| First Class – Beach Baby Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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This song paints a picture of being teenagers, hitting it off at a dance, spending time together at the beach a lot, and getting engaged, only for it to eventually go south. Sock Hops were popular in the 1950s. They were school dances where kids showed up and took their uncomfortable school shoes off to dance and unwind in a gymnasium or somewhere similar on campus. The singer describes the time he and his lover bumped into each other (possibly literally) at the Sock Hop and he spilled soda pop on her dress as a meet cute of sorts even though they'd supposedly known each other from being neighbors for years prior ("I didn't recognize the girl next door"). He pleads with her to take his hand and walk with him on the beach, possibly to reconcile or reminisce ("...give me your hand/give me something that I can remember"). The song goes on to describe their summer(s) being together where she'd be a beach bunny getting a tan and he'd be out surfing and having fun. Before they graduated, however, he proposed to her on a whim while they drove up to San Jose (which is a 6-hour drive. The song doesn't make it clear WHY they drove to San Jose except to maybe just "get away" from everything.) The true end of the song is when the singer states "I guess you don't remember anything," which indicates those were the good ol' days and their life together isn't as great as it was when they were in high school. Considering sock hops were popular in the 1950s and went out of style by the 1970s, and the song was written in 1974, it's safe to say this is a relationship that's on its last legs and the two members have been together possibly for as long as decade. |
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| Savage Garden – I Want You Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| How about It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) by R.E.M.? I can almost get I Want You down, but that one is just killer. | |
| Maroon 5 – This Love Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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Good god, how is this song played completely uncensored in stores? Is it because the words used can be taken different ways? "Keep her coming every night," "My pressure on your hips," "Sinking my fingertips into every inch of you"... I have to hear it at work almost every day, and it boggles my mind how these lyrics aren't censored somehow. |
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| When in Rome – The Promise Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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I agree with people who say it's either the loveliest song or the creepiest. I take it as the creepiest, sorry. I got out of an emotionally abusive relationship recently and this is setting off all the alarms. My boyfriend used to shower me with compliments, but when it came to disagreements, there was a lot of "I didn't mean it"s, "you're overreacting"s, and "I wouldn't hurt you on purpose"s. I know he was dedicated, but he smothered me, played my tendency to self-blame to his advantage, and kept me in check yet made me believe he had every good intention. I'm not sure if that last part was true or not, in hindsight. I'm healthier and more aware now, but some things trigger those thoughts and memories and make me uncharacteristically hostile. This song does it pretty easily until I shut off my brain. If I may relate the lyrics to my point: "If you need a friend Don't look to a stranger You know in the end, I'll always be there [...]" Always being there is romantic, yes, but when overdone it can feel smothering. When someone's got you brainwashed, it sounds romantic as hell, but in reality it's them keeping you in check and away from others who may "steal" them from you. "I'm sorry, but I'm just thinking of the right words to say I know they don't sound the way I planned them to be [...]" Definite red flag right here. Yes, couples get in fights, but one thing manipulators say is "Yes I did yell at you/hit you, but I didn't mean it. I just lose control." Ugh, I fell for that one so many times... "But if you'll wait around awhile, I'll make you fall for me I promise I promise you I will" I'm sorry, but "make you fall for me" can also be taken both romantically and threateningly. Sorry, you'll "MAKE you fall for me?" Also, this person seems very dedicated to winning over the listener to disturbing levels. Manipulators are all about control and keeping it, so it's almost like they're going to make you fall for them ... or else. Possibly to stalker proportions. "Sometimes if I shout It's not what's intended These words just come out With no gripe to bear" Same with what was stated above. Could be a genuine apology, could be a cover for "you make me mad sometimes; if you didn't do [blah] to hurt me, I wouldn't have to." Darn. I REALLY loved this song! I still do! It just triggers a fight-or-flight mechanism if I think too hard about it. I loved the "but if I had to walk the world" part until he said "I'd make you fall for me," instead of something along the lines of, say, how the Proclaimers put it: "to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door." You know, something less presumptuous. And yes, I did rediscover this song thanks to Napoleon Dynamite, but I liked it before and luckily they had the song name/artist in the credits. P.S. Being in an abusive relationship isn't a choice, believe me. Some people just learn your weaknesses and use them to their advantage to keep you from "escaping." It's all about control for them and if they brainwash you into thinking they care that much--and a lot of times they genuinely do, but to unhealthy levels--you won't go running off. In fact, they make you so dang scared to run off, it seriously is like being stuck. I'm lucky I escaped mine with my self-respect in-tact. I know of two other people with S.O.s that do this to them and they're so far gone, it's a real shame. |
