| Rilo Kiley – A Man/Me/Then Jim Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| When you listen to the actual song, it sounds like she's "a woman calls my house" and the lyrics as transcribed here are wrong. | |
| Lisa Mitchell – Neopolitan Dreams Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I believe the lyric is "I have no arrival time." | |
| Rasputina – Soon Forget Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| It's on their latest CD, a limited edition release called "Melora a la Basilica." This song is pretty much spoken (yelled?) word, though (and a Pearl Jam cover). | |
| Inara George – Genius Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| The song's about the classic dilemma of putting your life off until you feel more deserving or better prepared. "I'll ask him out/join a gym/ask for a raise/start going out dancing soon, but not until I..." | |
| Sparks – Tits Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Nirvana In Mystic's response is so hilariously out of touch with the lyrics. That's not a diss or anything, it made me laugh hard. | |
| Rasputina – A Retinue Of Moons - The Infidel Is Me Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I think that perhaps the secret alliance in "The Infidel Is Me" is an allusion to specious claims/semi-popular misconception that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had any sort of connection (beyond sharing the traits "Arab" and "bad"). Melora's analogue for bin Laden cries out, "Where is my unlikely ally?" but is left deserted because the alliance didn't actually exist. I really, really like purple ninja girl's interpretation, though. |
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| Rasputina – Identity Tokens Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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On Melora A La Basilica, she changes the lyric to: "Your mother was neither a saint nor a whore/Here's a haunting reminder that you weren't born poor." It's funny how a couple of syllables changes what the line means while the effect is still perfectly stinging. |
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| The Bird and the Bee – Fucking Boyfriend Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I don't know, it doesn't sound like the guy is shy or a wuss or too indecisive to take a friendship (or a nonsexual relationship) to the next level, but rather, he is being a bit of a bastard and using her for sex without offering any sort of relationship. Lyrics like: "When you can take me by the hands, And I will close my eyes" ... "When you lay down with me, You never slept that night" ... "But you give me almost nothing Keep me helpless Up to something on my knees" Make me read that they are getting it on and she's certainly hot for him and all but she would like him to actually be a BOYFRIEND instead of a booty call. I mean, for real, what on earth else would she be up to on her knees? |
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| Rasputina – The Pruning Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Ah, what I was looking for before was "the pending collapse of society." Regarding "kill 'em all off," the war metaphor makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking, too. Either way, the song is stunning. c8 |
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| Rasputina – Thimble Island Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Haha, okay, I don't necessarily believe that this song was WRITTEN with this idea in mind, but I can't shake the impression that Thimble Island is a metaphor for being socialized as feminine (even the name of the island works: thimbles -> sewing -> girly stuff). Girls don't return from that murky mystery place because once you've been successfully programmed to act and look the way society dictates, it gets harder and harder to drop the Cosmos, turn off Sex and the City, leave the house without makeup on, etc., because of the rewards you get for adhering to gender norms and the subtle punishments that you get for breaking them. Anybody who has ever suddenly taken an interest in fashion and makeup has probably noticed that other women who share such interests become easier to befriend and, notably, that men display more attraction... which leads to why you'd go on down to Thimble Island to find your true love there, yes? And of course, various "charms" matter much more than booklearnin' in the prevailing definition of femininity, so there's that too. | |
| Rasputina – Rusty the Skatemaker Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"The cannery fellows would follow her everywhere [...] with their hearts all aglow from her icy back-at-you stare when her teeth became tight when her eyes couldn't see." re: silverbaal's comments, I think this sounds more like the guys are harassing or just mocking her... the point being (I venture) that she just has to suck it up and carry on. |
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| Rasputina – Watch T.V. Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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To explain how that works line by line: "I sit and watch TV, I see only me, though I look for you there" She's looking for the missing person in the situation she's in, not on the TV she's watching. Or: she's trying to evoke the feeling of being around him. "Oh, where have you gone? Oh, were you canceled?" She's wondering what happened to him and 'canceled' possibly means 'dead.' "I change to channel 2." Just literal narration of what she's doing (also, it artistically parallels the upcoming mention of people changing). "You were the one who gave me all my answers. I changed; so did you." Simply: the missing person is important to her and now he's inaccessible. "Try another show, with the volume low. I make up what they say." More literal narration; she's not really into what she's watching. "What used to be your face is an empty space. Your co-stars look away." The person she's addressing is gone. By "co-stars," she means his former associates. "Where have you gone and do you miss me and what we used to do? You were the one who'd talk and smile for half an hour always new." They used to watch TV together, just like she is now, and talk and joke... and that is why she watches TV now. "I'm the lucky one, I watch a re-run. It looks a lot like you." She catches a show or episode they used to watch together and recaptures for a moment the feeling of being with him. "One star lost a family, one family lost a star. That's why I wait and watch to find out where you are [/That's why I sit at home alone and watch TV]." This works particularly well when I picture the missing person as her brother: her family lost him, he lost his family, and that separation is why she watches TV to remember him. "I can watch forever, I can watch for hours [etc.]" Again, watching TV is therapeutic for her. "I'm the lucky one. Always having fun." This line is ironic at both the beginning and end of the song (the music makes that rather clear). TV is typically used as entertainment, so the girl declares herself "always having fun" because she spends so much time watching, but the watching is actually a solemn and somewhat desperate act in her case. It draws an analogy to socially drinking vs. "drinking to forget" in my mind. |
