| Against Me! – Thrash Unreal Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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"She can still hear that rebel yell just as loud as it was in 1983 You know there ain't no johnny coming home to share a bed with her" ... Does anyone know if "Johnny" is a reference to something? It seems like it might be since it comes right after the Rebel Yell reference. |
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| The Format – She Doesn't Get It Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I'm pretty sure he isn't actually older, but he "feels" much older. When he says "all the girls pose the same for pictures, al lthe boys have the same girls' hair," it shows that he's part of this scene (emo most likely) but he doesn't feel like he belongs, he FEELS much older. If he was actually older, I doubt he'd be stuck with all the scene kids enough to feel frustrated by them. I think the Duran Duran reference "it's all before she was born" is him being disappointed that she doesn't know anything about classic rock, or anything made too long ago... As in, her musical tastes are trendy (she pronably poses "the same for pictures"). |
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| A Perfect Circle – Brena Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| In the interest of accuracy... Jennifer Brena isn't Maynard's wife! They broke up before marrying. | |
| A Perfect Circle – Blue Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Also, try singing this song with the word "optimist" and pronouncing the "i" in "optimist" clearly... you'll notice that you naturally want to pronounce an "a" there instead, just because of the adjoining sounds and the tune. | |
| A Perfect Circle – Blue Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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It IS "call an optimist," not "call it aftermath" or anything like that. It fits with the theme of the song. He's smiling despite the smoke, complementing her on what a nice colour blue is, trying to ignore that she's dying... he's being an optimist. It is a pun on what someone would normally yell in that situation, "call an ambulance!" I'm listening to this song right now, btw. He just pronounces the "mist" in "optimist" a little strangely, but he does that with alot of words. The "optim-" is VERY clear, and not very many other words start with "optim." |
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| A Perfect Circle – Pet Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Also, to everybody who says "this song is OBVIOUSLY about war, it has the word 'war' in it," please look up the word "metaphor." | |
| A Perfect Circle – Pet Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I can't imagine this song being about Bush... It seems as if a war or something to that effect is going on outside, but the speaker is trying to prevent the "son" from joining. The son goes to the window, and then the speaker tells him to ignore the rabble (which could very well be some sort of war) and just go to sleep, "to the rhythme of the war drums" which are still going on outside. The "watching bodies like sheep" is probably the perspective of the speaker, watching everyone get killed and not wanting their protectee to be involved. Of course, if the speaker was Bush this would make no sense. Bush WANTS people to forget about their personal safety and join the war for the benefit of others. He doesn't want people to stay home and be safe. And the speaker isn't the good guy either, there are statements suggesting that staying inside and not joining the war or whatever is happening is bad... eg "I'll be the one to protect you from a will to survive and a voice of reason" and "Stay with me, safe and ignorant." So, the son is being protected and kept safe, but at expense of self-sufficiency. Either this song is anti-anti-war, eg criticising people for not going and convincing others not to go to "stay safe" (this seems unlikely), or it's about something else entirely and has nothing to do with Bush or current politics. The mention of "New World Order" is probably sarcastic, since the NWO idea was supposed to be about a peaceful nuclear-weapon-free world, which didn't exactly happen, judging by the "war drums." This might be to create the image of a sort of perpetual state of war, point out the fact that wars and struggles and violence are happening out the window all the time even in the so-called "New World Order," that it's never going to end and participation or non-participation is irrelevant. I don't think this song is about anything specific, it's more of a general concept, with demonic and supernatural undertones. Drugs would make sense as an inspiration for this, you can envision something like heroin sheltering the user from the real world, making someone feel safe and blissful despite what's going on around them. But the user is also possessed and controlled by something other than themselves. Heroin would also have the convincing/pushy personality, since the user is addicted and despite wanting to go to "the window" every so often and consider leaving heroin behind, heroin is quite seductive, and they're easily convinced to turn around, go back to sleep and continue the habit as usual. The fact that the real world is somewhat horrifying and unpleasant is interesting, it's like the drug user is choosing between a rock and a slightly-less-hard place. Quite depressing really. Other points for the heroin/drug argument: Heroin or any euphoric drug removes the will to survive, in that you no longer feel like struggling, you don't feel hungry or like you need anything. "I must isolate you, Isolate and save you from yourself" is very much like the experience of being on a hard drug, you're in such a mindstate that you become like a little self-sufficient island, isolated from the world and your own needs/desires. But, I don't think this song is ONLY about drugs, the eerie situation and feeling could apply to so many different situations. It could be literally about demons. Who knows. I doubt A Perfect Circle wanted this song to have one single literal meaning, since some mystery makes for a more interesting song. |