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| UNKLE – Broken (feat. Gavin Clark) Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Your interpretation makes so much sense out of a song I love but just plain can't figure out, I feel like I should offer you my first born. Thanks. :) | |
| When in Rome – The Promise Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| ...aaaaand that just made me cry, too. I don't think the rest of the song goes with your theory, but that line... :'( | |
| When in Rome – The Promise Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Hope you don't mind if I simplify it for you 6-some years after your post: But when you're in doubt = when you're feeling negative Make you fall for me = make you love me When your day is through and so is your temper = at the end of the day and when you're tired and angry These words just come out With no gripe to bear = I am speaking without meaning to hurt you I think that's all the slang. Everything else is pretty straight-forward. :) |
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| Studio Killers – When We Were Lovers Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Seems pretty straight-forward: a guy and a girl were dating and the guy lost interest pretty fast, assuming he ever had feelings for her at all, and she eventually felt strung along the entire time. She had stronger feelings for him than he did for her. I like how they use the metaphor of the end of a rainbow to signify the death of their relationship, comparing the usual pot of gold to what a rainbow truly is (mist and sunlight) and ... a whole lot of nothing (an empty lot). Very poetic, I think. |
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| Studio Killers – Flawless Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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At first I was like, who put the joke filler in the lyrics section? Then I listened to the song again and yeah, they're playing Cherry's singing backwards. Derp. Beautiful song all the same. :) Definitely one of my favorites on the album. |
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| Studio Killers – Ode to the Bouncer Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Yeah, pretty sure it's "You think you're literati" because ...illiterati isn't a word. :[ | |
| Conjure One – Center of the Sun Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Okay, let's try this again. Judging by his (their?) other songs, I think Conjure One writes very metaphorical, obscure, lyrics. That, or he/they don't speak English very well, I'm not very sure because trying to understand the lyrics to "Sleep" is pretty difficult and the words themselves are constantly disputed, it seems. But I think in this song, the metaphors are the market, violins, and the sun. Naturally, the song says the girl and boy can't be hurt by the bad things in the world if they're in the center of the sun. Not literally, just in their heads. Or just anywhere safe. That's straight forward. Market confuses me until I listen closer to the lyrics surrounding the word. The children are in a market and that's when they sing about the bad things and then hear the violins, which I'll get to in a sec. The fact that they're in a place that they need to get away from indicates the market is just a negative. The violins are positive, since they're what trigger the Chorus about closing their eyes to hide from the bad things. So, as I see it, the market isn't literally a market, but just a vague negative place where the girl and boy are. The way the lyrics go "you say the most beautiful things just like my violins" makes me think each other's voices are what can take them away from the bad stuff. It could be something they've been yearning or actively searching for, what with them singing that they're witnessing/thinking about something negative until they hear their violins. It could be the nearby yet hidden voice of the other person. Then the song goes on to this (REALLY PRETTY) ending about hearing violins, as if they're escaping together with each other, having found each other at last, and can finally be rid of it all. I'm sort of taking "hearing" literally and "violins" semi-literally in that I think they do hear -something pretty and positive-, but it's up to the listener to fill in the blank. The market is too vague other than it's a place where it sounds like older people do bad things, Oh, the "men." The "men" could also be anything, not just ...men. When you're a kid, adults seem gigantic and scary, so I think that's what the song means by them. Something bigger, scarier, more powerful. They try to sound like a savior the girl and boy see in each other, but the children "sing" about how the men do nasty things and then amidst the negativity, hear each other--beacons of hope or safety. "Market of a violin," um... I just assume that means their counterpart is in the same area or encountering the same negative location or mental state. That one sorta stumped me the most, but it's the only time they use the term in the singular sense. I'm going backwards. Oh well. Big, scary, possibly mean things leave and the boy is "out of his head," possibly blocking out trauma. The girl's "eyes are red," which naturally means they make her cry. Back we go yet again... "Follows all the men:" The young boy could be among all the men, all the negativity and that's probably why he'd need to escape when they're gone. Both the boy and the girl handle the negativity in their own way. He still seeks the positivity