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| Rasputina – Watch T.V. Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I get the image of the narrator/watcher having lost touch with someone and thinking about time they used to spend together. Her watching TV serves as the setting during which the song takes place, so her contemplations are expressed in TV-oriented language and metaphors for artistic effect! Also, because all the songs on the album "How We Quit The Forest" kinda run together for me, I imagine this being told from the point of view of the sister in "Trenchmouth," recalling times spent watching TV with her now-missing brother, haha. Before that, I thought of the narrator speaking of an ex-boyfriend specifically. Either way, I never picture the narrator -literally- missing a TV show or movie star or any such thing, but rather, using the TV watching as a vehicle for thinking about an acquaintance. |
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| Rasputina – The Mayor Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Scissors, I believe that's "You're gonna hang your head and cry, you're gonna hang your head and cry, you're gonna cry." This song is fantastic... and so totally about Bush. The "Radical Recital" intro to the song just confirms it in my eyes. I like skeleton_key's interpretation of the mayor being part of a much more oblique metaphor, but I don't believe that was her intention. Sometimes when I hear these lines: "He's got a synapse lapse he don't think he has, but it's been proven empirically." and "There's a battle in his head that he cannot win. There's a man he could never be." I have to restrain myself from audibly declaring "oh snappppp" |
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| Rasputina – The Pruning Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Also, "On weird promises" sounds a lot like "Armed with promises" to me but I don't know which is correct so I'm not submitting a correction at the moment. | |
| Rasputina – The Pruning Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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No, OPW isn't about internet memes at -all-. From the History section on rasputina.com: "Creager wrote the songs featured on Oh Perilous World over the last two years after deciding current world events were more bizarre than anything she could scrounge up from the distant past. She obsessively read daily news on the Internet, copying words, phrases and whole stories that especially intrigued her. " That said, I can't make the connection between the meaning of this song and recent events either. The emotion it evokes is crystal clear, but the exact terms on which the metaphor is based... are not. |
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| Rasputina – Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater Revival cover) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| This works -so- perfectly as a Rasputina song that it might as well have been written for the sole purpose of being covered. | |
| Rasputina – Incapable Of Regret Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| The second to last verse is mostly my best guess and I'd love to hear suggestions for corrections. :T | |
| Oingo Boingo – Nothing to Fear (But Fear Itself) Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I think that some component of this song is in response to to the scaremongering and sensationalism that is rampant in the news today (though I can't speak for conditions in 1982). I could easily be wrong. | |
| Fiona Apple – Parting Gift Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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"I bet your fortress fades Belied your fort of lays" Is it just me or does this make a lot more sense as "I bet your fortress face belied your fort of lace?" That is what I always hear. |
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| Suzanne Vega – The Queen And The Soldier Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Gypsy_eyes: To the extent that it's that particular metaphor, I see it as being about having a very hard choice to make and choosing correctly at the cost of immediate personal indulgence. Imagine that the ongoing battle is being fought for the good of her country on a macroscopic scale that really wouldn't be immediately obvious to a soldier. Would it really be feasible for a queen to dismiss a soldier and desert her post to be by his side? She may not have chosen to be born as royalty but does that mean she can just toss aside such a huge responsibility? Looking at Asymmetry's quote from the author herself, tho, it seems I have it all backwards and the queen's persisting in an unjust war out of issues of national pride or something (and, realistically, that *is* the more likely scenario, isn't it?) but for whatever reason, that's how I see it with respect to the choice metaphor. ~ The first time I heard this song was in high school AP Literature when we were covering Victorian poetry and the theme of repression as expressed therein, so the message of this poem is strongest to me as it was presented in class. My teacher gave us the text of the lyrics as a poem without revealing its author or originating time period and then explained everything and played the song after we read and analyzed it. In the context of the unit, he interpreted it as a treatise on repression in the vein of "The Lady of Shallot" and similar poems we had read that semester. I have more to say on the details of that, but "it's about repression!!!" covers it pretty well so I won't belabor the point with a line-by-line rundown on all the symbolism or anything. |
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| Oingo Boingo – No Spill Blood Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| This song is about H. G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau." | |
| Mika – Grace Kelly Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Grace Kelly was an actress. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000038/ |
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| Tom Lehrer – That's Mathematics Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Fermat's Last Theorem came from a comment written in the margin of his copy of Arithmetica, originally in latin: "It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain." This song was supposedly written for the MSRI's Fermat Fest in 1993, held in celebration of the fact that Andrew Wiles made a proof for Fermat's Last Theorem over 300 years after it was written. |