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| The White Stripes – Apple Blossom Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Yeah, I agree w/ mockingsmile [and the one before] that the tone of this song is condescending. However, this has to be put into historical perspective. The White Stripes are VERY retro. They don't just sound old, they actually create situations and characters from the past. The attitude towards women until probably the 70s was very condescending, and the female ideal was what we would today consider diminutive and childlike. Look at shows like "I Love Lucy" from the 50s... In this show a forty year old woman acts like a little girl to get the attention of her husband, who has to look after her. Sixty years before was the Victorian era, where the feminine ideal was delicate, floral [if I can say that], and in need of male protection. So, it seems creepy to us now that he sounds like he's talking about a "little" girl, who is delicate like an apple blossom, and who needs rescuing by him and his marrying her. More importantly perhaps, it seems creepy to us today that he is attracted almost exclusively to her need for him, with nothing to do with personality or anything aside from her lack of independence. You get a good sense of this by the way he keeps calling her little, her troubles are little and they go into a little pile, so he can fix them for her ('cause he's a man and that's easy for him)... He doesn't take her seriously, doesn't see her as an equal but rather soothes her "little" troubles like one would a baby. But fifty to a hundred years ago this frailty and need of a man was widely viewed as an appealing female trait. This song has taken an old ideal and an older version of the male/female dynamic and presented it to a modern audience. It seems, based on the tone of the song, that he somewhat acknowledges the sinister association this situation would have nowadays with pedophilia and exploitative relationships. However, the singer's voice and tone generally stays true to character. This isn't really a commentary on the past, it seems, but simply a represenation of it. If we were in the past, of course, this would simply be a sweet love song... so it also makes sense to look at it that way if you imagine yourself in that world. So this could be nostalgia, or commentary, or more likely a subtle combination of both. |
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| The White Stripes – Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Well this song is definitely about missing someone who's away. At some points it's him who's away ("tell you that I'm coming home") and at other points the girl is gone ("I come home... no one to wrap my arms around"). So this song is sort of a general song of longing. It works really well with the music, pretty much all the meaning of this song (which has semi-random lyrics) is in the instrumentation and singing style, it's so intensely moody it's awesome! This pulls off a lonely retro cowboy/blues/folk sort of combination really well, and actually adds something new to old genres instead of just copying them (like... Christina Aguilera's retro thing... awful). The random "shiny tops and soda pops" line is really overdoing it though. Yeah, we get it, it's retro... >_< Retro doesn't have to mean stupid and simplistic. At least that's the only such awfulness in this song. |
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| The White Stripes – Blue Orchid Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| But, on another note... He tells the object of this song to "get behind me," and the album is called "get behind me satan," so there's probably a connection there. Is he deliberately patronising Satan by describing him as an immature, attention-seeking and destructive teenage figure? I guess I'll never know, seeing as these lyrics are too repetitive to even THINK about without getting a headache. | |
| The White Stripes – Blue Orchid Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I think this song is about Jack repeating the same lines really loudly under the current emo theory that ugly=cool. He also seems to express hopes of perpetuating the glory brought on by his previous records, even though his inspiration for lyric writing has clearly run dry. I think he hopes that repeating lines loudly in his most annoying voice will also disguise this fact. I mean, it's migraine-inducing, repetitive, and sounds like nails on a chalkboard, so clearly since The White Stripes are cool and artsy, that means this song is just EXTRA artsy, right? | |
| Elliott Smith – Roman Candle Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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1 - I'm for the child abuse idea. I get the feeling it's a sister or brother he's talking about, it sounds like they're very much in the same position, and when he talks about falling asleep, it sounds kind of like they're sharing a bedroom. 2 - This song exists independently of Elliott Smith, one can see it's about child abuse regardless of any biographical knowledge of Smith as the song's creator. So, this song is probably about child abuse, but you can't say it's about Smith himself. It may have been inspired by his own story, but it's a new, independent entity now that he's made it into a song... whether or not it's about his personal history is irrelevant. It also might have been inspired by a friend who was in that situation, or a movie he saw, or anything, or a combination of things. It's not fair to assume artists are always writing about themselves, and that every word they say is part of their personal unabridged life story. |
