| The Replacements – Kiss Me On The Bus Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| me too | |
| The Magnetic Fields – Quick! Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I think it's "ah but who will pay the rentS" | |
| The Magnetic Fields – The Horrible Party Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
*known hitherto only to wolves, I believe also I believeD it was "new uses for loosening stools", now I'm sad to find the truth |
|
| The Beatles – Savoy Truffle Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
worth mentioning the heroin/opiate refs (ginger sling, might not feel it now but when the pain cuts through, sweat) I'd always gone with the Clapton sweet tooth thing, but I kind of like this idea about it being a comment on Paul's songs |
|
| Bob Dylan – To Ramona Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
the way I see it: he's not against the statement itself. I'd say he very much agrees with it. he just considers her not true to her words and criticizes her, not necessarily for saying a falsehood, but for not following/believing the wisdom in those words. (in other words, thinking no one is better than you and you are no better than anyone would mean that you know you got nothing to win and nothing to lose) the song's about some girl from the country moving to the city, who becomes unsure of herself in the face of the city and feels the need to prove herself or make herself as quote-unquote successful as what she sees. Dylan's saying she shouldn't value things like that or twist her life to live up to the fixtures or dreams or schemes she encounters there. |
|
| Pavement – Stereo Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
whoa, I just looked up "crick" Malkmus must have too. crick = old britishy variant of creek, mainly currently = bad neck spasm |
|
| Pavement – Strings of Nashville Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
so I think it's "put back the magazines" "it's not that quiet here" (could go either way) yep |
|
| Pavement – Pueblo Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
I really couldn't say how this notion got into my head, but a week ago listening to it, I saw the hanging going on being for some guy being gay and then Jacob's trying to arouse him, and someone's saying "don't say what you made 'em feel" and then of course gold factors into it. oh right: I thought the line was "Jacob, when you move, it don't move, it don't moooooveeeeeeee!" well anyway. as for being constructive, I think the line is, "then it hits them, you can't buy sand". as for the later parts, my hearing cannot be trusted. |
|
| Pavement – Perfume-V Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
things make things be like things. heroine or whatever affecting them. the radio affecting him. making some heroine getaway vacation something look like a wife's ex plot. the power of perfume to make things smell like things. the power of the word "lime" to suddenly change an image in your head. |
|
| Pavement – Grounded Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
wait so are sedans fancy cars? it seems to me Malkmus is walking a thin line where he's talking about doctors' ambiguous riches and then saying "I don't know which boys are the ones dying on these streets." it's painted as calling out the rich doctor for whatever whatever (and doesn't take back that attack), but it's the rich doctors who have their souls sucked out and fear the medical world knocking you out, they're going crazy over the bridge falling apart with some more etc. miseries. so yeah, boo hoo for the doctors, life sucks. also poor people are dying on easter, so yeah. kind of a meditation on job security. which I find funny because Malkmus plays guitar and yells for money. |
|
| Pavement – Here Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
jesus. like no interpretation here. my interpretation when I listened at the end of high school was really topical, but it hasn't really changed. the singer is going out with or is friends with some person(s). he's wanted to be close to them and is now just tolerating them. he's forcing laughter and feigning okayness. the relationship's gone to piss, they hate their boring rituals, but they go on and smile. in high school, the logical thing was that you just smile until that last summer's over. the chorus says, uh, prayer does the trick. it is hard to be the one to call it off. near the end it can get bitter-- under the thinning mask of innocent friendliness you may fire attacks at one another, but keep it just ambiguous enough that they can't be certain that you're totally dissing them man. that's my interpreting of the "sterile striking/if it's just too clear" part, though the wording is weird. the chorus kind of says, "uh, not really sure how to make a clean break. spontaneous prayer circle?" it's kinda just a hopeful way for people in a weird situation with each other to approach it as themselves and show themselves for who they are, etc. etc. it probably won't happen. I imagine that painting portraits of minions and slaves is an activity of theirs. translates to: them spending time together is time spent asserting power or reinforcing roles on each other. the "Spanish candle/mountain shiver" line's confusing to me. how I take it: despite hating what he has to be around this person, it sticks with him and it contributes to who he is. also, IMO it's "gone to piss". anyway, not really sure about that one. but I really like the last part. now he guesses she spent her last quarter (weed) randomly as she probably says when he asks. he guesses. if that quarter was supposed to be for "them", what'd she go through it all for? you can't really get mad at "spent it randomly" in its vagueness. he can't be sure that she says that because she hates his guts, which is why both of them guess that a guess is the best he can do-- the security of keeping things ambiguous. so yeah. everything's turned cold, and soon the niceties only come in ambiguous "might be being friendly, might be masking pure hatred" and they'll become callous with each other, and that's how everything ends at the beginning of the false kindnesses. oh yeah and "dressed for success" is a great line. to preface the song with that means that the singer's main motivation for really being in this relationship is personal social success, which he attempts to achieve by just getting himself all clean and proper. of course what follows will be a sham relationship. |
