| Elliott Smith – Everything Means Nothing to Me Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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At a quick glance you might think "ah what a lovely poem" and enjoy the ambience, but I consider Elliott Smith somewhat of a genius and I had to go deeper into his song 'Everything Means Nothing To Me' This song being on his penultimate album before his tragic suicide lead me to believe its how he viewed life at the time After a beautiful piano on the intro he opens with "Someone found the future as a statue in a fountain" I consider Elliott to me anything but vein so I think that when he says "someone" he means himself. THis is just an interpretation, I imagined Elliott in an american mall and he saw a statue ("the iron man") in a fountain, which is quite common in malls, and when he saw the reflection in the water "the reflection in the water showed an iron man still trying to salute" it would have shown: the statue, himself, and the mall around him. So he didn't really see the future but since the "iron man" (the statue) was "from a time when he was everything hes supposed to be" technically the present was the future. I think this is just the idea that inspired him, the rest of the lyrics are of his own creative genius and his (at that time) view on life. For instance there may well have been a bird on the statue's (the "iron man") shoulder but it would have been stone/statue colored, not blue: "the blue song bird on his shoulder who keeps singing over everything" and the bird is singing "Everything Means Nothing To Me" So picture Elliott in a mall imagining this inanimate object, a stone bird singing everything means nothing to me. He then metaphorically picks up the song that the bird is singing "I picked up the song and found my picture in the paper" The fact that his picture is in the paper, I think, means that the bird was singing about Elliott. i.e this is how Elliott feels: everything means nothing to him, everything meant nothing to him; it whispers suicide, it perhaps even fore-told it, this song was after all on the penultimate album and he killed himself before the last was released. The "paper" though is the only thing that i don't understand I don't know what it reprsents or where it came from, the bird was singing a song and suddenly paper appeared that he was able to pick up "I picked up the song and found my picture in the paper" With this interpretation the song becomes very dark when I listen to it, I feel ill, he's almost screaming "I want to die" at me, it's scary but hey check it out its 'Everything Means Nothing To Me' by 'Elliott Smith' on the album 'Figure 8' you can interpret it how you like, this is just how it is to me "bye" |
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| Elliott Smith – Either/Or (No More) Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I don't think the pro-noun "you" is directed at himself in this one. Although he's done that before, in fact he has a tendancy to. I have a few interpretations about some lines, but it's one of his more ambiguous songs, you don't really know. |
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| Elliott Smith – Placeholder Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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it's just simply another one of his unrequited love songs, surely you Smith fans are seeing the pattern here. His song topics were mostly 'drugs' 'girls' and 'suicide.' This is one of those 'girl' ones. "all these records look like big zeroes" pathetic fallacy, to describe his mood, he's down, he feels like a zero, a loser "The biggest loser on 16th Street" this is the effect unrequited love has on most people. "A placeholder until you take up mine" A placeholder, someone who holds a place, he's holding this place for this girl whose picture is on "the back of a 45." He wants her to "take up" his. |
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| Elliott Smith – Alameda Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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After reading all the comments I am only now realising that 'Alameda' is a street as apposed to a girl's name which changed my interpretation slightly. Oh! Gotta include how great an idea it was to start singing the next line "walk down Alameda" before he finished the line before it which was "you can't finish what you start". That's gotta be like musical onomateopia or something. My interpretation of the song was that it was about a 'drama queen'. An ex-girlfriend of Smith's whom he still loved. The "you" pronoun meant different people at different parts of the song, "you walk down alameda" referring to the ex-girlfriend walking down the street and the "for one or two, minutes she liked you" referring to Smith. "But now the fix is in" as drama queens often do change their minds. This girl probably messes alot of guys about, Elliott just happend to be one her victims, he realises this "shuffeling your deck of trick cards". "your friends How you maintain all them in a constant state of suspense" She is keeping all the guys she's been with who have fallen for her hopes up, when she has no intention of being with any of them, she just likes the drama. |
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| Foo Fighters – See You Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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this song is definetly about when someone breaks up with you, but you still really like them. They don't feel the same way about you but it still makes you feel good to see them "I wish you only knew how good it is to see you" "These steps I take don't get me anywhere I'm getting further from myself" - line means: you are trying to get the person to like you in 'that way' again, it doesnt work, in doing this you don't act like yourself "I'm done resenting you you represented me so well" - 'resenting you' the 'you' is not a person its the fact that the person broke up with you, and the 'you represented me so well' you thought you were so great together |
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