| Streetlight Manifesto – One Foot on the Gas, One Foot in the Grave Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I'm really surprised that this is the only comment with this interpretation. Because frankly, it fits the best. "One foot on the gas" is literally the gas pedal of a car, and we are driving ourselves to destruction. The song is about oil dependence, in the context of America's foreign policy and the religious (thus the religious connotations in the lyrics) and business motivations behind those policies. A lot of SitB deals with the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the various hypocritical, self-serving rationalizations that those in power have come up with to justify them. It's in the air you breathe And also in the water It's something you can't see You've been warned of by your mothers I don't see how people miss the allusion to pollution here. CO/CO2 are invisible gases that are in the air and the water in ever-increasing amounts. As for the last line - don't smell the exhaust, little Billy! They gave us seven days To renounce our wicked ways Too late to make amends Because we both know how this ends This is about climate change. It's too late to stop a lot of the bad things that are going to happen because of it. We want it They got it They claim we'll die without it But something tells me they are wrong Oil. Oil companies. OPEC. All that jazz. |
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| Goldfinger – Handjobs for Jesus Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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There is nothing in this song to merit any of the reactions seen so far, except possibly Mursane. The writing is trite; the music is stale. If you're hearing this song as anything other than a rehashing of a bunch of musical and lyrical themes played out over the past decade-and-a-half, you must have been living under a rock, or deaf. As far as lyrics are concerned, it's not offensive. Rather, it's juvenile, whining about things that all atheists already know and all Christians will never listen to. The sentiment they're expressing is very old, and very tired. The battle lines have been drawn, and they haven't moved for centuries. It's doubtful they will, and a crappy punk/screamo song isn't going to do anything nor have anything more interesting to say about the subject. Musically, it displays a complete lack of innovation on Goldfinger's part. They've clearly just been spinning their wheels since Open Your Eyes - the first two minutes are all the same rhythms, the same chord changes, the same melodies that were beaten to death in that album. Sure, what follows is a lot of "different" material, stuff Goldfinger hasn't done before, but everything "new" they're doing here can be traced to something that another relatively popular punk band has already done in the past 10 years. The vaguely 80's metal sound in the middle is something we heard 10 years ago from Sum 41 in "Pain for Pleasure" - hell, the rhythm guitar parts are virtually identical. The "song in five parts" motif is embarrassingly similar to Green Day's "Jesus of Suburbia" and "Homecoming," and not nearly as well-developed. The screaming is just another facet of Goldfinger's descent into mediocrity and worthlessness, seeing as 10 years ago they were mocking that very style in "Woodchuck". And even further, there's the inherent hypocrisy of writing a song like this attacking Christianity for their blind faith and belief in things not supported by hard evidence and yet being militant vegans. If Goldfinger is in fact attacking the faulty _people_ in Christianity (which I sincerely doubt - "all religion can go straight, straight to hell"), doesn't the same logic implicate the band themselves as a bunch of insane people trying to pass off their fringe opinions as undeniable fact to the rest of the world? I'm tired of Goldfinger, their pretentious approach to politics, their half-assed approach to music, and most especially, their incessant mob of teenage hangers-on who, with every new album produced, proclaim that it is "The Best Goldfinger Album Since Hang-Ups!" It's ridiculous to compare the Goldfinger of Hang-Ups - an innovative, fresh ska/punk band - to the Goldfinger of today - a tepid, washed-out punk band. |
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| Flobots – Handlebars Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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It's a parable of unchecked ambition. You people can put whatever stupid political spin you want on it, but you'll be wrong. Bush didn't start out as a rapper with a microphone. Nor did ANY politician (so far). Man, it's really annoying how every time an election year comes up all of you have to use every completely unrelated issue to complain about the current president and/or the ones trying to be elected. Also I really can't believe the comments from people trying to explain nuclear fission and explaining it wrong. Nuclear chain reactions are caused by neutrons. Neutrons split uranium, which releases more neutrons when it splits; those neutrons split more even more uranium. Thus chain reaction. |
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| Streetlight Manifesto – The Receiving End of it All Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Brief update to my post: at the Milwaukee stop on the 40 Days & 40 Nights of Tour, they actually played this song. So. Fucking. Brilliant. Seriously, best concert I've been to in years, if only for hearing this live. Streetlight crowds are the best crowds in the world. |
