| Neutral Milk Hotel – Wishful Eyes Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Arsehole. That's not 'wishful eyes', that's "Sailing Through". Anyone who says 'FYI' is a complete twat. | |
| Neutral Milk Hotel – Where You'll Find Me Now Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| The fact that the beginning really does have the same melody, apart from accompaniment, speed and the different melodies woven in with the second verse, and the fact that the songs are on either side of the album's instrumental, shows that this is entirely conscious. Also, note that the rhyme scheme is the same at the beginning (SILvery streams/ BLISTtering Pree). Mangum never had a problem coming up with a melody; instead, he is showing how subtle changes to a song can change its outlook utterly. | |
| Neutral Milk Hotel – Circle of Friends Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Ideulogy is definitely right. The ly4rics above make no sense, and it pisses me off. We should be able to change these, dammit. (It is almost certainly 'hearts' by the way). Also, there are some small-but-obvious things that are wrong; you leave out 'and' a lot, which is fine, but then why include it in the second verse? Also, it's "some things YOU can't know". Sorry if I sound pedantic, but on the other hand I'd get pissed if I read lyrics to 'All Along HIS Watchtower', or 'I WAS The Walrus' - different words shape meaning |
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| Love – She Comes In Colors Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Apparently it's about a woman on her period. Thanks for that, Love. |
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| Dashboard Confessional – Screaming Infidelities Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Dear Ilymuch, Congrats on being the captain of your "cheer squad". I am delighted that you love life, and that you love this song - a fact that you seem to have reiterated below the comment you left me. Just to clear a few things up - I am not that dumb; as you can see I perfected both spelling and grammar while you were out there practising your kicks and getting on with the more deep and meaningful things in life - as evidenced by the fact that you, a cheerleader, like emo songs. And about me not having a life - I do, in fact, despite being able to spell, and I was in the middle of it when I came home last night drunk and pissed off at emos - at which I copied and pasted some punk lyrics on songmeanings. This is something I now sincerely regret due to an influx of emails basically going 'But it's SO REAL'. Anyway. You will notice I never said this was listened to by emos, I said it was emo. Which is an inarguable fact. But with unflagging logic like yours, most of this will probably sound like, so totally LAME, when I tell you there is so much better music out there and that emo raped punk and then spawned mainstream bands like these - Therefore I wish you a long and happy life. Sammy |
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| Nick Drake – Free Ride Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think it's significant that its about someone he cares about - and the girl he loved was called Sophia "Ryde." Now, she was basically the love of his life, but they never had sex, remaining basically, as she would later call it, "best friends". Since Nick Drake wrote songs based on personal experiences, I think it's not too much of a leap to go from 'Ryde' to ride, based on their emotional history yet lack of 'consummation'. Also, he used to take his parent's car and drive around for hours until he ran out of petrol. There may be a metaphor in that 'free ride' could also symbolise the lack of direction to their relationship, much like his midnight drives. @ Psylogon: would people PLEASE stop interpreting songs based on their 'personal experiences'. The next time I read somebody saying a Beatles song could be about being dumped in chemistry class I'm going to scream. |
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| Pavement – In the Mouth a Desert Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| It's not just the 'speaking style', which Tom Waits et al have often used, it's the fact that it sounds very much like the pixies, what with the Black Francis drawl; in fact this whole song I thought on first listening to it was a pixies tribute, abstract lyrics style, song structure and everything ... | |
| The Smiths – That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Un petit mort is the french for an orgasm. Basically, the whole piece centres around the ambiguity between whether he is talking about suicidal depression or sexual loneliness. Taking a random phrase, for example, 'Time's tide will smother you, and I will too' could refer to murder or love-making. The lyrics draw heavily upon a passage in Beckett's Endgame: Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. ... Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more. |
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| Cheap Sex – Fuck Emo Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| RIGHTEOUS | |
