| Tori Amos – Jackie's Strength Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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This song is about getting married to a man who seemed perfect and loving, then discovering not long before the wedding that he has not been honest or faithful to you. I think Jackie's strength is meant in two ways, both in the obvious sense of her strength when her husband was shot and in the sense that JFK was openly cheating on her and she managed to maintain her poise and dignity and strength through that. Tori shares her experience of the JFK shooting, when she was very young and her mother laid her on the front lawn and prayed for the first family and for Jackie to stay strong, then talks about her teenage years, never quite fitting in, attempting to become popular by becoming anorexic in "hope someone will see." She was "feeling old by 21, never thought my day would come" but finally met a man who she thought was really the one for her, who said he could turn her into "the real thing," who she let into her heart, then discovered before the wedding that he had not been honest about wanting to make the relationship with her work and was sleeping with one of her bridesmaids. She had been saving herself for him to be a virgin on her wedding night, which she thought was what he wanted, but she now feels like no one is taking her protests of his unfaithfulness seriously because of course he'd go to someone else since she wasn't putting out. "But virgins always get backstaged, no matter what they have to say." She draws a comparison between the mythical Camelot (in which Arthur hid the secret of his incest-concieved son and Guinevere and Lancelot concealed their unfaithfulness with each other), the metaphorical "Camelot" as they called JFK's "court," and her own relationship, in which her fiancee claimed that he hid his unfaithfulness because he loved her and didn't want to hurt her. "If you love a lot, you lie a lot." So now she lays herself down on the lawn and prays that she might be given Jackie's strength to endure the situation. |
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| The Dresden Dolls – The Perfect Fit Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I identify totally with this song. When you're the "smart one" in school, doing everything so effortlessly, the teachers stop watching or caring what you're doing, and you start slacking off because you can get away with it. (I didn't learn to read music until I'd been playing the violin for three years because I could just hear a song once and then play it by ear.) When everything in school is easy and you never have to work hard to do well, you don't end up developing as much of a work ethic and have to struggle with that for the rest of your life. So you end up with all this potential that you never do anything with. It's extremely frustrating and feels like you've screwed up your life just by being who and what you are. |
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| The Dresden Dolls – Shores of California Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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This song makes me sad and amused at the same time because my relationship with my boyfriend is the exact opposite- he wants romance, I want sex. Re: the whole trytaker debate; Someone is always going to find a way to reinterpret lyrics and take offense, particularly the lyrics of a band as ironic and morbid as the Dresden Dolls. Just let the guy feel righteous and move on. |
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| The Dresden Dolls – Sex Changes Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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The first part is about how sex changes you, losing your virginity changes you, it's not what you're expecting. The second part refers to unplanned pregnancy and an abortion. |
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| The Dresden Dolls – Gravity Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I also thought sobriety test- about several occasions of driving drunk. Here's my breakdown of it. "Gravity plays favorites I know because I saw, honest to God, officer, it's awful" (When you're drunk, gravity seems to tilt and get stronger then lighter, etc. It sounds like she just fell over and is trying to explain that it wasn't her, gravity just changed and turned against her.) "Down at work I'm getting too familiar with the floor, trading in my talents by the mouthful" (More than once she's ended up giving the officer a blowjob in exchange for not giving her a DUI/ arresting her) "Hate to break it to you, but its out of my control Forces go to work while we are sleeping If I could attack with a more sensible approach Obviously thats what I'd be doing" (Feeling like everything's working against her and responding to being told that she's rambling and sounding drunk and illogical, but that's all she is capable of at that point, as in, yeah, I know, don't you think if I'd been able to respond coherently and say all the right things I would have done it?) "Now, Necks are cracking sideways Hit me from the back side I am on the white side You are on the black side" (A car crash- necks cracking sideways, being hit from the back, the black road and the white lines; gives me the impression that she's driving in the wrong lane or something) "Cut a piece thats bite size Shoot me from my good side If you got a straight line This would be a good time" (News bites of the accident, being brought into the station and getting mug shots= shoot me from my good side, as sort of a sarcastic comment. The 'if you've got a straight line' sounds like something someone is saying to her while she's at the station- if you've got anything sober to say to make you look less bad in this situation, now would be the time.) "Gravity works slowly--if you notice it at all Some of us are getting mighty lucky, arent we?" (She ended up in this situation without noticing or seeing it coming, no one sees it coming- and she's sort of telling that to all those people who respond with 'oh, I do the same thing all the time and nothing like that ever happens to me' This reeeeally reminds me of how I feel when my best friend- who is ALWAYS tailgating, speeding, and making illegal turns and lane changes- gets all pissy and "who are you to criticize my driving" because she's never been in an accident and I've been in two. It's like, yeah, sure, you haven't been in one YET. Which is damn lucky, considering the way you drive...) The whole shouted lines sound like parts of a sobriety test, and in the background you hear the sounds of people trying to figure out if the person in the other car is still alive. |
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| The Dresden Dolls – Dirty Business Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Oh, and I hear "Take that!" and either "Make it back" or "Meet me back" with the yelling. | |
| The Dresden Dolls – Dirty Business Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Lift your hats off to the checkout girls with tattooed backs They'd make an angels' skin crawl If you ask them for assistance, there's an even chance You'll get a number I interpreted this one completely differently than the other posters so far... I thought she had this sort of amused/affectionate/condescending tone- you can hear her laughing between the lines. "checkout girls with tattooed backs" made me think of those twentysomething girls with tramp stamp type tattoos that show whenever they bend over- girls who work minimum wage jobs (checkout clerks, etc.) and will give their number to any guy who shows interest in them- a sort of "let's make a toast to those trashy checkout girls you always see at the stores, god bless 'em"- a sort of nostalgic thing, maybe? And I think the Dirty Business Brigade might have been named after the song rather than the other way around. |