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| Green Day – American Idiot Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think it's pretty ironic the way they talk about being controlled by the media, and yet simply assert the position of the OTHER type of media (youth-oriented liberal media). It's all media, and it's all controlling someone. Including this, which gets anti-war liberals all worked up the same way redneck media does to conservatives. If you actually agree with this hit top-ten radio song, hey, you're participating in the media. Way to be an individual. If this wasn't a popular position with millions of braindead followers it wouldn't BE a hit song. In conclusion this song is clearly unaware of its own bias and irony, and so is not very clever at all. |
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| From Autumn to Ashes – The Fiction We Live Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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This is probably one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. To me this is a song about that intense longing for a fictional ideal love. It's almost like the longing for true, pure love in a fairy tale, quite like something from Hans Christian Andersen where this longing is lifelong and all-consuming. The intensity of this feeling is expressed through the singer's voice and the lonely sparseness of the simple guitar melody, rather than just the lyrics. The song also seems to be about how any real individual won't compare to this fantasy, a real relationship will end in "sorrow," "held down" by the fiction he attempts to mold the real girl into and compares her to. This song to me is about how some people always feel a longing for someone perfect and almost magical, like a fairytale prince or princess, and this longing can never be satisfied. The ideal love is so specific and possesses such otherworldly perfection that they cannot exist, and will always remain the object of an unfulfilled desire of the most intense sort. It is a longing for someone you dream about, and the more you dream about them the more real they seem to you, the more fleshed-out their image becomes in your mind until you can almost feel their presence. And yet they're still completely unreachable, because that boundary between dream and fiction can never quite be crossed. And the harder you dream, the more real that person feels inside you, and the more acutely you feel the emptiness the desire for them creates in you. This can become almost as strong as the emptiness and longing that losing a real person would create. The singer in referring to his ideal as "you" and even giving her a name, Autumn, brings the feeling of frustration at how close his ideal seems to reality into the song, only accentuating his frustration and sadness. |
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| Brand New – Millstone Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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(add to above since i should probably back that up) eg... car crash is a deadly physical collision between the individual and the average everyday middle-class American existence, symbolised by the good old automobile. Very suiting for emo music in which a young individual feels alienated from their culture. They live in physical comfort within this society, yet find no purpose or meaning to this mode of existence, and feel a vague desire to escape their society's empty confines. Death by car is the ideal meeting point of individual escape and a hostile, spiritually void society. And non-deadly car accident is the idea meaning injection into such an existence. In this song for example, the singer feels a lack of meaning in his existence, his society, his acquaintances, in doing standard social activities like going out, even in kissing which no longer represents a meaningful interpersonal connection to him. He feels these things are void of purpose, he feels empty inside as if he wants something more, perhaps a return to the spirituality of his youth (which is presumably impossible since he's lost a certain innocence by the time he no longer remembers every person he kissed). Then a sort of epiphany is achieved when the unfeeling and deadly undercurrent of this society (the car can be dangerous) gives him (or another in similar circumstances) symbolic release through death... He shuffles off this mortal coil... This is VERY cliche of course. Seriously. Not every personal struggle needs to reach its epiphany in a car accident. Plus they already have OTHER songs about cars. It's funny how the video for "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows" is a girlfriend in a car accident. Like the only way anyone can think to create significance out of the emo genre is to put the feelings into the context of a car crash... come on, get creative people. |
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| Brand New – Millstone Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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BNewPerson - Yay for pointing out his biblical references without claiming Brand New is preaching! It almost seems like they're using these references purely for lyrical purposes, to give a more monumental and timeless feeling to the songs. They also seem to be using the archaic sound of these words to contrast in an interesting way with the very modern style of the music. Gothic music often does this, and the combination gives some of Brand New's songs, like this one, a slightly gothic quality. Oh, and the car accident/crash/whatever is totally cliche no matter what it is... dying in a dramatic accident, betrayed by what seemed a comfortable consumer vehicle, symbol of ease of living and a decent middle-class salary, has tons of psychological implications that make it a popular theme in music. A little too popular. |
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| Neutral Milk Hotel – Heroin Bag Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| This is totally NMH's worst song, in my humble opinion! Good thing it wasn't released! The characteristic ability of the rest of Mangum's songs to turn life, death and decay into things of strange beauty, and reveal them fatalistically as but part of the exquisite complexity of existence, is not present in this song. Just depressing... bah! Anyone could write something like this. | |
