| Arcade Fire – You Already Know Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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To me, this song is about commitment. It's about when you're in love but you're unsure if you've found the right one, so you waffle, and you don't know if you should commit... But you already know. (Just commit already, you love them!) Either that, or your relationship has soured -- on some level you know it but you're kind of in denial, and so you don't know whether to call it quits yet. But you already know. (Just break up with them, it's over!) The theme of committing to a long-term relationship and making it work seems to be a big one on Reflektor. It seems important in this song, and in Porno (you can cry, I won't go / you can scream, I won't go) and in Afterlife (I've gotta know / can we work it out? / we scream and shout 'till we work it out). |
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| Bon Iver – Calgary Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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For me, this song feels like watching an old home video of family vacations at a lake house. We see different scenes of the family, maybe even over many years. He's a little baby sleeping in a crib. He's held on his mother's hip. Everything's drenched in sun and overexposed ("swollen orange and light let through"). Paddling a boat out into the middle of the lake. Swimming in the lake and coming out with a clingy swimsuit. Maybe earwigs climbing out from under the old boat with their pinchers and black eyes. A dying campfire. An idyllic time ("Joy, it's all founded"). And there are also his feelings reviewing these old homemade videos with their "pops and clicks." Maybe by now his parents have passed away and the memory of this happy time is both bitter and sweet - "the demons come, they can subside." Still, these memories are precious and he wants to keep them forever: "Always keep that message taped / Cross your breasts you won't erase." (On a VHS tape?) These images seem to go with his interview comments about how Calgary feels like a home he's never visited. But other interview comments suggest this song is about romantic love... another example of how a wonderful song can mean many things, and different things to different people. |
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| Bon Iver – Towers Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I wonder if he means Hagen, the character in German and Norse fables. "In German tradition, Hagen is especially grim, implacable, and violent... In these accounts, it is Hagen who kills the hero Siegfried" Another fun fact: way back in the day they used to think passion came from the liver. That liver line also makes me think that smell on your skin you get while your liver is detoxifying alcohol. |
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| Bon Iver – Towers Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Since he's said it's about the dorms and losing virginity at 19 it's unlikely to be about sex with a minor. Plus I think it's about him losing his virginity as much as her losing hers! "The onus is not all your own" - it takes two to tango, he's in this as much as she is. | |
| Empire of the Sun – Walking on a Dream Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Haha love it, I also had some weird ideas.... I thought the chorus started with It's yer graaaaandma But I also thought the chorus was in French (thus why it sounds like silly English)... making the second line of the chorus something French like Ton pays pas ne comprende Yeah, I obviously do NOT speak French... LOL! And come to find out it's actually ENGLISH WORDS??? Mind blown. |
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| Arcade Fire – Porno Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Yes - women aren't just for emotion-free sex (like in porn). They're for emotion AND sex (the kind of sex that makes BOTH people happy!). I think many of us women would thank Win for putting that message out there! | |
| Arcade Fire – Porno Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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This song seems to be part of a theme on Reflektor: making a relationship last. Any loving relationship will be tested again and again, and will take hard work to make last. In Porno, Regine's character is trying to leave Win's character but he won't let her: "You say, I'm over it / But I know / You can cry I won't go / You can scream, I won't go" In the next song, Afterlife, the two are working to resolve their problems: "I've gotta know / Can we work it out? / Let's scream and shout 'till we work it out" He sees her as a whole person, beautiful even underneath her makeup - which seems like a metaphorical shield she uses to protect herself from being vulnerable that he needs her to remove so he can get through to her ("And all your makeup / Just take it all off / I've got to find you"). She's trying to break up with him, but unlike all those other boys who "would have run at the word go" he's not letting her. He needs to get through to her and make her see it's still worth trying. Some women love being sexual; it can be beautiful and empowering, as in this song where the woman has "sacred sighs." The problem comes when men expect women to behave like actresses in porn, who get off even when the man is being sexually selfish and putting in zero effort to make sure she's fulfilled. These "little boys" end up thinking that, like the sex they see in porn, relationships are easy and don't take any effort ("And boys they learn / Some selfish shit"). But they quickly find it doesn't work like that ("Until the girl / Won't put up with it"), and this is so overwhelming they just run away. And what else would they do? They've never been taught how to see women as sexual objects AND loved ones who they respect and want to be happy. But Win's character does know how. "They don't know that we know / Never know what we know" He knows he can keep at it until he makes things right. He'll just keep reminding her of his love for her. "You say love is real... Come on tell me please / I'm not over it... Wait" Even in a world where Regine's character has been hurt by selfish boys, where Win's character feels out of place, where they don't know where there is a place for them, he knows he can make it work if he just tries. |