|
| Pavement – Frontwards Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| it's certainly an embarrassing interpretation to write (both because you can't be sure if it's too-obvious or too-out-there and because it exposes the interpreter's own stupid thoughts about social whatever), but I maintain that's why Malkmus is a genius for wrapping up his songs like this. it's beautiful to be have a depressing song about how hanging out with your old friends is terrible (Here) and play it to your friends 20 times without them really knowing what the singer guy is singing. and it allows Malkmus to put feeling or new phrasings into his songs without pretensions or weird emo trappings. plus the ultra-specific images and situations make it that much more powerful. there's paranoia and embarrassment in the song, and a few of the lines do hit me. | |
| Pavement – Frontwards Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
I disagree with the disconnected images thing. I held back my interpretation before because it's almost too close, personally, and because it'll be weird and difficult to bring together. but I find it's best to take a song as the singer should know it's heard the first time-- you hear the first line and think "what could that mean and what will the next line clear up about the direction it's going in and the ideas it has?" and doing the same with the second-- so that's what I'll do. a search for something, the action of which must seriously avoid being found out. singer purports no one else is searching for it. what kind of thing might a person be searching for that no one else (according to singer) is searching for, but which that person cannot allow other people to know he's searching for? things other people say, stories they've heard and told, it's not making perfect sense. a group of people who are not "far away from the beginning" agree that something's being fudged or somehow isn't adding up. i.e., from a naive standpoint something's not logical, or being held behind the scenes. "oh shush, you natives, let's hear some shoddy speculation and stop harping on why natively straightforward things become tangled and confusing in their sophistication" might I suggest that whatever data the natives are fussing over is connected to the search? might I also suggest that the natives being told "quiet you" is connected to why others must remain unaware of the search? there's the beginning and reasonable something, then there's data charts and stories you hear and it's the today and there's something fishy about empty homes and plastic combs. how'd we get to the point of homes with the people not in them and something sheen-icalistic phonily made from stolen rims? sigh, this is where it's necessary to belong to a certain culture/scene/group of friends for SM's words to relate. here less than Here, but still. she being the only one who always inhales - she takes the drugs as she's expected, do(s)es as she's told more-or-less oblivious that she's altering her mind as per the friends' choice. hard to explain but that's the best I can do. oh right, forgot about the "chorus". coolness. you might as well say that's what the searcher is searching for. hipness to the situation, understanding. if there's no certain reference point for what each person understands of a social situation, where's the top style that you're being social under? does it even mean anything to be so aware of what's going on in your social relations that you won't be topped in coolness? so sure, "I've got so much style" even if it's wasting as it were. "Paris is stale" fits in with that-- Paris is known for being smugly so aware of what culture and sophisticated life are. but it's been found out. we know what's up. "and it's war if we fail" - but are we at risk saying we know what's up if we don't know what's up? there's the striving to understand and there's the fact that you're striving to understand. if one is not achieved fully then the other is let on. it's pathetic. the foreigners don't really understand what's going on (in a culture kinda way), they weren't at that place from the start with the others. so how can they sleep soundly? they're disadvantaged and prone to disaster. you strive hard, put effort and put yourself into "fitting in" or whatever the kids are calling it these days. and it takes its toll. you smoke to be cool (I guess that's a "thing" to SM), but it's killing you. putting themselves into it, the foreign insomniacs are workin' hard, and their souls are crumbling like the clods of dirt you pick up. whatever they've gathered to make themselves "soulful" is crumbling when applied socially to Parisians or whatever whatever. I'm not really sure about plastic combs, I guess they're artificial, but the other two things are artifices and what they're made of (chrome made of pure, home is made of heart) are lies with facades. yeah he's working hard and piling on the style (though from the beginning we know this process is pointless if transparent, and the shroud is just a more well-understood, more successful version of the natives' confused fussing), the magical insight that allows him to be on top of things. but you know what, there's no reference point. it's just people who don't understand things truly trying to figure out what's actually going on, thus continuing to maplessly build roads to places unknown, feigning confidence that they know all along. if there's a rhyme+reason or a well-socialized way people should understand each other and themselves and the world (the pattern), well we're not seeing it, and we're blindly weaving it and creating the social fabric for the future in that way. so as we move frontwards, there's more and more bullshit that everyone's social reality is built upon, and we're further from the naive/natural/simple/reasonable way things might should work all the time, destined for confusion and deception and power tactics. |
