| Pearl Jam – Severed Hand Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
It seems to me that this song is pretty obviously about psychedelic drug use, like LSD or peyote. Heres evidence: "Got some kicks, wanna take a ride?" --> kicks = hits, ride = trip "...leave yourself behind" --> hallucinagens sometimes give the sensation of being outside your body "tried to walk, found a severed hand...recognized it by the wedding band" --> he can't walk right, he sees his hand, but is outside it, "severed" from it, and he only recognizes that it is his by the wedding ring "you'll see dragons after 3 or 4" --> hallucinations "the rooms taller now" --> spatial perception shifts "I see the sound in waves" --> experience of synaesthesia (i.e. tasting shapes, smelling colors, etc.) caused by psychedelics "If i don't lose control explore not explode" - often users of hallucinogens panic when their world starts to desolve. he realized that he must keep control and not explode "a preternatural other plane" --> reference to the transcendent journey he in undergoing "once dissolved we are free to grow" --> a hippie idea, on the same page as Timothy Leary, that humans can reach spiritual freedom when the mental filters that structure our world are broken down in addition to all this, the picture that accomplanies the lyrics in the album seems to fit along the lines of transcendence, mental/spiritual freedom altogether, a great song |
|
| Pearl Jam – Rats Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| As far as this song being ironic, it is. The ridiculous of his lyrics that portray rats as civilized is a mockery of similar rhetoric that humans are civilized and superior. Vedder is using this irony to reveal the truth that humans are just as animalistic as rats - and maybe worse due to the calculated cruelty we exact on one another on large scales. | |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.