| Dashboard Confessional – Screaming Infidelities Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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"Dear diary, my life is a complete fiasco. The dashboard show is this weekend and I can't even fit into my little sister's jeans anymore. My dad grounded me cause he caught me in my mom's makeup again. He's such a nazi. I wish i could just run away to somewhere where people could understand me. I make out with one guy at a show and I'm gay? Hello, it's the new millenium. Ever heard of experimentation? I tried to cut my wrist yesterday but some of the blood got on my pants, and I totally freaked. Needless to say, they're ruined." For the past few years we've seen you around pretentious art fags taking over my town You're too mature to have any fun Your trend in a year will be over and done Your hair isn't a bowl or any shape You're acting like you're gay just to get laid and a white belt holds up your pants you're too mature to fucking dance FUCK EMO! we aren't dead and in a year there will be none left. "mmm, emo. you bet your sweet ass it's emo. ooh, doesn't it just make you wanna cry?" [repeat verse and chorus] "anyway, my life is just a black abyss. I'm up to 98 pounds now and i don't know what to do. I don't know, maybe i'll join the navy." |
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| Dashboard Confessional – Hands Down Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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"Dear diary, my life is a complete fiasco. The dashboard show is this weekend and I can't even fit into my little sister's jeans anymore. My dad grounded me cause he caught me in my mom's makeup again. He's such a nazi. I wish i could just run away to somewhere where people could understand me. I make out with one guy at a show and I'm gay? Hello, it's the new millenium. Ever heard of experimentation? I tried to cut my wrist yesterday but some of the blood got on my pants, and I totally freaked. Needless to say, they're ruined." For the past few years we've seen you around pretentious art fags taking over my town You're too mature to have any fun Your trend in a year will be over and done Your hair isn't a bowl or any shape You're acting like you're gay just to get laid and a white belt holds up your pants you're too mature to fucking dance FUCK EMO! we aren't dead and in a year there will be none left. "mmm, emo. you bet your sweet ass it's emo. ooh, doesn't it just make you wanna cry?" [repeat verse and chorus] "anyway, my life is just a black abyss. I'm up to 98 pounds now and i don't know what to do. I don't know, maybe i'll join the navy." |
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| Dashboard Confessional – Again I Go Unnoticed Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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"Dear diary, my life is a complete fiasco. The dashboard show is this weekend and I can't even fit into my little sister's jeans anymore. My dad grounded me cause he caught me in my mom's makeup again. He's such a nazi. I wish i could just run away to somewhere where people could understand me. I make out with one guy at a show and I'm gay? Hello, it's the new millenium. Ever heard of experimentation? I tried to cut my wrist yesterday but some of the blood got on my pants, and I totally freaked. Needless to say, they're ruined." For the past few years we've seen you around pretentious art fags taking over my town You're too mature to have any fun Your trend in a year will be over and done Your hair isn't a bowl or any shape You're acting like you're gay just to get laid and a white belt holds up your pants you're too mature to fucking dance FUCK EMO! we aren't dead and in a year there will be none left. "mmm, emo. you bet your sweet ass it's emo. ooh, doesn't it just make you wanna cry?" [repeat verse and chorus] "anyway, my life is just a black abyss. I'm up to 98 pounds now and i don't know what to do. I don't know, maybe i'll join the navy." |
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| Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I'm not going to analyse this song like I usually do except to say that I'm glad it's still up there with all the top 25 most viewed lyrics despite not being FUCKING EMO | |
| Guided by Voices – Hot Freaks Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This is what I THOUGHT the song was about, before you shattered my illusions: non-dairy creamer: vegan fruit cake: mental person who eats fruit (i.e. someone who is crazy to be a vegan) wet-spot: who'd been laid out (for being a vegan) and was bleeding copiously new church: crazy vegan religion they have a tequila; she shows him vegans are cool this one's on the house (talking about alcohol) after becoming a vegan, he wanders back one day into a meat-eater's house. The meat-eater has a wider experience of things (hence king everything) and invites him to eat meat with him, in the form of pies and chicken. He does eat the meat; (hence 'recovery') and the experience leaves him bitter and cynical, turning him into the person who beat up the vegan in the first place. So it reads like a witty piece of social commentary. 'Should we beat vegans?' Robert Pollard asks ironically, if they drink alcohol. Furthermore, was the protagonist right to join veganism just because they also drink alcohol? But no, it's a song ABOUT FUCKING BLOW JOBS. |
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| Guided by Voices – Tractor Rape Chain (Clean It Up) Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I am definitely alone in this, but this is my favourite song by GBV. A guess as to this song's meaning? A failing relationship, a girl who does not love him, and an ex-boyfriend (ghost) in the picture. Despite this, it does 'mean something to him' (paraphrasing). This is why he is telling her this, hoping she'll 'tell it to go away'. The mish-mash of words for the title track is something often used in alternative rock: you put three associative words together in an often semi-conscious thought process, in order to create several layers of meaning. While these aren't necessarily there, one can read: -Tractor-rape: Sexual exploitation becoming mechanical (their 'cynical' relationship) -Tractor-chain: The machine-like inevitability of fate (parallel lines coming to an end; whether you speed it up or slow it down, there's no difference) -Rape-chain: Presumably, one act of sexual exploitation followed by another, hence her ex-boyfriend. If you read it like this, the rest of the song is self-explanatory. |