|
| Pavement – Strings of Nashville Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
another song sung by a (sym)pathetic character. telling someone to stop building yaself up socially and lying and conforming in the meantime. the lyrics seem pretty off, but I've gotta go. |
|
| Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – It Kills Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
The words sung at the end are probably: "Don't cater to The throng in your head Lead with your heart Open instead Transi-i-tion is where we make it happen Transition is where we make it happen And how it starts It's not an art You come apart You be reborn into a form Of what you are and what you were And what you're gonna be" according to this "acoustic session" from a radio thing where he sings it plainly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DL23GLfmBo . in that performance, these words are there too: "What can I say Some people stain Get way inside Under your brain And no one wants to be a nervous actor No one wants to be a nervous actor" I think It Kills cannibalized Nervous Actor, so |
|
| Pavement – Carrot Rope Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
I always think Pavement songs are about music and how they're approaching us, so that's probably why I somehow interpret the song in that way. we desperately listen to Pavement, clawing to get to the bottom of a song and see if Malkmus is fo real. yet there's a boundary, and there's always a purposeful misty-que. but hey, lucky day, he's gonna let us know what's in his pocket (something the only other Pmenters have seen). and the carrot rope is that dangling thing out of reach that keeps you entranced by the band, with the horse/donkey-on-a-treadmill thing coming to mind (as someone said above). fitting as their career finale. yeah of course there are holes and stretches (IN INTENTIONAL REFERENCE TO THEIR OBSCURE SONGWRITING HMMMMMMMMMM), but since this is Pavement's (apparently) most commented song here, I figured I might as well include this other interpretation. |
|
| Pavement – Father To A Sister Of Thought Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
lyrical thoughts: -I am almost certain it's "I know I'll never go" -more my opinion: it is "costs too much", not "cause" /// maybe it'll be different if I listen again, but I always assume it was "I'm leaning in" in both places /// "I bind with my hooks" (not I'm binding my hooks) anyway, agree about marriage at least in part, speedlimitdriver. first part: can't stand these social obligations. social nervousness, not exactly indicative of solidarity or the narrator's closeness with the gf/people. probably was trying to be there and try chatting, but can't stand to stay. "I know I'm leaning in to the end" - he can't keep it up next he starts acting liberated. "oh poppycock, I'm giving up on the fact that society says I should have a partner and fulfilling relationships. now I don't give no fuck bout narthing." "calling the bluffs, talking so tuff" - not holding his tongue when social practice warns him against exposing ugly social things. ugly steeple fear (marriage) ain't gonna be the motivator for trying to act decent and correctly any more, since he's giving up on close relationships anyway. people are bluff-y and cryptic, and it's an ugly ugly thing, and to that he says, "I'm just a man, you see who I am, even if I'm the only one willing to be open" (which also works with the Pavement notion of the music industry). "I know I'm leaning in to the end" - "so fuck it all, fuck the ties that bind, I'm on the verge of actually giving up on relationships and the social charade" "I know I'll never go" - "...but I know I won't actually ever go that far" |
|
| Pavement – We Are Underused Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
ok so I'm basically with speedlimitdriver. we're born human, and given the task to say we care about each other and make our lives monuments of our love and devotion. the lovely response: for what else is there in life? the cynic's response: but why care to pretend and put energies into an interpersonal devotion that's temporary and circumstantial when the effort ultimately yields nothing? (actually caring for people isn't in human nature, it's beyond the call of duty) I usually give too much credit to SM's ambiguity, but the polite/sarcastic lines (now I know you care, dying does not meet my expectations) make me wonder in which direction we are underused? is social obligation/affection taking away from what we should be doing (and what that is who knows), or does the truth of our natures and the holding our instincts hostage impede on how fully we could give ourselves to proving that we care? either way it's sarcastic and probably nihilistic. also notice how unusually stilted (even for BTC) the words in the first part are. I always figured talking about stupid cultural rituals and impressing others with your roast purposefully went with playfully using the arguably stupid metrical rules of songwriting as a means of expression. |
|
| Pavement – Frontwards Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
oh what the future holds. I find this song to be pretty bleak. |
|
| The Olivia Tremor Control – California Demise Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| and I think it's just about kids who grew up together with only each other, and later in the song that's confirmed to be tragic. though kinda simple, I feel it's a bit elusive since I personally didn't pay heed to what the lyrics about angels and storybooks were about till recently. | |
