submissions
| Red Hot Chili Peppers – Otherside Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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The word "otherside" can be a reference to beyond death, but it's also often applied to living a new clean lifestyle after long term drug abuse. People who have been through the drugs and rehab cycle, relate very strongly to 'Otherside'. As a dead friend, likely Hillel Slovak, speaks to him "through a photograph", Anthony knows that he "can never go back"... but it's just not that simple. The song builds to a dramatic climax, at which point Anthony shouts about his addictions, "It's not my friend / I tear it down and I tear it down / And then it's born again", vividly painting the epic battle that staying clean really is. |
submissions
| Suzanne Vega – Tom's Diner Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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The song is written as a simple first person vignette of a man stopping at an unnamed diner for a cup of coffee. He notes the newspaper he is reading, and the women who come and go in the diner, outside in the rain. The ringing of bells at a nearby cathedral cause him to reminisce on an unnamed companion with whom he had picnicked previously. Finishing his coffee, he hurries from the diner to catch a train.
Vega wrote the song based on a comment by her friend Brian Rose, a photographer, who mentioned that in his work, he sometimes felt as if "he saw his whole life through a pane of glass, and [...] like he was the witness to a lot of things, but was never really involved in them." |
submissions
| Arcade Fire – Neighborhood #2 (Laika) Lyrics
| 20 years ago
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Neighborhood #2 (Laika) is about an "Alexander our older brother" who went on a "Great Aventure". It also says "Our mother should of/ Just named you Laika". This is a song you have to paste together. Laika was the Russian space dog that proved that is was possible for living things to enter space. Laika was sent into space with no intent to bring back alive. Alexander (or Alex) was the name the main charater went by in "A Clockwork Orange", who committing crimes purely for enjoyment. The crimes described in the book increase in severity, from assault, to robbery, to a fight with rival gang, culminating when the gang breaks into a house and rapes a man's wife. A creature who can only perform good or evil is "a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil." Paste it together and what I get is that "Alexander our older brother" did something to become an organism that is being used for evil, to the point of their being no hope. And in the line "Our older brother/ bit by a vampire" it is indecated that he is hurting people. And that explanes the talk of Police lights and disco lights and the end of the song. |
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