| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Nobody's Baby Now Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Her Will Ferrell stare? | |
| Waxahatchee – Swan Dive Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Such a strange and compelling song. Lyrically, it's rather bleak, seemingly about two people whose alcoholism and depression means they can't be happy together or apart. but musically, the rhythm and chiming guitar creates an uplifting feeling of forward momentum. The net effect is like the bittersweet feeling of watching the scenery slide past on a long car journey, lost in your thoughts about the future, and the past. | |
| Camera Obscura – Come Back Margaret Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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She's secretly in love with a right-wing Tory Boy, but she has to compete with his adulation of Margaret Thatcher. She wishes Thatcher would come back to power, so Tory Boy would be happy, and she could explore being a laissez-faire capitalist. Trying to get into the right-wing mood, she says she likes the "free days with no expectations", clearly a metaphor for the free market, and that she likes it "my way with no limitations", which refers to the new right ideology of individualism and unregulated capitalism. But still, she can't overcome her natural left-wing, liberal instincts, and can't help but "despise" Tory Boy for his political beliefs, even as she loves him. In the next verse, she says "Darling you will always be around'. At first glance, this would seem to refer to Alistair Darling, chancellor of the exchequer from 2007 to 2010, and his ubiquitous presence in the media due to his status as a senior political figure. However, Darling was a Labour MP and, although New Labour moved considerably closer to a Thatcherite ideology, it seems unlikely that Alistair Darling is quite as enamoured with Margaret as the unnamed object of the songwriter's affections. It seems more likely that the actual subject of the song is Captain Darling, from TV's Blackadder. Despite being a fictional character from a show set in the early 20th century, Darling's status as an upwardly-mobile middle-class member of the officers, clearly identifies him as a proto-Thatcherite. Furthermore, the constant repeats of Blackadder on G.O.L.D. and other freeview channels explains why he will "Always be around, whether my mood's up or if it's down". The final clue to Darling being a fictional character is how the songwriter dreams of "taking him far away". Far away from the horrors of the WW1 battlefields that eventually claim his character's life. Why can't she take him far away in real life? Because in real life he's just a figure on a TV screen, played by Tim McInnerny. And he won't stay because when she wakes up, he's back where he was on TV. She could take Tim McInnerny far away, but that wouldn't be the same. |
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| Interpol – Leif Erikson Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| To me, the song is about getting to know someone in the early stages of a romance/relationship of a deeper and more serious kind than either person is used to. Learning their qualities and flaws, and the way they express themselves emotionally and physically, and considering if they are someone you could spend your life with. The lyricst likens this process metaphorically to exploration, in particular the idea of a meeting between an explorer and a native of a foreign land, and to learning to speak another language. | |
| Death Cab for Cutie – Underneath the Sycamore Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Hippocrates, who is often referred to as the "father of medicine" apparently taught underneath a Sycamore tree, and they and their shade have long been associated with healing. My interpretation of this song is that the narrator has been involved in a serious car accident and has serious physical injuries. Whilst convalescing in hospital, he meets another person who is recovering from mental illness, perhaps a suicide attempt. Against the odds they form a connection, possibly romantic, despite their very different characters and situations, and help each other to recover from their wounds. | |
| Death Cab for Cutie – Codes and Keys Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| It's about how we use use culture, intelligence, art and technology to deal with, and separate us from, the difficult reality of our emotional lives. Experiences go from being keenly felt to being reinterpreted by artists as music, worlds, television, etc. This helps the artists separate consume and separate themselves from the events. The person who views, consumes or appreciates the art experiences these emotions at a safe distance, instead of going out and experiencing these things first hard. All our lives become a practice of communicating via feelings and opinions that we have recycled from the art we have be exposed to, a sort of strange common language that leaves us both eloquent and mute. | |
| Belle & Sebastian – The Boy with the Arab Strap Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| You're only half right. He sings the line twice, the first time it's "with" the arab strap, but the second time he switches it to "from". Later in the song he goes back to "with". | |