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| The Dresden Dolls – Coin-Operated Boy Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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It's about a fantasy of a doll, a sex toy, that will hold you afterwards until you fall asleep so you won't be alone. I don't think it's about wanting someone who you can dominate so much as it's about frustration with all the angst that comes along with relationships, wishing you could have "love without complications galore." About wanting regular sex and to be told that you're loved "saying that he loves me and he's thinking of me, straight and to the point", without the arguments or boring dates or living up to arbitrary standards. She wants a guy who is happy to just be with her- "I turn him on and he comes to life, automatic joy." "can you distract me from my plastic fantasy? I didn't think so but I'm still convinceable" The coin-operated boy isn't _really_ what she wants. She's giving up on real relationships as a sort of dramatic gesture of disillusionment and what she really longs for is someone to make believe again. |
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| The Decemberists – We Both Go Down Together Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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My first impression was that this song was about rape, but after listening to it a million or so times, I'm not sure. I get the vague impression that it might be about a young, innocent girl who is raped by a rich young man, but loves him back anyway. Consider that back in the day, rape was not considered such a criminal act if the girl was in the lower class and the perpetrator was not. It was, if anything, considered the girl's own fault. So, not knowing what to believe or do afterwards, she retreated to the shelter of his insisting that he loved her and calling her his sweet, innocent forbidden love, and clung to the affair with him, because without it she would be just another 'tattoed tramp,' defiled by a sordid rape in the grass of a clearing. Keep in mind that I am not saying that any kind of rape is beautiful or romantic. I'm just giving a theory about the reason that the girl would continue to secretly meet him, and why she would choose to die with him, if indeed it was her choice at all. |
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| The Decemberists – The Infanta Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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*blinks a few times* Oh. It's 'I agree with YOU.' I read that as "I agree with your underwear." |
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| The Decemberists – Sons and Daughters Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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As for the historical significance of the word, "dirigible", I think Colin just likes that word, like "petticoats", which he also uses whenever he has the opportunity. I think it begins talking about people making their way from a war, possibly even the London thing which the cinnamon might be a reference to, but the land they are travelling to is some archtypical dream place, some faraway shore over the sea, where they can no longer hear the bombs. |
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| The Decemberists – Sixteen Military Wives Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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gtg450y: calm down, no one is being unsupportive of our troops. I have not seen one post in this forum maligning or disrespecting the soldiers. Many, many anti-WAR and quite a few anti-government statements, yes. But I see in both the lyrics and people s responses to them, an expression of sympathy for the soldiers and their families- whether we see them as heroes doing what is right OR the victims of a misguided foreign policy whose deaths are being demeaned by the media-hype of the war. |
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| The Decemberists – On the Bus Mall Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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My definition of the song: A boy from a well-off family ("Your parents were anxious/Your cool was contagious/At the old school" implies a more middle or upperclass upbringing to me) and another boy, who ran away from home and lives a darker, poorer life, doing drugs and frequenting pool halls and bus stops, fall in love. The subject of the song runs away to be with him. They both end up addicted to hard drugs and resort to gambling and then prostitution to get the money to buy them. Their love, originally a romantic thing, becomes something deeper, and through these shared hardships, they "fuse like a family." "But I will not mourn for you" is basically an acceptance of the fact that the first boy was drawn into this low, sordid life by his love for the speaker. (I think there's also a possible implication with "mourn" that the first boy is dying, possibly of something like AIDS or HIV, but that is entirely open to interpretation and I did watch Rent not long ago, so...) |
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| The Decemberists – Odalisque Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I think that her mother, who probably got pregnant by accident and out of wedlock, and who was poor and didn't make much effort to raise her well, sold her into slavery as a child. She was an Odalisque, not by her own choice, thus the reason why she ran away. The references to rape and beating are probably referring to what will happen to her when the speaker catches her. |
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| The Decemberists – O Valencia! Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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If the girl's brother is in a gang, he'd never put up with her dating a member of a rival gang. I saw her brother as the leader or one of the more powerful members of the gang and took "you belong to the gang" as her being considered the property of her brother's gang by association. Generally, female members of gangs or girls involved with them are connected to the gang through their boyfriends or family members, as unfeminist as that may be. |
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| The Decemberists – Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Has anyone else connected the description of his "soiled teenage girlfriend" as "furrowed like a lioness" to the girl in the song Clementine (about two young newly married people traveling around with only their love, without a home)- who he calls, "my sweet lady lioness"? Because I made that connection instantly when I heard that line. |
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| The Decemberists – Grace Cathedral Hill Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I originally thought it was, "and the world may be wrong for you, but it'll never belong to you" ... though I figured it out before reading it here. I still like my version as well though. |
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| The Decemberists – Clementine Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| "and we'll find us a home built of packaging foam that will be there til after we die" is some sort of inside joke based on the fact that packaging foam (styrofoam) is non-biodegradable. | |
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