| Wolf Parade – I'll Believe in Anything Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I am growing to resent this song; every time it comes up on my playlist, the next few songs that come after it always seem hopelessly weak by comparison. It's like a tree that grows so big and tall it strangles all the underbrush beneath it for lack of... sunshine. |
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| Crystal Castles – I Am Made of Chalk Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I've seen a number of people, in a number of places, suggest that this song is attempting to capture the moment of death. That was basically how it first came across to me as well. Specifically, we are witnessing the decohering of a mind. The last moments where memories and identity are dissolving away. The mood seems mostly sad acceptance, except for one little outburst near the end - either one last angry lash out at fate, or the process of decoherence reaching its destructive conclusion. Kineticc, the idea of this being a concept album about life and death is really intriguing. The album opens with Fainting Spells, which is pretty plainly describing sex in one form or another, and ends with this. Anyone care to try to fit the remaining 12 songs into this schema? |
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| Crystal Castles – Black Panther Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| "Based on lyrics *alone" | |
| Crystal Castles – Black Panther Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Ok, so it's either about masturbating, or incest? Based on lyrics along, I'm leaning towards the former, though its location on the album also somewhat suggests the latter. |
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| The Bravery – Believe Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Quackers and sullivanm55 have got it the closest, thogh Sullivan's specific lyric interpretations are way off. "its already done" is NOT an allusion to suicide, and the song never gives any indication whatsoever that the singer is contemplating suicide (there is a reason for this). Further, although ideas like the search for meaning and purpose inevitably meld into questions of religion, there is also nothing remotely religiously explilcit in the lyrics. This song is a fair bit simpler - and a fair bit more depressing - than any of you realize. This song is about the human condition. Quackers sums it up reasonably well: "i think this song is just about how we're all trying to make a difference in the world yet few of us do. and how you're waiting for something amazing to happen, for that life changing moment to come around the corner, but it never does, and you're starting to loose hope." But it's even less dramatic than that. The singer does not imply that he is looking to make a difference in the world, or that they are waiting for a major moment; his hopes are much humbler than that. All he is hoping for is for life to be something other than a linear collection of valueless instants. He just wants thet "one thing" that makes it even mildly worth going through the effort. It doesn't have to be saving the world, or finding a state oif being that fills him with joy. He's not asking for much - he just wants that one single little thing - that one cause, helper, responsibility, to give him something to keep putting one foot in front of the other for. As Sullivan says: "someone who has seen past everyday life. One who knows there is no point to the very routine life we live" He goes very wrongly after that though by suggesting its the state of modern society which the singer has a hard time with. I expect the singer would have similar difficulties at any point in human history. It's the human condition - the state of living itself - with which he has problems. I said before that there is a reason that the singer never gives any indication of suicidal tendencies, or of anything else so dramatic (in my opinion, doing so would have been greatly to the song's detriment). The reason is this: the singer is describing a state of mind in which living is a fruitless endeavor. And he is in a worse position than most for seeing it. The lyrics: "The faces all around me, they don't smile they just crack." Manufactured pleasantness. We all see it every day, unless you are completely oblivious. How many hours per day do you spend being pleasant to people you have no attachment of any kind with whatsoever - who you are going to forget the moment they leave your sight? Very first line of the song and he's already called attention to the fact that you spend nearly a third of your life suppressing your identity - putting forth a false, crafted image - an image of someone else entirely - just because that's... what we have to do. You will only live 1/3 of the generally accepted length of your life. Obviously, you are asleep for one third, but for the other third, you are drifting around inside your own head, passing the time, while the proxy you does what it needs to do to keep food in your mouth. "Waiting for our ship to come, but our ship's not coming back." As Quackers suggested: we spend a huge portion of our lives just hoping things'll turn around. The further implication is that we use this hope to justify not taking matters into our own hands; there is a fictional salvation coming, always just around the corner, and all we have to do is just barely get by until it gets here. We do our time like pennies in a jar What are we saving for? Reiteration of the above: most of the time, we're just passing it. Why? Is THAT the point, after all? "There's a smell of stale fear that's reeking from our skin. The drinking never stops because the drink absolves our sin. We sit and grow our roots into the floor What are we waiting for" What this paragraph means to highlight is how simply waiting for our 'ship' to come in is worse than it seems. It's not just that we're not actively moving towards a better life - passing the time continually roots us further into our current life. We forget more and more of