| Tom Waits – A Sweet Little Bullet from a Pretty Blue Gun Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| I like the contrast in this song between the delicacy of the key lyric—"it takes a sweet little bullet from a pretty blue gun / To put those scarlet ribbons in your hair"—and the savage reality of the act it describes. That contrast strikes me a metaphor for Hollywood itself. It's an industry that sells glamor and beauty. But scratch that thin, glitzy veneer and you'll find the grime: the sweet, pretty little girl who buys into a bankrupt dream of stardom, runs away from home, and burns her bridges, only to end up used, cast aside, and driven to the end of her rope in some roach-infested flophouse. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Song for an Old Friend Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Aren't we all still chasing that first high? | |
| Tom Waits – Shiver Me Timbers Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I don't think this is about suicide except in the most metaphorical of ways. The Martin Eden reference would seem to suggest so, but when he invokes Ahab later that complicates matters. What ties them together is that the both destroyed themselves by failing to settle down, while manically striving for something always just out of reach. To me, the character in this song is some who always has his foot halfway out the door. His human connections are superficial because he never stays in one place long enough to build them, and that's a vicious cycle that gives him one more reason to move on ("nobody knows me/I can't fathom my stayin'"). Being in motion (or at sea) is the only time he feels like he's someplace familiar ("the clouds are like headlines/in a new frontpage sky"--he can read them like the morning paper--"tears are saltwater"--any emotional connections he builds are eventually reduced to the very stuff of the ocean). So I read the Eden/Ahab references not as invoking death or suicide, per se, but as the narrator's recognition that, although the peripatetic life is all he knows, it has the potential to ruin him. |
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| Tom Waits – Better Off Without a Wife Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I read this as being about the way we rationalize the places we end up. Was staying single really a principled decision by this character? No, not at all, but it's where he found himself and he's making the best of it, with good humor. Maybe our lives don't work out the way we thought they might, and maybe that gnaws at us a little, and so we spin the fictions that let us live comfortably in our circumstances. | |
| The Dismemberment Plan – 8.5 Minutes Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Seems like people have more or less covered the technical aspects of the metaphor at the center of this song, but there's been less discussion about the thrust of the metaphor itself. That shows itself in the song's motivating question: "What were you doing for those eight and a half minutes?" In other words, what really drives you when you strip away everything superficial and transient? (That stripping away is accomplished in an extreme and evocative fashion here, which understandably diverts attention from the message.) The song presents the question both on the collective and the individual level. The narrator observes things like the lack of looting, but also tempers that observation by the fact that potential looters might be deterred by the cold. You can hear him wrestling with the question of how the human race is going to behave in the face of existential crisis. Is it fundamentally self-destructive or can it muster the fortitude to "get it right" while staring down extinction? We also get the individual question: when the chips are down, how are you going to react? Is your impulse to try to get in your spiteful parting shots on the people around you, or do you square yourself with your conscience by attempting to right any wrongs you've committed against them? It's a song that struggles with the contradiction of the human impulse for great empathy and altruism along side it's equally capacious selfish side. It wonders, ultimately, which side wins out, both within individuals, and within society writ large. |
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| Okkervil River – The Valley Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I think thehungrybear has the gist of it. I get a picture of a lifestyle that chews people up and spits them out, but which nonetheless has its own strange, irresistable momentum carrying people along. We get the sense, through the seasonal metaphors sprinkled throughout, that this is a cycle of destruction. Notice, though, that the seasons are mentioned backwards: summer, spring, winter, autumn. The implication seems to be that the "cycle" of the music world is unnatural and pernicious, but nonetheless beyond the control of those caught up in it. |
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| Built to Spill – Distopian Dream Girl Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I'm in the camp that maintains this song was mis-titled, and should have been "Solipsist's Dream Girl." Here's an interpretation that might seem like a small stretch, but which I would maintain is consistent, and will ring true for many people: Theme: I read this as being about the process of realizing that you care about someone else more than you care about yourself. That, I don't think, is not so controversial. But try this on for size: We start out with a vignette of a selfish kid; someone who dismisses people because of superficial disagreements ("my stepdad's a fool because he doesn't like David Bowie"). A more empathetic person might understand why someone with an uncanny resemblance to Bowie might get a little irked at having this pointed out repeatedly, and cut the guy some slack on matters of taste. In the next verse we get another vignette of a couple in bed, feeling unsettled, unable to control their reactions to the situation they find themselves in. My guess? Resist the temptation to interpet this song romantically and take another approach: she's pregnant. At least that's a major reason a married couple might be waking up and feeling a bit out of their comfort zone. Having children is the inflection point in the solipsist's life. It's the juncture where he realizes that his interests no longer come first, and he can no longer act in accordance with the philosophy he had adopted as a convient way to justify his selfish disposition. |
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| The Wrens – Ex-Girl Collection Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| SweetestSiren: I believe the clip to which you are referring is actually part of the lead-in to "Per Second Second". I don't want to hazard any guesses as to what it means, though, because "Per Second Second" not only has near indecypherable lyrics, but if you do read them, they're very oblique. They do fit better with that clip, though. | |
| Modest Mouse – Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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"hahahaha this guy is the worst singer ive ever heard!! hahahahahah" "The better the singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying." -David Byrne |
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