| Ani DiFranco – School Night Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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The craft and clarity of this song are astonishing. Ani perfectly conveys the agony of falling in love with someone while remaining in a committed relationship with someone else. I don't know if anybody else has noticed this, but Ani never seems to perform this song live. I've seen her in concert at least six times and scanned through legions of bootlegs, but I've never seen School Night pop up. I can't help but wonder whether it's simply too painful a place to return to, even for the length of a song. |
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| Ani DiFranco – Manhole Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I love this song, both for it's feistiness and its strength. It seems to me that Ani is singing about a break up with someone she liked but didn't love. As with many of Ani's (unfailingly brilliant songs), the lyrics are reminiscent in structure (although not in form or content) to a college essay--she begins with an introduction to lure you in and set the stage, then lets the story unfold and grow more complex stanza by stanza, and finally summaries and reveals her conclusion in the last section of the song. In the opening lines "i'm holding here a book/notable but not the greatest/stolen for me by the latest/in a long line of thieves" Ani conveys the idea that the gift that this latest lover gave her was important but not exceptional, and implies that the relationship itself was along the same lines. In the next line Ani notes that the book, as a symbol of the relationship "doesn't bother me/like "love's mementos usually do" and she stops to wonder why the end of this relationship is less painful than most. The next section is brilliant and really hits home -- she's talking about how her (now) ex was a charmer who kept her entertained but who wasn't authentic or trustworthy. And while she may have found this peronality type attractive in the past, with the line "you can't fool the queen baby/'cause i married the king" Ani shows us that in fact a previous, more significant relationship with an even more compelling and skilled charmer/manipulator (likely her ex-husband) has made her less susceptible to these types of advances. "The king", whoever he was, talked a damn good game but ultimately caused far more pain than he was worth--all the charisma and good storytelling in the world aren't enough to make a relationship work. In this song, Ani comes to terms with the fact that she's attracted to charmers who "create personas" for her benefit. But due to her difficult experiences in the past, she has changed enough to allow "integrity to win over desire." AMAZING SONG! |
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