he hears, though, since it there's that "but" in between the breaking things and the escaping to the sun and the violins are the bridge. OKAY. So, sorry. Summary: "Young girl in the market" [Young girl among the negativity] "Music to the men" [Someone who draws the scary escape-seekers to her] "When the men leave," [When she doesn't find her boy, her escape] "Her eyes are red" [She cries.] "When her eyes are closed again, she sees a dark market of a violin" [She closes her eyes and knows the boy is there] "And she sings 'they say the most horrible things'" [She yearns for the boy while she's scared, hurt] "But I hear violins" [She knows he's there, she can "hear" him because he's singing, too.] "When I close my eyes, I am at the center of the sun" [Straight forward--she closes her eyes, dreams perhaps, where she's safe] "And I cannot be hurt by anything this wicked world has done" [Straight forward] "Young boy in the market follows all the men" [The boy among the negativity is hard to find among the causes of the fear and pain, but he's there] "When the men leave, he's out of his head" [When the scary things go away, he resorts to hiding in his own mind] "When his eyes are closed again he sees a dark market of a violin" [He thinks of the negative place where he knows/hopes the girl is] "And he sings, 'They break the most beautiful things'" [He yearns for the girl and notes a different way the personifications of pain, fear, and darkness affect him] "But I hear violins" [But he knows the girl, his way out of the painful situation, is there somewhere] [Chorus, ditto] "Young boy in the market sees the girl alone..." [The boy finally finds the girl...] "..and asks her "have you lost your way home?" [He's asking if she's the one singing back, the one who could help him escape forever, the one who's as stuck in the negative place as he is] "She sings, 'You say the most beautiful things,'" [She acknowledges he's not a man, something to be feared like everything else] "Just like my violins" [...and that he's the one who can save her from her pain, too.] [Chorus] [Looking into the other's eyes is essentially the same as closing their eyes, just more positive than using a coping mechanism. In the case of the time they used this lyric before the two met up, I'm going to assume it's them imagining it happening, then afterwards it's actually happening] "I hear violins" (repeat x4) [The two have finally found each other and are finally escaping from the harsh world they were in earlier in the song.] VOILA. Not drugged this time and hopefully that's a good enough run-down of the symbolism I found. I don't know if the girl and boy are figurative or literal. I like to think they're literal because holy smokes, this'd go on forever if I didn't. Who were they? Where were they? Why was it negative? How exactly do they escape? Where do they escape to? How bad does it suck for all the men/negative situations who wanted to escape too but never found their singer? Why use violins and markets as the key words? All up for interpretation, I think. |
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| The Doors – The End Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I don't know if anyone's brought this up yet, but here goes: I first heard this song in Spoony's spoof of the opening to Apocalypse Now. Out of curiosity, I watched the movie. I now associate this song entirely with Vietnam and the psychological effects from it. Maybe it was written long before Vietnam, I dunno. I still associate it with it all the same. "This is the end, beautiful friend ..." Everything he talks about regarding endings strikes me as thoughts by a drafted soldier dealing with the shock of being uprooted from his home and tossed into battle, dealing with the thought that he may never come home again. That, or he's feeling like being in Vietnam is pure hell. "Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain..." Okay, I got nothin' for this part. It reminds me of actually physically being in Vietnam, though. Summer rain, danger, highway west (I assume U.S. troops flew westward to Vietnam. Seems kind of silly to do it otherwise). "The west is the best, the west is the best Get here, and we'll do the rest The blue bus is callin' us, the blue bus is callin' us Driver, where you taken us" or: "America will save Vietnam because we rock. Wait... how much is this going to suck??" Then the rest is about a soldier coming home with PTSD and homicidal tendencies. Granted, I didn't know he said "fuck" so many times until now. I guess the version I have is censored. Again, I'm sure I'm dead wrong, but this song made the opening to Apocalypse Now. It haunted my thoughts and weighed me down for a week straight. BTW... if you haven't seen Apocalypse Now, you're missing out. It's a heavy movie, but a REALLY GOOD one. Get some culture. ;) |
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| Studio Killers – Ode to the Bouncer Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Studio Killers – Eros and Apollo Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Hot dang, I love this song... But are the lyrics correct? Unless there's some missing syllables in the delivery, it doesn't seem like they'd be able to stick "kinda follow him" in there. I can't hear it, anyway. Could someone double check? Not that I'm any better. I hear "cut off him back home." ;P |
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| Conjure One – Center of the Sun Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| ...or I could just MISREAD THE LYRICS and write up a mathematical equation that's rendered mostly invalid because of that fact. This is what I get while trying to analyze while under the influence of pain killers. | |