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| Warren Zevon – Play It All Night Long Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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While the last two posters' analysis is pretty, I think it misses the mark a lot - this song isn't pretty. It's pretty damn irreverent when you get down to it, the way a lot of Zevon's work is. He's contrasting this great image of the South with the terrible reality. Look at the gritty, vulgar language he uses in the verses, contrasted with the reverence of the chorus. Mixed with the way the music actually sounds, it comes off a lot more sarcastic and cutting. Rather than admiring popular culture for helping people make it through suffering, he's attacking them for saying that the South is a wonderful, great place when there's so much hardship everywhere. While the song isn't anti-redneck, it's still pretty harsh. He's saying that popular music is stupid for ignoring the problem, but also saying that the people are stupid for letting the music lull them into the concept that everything is just a-ok because they're Southern. Play it all night long. Also, Warren Zevon is awesome. AWESOME. |
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| Streetlight Manifesto – The Receiving End of it All Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think Cadaver's given the most objective take on it so far, and I agree with most of it. Though, I feel like the song is a little more sympathetic to the woman than most people are letting on. There are a number of places in the music where Tom has one group of vocalists sing a line, and then the other half of the band will respond - most notably on "She said it hurts too much/I said it'll never hurt enough/No one will ever see these cuts/No one will ever call this bluff" - I think it implies some dialogue in the song, that some of the lines are actually Marigold's point of view, rather than the singer's. I think that might be the cause of the confusion some people have expressed about the meaning. Anyway, I agree with Drew about the "That motherfucker he took everything we had" bit being about a father. Though, I think it's Marigold's father, since the singer seems to be in a much more stable place than she does. It seems to me that she blames all of the problems she has in the song - her friends leaving her, her problems with loving people back, her relationship issues - on her father. If you look at it that way, there's a duality - the father took everything Marigold and her mother had, as well as everything that Marigold and the singer had. The singer wants her to get over herself and take some responsibility for her actions, rather than blaming this one experience in her past. Kind of a common theme for a lot of Streetlight's work, on both Everything Goes Numb and Somewhere in the Between. On a side note: I can't wait until they tour for this album, so that we can hear this song live. Assuming they include it. |
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| No Use For A Name – Insecurity Alert Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I really don't think the song is about 9/11 specifically. It doesn't have the sappy, patriotic tone that songs about it would (and do) have. It's about everything that followed it - the deception, the lies, the propaganda. This song isn't sad, it's enraging. Every time I hear it, anyway, I get really angry at the system - hell, at humanity in general. | |
| Whole Wheat Bread – Broke Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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All of Nick's songs are hilarious now, given the recent turn of events. "I'm a pothead and an alcoholic/Label me a fucking convict" http://www.fightingrecords.com/wwb/press_release.html Yep. He just might be a fucking convict. |
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| Whole Wheat Bread – No Future Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Oh man, no joke. How do you fix lyrics? All the lyrics are right, except that the recurring two lines are supposed to read: "Breaking the rules Sick of staying in school" and the final line should read: "Don't nobody care" ... How do you listen to this song and get "Playing the fool"? Ugh. |
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| Billy Joel – Famous Last Words Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I like that explanation. It's so awesome how he drew the parallel from his own life to the Merlin legend. "Sitting here in Avalon..." Being that he's off doing his own thing until he's needed again. I wonder if I'm taking that too far, and Avalon is actually a town where some event happened? |
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| Andrew Lloyd Webber – The Point Of No Return Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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quitejaded - Clearly, not jaded enough. Gerard Butler was terrible for the part, and any true Phantom lover knows that. Michael Crawford is the god of this musical. And for anyone still wondering... It's about sex. |
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| Foreigner – Hot Blooded Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Meaning is obvious, mostly. "Are you old enough? Will you be ready when I call your bluff?" It should be noted, however, that the song is about a woman below the age of consent. I know I didn't catch it the first 15 times I'd listened to it. |
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