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| Mika – Lollipop Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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"Jesus loves her, she wants *moooore*" is pretty darn funny. Okay, I don't understand this: Take a look at a boy like me, Never stood on my own two feet, Now I'm blue, as I can be, Oh, love couldn't get me down! If love couldn't get him down, why is he blue? Alternate interpretation: I sometimes hear it as "love, COME GET ME DOWN!" He's always been real dependent on his lovers ("never stood on my own two feet") and now he's not in a relationship so he's blue and he's saying, as he does throughout the rest of the song, that love gets you down, but it's *love*, so you want it to get you down! Thus adding a layer of unexpected depth! I don't think the explanation he gave about telling his little sister not to have sex makes much sense, in context. If he had just left out the part I quoted above it would have all tied in together for a single (and depressingly conservative >:| ) message. I also kinda think he just really really wanted to work a song around this particular double entendre so there's not any sort of strongly intended meaning at all besides "Go get up and dance to a guy singing about lollipops! go do it! right now!" but that doesn't really come off well in interviews so he was like "UH, UH, MY SISTER" |
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| Mika – Stuck In The Middle Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Still don't know what the hell the "five kids better than one..." line is supposed to be, but the impression I get from the rest of the song is that of a son estranged from a parent because of something about him and his life choices. This part, if I'm hearing it correctly: This is who I am This ain’t a greater plan to break your heart of me I know that what I’ve started means that when we have parted I can live in honesty makes me think it's because the narrator is gay, though Mika isn't commenting on that particular part of his personal life at this time... He's saying he's not deliberately trying to piss them off, that's just who he is, and their disapproval prevents him from being open about that aspect of himself (thus, he can't live in honesty). The family "based upon tradition" and his entreating for someone who "won't try to change" him support this hunch, I think. You could use the same argument to say it's about a boy who wants to be an artist/rock star/hairdresser/video game designer while his parents want him to be a doctor or any sort of conflict in that vein. (Also, I don't think the opening lines imply an ill/dying parent so much as resentful fantasies on the part of the narrator?) |
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| S Club 7 – Never Had A Dream Come True Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| The Great Gatsby. YEAH, OKAY, obsessive love is hardly an obscure theme and the song is by S Club effing 7 but even if it's not at all intentional, that is the meaning this song holds for me. And I like it! | |
| Streetlight Manifesto – A Moment of Silence Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Hey, it's pretty darn obvious that the song's about Catch 22 but it works decently on a more literal level, yeah? If you didn't know Kalnoky's backstory it would still make sense as a song intended as "a moment of silence for those who never got the chance" (the losers, etc). A song can be interpreted in more than one way without being something incredibly deep or complex, it's just conveniently ambiguous! I think so. | |
| The Sea Nymphs – The Sea Ritual Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| This song is just the first two stanzas of George Darley's "The Sea Ritual." | |
| The Sea Nymphs – The Psalm Of Life Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| The lyrics are Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "A Psalm of Life" with a few minor changes. | |
| Scissor Sisters – Kiss You Off Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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The music video for this song is the visual equivalent of catchy. Somehow, I like the song a lot more after seeing it. Whoo! Also, note Jabberwocky reference: "Crush you like a gyre/But the gimble's all the same." |
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| Scissor Sisters – I Can't Decide Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I like the idea that this is a song about love. It didn't occur to me until I saw it mentioned above but it makes perfect sense! The guy has a very jaded, pessimistic sort of view of the world and social interaction ("It's not easy having yourself a good time"/"It's a bitch convincing people to like you") and he's falling for someone and he resents them because of it because it challenges the way he sees things. (Also, he isn't LITERALLY saying he's gonna kill the person he loves.) I read "I'm just a loner, baby/And now you've gotten in my way" as him saying "you've gotten in the way of my loner lifestyle and if I keep this up I might have to open up and care about someone godDAMMIT!" At least, that's my interpretation and some things don't make perfect sense but I figure it's dance music not poetry and such songs typically go for impressions rather than tight lyrical coherence. So. |
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| Cardiacs – Arnald Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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"Troop home to silent grots and caves Troop home and mimic as you go The mourning winding of the waves Which to their dark abysses flow" and "close in fruitless sleep her eyes" are both from George Darley's "The Mermaidens' Vesper Hymn." |
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| Cardiacs – Blind in Safety and Leafy in Love Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| "In the wormless sand shall she/A feast for no foul glutton be" is paraphrased from George Darley's poem, "The Sea Ritual." | |
| Mika – Stuck In The Middle Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Oh, also: "better words" is "bitter words," and "who’ll try to teach me?" is "won't try to change me?" |
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| Elvis Costello – Imperial Bedroom Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| Is the sister perhaps resentful because the best man with whom the bride is cheating is her significant other, or is that reading too much into a throwaway line of costello wit? | |
| Mika – Stuck In The Middle Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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"So I (dunno). " This is pretty clearly "so hard to know" but all the other parenthetical lyrics are incorrect as well and I cannot figure out for the life of me what they really are. Any suggestions? Also, if the SS song you are talking about is "I Can't Decide," I got that impression as well, but I love it even if it is "very over the top" so I don't have any complaints there, haha. |
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| Cardiacs – I'm Eating in Bed Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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"In every cry of every man The mind for ??? and it calls my bluff" that's "the mind-forged manacles I hear," from william blake's poem "london" |
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