| Barenaked Ladies – Next Time Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I believe that this song presents a protagonist whose life has gone off the rails, and is considering the advantages of suicide as a "reset button". He wants to see what the answers were, to see the list of what he could have done better, perhaps to get it right "next time" (especially if you consider their song "It's All Been Done", which tracks the protagonist's attempts to woo the object of his affection through multiple reincarnations). | |
| Kate Bush – Night of the Swallow Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I believe it is somewhat between the previous two interpretations. Although a war-time interpretation is not far off, the "pigs can fly" imagery seems to more accurately evoke police forces, flying in aircraft, rather than enemy forces. As such, I believe it is a song about a woman begging her man to not go on a mission ferrying an IRA operative out of England and into the Continent (or perhaps to pick up said operatives and spirit them away from the reach of British justice) in a plane under cover of night. The object of the song sees it as a low-risk opportunity to do "something" with his "miserable life," something without implication of guilt. It is unclear whether the pilot is an actual Irish Catholic, or simply an IRA sympathizer. The singer does not agree, and has to overcome the pilot's sense of pride, as he has chosen this illegal opportunity in order to add meaning to his life. |
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| Oingo Boingo – Reptiles and Samurai Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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In Freudian terminology, I believe that this song is about the struggle between the id (the reptile hindbrain) and the superego (the part of our personalities that govern our participation in society). Without going into a lengthy diatribe on whether or not Fruedian imagery has any validity, let me simply ass that the superego is said to restrict the id and its drives, in order to ensure that the ego (the self) is able to maintain its position in society -- basically, that you make decisions based on how best to survive in society, as opposed to what you want at any given moment. "They are not friends/ But they are forced reluctantly/ To share my brain...Are under my skin They hide in my mind/ They speak with my tongue/ They run amuck in my terrain". The reptiles and lizards in the song are depicted in imagery of consumption, biting, primal images. They are also beautiful, with "pretty scales." The samurai, on the other hand, are expressions of order, manners and society. Granted, they do "fight alot," but they are otherwise expressing an ideal of culture and social grace. "They hear what I hear/ Watching through my eyes/ They don't like what they see" expresses that the singer feels these two forces to be not only in conflict with each other, but in conflict with the world "outside." The singer would appear to be in a continual state of discord with society, social rules, or his current place in society. Enter the love interest: "Sometimes I watch you from this place way in the sky/ Your face is young and shiny transformed right before my eyes." An adoration for another person, and the singer imagines a place above the psychological terrain he has set up earlier in the song, a sort of deity position outside of conflict. This impression of aloofness is shattered when the singer's feelings for this adored person is broken up by the conflicted feelings of his id and his superego, between his animal instincts and his need to not make a socially diastrous maneuver. |
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| The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets – Please God No Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| The song ties together elements from various Lovecraft monsters, focusing on the point of view of a mortal who is horrified to be experiencing a terrible and grotesque transformation into something from beyond this world, a haunter of the dark, or something else with the ability to fly. | |
| The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets – 20 Minutes Of Oxygen Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| This song is set in a science fiction universe, with a hapless spacehopper trapped in an airtight room with 20 minutes of air left him. While railing agsinst his predicament, he muses on the possibility of building a device to allow him to visit a younger version of himself and provide sufficient warning to prepare for and escape from this trap (the "rip-cord in my destiny"), in the form of a cigar burn (as a reminder) and an exhortation to keep a "Hilti" (a type of power drill) on his person. | |
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