what we learned in school. We get more and more tired, and the prospect of going back for further education, or putting in the huge amount of work that would be required to drastically change our position in life becomes more and more intimidating. The longer we 'get by' in a given sitiuation, the more readily we can convince ourselves that we've got enough to live comfortably, and taking any sort of risk to change our position becomes more and more unnerving. We become afraid of taking any steps to effect the change that we've originally desired, because we're terrified of losing the little that we currently have. Obviously, many have turned to drink in similar situations - that one ain't hard to get. "so give me something to believe cause I am living just to breath and i need something more to keep on breathing for so give me something to believe" The crux of it all, and the chorus for that reason. This paragraph explains why he is singing this song. "So give me something to believe" Something. Anything. Just that one thing that will make his life more than a simple succession of days. Something that will persist past one sleep/wake cycle. Something more than getting through that day on the job without getting fired. A greater victory than getting through the month with no disasterous medical expenses, or the car breaking down. "Cause I am living just to breath" Cause at the moment, all he has is the next breath. The only reason to draw it is to get to the one after it. "and I need something more" The breathing itself just ain't enough. "to keep on breathing for" see? "somethings always coming you can hear it in the ground it swells into the air with the rising, rising sound and never comes but shakes the boards and rattles all the doors" There's two things this paragraph could refer to, both equally relevant. If he meant for it to refer to both, he is simply a genius. 1.) We've moved beyond the ship metaphor, but this something is the same thing as the ship. His point with "you can hear it in the ground" is that we're very good at convincing ourselves that it's on the way - that we can 'see it just on the horizon,' so to speak. "Swell"ing into the air, and the "rising sound" are further manifestations of the ship - we can see, feel, and hear it - it's just always right there - a week, amybe a month away. If we can just get through the next day, and a few more after that... But it "never comes," though the shaking boards and rattling doors tell us its oh-so-close! 2.) Alternatively (and I would lean towards this, as the 'ship' has already been addressed), the something could be the disaster that will knock him from his place of bare subsistance. The incident that will force him to change his path, since in his current state of drastic underachievement he doesn't have very many resources to deal with disaster. This distructive event is always just on the horizon as well. and he continually narrowly avoids it (or he wouldn't be here singing this), but he can't help but feel, at all times, that he's just one bit of bad luck away from everything falling apart. Shaking the boards and rattling the doors concurs images that go very well in line with this. (The possiblity that part of him is hoping for this disasterous thing to happen should be noted. He is so dissatisfied with his current state, that perhaps being knocked onto ANY other course would be more desirable than remaining "rooted" where he is.) "I am hiding from some beast but the beast was always here watching without eyes because the beast is just my fear That I am just nothing now its just what I've become what am i waiting for its already done" My least favorite verse. He didn't need to tell us the beast was his fear - there was enough there to figure it out. The point here is, as I mentioned before, his own fear of things falling apart has become the force that is holding him in place. He wants nothing more in the world than to find some other state of being that he can live with, but HE is the one preventing him from making that discovery. And he's proven to himself again and again that there's not a damned thing he can do about it by now; if he hasn't made a move and shaken things up by now, there's clearly nothing short of something directly forcing his hand (that this that shakes the boards and rattles the doors) that will cause him to. "I am hiding from some beast but the beast was always here" Acknowledgement of the paradox described above: The beast is what is causing him to hide, but wherever he hides, there is the beast. "the beast is just my fear that I am nothing. Now it's just what I've become." Although he was finally able to get out his thoughts, he realizes that it's already too late. He's the victim of his own self-fulfilling prophecy: his fear of his life becoming valueless has played a major role in causing it to become so. He is acknowledging that fearing that conlusion is a waste of time at this point, because he's already arrived at that end. Now, despite the fact that he just seems to directly admit that his hopes no longer have any shot of being fulfilled, he ends the song with the chorus - one last request for that one thing. Perhaps this is simply because ending on the chorus worked, musically, for this particular song, but perhaps not. No way to know except straight from the horse's mouth, I suppose. But I'll suggest two other possibilities: 1.) Despite telling even himself that it's over, hope springs eternal, and he still has, somewhere, some tiny bit of fight left in him. He'll keep on looking for that one thing to believe in until he's got no means left of finding it. 2.) Despite his stark honestly with himself, and his ability to eloquently express the speicifcs of the situation that the rest of us don't even realize we are in, he's still no farther along than us. At the end of the day, he can tell himself all he wants that something's got to change, but he's living proof that none of us - not a one - can transcend this human condition. That we're all just... "Waiting for our ship to come. But our ship's not coming back." |