| Conjure One – Center of the Sun Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I saw something recently about comparing relationships of all kinds to different shapes of puzzle pieces and their compatibility. I hear this song and pretty much think of a symbolic mathematical equation. Girl's POV: "They say the most horrible things, but I hear violins." Action: negative (say, when grouped with the--) Description: negative (horrible) Thus, violins in the following statement: positive (but) Boy's POV: "They break the most beautiful things, and I hear violins." Action: negative (break) Description: positive (beautiful) Thus, violins in the following statement: negative (and) Then they meet each other, and their link to each other is positive. It switches both the positives in the phrases together: (say) becomes positive when linked to (beautiful), and (violins) when it comes from her POV. It makes the equation end in a positive rather than the negative they both had before. I'm lousy at math, but this is what I'm visualizing: Girl: (-1) + (-1) + 1 = -1 Boy: (-1) + 1 + (-1) = -1 And when they meet each other, they cancel out each other's negatives with the switch in tone of "say": Both: (1-1) + (1-1) + 1 = 1 They are complimentary puzzle pieces that fit that well together, essentially. The metaphor I referenced was more descriptive of a string of friendships that help form a positive society, but that's beyond the scope of this song and this analysis. |
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| Owl City – Enchanted Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Oops, turns out this is a cover of Taylor Swift's Enchanted. Both are beautiful, but I prefer Owl City's if only because it's a bit faster in tempo. It's good to know the Taylor he's singing about isn't dead, though. | |
| Owl City – Enchanted Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I'd look it up on YouTube and give it a listen if you can find it. I like Owl City's songs, but this is definitely one of their better ones. | |
| Owl City – Enchanted Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Such a beautiful song, and so few comments! I hope this gets some attention soon. Does anyone know who he's referring to when he sings about Taylor? Is that his wife? It seems all the really talented musicians are married. But then he says at the very end, "I -was- so in love with you," which makes me wonder if he's singing about another lost loved one, kind of like in Vanilla Twilight. If so, then this guy's been through some real tragedy, my god. But maybe it's his first love, I dunno. I know I crushed hard on my first... uh... crush. If you want a deep analysis, I got nothin'. It just sounds like love at first sight to me. |
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| Skin – Nothing But Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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When I first heard this song, I related a bit too much to the singer and couldn't listen to it for months without crying uncontrollably. It conjured too many memories of being replaced by the one you love. I love how poignant it is. It's talking about all these positive thoughts and feelings, and that is EXACTLY the opposite of what this girl is really feeling. It's evident in the choice of chords or... I don't know the musical term for it, but if she meant it it wouldn't sound this depressing. When I get bummed out and can't get myself to cry, this is one of the songs I listen to now. It is one of the most cathartic things I can hope for when I'm depressed. Great song. |
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| R.E.M. – Shiny Happy People Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Me, too. Just seems like the attitude Hippies had in general and the way they'd do that whole happy campfire thing. | |
| Coldplay – Clocks Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Thank you! This is the best and most coherent interpretation I've run into on this site, whether or not it's truly accurate or not. Addiction--that's how I'm going to think of this song now, since song lyrics that make no sense to me drive me nuts. | |
| Shiny Toy Guns – Major Tom (Peter Schilling cover) Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I must say I'm fascinated by your in-depth interpretation of this song, though I'm not sure exactly where you got some of your theories. All the same, it puts an interesting spin on the lyrics and gives them much more meaning than they have at face value. BTW, this is coming from someone who only heard/understood the "earth below us, drifting falling" part before coming across the entire song. I seriously thought it was another metaphorical song about sex. |
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| Tennessee Ernie Ford – Sixteen Tons Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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IIRC, we discussed this song in one of my History classes in high school. I -think- it was written before Unions were formed and illustrates how bad things could get when businesses could ... I don't remember, pay you crap wages for hard work or something. I also remember it because it was one of the songs on that DisneyTV VHS I own that showed clips of Disney cartoons to old songs like "Baby Love." Of course, I didn't get the significance when I was 5, but now it makes me sad for the guys who had to work so hard to survive. |
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| Helloween – As Long as I Fall Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It sounds to me like the singer is talking about pessimism. Like... as long as he sucks at everything, he won't be upset if things go wrong. Either that or he's talking about getting high off drugs and how it seems to make his problems go away. Iunno. |
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