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| Guided by Voices – Surgical Focus Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This song is about the healing process of a relationship that is translated into a metaphor involving surgery, cleansing, and waiting-lines. The guy is healed and soars high with 'surgical focus'. More specifically it is probably about a guy that has loved a girl for a long time but has trouble reaching out to commit himself to such a relationship, and so is helped, happily, by the girl. A distinctly under-rated song. |
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| Britney Spears – Baby One More Time Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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btw, I failed to mention that the reverse is "with you I lose my mind give me a sign" and I meant in the context of the VIDEO, not just the song. |
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| Britney Spears – Baby One More Time Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I was just on a site called reversespeech.com, just cos I'd never heard Stairway played backwards, and listening to the song samples they have is a seriously creepy experience with all the satanism and such ... but I'd have to say the most disturbing(and by far the clearest-worded) was Britney Spears on this track quite clearly singing 'Sleep with me. I'm not too young.' I know what you're thinking (30 min ago I thought the same): Why doesn't it sound like 'gnouy oot ton ..'? Apparently what they do is record sound backwards over the forwards version so it sort of fits into each sound wave. Anyway, to me it sounds like the industry trying to fit some subliminal messages in there (think about it in context with the song) in a pretty fucked up manner. Go listen to the song, and make up your own opinion (to my mind it is unmistakeable). Also, check out the unlikely but amusing 'popeye' sample. |
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| Nirvana – Heart-Shaped Box Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| Just in answer to lilrocker99: when I said above that he was obsessed with the dark side of sex, I'm not saying he was attracted to it. People are intrigued by dark things (such as psychopaths), it's human nature | |
| Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Over and Over Again (Lost and Found) Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I agree with Toru: I reckon this song is about the path of music. 'The Revolution' could refer to the hippy movement that thought it was going to 'change the world' (Beatles song) and petered out in the 70s. The 'woollen sweater' could very well refer to grunge, or any number of songs from those years (such as the Pixies' "Cactus"). 'Scandalize the lion' may refer to 'Pedro the Lion', a derivative indie/emo band who contrast grunge's revolutionary aims: i.e., by implying the other guy wrote their songs, you take such bands down a notch. 'A clean shave ...' refers to the way fashions change overnight; again this directly refers to both periods of revolution above, 1. when the hippies began to grow their hair and beards after the Barbershop period, and 2. when grunge fans started growing their hair and beards after the stadium rock era. 'Time has gotten by on alibis': the art of alibis is to say you were in another place when something happened. The history of rock has been about 'being there when it happened' (for example, Woodstock) ... but the phrase also refers to how things haven't really changed very much at all. The next verse is pretty much self-evident. The final verse refers to David Bowie, who was on the cusp of several revolutions in music (but mainly spanning the death of the sixties to the late eighties): now certain bands try and LOOK revolutionary by trying to adopt something revolutionary that has already happened, therefore 'you look like David Bowie but you've nothing new to show me'. 'Start another fire' reminds us how every few years the press tells us of the next big thing that will change the face of the world, and how it always dies. All in all, a pretty bleak view of rock music, repetitively ('over and over again') losing its way and then finding its way again ('lost and found'). Bleak, but not untruthful when one considers that every major movement has essentially died: the only thing that remains is an artist's individual achievement on a singular basis. We enjoy Jimi Hendrix's music, but we don't trip out on acid listening to it; and if we do, we do it with a sense of irony. Contexts change, and meanings along with it, certain things integral to the original music are lost, then found by a new generation of artists ... over and over again. |