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| The Offspring – The Kids Aren't Alright Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I don't think there's any hidden meaning here :) Just a beautiful song, and a beautiful video (just see the PEOPLE... they're what the song is about after all). |
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| Tegan and Sara – Walking with a Ghost Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Two more points - 1.) The above interpretation could be supported or attacked by finding out whether or not it was the one dressed in black who moved. I am not familiar enough with them to tell them apart! 2.) Got to thinking about the black domain being closed off and the white domain being an open area. This fits the character profile as well: usually the one leaving never really opened themselves up in the relationship, and hid their feelings/intentions, so that they don't hurt when separation comes. On the other hand, the white one was more open - allowed herself to get closer, and thus, more hurt, especially since she probably didn't see it coming, since black was (literally!) closed off. |
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| Tegan and Sara – Walking with a Ghost Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I get the moving to Montreal thing, and I buy it. Just a few comments. Salvo said, "although I saw only 2 evils and 3 good. so where does the extra heart come from?" There are three black ones. The third is sitting on top of the huge black room (it took me a million viewings to make out what was going on with the youtube resolution and all, but you can definitely tell the one surrounded by hearts is sitting on the edge looking down at the white ones). Three and three. When one gets her heart back, they all do simultaneously, and when two blacks give their hearts up, the who black entity loses its, including the one on top. So three whites represent one person and three blacks represent one person. Ok, so far so obvious. Each (white and black) has an outward facade and inward feelings. For the black the outward facade is the one who stole the hearts and sits up top. For the white the two timid ones are the outward day-to-day facade. The outward black one has no part in returning the heart(s). The remaining white one, though generally meeker, well, part of her is angry enough at being abandoned to lash out and try to get some answers. Thus only one third is willing to go into the black - the very inward part that is unwilling to just let go. Seem like any relationship you've ever been in? (The more general definition of the word relationship - get your minds out of the gutter.) One party takes off, crushing the one left behind. The one left behind is usually the one hurt on the surface and wanting answers, while the one leaving usually puts on a hard exterior but perhaps is hurting inside, even if they won't admit it. I'd even go so far as to suggest that the six persons aren't actually the two people - the black and white domains are the two people. Think about it: black appears unfased on the outside, even after literally ripping out someone's heart, but is hurting on the inside, while white appears hurt and weak on the outside but inside is angry and feels wronged internally. And guess where the corresponding person are? The black that did the stealing/leaving is OUTSIDE (on top of) the black box (body), and represents the uncaring, hardened exterior. The blacks that are sympathetic are INSIDE the black domain (body), and represent inward turmoil/pain and sympathy. White doesn't correspond in exactly the same way, since the white domain is not a box but an open area (as far as I can tell), but the timid two represent the person most of the time, while the one who ventures forward is the bit that feels wronged and is angry/hurt enough to want answers. Now I know very little about this band, and the whole moving to Montreal thing I hadn't heard before reading this thread... I usually like to try to interpret songs BEFORE I know the real interpretation, so maybe I'm digging waaaay too far into this and giving them too much artistic credit, but as far as my experience goes this is a not uncommon format of breakups, and not necessarily restricted to romantic relationships. If it is true that one moved away without letting anybody know, as someone mentioned earlier, then the resulting emotions could be very much the same. |
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| Weird Al Yankovic – Hardware Store Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Couple more attempts and I got it down. Course, that's in a room voice. Projecting it for a performance is an entirely different animal, I think. |
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| Weird Al Yankovic – Hardware Store Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Third verse is very doable. I don't sing, swim, or do anything that requires building up lung capacity, and, after a half dozen tries, I can get through 'automatic circumcisers' before my voice starts to weaken. For someone who sings for a living (i.e. Weird Al), I imagine it would be no problem. |
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| System of a Down – Revenga Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Ok, so hitting the 'back' button, then going forward again = double post. And a d@mned long one at that. My bad. | |