| Xiu Xiu – Poe Poe Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| The sinister quality of the singer's voice really makes this song. It's about a person's vanity and dependence through life. But the music makes this sound so creepy, like the kid is some kind of vampiry leech creature. The way he sounds like he's whisper-yelling these words desperately into the night (with sounds like chimes in the background), and even the title with its gothic associations (Edgar Allen Poe), help do this. | |
| Ill Scarlett – Heaters Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I keep hearing this on the radio and it's driving me mad. Do they even KNOW what a police state is? If this was a police state, do they think this song would even BE on the radio? Stop selling crack and maybe you won't see so much of the police. This would be okay if it was obvious they were joking or something (the band is clearly not of the culture their music is emulating), but it sounds exactly like the type of whiny air-headed protest piece it's pretending to be. This adds nothing to an already irritating genre. I bet the one with the dreads wrote this. | |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers – Scar Tissue Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I think this song can be described very simply. It's about feeling detached from the world, like a bird flying above it... A detached way of interacting with the world as if he is watching it all from far away, and seeing people but still being distanced from them and completely alone. (And yes, I'm sure being a drug addict could do this to someone, but he's generalised the feeling he describes, so this song is not about drugs. Many others feel this way too, who aren't drug addicts... hence so many people identify and find this song so powerful to listen to. ) | |
| Jack Off Jill – Cockroach Waltz Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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[continued from above!] Oh, and I think saying "we look like each other" is derisively robbing the ones the song is about of their individuality... As in, they're cockroaches... they're dirty, they're all the same, they might love each other and cheat on each other but it doesn't matter, they die and no one notices or cares because there are tons more of them, they don't even care themselves because they can't, they're cruel, one is pretty much the same of the next to the extent that they're almost the exact same thing, one is part of another, made by another, and may as well be the other... I think it's generally just a dark comparison between that, and human relationships. |
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| Jack Off Jill – Cockroach Waltz Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I think this song is actually mostly abstract. There's a relationship going on, clearly. But by turning the relationship she's singing about into something between insects, I think she's making a general statement about how cold and heartless they were. She's also generally adding an atmosphere of disgust to the attachment and the people she describes (the "I" and the "you") just by the fact that she's talking about cockroaches, which are associated with disease and filth. | |
| Marilyn Manson – The Beautiful People Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I find it hilarious how people think Mairlyn Manson is so scary and subersive, and yet his songs have very mainstream left-wing political messages. So yes, this song is about how capitalism and religion are tools with which the dominant majority controls the weak. And how bad that is. How flower-child of him. | |
| The Decemberists – O Valencia! Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I'm pretty sure the name Valencia was chosen just because it sounds Italian (like Valentia, more common spelling) and so brings images of the mafia to mind. Since it says "Oh Valencia With your blood still warm on the ground" it pretty much sounds like Valencia is human, if he was talking about a city or something the whole song would really make a lot less sense. So yeah... this pretty much HAS to be a boy/girl tragedy story a la Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, etc! Pretty straightforward, its classic movie-style melodramatic atmosphere translated into song is what makes it interesting. The video for this song is a straighforward boy-girl narrative that goes with the song step-by-step, by the way. (But it has a twist ending that changes the meaning of the story and makes it, in my opinion, less interesting... so don't watch it!) |
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| Rancid – Dope Sick Girl Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think this isn't really about a girl who was only using him, exactly. Rather I think it's about how the need for drugs can be so strong that it can even cause people you know and trust to turn against you. It doesn't sound like he blames the girl, it sounds like he pities her and still likes her (she takes his heart everywhere she goes) even though she took his money, because he knows she was so desperate and being controlled by the "demon" of her drug addiction, and that she had "no freedom." I find this song very sad... Way too many people become drug zombies like that. |
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| Rancid – Rejected Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Well it doesn't seem like this is about being rejected because he's punk specifically. Rather I think he's talking about being from a lower socio-economic class, or otherwise having a personality that doesn't fit in with the world of the upper class, or with those with white-collar aspirations who mimic the mannerisms of the upper class (with strict dress codes, speech rules, behaviour codes, etc). Punks are one example of a group of people who often have personalities and general behaviours and lifestyles that make it almost impossible for them to fit into any social niche that will give them any sort of economic success or mainstream acceptance. There are many other types of people who also have this problem and who find themselves perpetually marginalised despite their desires and efforts to conform... They just can't, they always retain an appearance of being "sketchy" or "ghetto" or something of the sort that causes more successful people to distrust them. Um, in other words... It's about not fitting in. :) The "distrust" and being "unspoken among the priviledged (ie ignored?)" and being just "not good enough" makes me think that he can't move up in the (mainstream) world. The part where he says he was the one who got caught, dropped, etc makes it sound like he's being negatively singled-out in a workplace (ie caught doing something wrong, fired), or possibly that he just can't behave in a way that doesn't get him in trouble. |
