submissions
| Future Islands – Balance Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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This song is amazing. I can't describe how gratifying it was listening to it right at the moment when things in my life were kind of synchronized with what's going on here. Beautiful and reassuring. |
submissions
| The Big Pink – Dominos Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Honestly, I think the song is written from the POV of a huge douche-bag. This talk of "dominos" reads like a caricature of the macho "game" attitude among dudes, a pretty chauvinistic if not downright disdainful metaphor for women.
Also, I "really love breaking your heart"? This guy is a fucking sociopath. |
submissions
| Jens Lekman – A Man Walks Into a Bar Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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love this song. it kind of makes me imagine all those missed opportunities and possibilities when thinking back to someone who shared a relationship. maybe remorse? ...about not doing, and saying, and asking all the things you may have wanted to when the going was good.
so epically nostalgic in a kind of knowing-laughter that you can't explain way. the end as well is pretty evocative. not being able to remember the joke is way sadder than simply forgetting, it's having lost something much more special, a part of that person in a way. |
submissions
| Sonic Youth – Incinerate Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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when i first listened to the lyrics it sounded like he orchestrated a fire to kill off his wife. He escaped while his wife died. I mean, metaphorical firefighters sound kind of retarded, so i'm assuming he means real ones literally putting out his house, spraying him down, and consoling him when they find his dead burnt wife. |
submissions
| Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Pink India Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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this song is about the period in history where conflicting British and Russian interests in central Asia pitted them against one another as political rivals, almost breaking out into war in the 19th century. It was called "The Great Game," and Mortimer Durand is the name of a British official who delineated Afghanistan's northern borders with an expanding Russia.
What an inexplicable and awesome topic to sing about. |
submissions
| Mates of State – Goods (All in Your Head) Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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seriously: does anyone else find it annoying that everyone defaults to " this song is about a guy who is in love with this girl"? or maybe it's about how it's about "telling her his love and getting rejected"?
sometimes you need to just listen for tone and mood and melody and NOT try to bend every song you hear into some moronic pop-song. there are enough of those already |
submissions
| Wolf Parade – Modern World Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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Amazing sound and lyrics. It says exactly what it means.
I especially like the line "It was a torch driving the savages back to the trees," which suggests that modern civilization isn't necessarily 'better' for us - it just outcompeted and marginalized other "barbaric" societal forms like hunting and gathering. The modern world is presented as cold, efficient, and totalizing.
"Modern world don't ask why" is referring to the myth of progress, which holds that the purpose of society/civilization is production, population, and unlimited growth. But the line "Modern world i'm not pleased to meet you / You just bring me down" argues otherwise - it says that maybe civilization is about happiness, and not about the increasing arms race between people's material wants and means of sating them.
As a student getting an environmental science / anthropology degree, this is my theme song. |
submissions
| Built to Spill – Else Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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I don't think this song is supposed to be a downer like everyone is saying it is.
Its theme is actually very inspirational and epiphenal. It's saying, like one other poster mentioned, how questing after the bigger questions like "what is the meaning of all this? of life? of love? of (whatever)?" really are besides the point.
The song is basically telling all of those depressed french philosophers and kids experiencing existential angst to chill out. Quit searching for "something else" when what matters is the present: the people you love, your friends, your family, your lovers.
Acknowledge that what we have is fleeting, transient, and ephemeral. Given that, treasure your what you have rather than asking why you have it or what it means.
The last line, "Just this side of love / Is where you'll find the confidence not to continue" isn't sad, it's inspirational! it's saying that in love, in living life viscerally and intensely, you will see how unnecessary it is to come up with a meaning of life. The meaning of life, Doug suggests, is "just this side of love" and not anything "else". |
submissions
| Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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I think pamelachae is approaching it from the right angle, but the song title ("cool goddess") seems to be describing this woman's 'coolness factor' and not really her 'beauty'
I agree with the vanity assessment. The singer suggests that beneath the hollow, empty, 'act' which coolness amounts to, there is an obscured and marginalized human dignity. In a way, the vanity that a lot of people can get locked into is dehumanizing - it's tiring to maintain the illusion, that image you present to everyone, when underneath there's perhaps a starving 'true' identity.
The line "You're so different / In a different way" seems to capture what being cool is all about: a subtle and controlled iconoclasm to make people think certain ways toward you. But, as the singer says, "what goes up has so far down to fall / So go salvage / Some of that human dignity / It'll be a long /Hard / Road"
People need to stop being so superficial and trying to meet 'cool' expectations. |
submissions
| Devendra Banhart – Hey Mama Wolf Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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To me, "mama wolf" seems like a metaphor for capital "N" nature, its wildness, and its beauty.
Nature is both a kind of "mother" in that we all come from and depend on nature, and it is a "wolf" because it is untamed, wild, and dangerous still. I think this characterization is actually very evocative and interesting.
The singer kind of recognizes "mama wolf" during birth, when in teh womb, when in the mountains, or the woods. He ends it with "when you're under me", which almost seems like a kind of lament; mama wolf is dead, or perhaps our wildness has been exorcised, and has been erased from our nature, though we are still reminded of it. |
submissions
| Echo and the Bunnymen – Silver Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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yeah, Mad Ape that was amazing. Way to somehow apply Nietzsche to Echo and the Bunnymen! I think you're completely right, and the inspiring lyrics I guess can get lost superficially beneath the vast instrumental component |
submissions
| Wilco – Pot Kettle Black Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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Eelsrule nailed it. the singer's saying he's not going to criticize others for "having no motive" or "being so oblivious to yourself" or whatever - because he sees it in himself as well. |
submissions
| Chad Vangaalen – Clincally Dead Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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Great song. It brings in the new futurist conception of eternal life through 'brain in a tank' science fiction. Really interesting imagery. It argues against those who believe that life dies with the brain. Actually, Chad argues, it doesn't. As long as some motor, some cognitive spark still "dreams on", you can live on. And maybe get hacked by prankster kids, making you see a light at the end of a tunnel! |
submissions
| Chad Vangaalen – Echo Train Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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this song is saying "chill out with your big fucking philosophical questions" - or to "stop dragging us down" with them. Of course in the big scheme of things, what we do, what we are, and everything that we value is ephemeral, transient, and exists only for the moment that we live. As Chad suggests, we should "just think about our bodies in this place." Why worry yourself with the big questions when they just make you existentially bummed? |
submissions
| Chad Vangaalen – Echo Train Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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this song is saying "chill out with your big fucking philosophical questions" - or to "stop dragging us down" with them. Of course in the big scheme of things, what we do, what we are, and everything that we value is ephemeral, transient, and exists only for the moment that we live. As Chad suggests, we should "just think about our bodies in this place." Why worry yourself with the big questions when they just make you existentially bummed? |
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