| System of a Down – Revenga Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Poisoning a drink - misoprostol (abortifacient ingested orally)? Or perhaps saline injection (NOT ingested orally.) Bleeding in a sink - pretty obvious Choking with a link - coat hanger? Killing with a stink - pennyroyal, (an abortifacient with a potent smell)? Trampling a shrink - abdominal trauma? (although I admit I have no idea why 'shrink' is used, except for rhyming purposes. ALL forms of abortion. And, of course, the one line no one has commented about: "It's in the making baby," which is darkly funny, if you're thinking in terms of abortion. It seems pretty plain once you look at it that it's about abortion. Could be wrong, but I'd be surprised to hear otherwise definitively. Many of the other lines are consistently sarcastic/venomous towards the 'mother.' "My sweet revenge Will be yours For the taking" Translation: "You sick f*ck, why would you do this to something that can't defend itself [i.e. for the taking]. Make you feel powerful?" "I saw her laugh And she said Go Away" Mother's attitude towards child. Or perhaps her response to the narrator (a man) when he expresses concern for her child. Either way, she just don't give a d@mn, and we are to be disgusted by that. "Shoulda been coulda been Woulda been woulda been you!" Perhaps, as some have suggested, means "wish YOU (the mother) had been aborted instead." But I think it means (addressed to the child) "You should have been allowed to live. You should still be here right now." "Just your mother's HO" Perhaps better understood as "You're just a result of your mothers whoring." Not to be unnoticed is the "My sweet Clementine" connection. From the original song: "Thou art lost and gone forever Dreadful sorry, Clementine" While the meaning of this song is anything but obvious, there is not a single line that can't be readily understood in terms of an abortion. Well.... except for "Hallelujah wink." I'm as lost there as the rest of you. |
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| System of a Down – Revenga Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Poisoning a drink - misoprostol (abortifacient ingested orally)? Or perhaps saline injection (NOT ingested orally.) Bleeding in a sink - pretty obvious Choking with a link - coat hanger? Killing with a stink - pennyroyal, (an abortifacient with a potent smell)? Trampling a shrink - abdominal trauma? (although I admit I have no idea why 'shrink' is used, except for rhyming purposes. ALL forms of abortion. And, of course, the one line no one has commented about: "It's in the making baby," which is darkly funny, if you're thinking in terms of abortion. It seems pretty plain once you look at it that it's about abortion. Could be wrong, but I'd be surprised to hear otherwise definitively. Many of the other lines are consistently sarcastic/venomous towards the 'mother.' "My sweet revenge Will be yours For the taking" Translation: "You sick f*ck, why would you do this to something that can't defend itself [i.e. for the taking]. Make you feel powerful?" "I saw her laugh And she said Go Away" Mother's attitude towards child. Or perhaps her response to the narrator (a man) when he expresses concern for her child. Either way, she just don't give a d@mn, and we are to be disgusted by that. "Shoulda been coulda been Woulda been woulda been you!" Perhaps, as some have suggested, means "wish YOU (the mother) had been aborted instead." But I think it means (addressed to the child) "You should have been allowed to live. You should still be here right now." "Just your mother's HO" Perhaps better understood as "You're just a result of your mothers whoring." Not to be unnoticed is the "My sweet Clementine" connection. From the original song: "Thou art lost and gone forever Dreadful sorry, Clementine" While the meaning of this song is anything but obvious, there is not a single line that can't be readily understood in terms of an abortion. Well.... except for "Hallelujah wink." I'm as lost there as the rest of you. |
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| The Decemberists – The Mariner's Revenge Song Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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words&tricks - I had completely forgotten about reading the Cask in High School til you mentioned it. Not exactly parelles, that and this song, but that was another good send-shiver-sup-your-spine revenge bit too. |
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| The Decemberists – The Mariner's Revenge Song Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Sleepytime and Paperstreet - I am SOOO glad someone else noticed that pun. No one I know who listens to the Decemberists (not many, admittedly) picked it up. I grin ear to ear everytime I hear it |
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| Guster – Keep It Together Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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oh yeah- if it is about the band, after all, you could apply my interpretation to say that this song is their way of saying that being successful doesn't make life any easier or of a higher quality than before. |
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| Guster – Keep It Together Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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Maybe this song is about the band, i haven't heard myself, but if a member of the band said so it's most likely accurate. Still, what does it mean that it's 'about the band'? About their development? conflicts with stardom? how things are different now with family and old and new friends? There're a million things that it could be about even if it is 'about the band.' To me, the meaning seems very obvious, and if it is about the band, you can also extend it to a more generalized meaning - Basically - a warning against falling into the grass is always greener trap: leaving everything and starting over isn't always all it's cracked up to be. First verse: "when we all finally washed ashore it was clear there was no one else around we declared a national holiday a chance to build it from the ground so far away from everyone and everything starts today" Basically - picking up the peices and starting from scratch, optimistically, of course, with the hope that things'll be better this time around than whatever circumstances got them shipwrecked in the first place. Verse 2: "can we rise? can we get along all right? can we miss the storm that sucked the whole world in?? Says it all right there - uncertainty - can we ever really start over? Can we ever really escape the pitfalls of life, that make us disatisfied so much of the time? Verse 3: "the thunder struck the clouds appeared our fearless crew was not prepared and pretty soon the boats came for us half a million strong we gathered arms we fired shells we built a wall around ourselves" The answer: No. The reality of life doesn't let you go that easily. Even after wiping the slate clean and starting over, "so far away from everyone," this new figurative utopia turns out to be a lot like what they escaped before. "And pretty soon the spirit was a lot like what it used to be back home." |
