| The Raveonettes – Twilight Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I wouldn't say this song's about rape, exactly. I think it's about the bad boy mystique, and how it feeds into a girl's attitudes about herself. "You got nothing to prove/You're a bad little girl/And you know your life is in ruins..." as spoken by the bad boy to the girl - but it's all about the girl, really, the self-destructiveness and the desire to be with someone who won't be kind or dishonest with her. Which I think is what "I don't count you in at all," and "I'm not your friend but your foe" is about: you can trust a selfish person to be selfish sometimes when you can't trust a nice person to actually be nice, deep down. My favorite bit is: "So when Friday comes and you got the chills/And your feet are aching to go/Don't have to call on me/Cause I'm already there/Come on little girl, let's go!" because it gives the whole thing an almost mythic quality: the lover/enemy waiting for the girl before she even gives in to wanting him, because (a) he wants her that badly, and/or (b) he's really a sort of reflection of her and her darker self. |
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| Jolie Holland – Mad Tom of Bedlam Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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This song is actually part of a loose cycle of anonymous songs from Elizabethan/Jacobean England, based on songs sung by actual homeless lunatics while begging for food, about a madman named Tom O' Bedlam (see references in "King Lear," "The Fisher King," and the comic series "The Invisibles," to name a few) who's been confined to an asylum after losing his mind after being rejected by his girl Maudlin, and is now wandering around the countryside looking for her. She's also looking for him, having regretted her treatment of him. So this is Maudlin's song, and it's a bit scarier than Tom's, but no less amazing. And this cover? Rocks. |
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| Tom Waits – Downtown Train Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I've never heard Rod Stewart's cover, to my knowledge, and honestly I hope I never will. I heard this song for the first time driving around LA one mopey afternoon, and I fell utterly in love with it. "Rain Dogs" was my first Waits album and still my favorite, and this might well be my favorite song. Heartbreaking, certainly - I love the Brooklyn girls, who "have nothing that will ever capture your heart, they're just thorns without the rose - be careful of them in the dark" - but also the wistfulness of "if I was the one you chose to be your only one" and the yellow moon punching a hole in the night-time. Just a perfect mix of grounded urban observations and wild romantic flight. One of my very favorite songs. |
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| David Bowie – Oh! You Pretty Things Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Since everyone else has already discussed the lyrics seriously, I just wanted to say that I can't read these lyrics without thinking of the X-Men. "Homo superior," forsooth. Yeah, I'm a geek. |
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| Pink Martini – Que Sera Sera Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I've always loved this song but I've also always thought it had a seriously dark side. The tune is haunting in its simplicity, and the stark fatalism next to the childish innocence in the lyrics suggests to me that some serious badness is stalking the singer. And this version is probably the most dreamlike and unsettling of all the covers I've heard, with the minor chords and the bridge like unhinged circus music. Or maybe I've just seen "Heathers" too many times. |
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| Frank Sinatra – Brazil Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| Amazing how use in a movie can skew your impression of a song. It's not this cover, of course, but I can never think of this song without being reminded of the Terry Gilliam movie. Which is probably not exactly the mood the song's writers had in mind. | |
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