| Counting Crows – Cowboys Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| That's completely insane. Why would Lincoln's head bleeding have to do with Monica Potter in LA? It's already a huge stretch to think that because they called him "Honest Abe" his head bleeding means someone lied (far more likely, considering the socio-political slant of the song, is that it has to do with the fact that Lincoln's head is on the smallest denomination of American currency), but even if I granted that's a valid reading, why would it be about that actress as opposed to, say, the girl Goodnight Elisabeth's about, or the girl Anna Begins is about, or the girl Barely Out Of Tuesday is about, or someone completely different? Knowing one event in a musician's life doesn't mean everything they write is about that; people get very strange ideas about celebrities. | |
| Counting Crows – Cowboys Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I'm also a Mexican (half native american, half jewish, but born in Mexico). I think you're on the right track; multiple readings of any piece of poetry are valid, and your reading makes sense, as there are certainly allusions (satellites, Lincoln's head=pennies=economy, cowboys, "a hungry man with a gun in my hand and some promises to keep"). But there's also another way to read the song--as something about a man's personal breakdown. I see it this way: a cowboy is a musician, a gun is the instrument (guitar, piano, microphone, voice, whatever) that connects you to the music. "I bought a gun 'cause it impresses all the little girls I see and then they all want to sleep with me..." That makes the rest of the song a little more beautiful and tragic, I think--it's about the way doing violence to art by using music as a weapon to impress women doesn't get you what you want, it leaves you alone and watching, as the person you consider yourself to be is really just an object to you, you don't know who you are or where you disappear into. So in the end he's saying "well, if I'm a cowboy, I might as well do what the cowboys do and go wait for the showdown at high noon, and to hell with her, and to hell with everyone else, but god damn it I believe..." | |
| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| It's just you. | |
| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Your family friend is incorrect. It is based on a massacre (Foster the People have been slightly cagey with the details, I heard from one source that it was a mall shooting; from another that it was a school shooting), but one of very few things we can be sure about is that it's not Columbine. For one thing, as you said, there were two shooters. But the lyrics don't "make sense if you relate" them to Columbine: think about it. Pumped up kicks are those partially inflatable shoes, I think Reeboks, that were so popular a few years back. They were very expensive, so only the rich kids would have been wearing them. Robert from Pumped Up Kicks clearly comes from a poor family ("Daddy works a long day, he'll be coming late... dinner's in the kitchen and it's packed in ice, and I waited for a long time...") and doesn't get as much love or attention from his father as he needs. He's poor and envious of the richer kids. So he's saying, "You rich kids with your fancy sneakers--better hope your pumped up kicks let you run faster than my bullets, 'cause I'm coming for you." It's a chilling sentiment, makes for a beautiful and disturbing song, and has absolutely nothing to do with Columbine, a massacre that occurred for very different reasons and in a very different context. | |
| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Obviously you're running a scam, but does this actually work for you? Have you actually succeeded in ripping anybody off by fishing for tricks on Songmeanings.net of all places? | |
| Insane Clown Posse – Miracles Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I know that ICP says they're not really anti-science, and I believe them. It's true that science often takes away from the simple wonder of things when we appreciate them for the miracles they truly are. But science is also what comes out of that sense of wonder, and science is one of the most beautiful miracles of all. The trouble is, this song explicitly opposes science to the beauty of creation, and that's not cool at all. One of the fundamental concepts of postmodernism is based on an essay called "The Death of the Author," and the concept itself might be thought of as the author's death. The gist of it is: once an author's work (be it a book, a poem, a song...) has been made public, its meaning stops belonging to him. That is, its interpretation is no longer owned by the author. That means once ICP released Miracles, what they were thinking or responding to with their song stopped mattering any more than my opinion or your opinion--once Miracles was public, every interpretation of it was just as valid as any other. And when you look at the song straight up--the way a lot of young, impressionable ICP fans are going to look at it, without bothering to check what J and Shaggy said about it--it has a clear message: stuff is beautiful and miraculous, and scientists' explanations of it are bullshit we don't have to listen to. This is a horrible message, a dangerous message, and one I'm sure J and Shaggy would not want to propagate. Again, I understand that people who are really familiar with ICP and Juggalo culture will know not to take it too seriously, but the fact is a lot of people are going to hear "I don't want to hear from no scientist/those motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed" as a hilarious condemnation of science, coming from their idols, and therefore something to pay attention to. The fact that ICP didn't think about this before releasing Miracles--or, worse, did think about it and just decided to troll the world (which, though truly evil, would be absolutely hilarious)--is part of the reason they get so much hate. | |
