because I don't like putting people down, but they're awful! They could be sexy but they're not. They could be interesting people but they keep stuffing their faces with mozzarella sticks and buffalo wings and getting totally drunk every night and shaking their asses all over Commonwealth Avenue!" ~ Black Francis