| Manic Street Preachers – Comfort Comes Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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My guess is that it's largely about Richey's view of relationships as failures (as referenced in his explanation of "Revol"). Love fades, but the shitty consolation prize of comfort remains ("brutal and mocking but always there"), and how people will hold onto unhealthy relationships, constantly cycling through anger and guilt ("a crutch for enmity's saddest glare"). Maybe the second verse describes one-night stands, or the shallow affection Richey received from groupies, threatening his overall confidence in the depths of human connections. The ephemeral theme of "comfort comes and ease me till the morning" is reminiscent of "Bag Lady," where it says, "eternity is not a sunrise." I think the last verse is a bitter dig at marriage. Here's a quote from an interview: Terry Hall: "Richey didn't know how to live, how to be happy. I remember him saying he was going to be married by the end of the year, and it was like, well have you got a girlfriend Richey? I think he felt that because me and Philip were happy or because his parents were happy, then happiness would follow let's get married. There was no girlfriend, it was a bizarre kind of, if I have that then I'll be OK, it was one of the abstract things he saw." With that in mind, I think he's rationalizing. The husband could be choking on a resentment of his marriage, their growing distance, and his wife's emotional emptiness ("forgetting how I hate self-pity blonde"). But he resigns himself to the comfortable rut he's in, and fights to keep the conviction he's happy ("comfort comes and smooths her over"). The "beautiful dress" could be a wedding dress; the wife, now some time into the marriage, is reminiscing about love's promise, which had collapsed into drudgery ("calloused hands") and a feeling of imprisonment ("handcuffs now her pearl bracelets"); their relationship held together only by familiarity and the fear of being alone. |
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| Pink – Just Like A Pill Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| 119 comments, and nobody points out what "shortage" actually means? It reminds me of Jewel Kirchner's poetry book, and how Kurt Loder pointed out her use of the word "casualty" to mean casualness. Look it up! | |
| Manic Street Preachers – The Masses Against The Classes Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I think the greetings are from the masses to the elite. The ugly little success is that of the concentrations of wealth and power, who often use their own myths of self-made empires to convince the lower classes that their cooperation with the ruling classes will be rewarded by that same kind of success (this is hinted at in the ending quote). Everybody wants to get rich, few succeed, so for most people the capitalist dream isn't a reality but an ultimately unfulfilled promise which prevents people thinking about different kinds of social order. I think the winter they speak of is the intensification of whatever forms of oppression are used by the ruling classes, which tend to galvanize (bring together) popular opposition, where before there was much more complacency. The privatization of (all) water in Bolivia springs to mind. They half-sarcastically say their love (for the rich) is unconditional (and it is: if you look at it, people tend to see success as self-legitimating, and don't question its origins), and their hate can be utilized: the ruling classes foster racism, war, and things that divide people on superficial cultural lines rather than risk them uniting as the working class. |
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| The Clash – Lost in the Supermarket Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I think this song comes from the perspective of a person living out the western capitalist ideal. Ads, by their makers' admission, no longer sell products, but present themselves as components vital to a lifestyle. The guaranteed personality (that is he being popular and having fun) he sought was meant to come with the giant hit discoteque album, but instead he's just alone with all of the crap he's bought. When life's significant events are reduced to a series of momentous purchases (a car, a house, a TV, the right cigs for your lifestyle) the world is reduced from a social place to a giant supermarket. | |
| Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Seen Enough Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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You have to wonder how a song like this gets made. I mean, you'd think Stephen Stills would have some friends, or a producer, that'd take him aside and let him know, "Hey, this song makes you sound like a self-satisfied old fossil. Is that what you were going for?" To summarize this song: The older generation from the sixties is racist war mongers. The generation after the baby boomers is nothing but violent tweakers and know-it-alls. People on TV (or whatever means in the last verse) are fat assholes. The only generation that gets a bit of slack is, surprise, surprise, the bloody boomers. The boomers grew up in a time of relatively low responsibility and great economic prospects. Generation "x" was the first generation to earn less than the generation previous. Since then we've had a culture of AIDS scares, Vietnam aftershocks and zero-tolerance drug policies facilitated by the insufferable former hippies. It's truly baffling a songwriter could harbor such my-shit-don't-stink delusions. |
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| Stephen Stills – Love The One You're With Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I could find value in this song if it hinted at irony or anything more complex than pandering to baby boomer decadence. Instead, it's a shrill pat on the back to an economically well-off youth-obsessed generation, steeped in drugs, smug protest and pre-AIDS epidemic promiscuity. | |
| Manic Street Preachers – Donkeys Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| To me, it sounds like someone becoming aware of their disillustionment with life. "Find some meaning, weight cracking a spine." Bury yourself in your work, maybe you'll forget about your doubts. "Sweetness bent double, whole days making polite." Carrying on a front while feeling empty. Jesus rode into Jeusalem on a donkey and said he was the way to heaven. The promise of an idyllic afterlife deludes people into a life of wage slavery, believing the more they sacrifice, the more they will someday be rewarded. | |
| Manic Street Preachers – To Repel Ghosts Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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This song is so vague. I could see them referring to the lessons to be learned by exploring the literal dead, and not advocating the atrocities always going on in the world. Repelling them, freeing them, as we free ourselves from the cycles of aggression/war/terror. Or maybe they're referring to the faceless people ("ghosts") the first world never interacts with, but is often unwillingly the victim of our apathy or exploitation ("A soul in pain has no image to reclaim"). I don't bloody know. |
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| Manic Street Preachers – The Convalescent Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I don't see any connection between the figures mentioned, however it does seem as though the song regards each of them with an intimate air. It's as though the singer is stuck in his bedroom desperately trying to connect with these distant personalities. He's aware of all these things in the world, and has no effect on them ("scream until the war is over") because he's in his own little world (a collage constructed and constantly fed). He develops some neurosis ("scared of cash machines and the mardis gras") but eventually breaks down and decideds to turn things around. | |
| Gwen Stefani – Hollaback Girl Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| This song marks Gwen's triumpant liberation from any pretense of artistic integrity. Probably the purest of her recent adventures in safe, thoughtless, inane pseudo hip-hop. | |
| The Pussycat Dolls – Don't Cha Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| There's nothing special about this song. It's just lowbrow entertainment product. If you like this song, you need to read a book. | |
| Manic Street Preachers – Let Robeson Sing Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Paul Robeson had planned a trip to Cuba in 1961. Before then, however, he attemped suicide in a Moscow hotel room. His son contends that his father was victim of the CIA's MKULTRA experiments, and had been given a drug called BZ while there. This is obviously a controversial topic, so confirming or debunking these statements I'll leave to those still interested. |
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| LFO – Summer Girls Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| This song is terrible. Read a book. | |
| Manic Street Preachers – Methadone Pretty Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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Since methadone was used to kick heroin, and 'pretty' was sort of a faint praise coming from such an extensive vocabulary as the Manics', I figured that "methadone pretty" would be the logical progression of "heroin chic." "Pump it up, safer than a suicide" and "Gonna stay a terminal young thing" could refer to the waif model's sick or prepubescent appearance: where, instead of dying young and being remembered only at that stage, they can freeze themselves in an unnatural perpetual adolescence. They, and the culture that spawned them, will go over the hill, and be that much worse for all the contortions made to maintain an ideal; their 'retirement' recognized in faint praise and drug rehab. |
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