| Insane Clown Posse – Miracles Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I had to comment on this. I personally dislike ICP's music, but that's an opinion and you're absolutely entitled to your own. But you said "If ICP sucked, they couldn't have started out as broke and homeless eighteen year olds stealing car stereos on the streets of Detroit, to selling platinum records and creating an entire sub-culture," which is absolute bullshit and I hate seeing it so much that I make a point of replying to it whenever I see anyone using this argument. You don't need to be good to be successful. If ICP is good, they're good. But they're not successful because they're good, no one really is unless they're relatively anonymous and anti-publicity (Aphex Twin is a good example of this). ICP works harder than any band I can think of on branding, marketing, packaging, and cultivating aspects of their subculture that aren't related to music. I'm not saying this is a bad thing; more power to them. I'm a musician myself, and I know how impossible it is to make money with music these days, so I absolutely have no problem with them pushing the clown gimmick as far as it would go and reaching out to their "Juggalos" to produce an increasingly tight-knit community (because the closer the community is, the longer it'll keep them successful). To think that ICP's success has to do with their talent--platinum records? Justin Bieber has platinum records and a big subculture too--is incredibly naive. I'm not saying ICP has no talent (well, I am, but that part is just my opinion), I'm saying that their talent (or lack thereof) is totally unrelated to their financial success, and what I'm really saying is that using a band's success in an argument, whether to claim that their music is good because it sells a lot, or to say that a person's negative opinion of a band is invalid because they are not themselves successful musicians, since you have to be a successful musician to talk shit about music by a successful musician (so only a successful musician can say that Justin Bieber's songs suck? And I guess that also means that Justin Bieber's opinions on music are more important than yours, unless you're an undercover rock star slumming it on SongMeanngs?) is an incredibly lame tactic and really not worthy of a person as seemingly articulate as yourself. Of course, I can't understand how a person as articulate as you could possibly like ICP, but the world is full of inexplicable happenings. Miracles, if you will. And btw, even though the ICP guys may not be anti-science themselves, the SONG definitely is--and that means that a lot of their fans, especially younger kids who look up to them, are just going to hear it as an anti-science message. It doesn't matter what their intention was, what matters is how it sounds--otherwise every song whose writer wanted to make the best ever would actually be the best song ever; the truth is that once a song is made public, the songwriter/singer's opinion is only as valid as everyone else's. And as for this song, the way a lot of impressionable teenagers are going to interpret it is "huh, I guess when I'm trying to learn about something really cool and the explanation is hard to understand that's just because scientists are full of shit, so instead of learning I'll assume they're lying, get pissed, and in the future instead of trying to learn the complex truth about things I'll just accept them as "miracles" that no one can explain. And that's not cool at all. | |
| Insane Clown Posse – Miracles Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I just noticed this had no replies, and had to give you props for pointing out how totally ludicrous it is for someone to call ICP's lyrics masterpieces. Well, "ludicrous" isn't a strong enough word. I was thinking of saying "insane" or "psychotic," but Juggalos would just go "YEAH YO WE FUCKIN NUTS YO" and take it as a compliment--because they don't actually understand what the terms "psychotic," "psychopathic," or "insane" mean--and I happen to be fairly anti-psychiatry; one of my favorite quotes on the subject is Gilles Deleuze saying "a schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch," or words to that effect. Point is, despite my being anti-psychiatry, there's a particular way in which what psychology refers to as psychosis is a bad thing (because it entails a kind of tremendously powerful self-deception), and that's exactly the way it's bad for someone to call ICP's lyrics masterpieces. | |
| Insane Clown Posse – Miracles Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
Man, I had to reply to you because while I disagree with you on the song (I don't like it) you write like an intelligent dude and I wanted to tell you what I agree with. Now, you're absolutely right when you say that anyone who thinks finishing high school means a damn thing about intelligence. Anyone who thinks a high school grad is automatically "smarter" than someone who wasn't able to or decided not to for whatever reason is demonstrating that he's not very smart, because that's a retarded opinion to have. And you're right when you say that these guys had a really hard time getting their music out there (for which I have to respect them as musicians and businessmen), which is ultimately the true reason for the clown gimmick (whatever they say, the truth is it's what made them their money). But you're very wrong about something: the success a band has had selling their music has absolutely NOTHING, ZERO, NADA, to do with how good their music is. Furthermore, if you had to be a professional musician (which I am, not that it matters) making money with your music (which I'm not, because it's damn hard to find paying gigs as a solo artist) in order to "diss" another band's music, then the only valid opinions would be "wow, I love this!" I hate Justin Bieber just as much as you do, but as a musician I am aware that his songs are very well produced, someone does a very professional job of puttiing them together (certainly not Justin Bieber, but someone who works with him), and he's successful. Does that mean that Justin Bieber's opinions on music are more valid than mine? Saying your financial success validates your opinions is exactly the same as saying your high school education validates your intelligence--and that IS irony. And the last thing I'll say is this: to each his own; there's no accounting for taste, and we all have our own. But man, how can someone as articulate as you, who's clearly capable of putting real thought into things, possibly defend this horrible song? Yes, those things are miracles and they're beautiful. But for me the ludicrous rapping (and the ridiculous dancing in the video), plus the off-key background vocals, and the way they put things--they don't want to hear from scientists, because scientists "lie" and "get them pissed"? Sounds like they're saying "yeah, things are cool and beautiful, but instead of learning about them you should just appreciate them as miracles and never find out what science knows about them, because science is bullshit." Now it's true that, as you said, science breaks down at its fringes. But that's true of all disciplines--go far enough in any direction and you'll find the places where it starts to break down, because there are some things we're just not capable of knowing yet, maybe ever. But saying that because scientists don't know the whole truth they're "lying" and "getting [you] pissed" is ignorant bullshit, and the fact that they're encouraging their fans to think like that, I believe, is absolutely criminal. |
