submissions
| Stars – Midnight Coward Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I agree, TaylorDall -- maybe it's forced uncertainty, just so they don't have to confront the truth yet. Or maybe it's real uncertainty, the slight giddiness and hope-in-spite-of-yourself keeping the loneliness at bay and allowing them to connect. Maybe even connecting over the shared uncertainty and nervousness! I'm just an ol' romantic, but I think there's hope here.
(Not that there's anything wrong, or even unromantic, about a one night stand. But it's a harsh thing when you're doing it even though you know it's not what you want.) |
submissions
| Dar Williams – Mercy of the Fallen Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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It's about being lost, yet still having a kind of direction. The people who have fallen are the ones who realize that they're not perfect, and it's not their place to judge others. They seek the kind of strength that's not about being able to impress the flightless masses and demand things of them, but about having something to guide you through life, and maybe become a beacon for someone else.
I have no idea what the deal is with Falstaff, but that part in general makes me think about imperfection, or incompletion -- about a place that will let you rest on your journey, where you'll be welcomed and comforted even though you don't have all the answers yet. |
submissions
| Dar Williams – Mercy of the Fallen Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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It's about being lost, yet still having a kind of direction. The people who have fallen are the ones who realize that they're not perfect, and it's not their place to judge others. They seek the kind of strength that's not about being able to impress the flightless masses and demand things of them, but about having something to guide you through life, and maybe become a beacon for someone else.
I have no idea what the deal is with Falstaff, but that part in general makes me think about imperfection, or incompletion -- about a place that will let you rest on your journey, where you'll be welcomed and comforted even though you don't have all the answers yet. |
submissions
| Dar Williams – The Easy Way Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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The way I like to think of it is that she's in a fight with her current partner, and he or she has just accused her of being manipulative or passive-aggressive or something. She's telling this story as a way of saying, "dude, do you have any idea how much it's cost me because I _wasn't_ willing to do those things? I could have kept the first guy I loved if I'd been willing to catfight a little, but I said no to that BS. I was on my own for years, until I found you, and that makes me even happier that I didn't compromise. So cut me some slack, okay? I might have gone wrong and hurt you, but I promise, I won't ever try to screw with you." |
submissions
| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Straight to You Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This almost seems like a pleasant daydream, for Nick Cave. It's grandiose! Exciting! Everything can go f**k itself! There's nothing left holding things in their places and he can take off and go running, straight to the one he loves. |
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| Mother Hips – Time We Had Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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I played this song on Rock Band with some of my best friends, the day before I moved across the country for my career. It's about all the things we love, about innocence, about our primal connection with the world. We talk as if we lose those things as we go about our lives, but they didn't go anywhere. We're on a long journey, but in time we will come back to them.
It also reminds me of my college class on existentialism with Robert Solomon, god rest his soul. He taught us about Camus's _Myth of Sisyphus_: "He chooses to care about the stone. The stone is his Thing." |
submissions
| Talking Heads – Once In A Lifetime Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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Things in the world come and go and god only knows where you'll end up. Sometimes it seems too good to be true and sometimes it seems too dry and empty to bear. But beneath all of that, if you listen, you can hear a river flowing. Beneath the big house and the crappy little shack, beneath the rich and the poor, there is water underground. Everything is part of it and everything returns to it. And so even when it seems like your life has stagnated, so empty and tired that your heart might as well stop, there is something that will keep flowing. It is the breathing of the world, and if you can hear it, and let its breath flow through you, then you can always go on. |
submissions
| R.E.M. – Falls To Climb Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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I'm with you , GotMeNow. But was strikes me specially about this song is the person it's addressed to. The scapegoat is defending his decision. He wants someone to know that he's not dying because he's weak, he's dying because he's strong enough to give his life for something he cares about. |
submissions
| Counting Crows – Kid Things Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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This song is the bonus track at the end of _This Desert Life_, after the end of _St. Robinson_ and a couple of minutes of silence. I like to think they put it there for people who listened to the album and ended up so depressed they couldn't get out of their chairs.
It's a bit of an antidote. You know... "Counting Crows may have made you despair about life, but there's still fun to be had. Now by god, get up out of that chair and go build a snowman!" |
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| My Favorite – burning hearts Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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A lot of the imagery here can be read as literally about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (there's more to the city, but Americans tend to refer to it exclusively for that). The shadows of people burned into the wall by the bomb's flash are one of the most enduring symbols of the devastation of nuclear war. snow that makes us glow may be a reference to fallout.
If we instead read hiroshima as a metaphor, the song is perhaps about leaving behind something that's brutal, ruined, or just depressing. The images deal with death, but the character's actions aren't about dying, or about haunting the rubble. They're about getting the hell out.
"The saint in the tower / died for her sins, not ours" is a tremendously liberating line. We're not bound here out of guilt. No one else is suffering on our behalf. We'll deal with our consequences, and they'll deal with theirs, and if we want to say goodbye to Hiroshima and go to Paris, no one can stop us. |
submissions
| Paul Oakenfold – Southern Sun Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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It's hard to make sense of. It sounds like the singer (Carla Werner, btw -- shame she doesn't generally receive credit) is talking about dissolving, but there's someone whose love is something solid, keeping her together. Or perhaps it is not solid but constant, something that will allow her to continue to exist once everything else falls away. |
submissions
| Jethro Tull – Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of a New Day) Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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It's funny, because the verses of this song describe troubling aspects of society and depressing places to be in life, yet it always feels hopeful and uplifting to me. I think something about it suggests that it's describing things that are in the past. All that's behind you; the sun is rising (or setting?) and it's a time of transition. You're leaving it all behind, skating away. |
submissions
| The Postal Service – The District Sleeps Alone Tonight Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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I'm with you, cloudwoven, although my interpretation mangles the meaning of "worth" even more... I see the protagonist as talking to his old friend / ex, who's moved on and put together a new life. He's not comfortable with her anymore, but he recognizes that she's doing better than she ever was with him. Does that mean that he was bad for her? No -- of all the losers she spent time with back at home, he was the one who helped her build herself up enough to get out of there. "I was the one worth leaving" = "I was the one who was worth enough that it became possible for you to leave." |
submissions
| The Flaming Lips – A Spoonful Weighs a Ton Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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"A spoonfull weighs a ton" is a stellar reference. Certain stars, late in their life cycle, will crush in on themselves with such awesome gravity that they overcome the weak nuclear force and form a gigantic atomic nucleus. These "neutron stars" are the most dense matter ever discovered. A spoonfull does weigh a ton (actually, ten million tons!). However, our sun is nothing like that. It's more dense than normal gasses on the earth, but a spoonfull of the sun only weights about a pound.
What other things are that dense? I thought that was as heavy as could be... |
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| The Flaming Lips – Race for the Prize Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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My feeling is that the scientists are cooperating in their struggle. They're racing, but it's not necessarily against each other. Against time, against danger. The term "side by side" is usually used for allies... in a competition it would be "neck and neck" or "head to head." That makes the song a lot happier to me! |
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