| The Olivia Tremor Control – California Demise Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| the saddest, and probably best, Bill Doss song I've heard | |
| Pavement – So Stark (You're a Skyscraper) Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| and if so, would he take offense? "I can't live beside [Scott] [yell yell screech]" | |
| The Olivia Tremor Control – Black Foliage (Itself) Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
a line is missing, in the second verse: "when you pass the black extension, imagine a ceremony just below the lids in your eyes / you are the subject eating walking..." |
|
| Bauhaus – She's In Parties Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
"She's 'in parties'" like other people say "she's in movies" in an idiomatic kind of way she's staging her life, and possibly caught up in the cinema and the detached acting gig of it all. |
|
| The Circulatory System – The Pillow Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| dreamy-inducing | |
| Talking Heads – Girlfriend Is Better (Stop Making Sense version) Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I think the comment in most songs like this is that this concept of love that (in this case) requires the expulsion of rational, honest thought is an unfortunate thing. | |
| Talking Heads – Happy Day Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
rambles aside, "bring that happy day to me"... everyone has the idea of a happy day. you don't even have to be absorbing movies and fairy tales for that one. it suggests a very cynical or even depressed Byrne, but I'd say he's grouping that idea of a happy day with those non-realistc/idealistic things that everyone is eager to claim they experience but which might not appear to the man who believes in Forms/etc like a Santa Claus or something and waits and waits for it. "The story that I told/The story I made up" the narrator might just delude himself into believing he does, I dunno. |
|
| Talking Heads – Happy Day Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
my thought, if you ever come back to this page: so that idealistic belief is about capital-t Truth being there and humans being somewhat aware of a nearly magical universality that touches all people's hearts and creates the meaning in all people's minds (though I can't promise that's Plato to a tee...). anyway, my guess is that Byrne thinks that's bullshit. the song's narrator says he believes that his mind's thoughts and the speech that comes out all correspond to the same exact meanings all people refer to and find to be true: happiness, him talking about his the will of his heart leading him, etc. it's all a nice way to remove the discomfort of being isolated in your head and just figuring things out to communicate and feel. I think most of their songs that feature the idea of love (and a great many do) muse over how love doesn't exist, but the masses come to grasp this idea as real, and the individuals in that mass are really just deluding themselves into thinking that so that they can belong to the mass. "Here I am..." |
|
| Talking Heads – With Our Love Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
I think this song deals with how men might fall for a woman, and in doing so kind of gives a weird and antimagical description of what love is. Men see the girl's special charms that she will put on to appear to be something special, or lovable, or different, or having a peculiar something that the men find transcendent in a person (stop me when you get the gist...). But, being humans with brains and memories and deduction skills, they know inside that this air of magic and otherness that the girl acts with is just an act, and they know (at least partially) that it's their role to ignore the reality of it and pretend to believe that a girl is so special until they can tell themselves with confidence that it's love: "Had they forgotten ... what this all means? / I think they want to forget / And they hope that this time..." The narrator in the song sings this observation. It seems he wants to be better than that - to be true to himself and ignore the fake love that's been perpetuated through our history as a species: "(And they) set an example for us" But.. the narrator is a man, and a lonesome one, just like the other men. He attempts to delude himself, 'well maybe there is love... there's so many other people who seem to be in love': men in couples all over "set an example for us-- I see it!. It can happen to me too." And by the end, despite his knowledge of the fakeness of love (similarly to every other person he's singing to and singing about, he tells himself with as much assertiveness as he can fake to himself that he does believe in love, for "I won't be neglected (not this time!)" |
|
| Sonic Youth – I Love Her All The Time Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| (the original was a long noisy dirge so of course CVB made a 2 minute hoedown out of it) | |
| Sonic Youth – I Love Her All The Time Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Camper Van Beethoven actually covered Sonic Youth. Bad Moon Rising was a year before II&III | |
| Sonic Youth – Sacred Trickster Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I figured that levitation/treble bit is just saying that even if the girl was saying anything important, it doesn't matter because half the listeners are just listening in their rooms thinking, 'this band is really neat' and not getting affected. the listeners are levitating the band, and the band has no control over their sound or its effect | |
| Brian Eno – Burning Airlines Give You So Much More Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| there's probably nothing to take from "I guess Regina's on the plane, a Newsweek on her knees...", but I just like the idea that the narrator's guessed that Regina's probably on the plane, and then proceeds to tell all the incidental details to her fact of being on the plane | |