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| Okkervil River – So Come Back, I Am Waiting Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I think you're off base with the diapason thing. A diapason is not musical talent, it's a particular interval (or grouping of notes), such as a perfect fourth or perfect fifth (which are called "perfect" because they nearly always work well, that is, to continue the progression in a melodic way, after a given note--from which they are either four or five steps away). So "birthing a diapason" is really just a metaphor for singing--straight up, "birth" = generation, "diapason" = "group of notes that make a melody." The airwaves "stretch" and "groan," like a woman giving birth, as the music is created and broadcast--but it's not uncomfortable music, or bad music, or even especially dark music, it's black because of the blackness in his soul. Music is an expression of the spirit, if there's pain in your heart it will bleed into your voice. So he's not at all saying that the heroin killed his talent, he's saying that the shape of his music comes from the heroin that's destroying him. Sheff thinks heroin had an adverse effect on Hardin's songwriting? Maybe, in the sense that he wasn't able to write as many songs (because he was in a heroin coma most of the time and died young), but many of his best songs were written either about heroin or about his experiences as a heroin addict, and they definitely wouldn't possess the same tragic splendor they do if it weren't for the heartbreaking truth of his addiction. Not saying he wouldn't have been as good--for all I know he would have been a hundred times better. But he wouldn't have that particular tone of majestic grief--a tone that Will Sheff, for example, lacks (listen to some Tim Hardin--specifically, Reason to Believe, Misty Roses, and How Can We Hang On To A Dream, and tell me I'm wrong), precisely because he's not a total fuckup like Hardin. | |
| Okkervil River – So Come Back, I Am Waiting Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| That is a fair reading of the song, but I don't think it's the strongest. I think it's about the drugs, but not just drugs--anything that works like a drug for you, that is, anything that is tied into your desire and your personhood in that way: music, most of all, is the metaphor, music and drugs. Something that's always calling for you, waiting for you to come back to it--so you can "take them all on" together. So when he says "so why did you flee? don't you know you can't leave his control? only call all his wild works your own," I think the sense is that it's heroin (or the devil, or whatever) talking, saying "How could you possibly think you can get away? You can't escape it, it's a part of you; but, if you accept it, a dark and terrible power will be yours." | |
| Okkervil River – So Come Back, I Am Waiting Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| That is a fair reading of the song, but I don't think it's the strongest. I think it's about the drugs, but not just drugs--anything that works like a drug for you, that is, anything that is tied into your desire and your personhood in that way: music, most of all, is the metaphor, music and drugs. Something that's always calling for you, waiting for you to come back to it--so you can "take them all on" together. So when he says "so why did you flee? don't you know you can't leave his control? only call all his wild works your own," I think the sense is that it's heroin (or the devil, or whatever) talking, saying "How could you possibly think you can get away? You can't escape it, it's a part of you; but, if you accept it, a dark and terrible power will be yours." | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Not sure if fun. can top this song ever either, if by "top" you mean record a song that causes blood to explode from every orifice in a listener's body (which this song only does about 20% of the time and then only in children, the elderly, and the extremely susceptible). You have heard many songs quite like this one before (unless this is your first time listening to what is called "music"); the lyrics are trite and unoriginal, making a statement that can be traced back, through poetry, to the earliest Old English (farther in some parts of the world), and even then it was considered kind of lame. "holes in my apologies" means he's a shallow guy whose apologies don't hold water because instead of really trying to make it up he's just saying "Hey, we're young, cut me some slack ok?" (Which is probably how the song got written, too. Not powerful or touching, more weak and tremendously insincere. Super candy-coated, ultra-simplistic story of a shallow asshole at a bar and his shallow, banal sentiments. | |
