| The Verve Pipe – Photograph Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
I think that this song is about photographs, and their interplay with our perceptions of people. When the speaker says "if you want beautiful, pitiful, have me in a picture," he's suggesting to the listener that she cannot make him be what she wants (beautiful, pitiful), but she can have a picture of him, and imagine that the person in the picture has those qualities. Similarly, the listener cannot really make the speaker dance, but she can make the picture "dance" by spinning it around. When the speaker says "if there's a crease in my face over time, there's plenty more where that came from," he's responding to the unspoken objection that a photograph can become creased and aged by pointing out that he, as a person, is sure to wrinkle and age himself. A simple crease in the photo is relatively insignificant. If the listener wants the speaker perfect, she's better off with a creased photograph than an aging person. "Words, frozen, will thaw when I am wasted; I am better shut up" speaks to the fact that a moment in time characterized by something the speaker says will pass, as he goes on to do or say something that undermines those words. But moment itself and what the words represent can be frozen in time in the picture. When the speaker says "when I'm alone and the world is a fist, and I am weightless," I think he's referring to himself not as an actual person, but as the person that is in the photo. He's alone, the world is a fist, and he is weightless because "he" is merely a picture being waved around in somebody's hand. "He" is fearless because, of course, he's not real. The act of "spin[ning] the sky surrounding" has a literal and a figurative meaning. Literally, the sky surrounding the person in the picture can be spun because the picture itself (and all of its contents) can be physically spun. Figuratively, "spin[ning] the sky surrounding" is recontextualizing the picture's scene in the listener's own mind. For example, if you have a picture of a person in front of a sky, you can imagine that sky is the sky of Alaska, Kyoto, Texas . . . it doesn't matter. You can contextualize what is in the picture any way you wish. This song is really about the fact that pictures never lie, but we can use the pictures as tools to lie to ourselves. |
|
| Goldfrapp – Crystalline Green Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
I think that this song is simply about spending the day at the beach with somebody. The first few lines practically set the scene: "settle down / on the beach / get the sun," while "deep and wide" describes the ocean. "Wet and warm" is how you feel lying on the beach after swimming, although I think here it is supposed to refer to how the sunlight is coming down, pouring its warmth on the singer in an almost liquid fashion. The titular "crystalline green" is the ocean which, though typically described as blue, takes on a much greener hue in many parts of the world. I think that's reinforced by the lines "deep and wide / blue and green." In the latter half of the song, night falls. When the singer says "little rings float in your eyes," I think she's describing the reflection of stars in the eyes of a person who is lying back, looking at the sky. And in fact, the very next lines are "stare into space / watch the sky." That's what I think that the lyrics mean. However, I think that she uses language evocative of sex (and perhaps drug use) intentionally, if not explicitly. These two things share the same sense of ecstatic immersion as the dreamy day at the beach that the singer describes. |
|
| Goldfrapp – Ride A White Horse Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
I don't blame anybody for thinking that this song is about drugs. That was my first thought, too. But upon further consideration of the lyrics, I've decided that I don't think that's what it's about at all. The key line for me was "In this world that's getting cheaper." "Cheaper" refers not to price, but to quality. In the eyes of the singer, a night dancing at the disco is the last place a person can get that feeling of glamor and opulence (albeit filtered through the dubious aesthetic of the 1970s). "Rid[ing] on a white horse" does refer to Bianca Jagger's entry to Studio 54, and to the over-the-top sensibility it represents. When the singer says "lend me a whole new world all night," she's not looking for the "new world" of a drug high to replace the "old world" of being sober -- instead, the "new world" is simply the excitement of being in the disco, while the "old world" is the world outside. Finally, she refers to feeling like "real leather." Not just leather, mind you, REAL leather. The implication being that real leather is to be distinguished from fake leather. This seals up the song's theme of the disco being a place of luxury in a world in which luxury is getting harder to find. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.