| The Mountain Goats – Psalms 40:2 Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
Psalm 40 starts out (and afterward continues likewise): (1) I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. (2) He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. (3) And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God... |
|
| The Mountain Goats – Genesis 3:23 Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
"Therefore the Lord God sent him out (or forth, depending on your translation) from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken." It sounds so appropriately soft in a beaten kind of way. I like the shark image for when he gets home. |
|
| The Mountain Goats – 1 Samuel 15:23 Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
"The sin of black magic is rebellion. Wickedness and idolatry are arrogance. Because you rejected the word of the LORD, he rejects you as king." I found two interpretations. 1) a sleazebag exploiting the poor and making a mockery of Christianity 2) A righteous man who believes in the tenets of most of what religion probably stands for, and who decides to be a selfless helper of people despite the fact that his actions will keep him from salvation himself (where the Bible quote comes in). He's hellbound, but he'll make things better along the way in a way he truly believes is right. |
|
| Pavement – Loretta's Scars Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| the sheepish/dumpy singing style makes me think the singer is the one who'd been scarred | |
| Guided by Voices – Smothered In Hugs Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I thought it was about God. Probably in a way similar to the person who said it was about a cult. It's something that came with a promise of making things better which just took advantage of people until the jig was up; the narrator though is already captivated by this thing and is still devoted to follow it (even if he admits he knows the others realize it's not worth it). It goes away, and won't come along to people in the future, but the narrator still thinks it would be better if everyone just kept on going with it. | |
| The Fiery Furnaces – Right By Conquest Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
methinks the Right-By-Conquest "defeat" is a ploy. he thinks one thing is going on in the wood at night, tells her in a make-believe game that they're just picking berries and will come back feeling good, but she's actually the one pretending to go under these pretenses so she can get him in the wood for something else. |
|
| The Fiery Furnaces – Inca Rag/Name Game Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
both/all of these/this songs/song are/is kind of throwaway silliness, but I say that in a positive positive way. inca rag sounds like a fun tale. matt or whichever narrator is going to the dumpster and finds the mummy de none other than Pizarro. they go on an adventure... matt takes the mummy to Spain and we have a few looks at the cheesy hilarity that ensues. they finally get to Spain, where it seems to me Juan Carlos sees him and throws him into the dungeon bottomless pit. when a trial comes of Juan Carlos doing that to a Spanish hero, Carlos is just like, "...c'mon! mummy mummy mummmayyyyyyyyyyyy!" good times for everyone. I tried figuring out Name Game for a while, but I think it's just FF playing around and seeing what a good proper noun can do to the tone and atmosphere of a song. once again, I repeat, MUMMY MUMMY MUUMMMMAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY |
|
| Pavement – Starlings of the Slipstream Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
"The language of influence / is cluttered with hard, hard C's" is a great line I think of the song as talking about cultural influence in general and how it (now perhaps more of a mass pop culture thing as opposed to a culture influenced by the 'dead leaders') tugs at you/pulls you with it. though my reasoning/interpreting pretty much dead ends when SM starts with the slavs and the cobras and jitneys... |
|
| Pavement – Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse) Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| oh. I haven't had time to listen again or think over which makes more sense, but I assumed the opening line was "Someone took envy's pants" | |
| The Raincoats – No Looking Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
I always imagined it was strangers in a coffee shop or something. But I just thought what if it's in a home? |
|
| The Modern Lovers – I'm Straight Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| please please go out with weirdo me, because I'm not on drugs. isn't that a good enough reason for you? that guy's neat, I guess, but like, he does drugs, so date me. | |
| Pavement – Fillmore Jive Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| NO MORE GODS KILL YR IDOLS | |
| Hüsker Dü – What's Going On (Inside My Head) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| god yes | |
| Hüsker Dü – Something I Learned Today Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| a kid being oppressed by/phased into society and the human nature fixed into that. good setup for the album. | |
| Pavement – Silence Kid Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| i thought it was "escher" | |
| The Apples in Stereo – Ruby Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
I like to think it's about taking care of an infant. PS-- the lyric is "Ruby, oh baby can't you see, it's the SOURCE of misery", or at least that's what I've always figured |
|
| Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| it's interesting to think about this song as if it's about the music business | |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.