| Bob Dylan – Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| You are completely wrong. This is pre-conversion. | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| As for writing a bunch of nothing, think about it this way: an untreated wound may start to expel pus and other such unpleasant substances. This song is a wound in the world and a wound in my mind, and the psychological response of my musical immune system (so to speak) is to desperately try to get it out of me by spewing venom in retaliation to the infliction of this "music" upon my memory. I don't want to spew venom at anyone I shouldn't, so I direct it where it's most deserved, towards the people who like the song. I know I'm not going to convince anyone of anything I'm saying, nor am I trying to; liking this song means you're beyond hope, but at least I can get my feelings off my chest. The truth is I've never felt like this about a song, so there is something genuinely special about it; while I've heard a lot of bad songs before, this is the first time one has actually been vile enough to damage my soul. | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I may be a prick, but the song still blows. I never said anything about professional music critics, I said the song blows in every way, and that anyone who knows anything about music will concur. "I have the authority to say this" was meant as a joke, but it's not surprising for someone who likes this abomination of a song to lack the ability to detect tonal variations. | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Although, come to think about it, there is one sense in which the song could be interpreted as being about rape: the protagonist of the narrative is getting a girl really, really drunk, encouraging her to drink, and then saying (though it makes no sense grammatically, which is pretty dumb--"if" should be followed by a "then" clause, not an "and") "So if by the time the bar closes and you feel like falling down, I'll carry you home tonight." Let me get this straight: if she's too drunk to walk and he's sober enough to carry her, he'll take her home? Considering he's talking about being young and setting the world on fire and living life to the fullest, I highly doubt he's going to wait until she's sober to try anything. So if you read it this way, the song is actually about a guy planning to date rape a girl he's already damaged emotionally. Why is this song so popular again? | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| You're absolutely right. Glad to see there are still people who know how to look past popularity to notice when a song is absolutely horrible. | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I'm always glad to find someone else who notices that this song is horrible and offensive. But you left out the part where in addition to a set of lyrics that offend the sensibilities of any right-minded individual on every level, the song also features some of the worst music I've ever heard, particularly the atrocious singing, boring melody, and terrible orchestration of the chorus. | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| That's ridiculous. While in a post-structuralist context (The Death of the Author) it is legitimate to say that any interpretation supported by the media artifact under consideration is equally valid, there's no real support for your idea. You're reaching very far for this interpretation and the thing about the apple is just ridiculous. Why do you think so much about rape? I'm truly sorry if you or a loved one has ever encountered the threat of sexual assault, because rape is a monstrous, unjustifiable crime that should be punished by unanesthetized castration. But there's simply no reason to think that's what this song is about, and frankly you're giving too much credit to what is ultimately a horrible, banal piece of garbage masquerading as music. If it were actually about rape then the lyrics would at least be dealing with a heavy subject and thereby worth paying attention to. There is no reason, however, to think that the song is about anything but a drunk, shallow asshole who did something (probably cheated on) to hurt the girl he likes trying to make up for it by writing a terrible song in which he justifies his actions by saying "hey, we're young, youth is the time to make mistakes, so really if you think about it you should forgive me, right? C'mon baby, we'll burn brighter than the sun" (and additional lame poetry, etc). | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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emuInAmuumuu is right, for the most part (though "Pumped Up Kicks" is different). The appeal of "We Are Young" is similar to that of "Somebody That I Used To Know" in that it's the flavor of the day, trending, so that people love it because they don't really have taste (note that I'm not saying it's because they have BAD taste--though you must if you like this song--but in the case of "Somebody That I Used To Know" it's due to never having formed the habit of using your own taste, so that you have to go for someone else's. "Somebody" (etc) is a boring, bland song, with unexceptional instrumentation and vocals, a trite and overused refrain ("you're just somebody that I used to know" is a very common line, so it's an unoriginal sentiment on top of a not-particularly-original song). The only reason someone like you (by which I mean "someone who likes "We Are Young") would listen to it (considering before the song blew up that band wasn't really popular and you wouldn't have known of them) is that it's on the radio, a hit, and you're constantly being bombarded with it. If a friend who listens to different kinds of music than you (i.e., who has different taste in music) had showed you the song once, you would never have thought about it again, because you would have associated it in your memory with a person who you don't identify with music you like, as opposed to "hits," under which the songs you mentioned fall). To go a bit further into your original statement: the lyrics of "We Are Young" are abominable, the songwriting is too weak to be pretentious but certainly not "good" whether truly or mildly, the singing is absolutely terrible, and the production is at best mediocre (listen to that keyboard in the chorus, ugh, what was the sound tech thinking?). The musicianship (which you didn't seem to say anything about, though perhaps that's what you meant by "ensemble") is also quite poor. I do take offense at lumping in "Pumped Up Kicks" with this piece of crap, though. The only thing they have in common is that you may hear both of them on hit stations. "Pumped Up Kicks" has intelligent lyrics, genuinely clever production, a fantastically catchy melody that triumphs in spite of its unoriginality, and a terrible singer who knows he's terrible and uses his terrible voice to its best advantage by virtue of production that highlights its good side and hides its weak spots (as opposed to "We Are Young," which features a guy with a good voice who thinks that having a good voice makes you a good singer--which is absolutely false, look at American Idol--and because of this overconfidence flaunts his quavering whine and emphasizes the ugliest parts of his voice, which would otherwise be the only redeeming quality