| Manic Street Preachers – Me and Stephen Hawking Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Herman the Bull and Tracy the sheep were early genetically modified (or 'transgenic') animals, produced by experiments in the early 1990s to manipulate milk production. Normal animal milk is not suitable for very young human children due it missing certain key proteins that a human mother's milk contains. By giving them certain human genes, scientists were able to breed animals whose milk (or the milk of his female offspring, in Herman's case) also contained the required proteins. The idea is that these animals can be industrially farmed, and their milk can be sold for children in developing countries instead of more expensive food supplements. The "African Punch and Judy show" and reference to Bombay is presumably about the exploitative relationship rich countries have with more poorer ones. "Today it's a cow, tomorrow it's you" is a warning that genetic modification will not stop at altering animals, and will eventually be used on humans. The "me and Stephen Hawking" chorus also relates to this. Despite the flippant tone, I think what he's pointing out is that Stephen Hawking, as a carrier of a (possibly) genetically inherited disease, might have been aborted prior to his birth had genetic screening revealed him as a carrier of familial neuromuscular dystrophy, thus robbing science of one of its greatest minds. The "sex revolution" he envisages therefore, is not a positive scenario, but one in which controlled reproduction becomes the norm, and those considered genetically inferior, such as Hawking or himself, are eliminated from the population. Eugenics is a theme he returns to in Virginia State Epileptic Colony. |
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| ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – The Summer of '91 Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I think it's about remembering a great time in your life, when you were happy and carefree. How times like that can't last forever, so you should treasure their memory but still look ahead to the future and try to create times that are just as good, 'It can be done'. | |
| Keane – Is It Any Wonder? Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| To me the most obvious interpretation, given the imagery used in the lyrics, is not political but religious. The mention of the "kingdom" and the empty cathedral setting, suggest the words are directed at God. It's like he's lost his faith, gone into a church and launched into a diatribe against God, accusing him of betraying his trust, and asking Him if he could have expected any different given all that's fucked up in the world. Religious overtones would fit perfectly with the U2 style as well. But whereas U2's view of religion tends to be positive, here Keane have twisted it around to a negative take, but whilst retaining the same sound. Quite clever really. | |
| The Organ – Brother Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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It's about bigotry and persecution by fundamentalist christians. She begins by warning that just because the current political situation is fairly tolerant, that doesn't mean it'll stay that way forever. She forsees being on the run and struggling against an intolerant state. The "Brother" part is interesting. It could, as others have suggested, be a deliberately non-sexual/romantic term meaning "brother in arms", e.g. her allies in this political struggle, or it could be a reference to "big brother", e.g. the oppressive state which is persecuting her. "Midnight knocks!" brings to mind secret police, knocking on people's doors in the middle of the night and making them "disappear", and "explosions!" as people resist them. She then admits that maybe this is all just a bleak fantasy that occupies her more pessimistic moments. She says that perhaps instead the Christians are right and the "Rapture" will occur. This is a reference to the belief amongst some Christians that at some point God will take up all the truly faithful into Heaven, leaving only non-Christians left on the Earth. However, if it doesn't happen, she fears that her dark daydream will come true... |
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| Belle & Sebastian – Lazy Line Painter Jane Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| "Painting lines" refers to lines in the road: She is often founding sleeping in the street, in the gutter, or "sleeping at bus stops". Instead of trying to help her, people joke about her being a "lazy line painter", because it's easier to make light of her situation than actually become engaged in it. | |
| Editors – All Sparks Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| It's a warning to someone who is a bit of a "bright spark". Someone who's a little too full of clever answers and opinions. He's telling them that their transcendence is very much a temporary thing, that they're going to be burnt out by life's long struggle just like everyone else. Fire is often linked with bright life and energy, but here the comparison is to a discarded cigarette cast onto the road; a tiny, doomed flame in a big, dark world. | |
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