submissions
| The Clash – The Magnificent Seven Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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Well, this song sums up working life pretty perfectly. Spend all day making money for the shareholders, get your tiny little cut that they call a wage or salary, then go piss it away on drink at the weekend so that you can stay just sane enough to hang in there for a brand new week of the same. I'd never been able to decipher the line about 'taking my baby to sophistication' and needing to work hard because 'I've seen the price.' Now that I have I think it's brilliant. |
submissions
| The Clash – All the Young Punks (New Boots and Contracts) Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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I don't claim to be a punk of any sort, though I do like the Clash. I'd like to point out though, for all of you nostalgic about what it would have been like to live in the late '70s, that you certainly wouldn't have found it free of punk posers, as the Clash could have told you. Cf. the lyrics to 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' |
submissions
| U2 – Ultraviolet (Light My Way) Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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Yet another U2 song that could conceivably be sung to God. My favorite bit is in the beginning, where Bono basically admits just how tempted he is to sin ('I want to get it wrong/Can't always be strong'). This interpretation admittedly seems to make the 'whispers and moans' line a little awkward, but 'Your love was like a light bulb hanging over my bed' to me seems to express that God loves His children even when they don't know He does. And if anyone's 'love is like a secret that's been passed around,' it's Christ's (who also was buried for three days like a treasure that can't be found).
You can also interpret this as a run of the mill romantic love song. That's the beauty of U2 lyrics. |
submissions
| The Kinks – Lola Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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I'm constantly surprised by how many people have never realized that Lola is not a woman. Tell you what, though, ever since I heard this song I'm a lot more careful when out on the pull! |
submissions
| Thin Lizzy – Whiskey in the Jar Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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A weird thing about Thin Lizzy's version of the song is that while the singer still consigns his woman (Jenny in the original, Molly in TL's version) to the Devil, we never get to find out exactly how she tricked him. Unless, of course, the simple fact that the Captain showed up at her place at all implies that she was sleeping both with him and with our hero. This is an awesome song by an awesome band and should be more widely appreciated. Best listened to with a glass of Irish single-malt. And if you ever get the chance to see the Cork and Kerry mountains, it's worth it. |
submissions
| U2 – New Year's Day Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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The song's original inspiration was the Solidarity movement in Poland, but this being a U2 song there's more to it than that. There's a strong apocalyptic element to the whole affair. (Remember all the trepidation we experienced leading up to New Year's Y2K? Remember how silly we all felt when nothing happened?) I think the "you" in the song is God and the singer is impatient to be with Him again. The bit about "arms entwine the chosen few" could refer to the Christian idea of the Rapture, in which at the end of the world the righteous are translated from earth to the presence of God in heaven. The singer continues to wait for that new beginning, but God hasn't yet brought it about, so he is left in this world where "gold is the reason for the wars we wage." This element of waiting (im)patiently for God to regenerate humanity and bring peace (Though torn in two/We can be one) appears throughout the War album (e.g. "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Drowning Man", "40") and throughout U2's entire catalog. Yes, it's also a love song, but it becomes much more powerful when the lover is God. |
submissions
| U2 – New York Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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I'll preface this by admitting that I have never lived in New York City. (I'll also point out that my screen name refers to the fact that I'm an American studying in Scotland rather than being a Yankees fan from Albany...Go Mariners!) Having said that, to me the song uses the idea of New York as a metaphor for the breakneck pace of modern life, which can threaten to distract us from the people we love ("Better put the women and children first/But you've got an unquenchable thirst/For New York). I often felt like this living in Seattle, but I'd imagine New York makes the point far more effectively. |
submissions
| U2 – In A Little While Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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Interpretations of songs say as much about the interpreter as about the song, so a warning to those pushing the pedophilia interpretation of this song: doing so may say things about you that you'd rather not have said!