in a song that has fallen upon the world like a hate crime). "Pumped Up Kicks" is a great song. "We Are Young" is a terrible song. Now, you're probably going to be thinking one of two (maybe both) stupid things: a) "That's just your opinion, man, you don't get to decide what's good and what's not, I know what I like and I don't care what you think." This is stupid because the reasons you used to back up your opinion (good songwriting/producing/singing, etc), in addition to the statement "Not exactly sure what the lyrics mean" (when a more simplistic and banal set of lyrics would be hard to write, indicating that either you've devoted zero thought to interpreting them or you just lack the capacity to think critically about "poetry"--which I put in quotes because while I'm reluctant to sully the name of poetry by calling "We Are Young" a poem, any set of words arranged lyrically is thereby a poem, though it may be a bad one), demonstrate that you have no idea what you're talking about. How can you call it good songwriting when you don't know what the lyrics mean? The only statement you made with any validity to it is "when a song snags you with its "feel' [sic] than [sic] it truly doesn't matter: [sic]" But if you can't say anything more than a vague statement about the "feel" of a song, you have no business asserting that the writing or production is good, let alone "truly" good. b) "Lots of people like this song, so you must be wrong." This is stupid because it's a fucking retarded statement. Lots of people killed millions of Jews during the Holocaust, and lots of people raped, slaughtered and/or enslaved the indigenous people of "America," as the murdering rapist slavers decided to name it while destroying every cultural artifact they could find and killing everyone who knew how to read or write native languages or knew about native religions, and lots of people never stop to really think about this. I mention these things for two reasons: first, because being forced to listen to "We Are Young" (even if only for the moments it takes to change the station) is comparable to the holocaust and to the mass destruction of Native American culture (I'm half Jewish and half Native American, so I have the authority to say this). Second, because the way these things operated (mass mentality, one hideous, atrocious thing becomes popular and people find ways to warp their minds into liking the idea) is the same way this song became popular--and I wouldn't be surprised if the popularity of "We Are Young" (and other songs that approach the same category of abhorrent pseudo-music, like "Look At Me Now" and "Glad You Came") were a sign that the eradication of all that is good and noble in the world (particularly music) is at hand. Have a nice day. |
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| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Well, thank you. I'm glad to see I'm not alone; sometimes I feel like the whole world's gone crazy except for me (and if sanity is determined by consensus...). Ugh, Glad You Came is another one. The funny thing is not all radio pop today is as bad as that--that "Call Me Maybe" song is trite and silly, but it's kind of cute, and the instrumentation is actually very professional (clearly the singer had very little to do with it, except maybe the lyrics--"before you came into my life I missed you so bad" is kind of a nice sentiment, even if the lyrics are dumb on the whole). "Domino" is also catchy and fun. There's a place in the world for sugary pop, always has been. The We Are Youngs and Glad You Cames of the world, though, make me feel an overwhelming sense of depression. I don't know what kind of music you enjoy, but my personal recommendation is to check out Punch Brothers, especially the songs "Missy," "Movement and Location," "New York City" and "Who's Feeling Young Now?" (title track off their latest album). "Missy" is my personal favorite. They play with bluegrass instrumentation (guitar, banjo, fiddle, upright bass (played with a bow and plucked, sometimes both in the same song), and mandolin--the mandolin player is both singer and songwriter). Punch Brothers are unique in that they play with the skill of classically trained performers--I've seen internationally acclaimed string quartets play classical music, and they give me the same chills I felt when I saw Punch Brothers live. Something about the absolute control they have over their instruments, which in the case of Punch Brothers is combined with the brilliance of their improvisations. Punch Brothers are also unique in that they aren't a bluegrass band, despite the instruments they play--their style is more like ultra-technical folk-rock (minus a drummer), but much catchier than that sounds. Their lyrics and arrangements exude intelligence; in a way they remind me of Steely Dan, in their superlative dedication to technical musicianship and their fusion of differing styles into a sometimes deceptively simple (by virtue of its approachable nature) form. Chris Thile, the mandolin player, also led a band that included Yo Yo Ma (The Goat Rodeo Sessions) in recording an instrumental album that combined bluegrass, folk, rock, and classical music in a similar way--I only decided to check out Punch Brothers (whose name is taken from the superb eponymous Mark Twain story) after I realized that anyone involved in such a stellar project had to be worth looking into further. I also suggest you check out Califone, another brilliant and tragically underrated band, whose music refuses to condescend to its listeners (making it the opposite of We Are Young and Glad You Came). Lastly, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but assuming we hate the same things in music, stay the hell away from Chris Brown's magisterially awful "Look At Me Now"--look at me now, look at me now, UH, I'm getting paper (where "getting paper" means "getting money," set to a nauseating digitally produced mosquito whine. From an intellectual standpoint I find it difficult to say that I "hate rap," because I don't like to dismiss an entire genre that way, and I have heard a fair deal of rap that is intelligent and well made. But then I hear things like "Look At Me Now" and wonder how the once magnificent American music scene devolved to such a frightening extent). | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| No way in hell am I buying this as anything but a troll. | |
| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Your interpretation is brilliant, subtly reasoned, and completely wrong. If you actually believe this is what the song's about you may literally be insane. Once a song is written its lyrics are open to any interpretation by anyone, regardless of what the songwriter intended, but your reasoning is so absurdly convoluted, you're reaching so far, that your arm is stretching like Michael Jordan's in Space Jam. You're out of your mind. | |
| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Kids get beat up all the time. The song doesn't even say much about it, there's just the implication that he's bullied, which says nothing about the time period. "Pumped Up Kicks" refers to a particular brand of shoe that was popular in the '90s I think, so that dates it. Rolled up cigarettes are what you smoke when you don't have much money, because they're much cheaper; if it were about the time period, it would have to take place almost a century ago, because filtered cigarettes have been available for a very long time now. Revolvers were not more common in the past--for a while they were pretty much the only kind of pistol, true, but there are simply more guns now than there were then, and revolvers are still among the most popular types of pistol (easy to use and maintain, less likely to jam than semiautomatics), so you could argue that revolvers are actually more common now than in the past. The song is definitely meant to be thought of as modern, just not necessarily today, more likely about fifteen years ago or so (the song is about a particular historical incident, in fact, but if we ignore the artist's interpretation--as Barthes's Death of the Author would have us do--it still gives us a very recent date). | |
| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| No, they're shoes. "Kicks" are shoes, and "pumped up" kicks are those expensive Reeboks that all the kids wanted in the 90's. This kid is upset that he can't afford them, and sees "all the other kids" who have them as mocking him, so he's going to kill them because he's crazy. It makes zero sense for all the other kids to know martial arts, and even if for some reason they did, "pumped up kicks" would be a ridiculous and clumsy metaphor for that. Song is not about martial arts. | |
| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| You're very likely right about Hawkins, but diazepam does not, absolutely could not, induce rage. Diazepam is valium. It does the opposite. | |
| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Yeah, if you don't think it's about a homicidal teenager, you're not reading it very well. Yes, he was very possibly abused by his father (there may be implications of it in the text; maybe not, but it makes sense), but he's definitely planning to kill a bunch of people with the gun he found in his dad's closet. You could maybe argue that he's just pretending, but then why would you say it "says nothing about a homicidal teenager" to you? Are we talking about the same song here? | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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The quality (or lack thereof) of any piece of poetry is a matter of personal taste, and since that you lack it enough to enjoy this song I wouldn't expect you to have any worthwhile opinions on the literary techniques employed in its lyrics. Still, what you just said is so laughably absurd that I can't resist replying to it seriously: heavy-duty figure of speech? Seriously? In the legendary "Macarthur Park," infamously covered by Donna Summer, Richard Harris wrote "Macarthur Park is melting in the dark. All that sweet, green icing pouring down. Someone left a cake out in the rain. I don't think that I can take it, 'cause it took so long to bake it, and I'll never have that recipe again! Oh, no!" It's a love song, you see, in which the cake is a metaphor for the lonely man abandoned in the park where he used to meet his lover, the green icing is a metaphor for the greenery of the park in which the couple used to meet, the park is a metaphor for the relationship itself, the recipe is a metaphor for the process by which the affair took place, and the rain falling on the park (and cake) is symbolic of Harris's sadness after his lover has left, reducing him to a sodden mess, like a cake left out in the rain. This is actual "heavy-duty" technique, as opposed to "We Are Young," in that it's a multi-layered, complex piece of poetry, in contrast to fun.'s song, which is so shallow and banal that even a flat image like "my seat's been taken by some sunglasses" stands out. However, Richard Harris's "Macarthur Park" is widely acknowledged (and rightly so) as one of the worst songs ever written, because the metaphor is absolutely retarded and sounds hilariously bad. By your reasoning, it should be a wonderful song, because it has "heavy duty figure[s] of speech" in it. But it's not, it's a terrible, terrible, song. About the best thing that can be said about it is that it's not "We Are Young." If you want to read some good songwriting, check out someone like Bob Dylan or Tom Waits or especially Leonard Cohen: "And Jesus was a sailor, when he walked upon the water, and he spent a long time watching, from his lonely wooden tower, and when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him he said 'All men will be sailors then, until the sea shall free them.' But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open; forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone." Now Leonard Cohen, as you can see by the last name, is Jewish and not at all Christian. However, he employs Jesus as a symbol in order to talk about the human condition (all men will be sailors, then, until the sea shall free them--all men will walk upon the waters of life until they sink under them and drown), and in the process says something significant about everything he mentions--the cross is a "lonely wooden tower," on which Jesus was "broken... forsaken, almost human"; most Christians don't pause to consider that Jesus must have been terribly lonely, if he really was the son of God. By writing this verse (in "Suzanne," which, far from being a religious song is about a love affair with a crazy girl), Cohen demonstrates his empathy for a foreign religion and expresses a complex, relevant sentiment about it without participating fully in it, remaining an