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| Nirvana – Heart-Shaped Box Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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THE SUBLIMINAL SIDE OF KURT COBAIN From a section of Kurt Cobain's journal (turn to page 234, all die-hard Nirvana fans) where he began talking about all his songs on 'I hate myself and want to die': "Heart-shaped box : Camille's vaginal/flower theory bleeding and spreading into the fabric that leonardo would have used to improve his hang glider but died before he could change the course of history [...]." fabric = silk stockings, probably. Also, on page 198, his first draft offers: "she fries me like an icecream - headaches and chills/ I'll cook my own meals." Directly across from this: "this weeks obsession vagina medical books". Kurt Cobain in his journals treats the vagina as a wound, and foetuses as strange, dead creatures. "magnet tar pit trap", "meat-eating orchids", "broken hymen" and "umbelical noose (not a cord but a NOOSE)" all refer to female genitalia in a dark way. This song is about his love for Courtney vs. his fear of female sexuality. 'Cut myself on angel's hair and baby's breath' could be him worrying about hurting himself on something apparently gentle, the vagina (equated with two incredibly soft things). Kurt in all his lyrics tries (and you can tell by the revisions he makes) to make as many unconscious associations as possible because he knew that this is a great way to make lyrics naturally opaque. In this he seemed to make the association, intentionally or otherwise, between Courtney’s gift of a heart-shaped box vs. his fears of intimacy and sex. The heart-shaped box therefore becomes a metaphor both for his hopes for the relationship and his fears (the heart-shaped box also being an image of the vagina). Sexuality is viewed, psychologically, as empowering women, (‘broken hymen of your highness’) and it is this that Kurt is struggling with in this song, as emblematic of their relationship, which was often a power struggle (“I’ll cook my own meals”). I don’t think he could state this more explicitly than the final image of him climbing up an umbilical cord to hang himself than expressing both conscious and unconscious fears over their relationship. Drugs, inevitably, play a certain part in the song too, “tar pit”, “angel hair” and “highness” all form double meanings, as well as the original verse talking about “headaches and chills”. For the record, Courtney introduced Kurt to drug abuse (at least on a large scale) and NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Before I get posts saying about how much of a pervert/ wannabe psychoanalyst I am, I’ll just say; READ the journals. It’s not like he ever bothers to hide anything, and he was obsessed with the dark side of sex, mentioning rape and sexual disease on every other page, such as adorning one of the covers of his journals with a close-up photo of ‘herpes gestations’. It’s pretty obvious he was as conscious of his imagery in his lyrics as I am (he says, at one point, “lillies. Orchids. Ya know, vaginal flowers.”). All in all, I interpret this song as being an expression of love and trust undermined by psychological fears. But one thing not gone into yet by anyone is how Kurt Cobain layered songs, often reshaping old lyrics after years, and so there are any number of valid interpretations for this song. Forgive me for going into the dark side of someone who has been canonized by a new wave of ignorant fans. I can't imagine how a manic-depressive, rage-filled heroin addict could ever be seen in a dark light at all ... |
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| Stiff Little Fingers – Straw Dogs Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Sad to see I'm the only one to comment on this song. :( I'll make it a long comment then. Great punk song, inspired by the Northern Ireland struggles (fellow NI punks the Undertones accused SLF of 'selling' the conflict). Possibly referencing both 'Straw Dogs', a banned film starring Dustin Hoffman, and 'Dogs Of War' by Frederick Forsyth and of course T.S. Eliot's the Hollow Men, which was quoted in 'Apocalypse Now' (all of these came out around the time the song was made): "We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw." All in all, a many-pronged attack on the British Army, equating them with a Nazi Army of Aryan ideals ('hard-nosed blue-eyed boys'), and with a animal's morality and straw - therefore with not the justification of a warrior to kill but that of a flimsy -straw - animal. The lyrics are mostly ironic until the fast-paced finale following the final chorus. The usage of 'cousins' and 'kin' reference the fact that the British soldiers in fact had no relation among the Northern Irish and no place being there (in their opinion), with therefore nothing to fight for. 'Pound for pound we'll take the shilling' means that the soldiers will not fight on equal terms with their enemy - further building the image of them being dogs of 'straw'. Many of the lines in this song are dialectic, the SLF picking up on the contradictions in the British cause ... 'fight for freedom ... but not for free' 'might is right ... if the price is right' 'admit you must admire our guts ... if only cos they're hanging out' The song is comparable to their song 'Tin Soldiers', equally vocal in its admiration for the British Army's efforts in Northern Ireland. All in all, one of their best, with a strong hook, musically and lyrically. |
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| The Libertines – Up The Bracket Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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I think this song is about two policemen trying to get information about a girl (Carl sings about the bits about 'he' while Pete sings in 'I', which means that Pete's 'you' is probably a girl) and failing to grasp the social reality of the situation and getting punched in the face. The 'Jacob bloody in a hole' refers to the Jacob who had the multi-coloured dreamcoat, being 'in another world', i.e. out of it ('cold' and 'crooked' fingers might refer to Pete's drug abuse and the effects on his body, again making him 'out of it'). The Kray Twins were around about forty years before the Libertines, so I don't think it could be about them. The 'girl' in question may be Lisa Moorish, with whom Doherty attempted an unrealistic relationship, especially after she gave birth to his son. |
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