Having said that, I think this is a truly beautiful song about living crazy (on Friday nights) when the people you love are waiting for you at home (on Sunday morning), hopefully willing to forgive you for your neglect. Since Bono is a musician who tours around the world and doesn't necessarily get to spend tons of time with his growing children, I'd imagine that this is a deeply personal song for him. FYI, "Sweetest Thing" has a similar interpretation; Bono wrote it for his wife to say sorry for missing her birthday because he was too busy recording "The Joshua Tree." |
submissions
| U2 – Peace On Earth Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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This is such a beautiful song and a terrible one. The Christian names mentioned are those of some of the victims of the bomb that exploded in Omagh on 15th August 1998, just a few months after the Good Friday agreement that was meant to bring peace to Northern Ireland. So this song continues U2's traditional concern about the violence in that region. It also ties into their deep Christian faith mingled with extreme impatience with God (e.g. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" or "Wake Up Dead Man"). Wars continue around the world even to the present day and God, for whatever reason, hasn't seen fit to put an end to them. I have to say that as a citizen of the USA post-9/11, the line "you become a monster so the monster will not break you" is sadly convicting. |
submissions
| U2 – 40 Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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I think you have to stretch this song a bit much to make it be about religious violence per se (or perhaps pull in references from Sunday Bloody Sunday on the same album). Rather, I'd say it's about the conversion experience (being "brought up out of the pit). "How long to sing this song" refers to the fact that as long as the Christian lives, he is called to sing the new song that causes "many to see and fear" while continuing to be subject to all the evils and miseries of this present world. Yet one could certainly argue that religious violence is among the worst aspects of the present situation. The interpretations aren't mutually exclusive, which of course is usually the case with U2 songs. |
submissions
| U2 – Vertigo Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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Amusing how many of these posts are dedicated to the "uno, dos, tres, catorce" thing. I think we can rest assured that U2 are NOT "just bad at Spanish." They said "one, two, three, fourteen" because they meant to. The reason why is beyond me--hey, maybe it is the "fourteen albums" thing, but I'm not going to make some sort of "Paul is dead" thing out of it. As for what the rest of the song is about, it does seem to be an attempt to reconcile the life of a Christian (which three of U2 are) with the temptation to party like a rockstar (which all four of them definitely are). Music, dancing, alcohol, drugs, stardom, and all the rest of it can definitely get us high (hence "Vertigo") but the image of the crucifix in the midst of it all brings the song back to that deeper love that's "teaching me how to kneel." |
submissions
| U2 – All I Want Is You Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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Personally, I'd like to have this song for the very last dance at my wedding reception some day. A wedding is a day on which a lot of vows are made which will almost certainly be broken at some point, given our frail humanity. I mean, honestly, "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part"? That's a lot to live up to and I'd imagine almost everyone fails to in some small way each day of their lives, even when couples "remain faithful" to each other in the sense of not committing adultery. And when those promises fail, or rather when we fail the promises, the only thing left is us in our frail humanity. When two people can continue to embrace each other in those circumstances, that's likely as close as they'll get to divine love in this life. Having never been married I have no idea what it's like to live that kind of love day in and day out, but when I hear this song I always think of how much I want to. |
submissions
| U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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Good grief, this song does get people riled up! May I please point out that this song, though its title does quite obviously refer to the events of January 1972, addresses not one word of condemnation to any specific group, not the Paras, not the IRA, not anyone else. Rather, it's a blanket condemnation of people of violence from any constituency. The point of the song is that it's up to each one of us to decide not to heed the battle call and remember that we won't have truly claimed the victory Jesus won until we can figure out how to make peace in Northern Ireland. Or the Sudan, or Israel/Palestine, or Colombia, or any other trouble spot you care to name. This song is highly generalizable that way
Yes, I realise that it's dreadfully easy for outsiders (such as U2, who are from Dublin and therefore would generally be considered outsiders in the North) to say "Why can't you people figure it out?" It's a hell of a lot more difficult for the people who have to live inside the situation and defend the things they hold dear. And yes, as an American, I have to admit that my country is doing a particularly crap job of the whole peace-making thing lately (and bids fair to continue doing a crap job of it for the next four years, sadly). Feel free to ridicule me for being a typical arrogant patronizing American if you like--I'm just trying to explore the meaning of the song. |
submissions
| U2 – Shadows And Tall Trees Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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Most of U2's first album is sadly underrated today and I think the gorgeous music and lyrics of this one make it the album's best track. Everything in it conveys a sense of existential longing--of trying to find the meaning of life in among all the mundanities of everyday living--that I think all of us get at times, certainly when we're 20-somethings as the band were in 1980. The line "Do you feel in me/Anything redeeming/Any worthwhile feeling" personalises it even more. Most of us can probably relate to nights spent awake wondering whether we have anything in me that can change the world for the better. |
submissions
| U2 – Wake Up Dead Man Lyrics
| 21 years ago
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From the very beginning U2 have had in their lyrics a strong element of faith and belief in God existing next to an extreme impatience with Him. Wake Up Dead Man has to be Bono at the utmost end of his patience. The song is a fervent and I think a very humble plea for God to finally step back in and help us sort out the Problem of Evil in this world. It just so happens that Bono here decides to describe the evil in the world by describing it as "fucked-up." I find it a trifle amusing that the song gets up the nose of a certain kind of Christian simply because of that. "Fucked-up" is perhaps the aptest possible description of the state of the world since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden. Anyway, if you choose to be offended by U2's use of language here, more power to you, but please don't get hung up on that and miss the power of their appeal to God--one which I think is legitimately amplified by their use of obscenity. |
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