outsider. This is the kind of thing a poetry and "heavy duty" literary techniques can do in a song when they're used well. Not every song has to be this complicated, of course; it's possible to do something simply and have it sound great. For example, in another recently popular song, Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" (which, incidentally, is catchy, poppy, and simple, much like "We Are Young," but is also intelligent, well-written, and an excellent example of working with a very simple hook and arrangement to create a worthwhile piece of music), the chorus "All the other kids with the pumped up kicks, you better run, better run faster than my bullet" is extremely simple but also profound. The character the song is about is poor--he can't afford the "pumped up kicks" that "all the other kids" have. So from his (psychotic) perspective, he's saying "I hope those expensive sneakers your daddy bought you let you run fast enough to get away from my bullets, because I'm going to shoot your ass, dude." This simultaneously allows us to empathize with a sick, twisted person about to do something very bad and expresses a very complex sentiment in very few words. "My seat's been taken by some sunglasses" does nothing of the sort. |
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| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| You know what? I changed my mind. This actually is the anthem of youth. "Moronic insincerity" is the exact reflection of the youth of America at the present time. No wonder this garbage is so popular. | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| From a more objective standpoint, the song is simply bad on every conceivable level. The lyrics are dumb (higher than the Empire State? Poetic brilliance! Almost as good as "na na na na na na na na na"). The vocalist is off-key and singing with an atrocious whining quaver he can't seem to get rid of (toniiiiiiiiiiiiiight we are yoooooouuuuuuung). The music is bland at best, the instrumentation is boring, and the production tinkles with the mindless yaw of the blind idiot god Azathoth who writhes and gibbers at the center of a cold, uncaring universe. The song as a whole gives off a striking and genuinely extraordinary sense of moronic insincerity. | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I drive a lot when I work (contractor), and all I have in my car is a radio, so I can't quite make up my mind: this is definitely the worst song on the air right now, but I'm really tempted to say it's the worst song I've ever heard. However, since it's being inflicted on me so often (even just hearing a few seconds of it while flipping through stations is enough to make me shudder with absolute revulsion), it's possible that I've heard worse songs before and I just can't think of any because this putrid "music" is so present in my mind at the moment. What's it about? It's about a guy at a bar with a girl he's not very interested in, thinking about the girl he is interested in (who he cheated on or hit or something recently, which he's making stupid excuses for in the form of retardedly banal poetry), and he's drunk and maudlin and getting sentimental to cover up the fact that he's actually a shallow idiot. That's all. "Tonight we are young" etc is just a way to say "I take no responsibility for the stupid things I've done, I'm going to say that it was a good thing because I'm young and that's the time to make mistakes." To a certain extent he's right, in that youth is the time to make mistakes, but he doesn't realize what his mistake is--it's subjecting the world to this abomination of a song forever (or at least until the human race destroys itself in a nuclear hellfire, which I'm honestly not sure would be worse than having to listen to this song again). The members of "fun." and anyone who genuinely thinks this song is the "anthem of youth" or whatever (that is, anyone who really identifies with this) are going to look back on it with horror and despair in a few years, realizing that the reason they thought it was a good idea to write/perform/listen to/identify with this song was that they were so obnoxiously drunk or stoned (literally or metaphorically) that they had become tone-deaf twelve-year-olds mistakenly thinking that there was some redeeming quality to this wretched excuse for a song. God, I wish there was a way to make a song take on human form, just so I could punch this one in the face. No, the singer's not good enough--unfortunately (usually it's a good thing, but not in this case), a song is more than the sum of its parts (lyrics, music, performer); it takes on a life of its own once it's been recorded. This song is if nothing else the lowest point popular music has reached in the 21st century--worse than "Look At Me Now" (which is pretty damn hard to accomplish), worse than Ke$ha, worse than Justin Bieber, worse than all of the things we usually compare music to as an extreme form of hyperbole. I have no idea how anyone has been conned into enjoying this, but I do thank whatever being is out there beyond the range of human understanding (not God, because there can be no God in a world where this song exists) for one thing: the nature of this song (this is the best, this is our peak, we're young, this is all great, woohoo let's get drunk and have sex with things we'll really regret having touched with our genitalia once we sober up) is to look really, really, really bad in hindsight. And that's exactly what it deserves. "fun." indeed. | |
| Okkervil River – So Come Back, I Am Waiting Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Ha, I sound like a real asshole in that comment, I don't even remember writing it, though I still hold to that interpretation of the song. Another interesting note: Tim Hardin has a song Red Balloon, which is about heroin. He says something like "Bought myself a red balloon, what a blue surprise, hidden in the red balloon, the pinning of my eyes" (referring to the pinprick pupils of opiate users), and afterwards, "It took the lovelight from my eyes, it took the lovelight from my eyes." Compare with "Hell there's plenty of light still left in your eyes" in Sheff's song. | |