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| Rancid – Junkie Man Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Yeah, this is listed on Jim Carroll's website as one of his performances: http://www.catholicboy.com/catholicboy.com-asp/audio.asp It's remarkable how much Jim Carroll actually sounds like the guys that sing for Rancid, except clearer. I personally think the mix of Carroll's spoken word poetry with Rancid's distinctive punk music is absolutely brilliant! Regarding the accent, has anyone else noticed that the guys in Rancid are very good at doing voices? I mean, yes Tim has a slurry too-much-heroin voice, but he doesn't in every song. He clearly deliberately exaggerates the slur, particularly in this song. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he took a cockney (or similar) accent into account when he decided how to sing this song. And actually, I looked it up out of curiosity and it doesn't appear that any of the band members were ever junkies or heavily into drugs at all, though Tim was an alcoholic. I haven't found anything of the sort at all about the other band members. Yes, random personal websites say they did lots of drugs just like they say about every musician, but no reliable sources do. As far as I can figure out they're just really talented performers creating characters for their songs, their music is really alot smarter and more deliberate than it sounds upon casually listening. |
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| Death from Above 1979 – Black History Month Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I just wanted to add that just because the band said this song wasn't actually ABOUT Black History Month but just named that because they wrote it in February doesn't mean it's true. When bands write about controversial or illegal subjects they often officially give some sort of more innocent meaning to it. For example Green Day said that the song "Brain Stew" is NOT about drugs... yeah right. | |
| The Shins – Pink Bullets Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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No no no! I think nobody has nailed the meaning of this song! I firmly believe it is about a childhood friend who commited suicide. It is not about a girl he fell in love with or was dating. All the memories are clearly from their childhood. They occur "a thousand summers past." They talk about flying kites and bullies in the halls. He reffers to his "timid young fingers" as if he was much younger, as the singer is clearly young this indicates he was a child. I assume the "since then it's been a book" stanza means that as they grew older, they grew apart and their lives became complicated and messed-up. "Over the ramparts you tossed the scent of your skin and some foreign flowers tied to a brick" is definitely a suicide scene. She tosses herself over a ledge, into the water with a brick so that she will sink and drown. This is a very common suicide method. I can't imagine any other reason you'd tie anything to a brick rather than to make it sink, nor could the scent of her skin go down without her. The way he says "your memory is here and I'd like it to stay" indicates that she is dead. He sounds so final, as if he knows he can never see her again. |
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| Neutral Milk Hotel – Sailing Through Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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To me, this song is exactly what it feels like to be very close to someone with a mental illness. I think that "spit in your mouth" means kissing. Easy enough. As a bit more of a stretch, I think the line "into the toilet with our faces removed" (not in both versions!) might be referring to oral sex. I think describing couple's activities that way isn't expressing disgust at his relationship with the subject of the song, but rather the fact that romantic relationships aren't all they're cut out to be. ("Is this supposed to save us? Is this supposed to break us?" = "Why is this so important? It's just spitting in eachother's mouths...") I think the resigned declaration that he "just wanted to be in your body" is expressing sadness that two people can share spit and say they love eachother but can't really be one. But you can't take NMH too literally of course... :P |
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| Brand New – Millstone Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I figured personally that this song was a reflection on the loss of faith and innocence, and an expression of the desire to be able to believe in something once again. Incidentally, you can't really assume that this song is actually about the songwriter Jesse himself. He'd have to be ridiculously emo to really believe EVERYTHING he writes about. (I like this song, but isn't the car accident part just painfully cliche? Car accidents in emo songs is such a trend right now...) |
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| Peaches – Fuck the Pain Away Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| It's funny that people either think this song rocks, or that it's stupid... Doesn't anybody else get the vibe that it's ironically stupid, as a dark commentary on the brainless sex-driven state of modern urban female culture? | |
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