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| System of a Down – She's Like Heroin Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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Like all System, this song SAYS so much more than it actually SAYS. And like all System, the key lies in the lyrics alongside the sound of the song. This song is split into two VERY distinct segments, and the words remain the same, but how those words are sung changes. The first is characterized by vocals that are upfront, confident-sounding, and even sung in a sort of silly way. To me, it seems very deliberate that you would hear this and think this song is just meant to be ridiculous - I think you were intended to think this at first - that it's about a guy and a girl (at least) involved in the drug/whoring scene, put in the form of a song that you can blast at full volume. After the little 'lalala' part in the middle, however. a drastic change occurs, and all of the sudden there is a very strong sense of desperation in the music and the lyrics. I mean, just listen to it again - the words in the two parts are the same, but they couldn't sound any more different. To me, this is where you are supposed to suddenly realize that something is seriosuly wrong - that it's not just a metal song about a herion addict and a whore anymore, but that suddenly these two people are given some depth, and some feeling is put into the song. The last line cements this for me - throughout the whole song it's been "I need someone to save her ass", and then, all of the sudden, it's "I need someone to save MY ass." Let me just sum it up this way: Anyone seen Requiem for a Dream? Things start out fairly neutral, and then there is a quick and deadly degeneration. The last line is where he finally realizes he's in over his head. One last comment: Although I admit I prefer System's more melodic stuff, I think the repetition of 'ass', silly though it is (I mean, come on, 40% of the chorus, such as it is, is the word 'ass') serves a very functional purpose in drawing the contrast between the first part, and the more emotionally involved second part, where it only appears 3 times (as opposed to 17 in the first). Basically, I just want to throw out a little tribute to System of a Down here: 1.) I don't like politically charged music and 2.) I'm not a huge fan of metal... ...and yet I still think these guys are incredible. |
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| System of a Down – Question! Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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believe it or not, I read most of all of what came before my comment (not quite all, so if what I am about to say is not true, I apologize) but in all of this commentary there is one thing I've not seen ANY of. You've all spent quite a lot of time on the lyrics (and come up with some very good ideas, I think, including many things I hadn't thought of before), but there's more to a song that just the lyrics and structural arrangement. Listen to the SOUND of this song, and the WAY it is sung, and the changes in feel (from the soft tone in the "sweet berries part" to the high energy "do we, do we know" part, and then the practically violent "na na na" at the end. My questions: after listening to it this way, does it seem like this is sung by someone who is confident in ANY of his spiritual knowledge? To me it doesn't. Just my thoughts, but I'd say that shoots all sides of the religious arguments right out the window. For the same reason - the drastic changes in tone, it realy doesn't seem to me like this can be political. System is always much more confident in their political statements, and parts of this song, as I've hinted at, sound like it's being sung by someone who's feeling weak and conflicted (angry, at times, too). I don't really have a complete interpretation of my own yet, but I just wanted to weigh in on an area that I think some of you went way wrong in. |
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| System of a Down – Lonely Day Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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I'm a System fan who doesn't like political commentary in music ... yeah, figure how that one happened, I know ... so maybe it's me just wanting to not see any politics in this song, but I really don't see either the 'emo mocking' or the 'war' aspect of this song. I'd be more inclined to agree with 'rememberlove' up there, and for one very specific reason - something about this song that no one has mentioned thus far. I think that for this song simply READING the lyrics isn't enough. Listen to it again, and listen to the feel of the whole song, then the very last line, and ask yourself, do you really think he has made it out of this day alive yet? Does it really sound like he survived it? To me, this song is very straightforward in that it is about someone who has lost a close relationship. But that last line - that says to me that he knows intellectually that he has to get past it and get back into the routine of life, without letting it kill him, but, although the words say one thing, the tone says, "I'm still not in the clear." Basically, it seems to me like he's trying to make himself accept that he may never feel right, or the way he did before when he was with her, again. And he's not really succeeding too well... |
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