| Steely Dan – Hey Nineteen Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| No, you guys are missing the point. It's not about a guy dating a younger girl. It's about a guy who used to be a suave ladies' man chatting up some young college girl at a party. He's thinking "Jesus, when did I get so old?" He doesn't go out with her--they can't even dance together, because people would think he was a slimeball. So he says fuck it, drinks some tequila, does some lines, and... ends up pretty miserable (the "make tonight a wonderful thing" is pretty obviously sarcastic, I think). | |
| Bob Dylan – Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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If you get no angry vibe from this song, you don't know Dylan or the song. It's not just sarcastic, it's bitter and hostile. He's not going to hurt her, or curse at her, or anything--he'll just leave. Certainly he did love her, but she didn't treat him well. Note of course that Dylan was probably an asshole to her--Dylan wasn't known for being the kindest of guys. This is just one of those songs where he turns it around and throws all the blame onto the girl. But that's what it's about--making sure she understands it was all her fault. "I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul" is an almost sociopathically twisted line, but it's awesome. Why is "Goodbye" too good a word? Because he doesn't really wish anything good for her at this point, he'd rather just be frostily polite. "I ain't saying you treated me unkind ... you just kind of wasted my precious time." It's a vicious, insulting song, and Dylan was a vicious, insulting guy when he wrote it. It's really ironic that so many girls like this song, considering that Dylan was clearly in a misogynistic sort of mood when he wrote it. |
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| Okkervil River – So Come Back, I Am Waiting Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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You people suck. If you like this album so much, I would have thought you'd have looked up what it's about--the guy has talked about it a lot. In case you didn't know, Will Sheff didn't write Black Sheep Boy--that song's by Tim Hardin, a 60s-70s songwriter (who Sheff admires enormously, and for good reason--Tim Hardin is amazing) who fought with a heroin addiction to which he eventually succumbed around 1980. Sheff has said that he wrote this album about Tim Hardin. This song is pretty obviously about Hardin's struggle with heroin, and it's absolutely heartbreaking. No one has mentioned the syringe and rolling up sleeves. What did you think he was rolling it up for--to keep a pack of cigarettes? My inference is that the old black sheep man is heroin--the triumphant end of the song isn't really that triumphant. It's about Tim Hardin giving up and going back to heroin after he had spent years clean. "Come back to your life on the lam," "I am waiting on hoof and on hand ... all hated and damned ... to make you my lamb." What do you think that's about? Note also that "horse" is a slang term for heroin, and although sheep/rams do have hooves, "muddy hoofprints where he carried you" sounds more like a horse to me--at least, it might be meant to bring the image of a horse to mind. I think the line "So why did you bawl..." might be heroin personified talking. Some old holy song? Maybe the Bible, or a hymn; a religious song, or something like that. Even just the sanctimonious preaching of people who say that 'drugs are bad, drugs are bad...' as if it was a religious truism. If so it's implied that whoever wrote that old holy song was also an addict, and a hypocrite no less. I don't know how religious Tim Hardin was, but certainly something like that MIGHT have inspired his period away from the drug. This part I'm quite uncertain about, but it makes rather more sense like that. Note that what happened was that Tim Hardin simply gave up. At that time heroin addicts in England could get a weekly or monthly ration of heroin just for being addicts, and Hardin simply moved to England and got high for a long time. I think he eventually returned to the US, but he didn't last long after that. Yeah, so anyway, Tim Hardin and heroin. Not a love song, or at least not a traditional love song. And it's not happy. Not a bit. It's beautiful but unbelievably depressing. |
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| Incubus – Here In My Room Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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YOU FUCKING IDIOTS. I just registered for this site just to comment on this song, because it's too good to be ruined by fucking tools. Fuck your Christian morality and romantic sensibility: IT'S A SONG ABOUT SEX WITHOUT LOVE AND WITHOUT COMPLICATIONS. GET THE FUCK OVER IT. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH A ONE NIGHT STAND, YOU FUCKING IDIOTS. Let's see why that is: "Yeah, love is a verb here in my room" YOU CAN'T IGNORE THAT. Whatever garbage you say about the first two stanzas, they're meaningless--they are only given meaning by LOVE IS A VERB. What, do you think what's his name is an idiot, and didn't know how the line would be interpreted? Love is a verb can ONLY be interpreted as sex. A verb is an action. Love is an action in his room. Sex. Q. E. D. "Pink tractor beam into your incision" SEX, you mindless retards. "So thank you for being that kind of girl" Apparently you people don't read. "That kind of girl" is an old phrase. Girls say (well, said, really) things like "I'm not that kind of girl." "That kind of girl" is an easy girl. He's thanking her for being easy. For not resting her eyes on his scars. For not going deep. He DOESN'T WANT A RELATIONSHIP. He's happy because he expected nothing but the same sort of meaningless nonsense that you stupid romantics persist in calling the only way to love, and what he got was sex free of complications. NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE, THE SONG SAYS "PINK TRACTOR BEAM INTO YOUR INCISION." PINK FUCKING TRACTOR BEAM INTO YOUR FUCKING INCISION. IT'S A VULGAR FUCKING IMAGE FOR SEX. Do you really think the guy didn't NOTICE that the image was vulgar? He put it there so people would understand that his song is about SEX! Not making love, not romance, not an emotional relationship. It's about FUCKING. FUCKING. FUCKING. There. Now I have no need to review any song here ever again, unless some fucktard actually tries to argue with me. Fucking idiots. This song is too good to be ruined by your garbage. Just for good measure: FUCK. |
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