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| Fleet Foxes – He Doesn't Know Why Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| This song reminds me the film "Paris, Texas" (1984), which tells the story of a man who wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is, dirty, ragged, and peniless, and refusing to speak for several weeks. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his wife and son four years before. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087884/ | |
| Joanna Newsom – Colleen Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It seems clear to me that Colleen is a "selkie" - a creature from Irish mythology. Selkies take the form of seals, but can shed their skins to become human women. Here's the Wikipedia page on them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkie Since the song has a decidedly "Irish" feel to the structure, melody, and instrumentation, I think this interpretation definitely fits. Thus, Colleen is a selkie who, in shedding her skin, lost her memory of being a wondrous, mythical sea-creature. Having washed ashore naked, the humans who found her assumed the worst - that she must have been a sinful woman who fell off a ship and lost her clothes. They try to domesticate her, but she can't quite get away from her desire for water: she overwaters her plants, and feels like the air is missing something (the resistance of water). She has dreams about the ocean and a whale admonishing her for forgetting about her former underwater life and for wearing his baleen around her waist (a whalebone corset, a very uncomfortable but necessary part of being a civilized woman in Victorian times). When she sees the picture of the Narwhal, something stirs in her memory. The salesman (Who is he? He seems to know her true identity! Maybe he is a mythical sea creature too. Are there male selkies?) recognizes that she hasn't completely forgotten her true identity as a selkie. He refuses to speak her real (selkie) name, as it would cause her to be swept away - presumably to be turned back to a selkie and be returned to the ocean. After all, it seems she has willingly embraced life on land, and learned to become a very capable wife and mother (making medicines for babies who are being weaned off of milk, managing her property, etc.). But in the last stanza, it sounds like she wishes to (or actually does) return to the ocean and selkie-ness, where she feels more free, but forgets her human life. (This happens a lot in stories of selkies, which are tragedies in which a man falls in love with a woman who is really a selkie, has a beautiful family with her, but is ultimately abandoned by her when she leaves him to return to the ocean, forgetting him and never returning.) A beautiful song with wonderful lyrics, and an amazing re-telling of a very old Irish theme. I think the selkie story is a great metaphor for wildness vs. civilization, magic vs. practicality, which I think crop up a lot in Joanna's songs. |
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| Sufjan Stevens – To Be Alone with You Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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He has sung it live as "I've never met THE man who loved me," so I think he's singing about never having met Jesus in person. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoQzWb_f1oA |
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| The Faint – Machine in the Ghost Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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This song looks at all of the ways of trying to understand the universe (religion, mysticism, science, philosophy, fortunetelling, mind-expanding drugs) skeptically. In the first verse, it goes so far as to say that all of these belief systems are "boneheaded" and have caused a lot of problems (crucified history). The song says that we're nothing more than material from exploded stars (=carbon) that just happened to turn out as humans, and sure, it's difficult to wrap your head around this prospect. "Is that all we are?" we ask, but nobody from among this huge list of systems of thought can give a better explanation so in the end we must conclude "yeah, that's all we are." "Ghost in the machine": a brief explanation... Descartes (the philosopher who is famous for "I think, therefore I am") was a dualist: he believed that the body and the mind are separate entities. He believed that the body is a physical entity, and the mind transcends the physical (like a spirit or consciousness) and inhabits the body and controls its actions. Gilbert Ryle wrote a book in 1949 rejecting Descartes' dualist theory of the mind. He derogatorily called it "the myth of the ghost in the machine," where the ghost represents the mind inhabiting the physical body/machine. So when the song says "there's no ghost in this machine," it's saying the narrator doesn't have a soul or mind that's separate from his body. He probably believes that his "mind" is just his brain, which is a physical entity and is part of his body. I hope this is a helpful explanation! See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Ryle#The_Concept_of_Mind |
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| Blondie – Sunday Girl Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Well "paean" means "a hymn of praise (especially one sung in ancient Greece to invoke or thank a deity)," so it sounds like this is Chris' song to honor Debbie's pussycat, which I'm assuming is symbolic for her spunk or playfulness or some such quality. | |
| Pixies – Oh My Golly! Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Among the pines and the Puertorican waves We walked under the carribean moon Kissing, chewing (tobacco/gum?) with Surfer Rosa Guest in her way I'm I beach guy but there's no beach All of life is a complete mess, complete mess Totally lost for Surfer Rosa I miss more than life Here's my reasoning: --I'm guessing "riquenas" is short for "puertoriquenas," puertorican. --Chicar, as a verb, means "to chew" (as in tobacco), and is similar to "chicle," the word for chewing gum. It's weird that they'd chew tobacco, though, so maybe they were just chewing gum? It's NOT "fucking" though; that would be "chingando" not "chicando." --He's a guest "in her way," that is, he has to do be a guest the way she tells him to; she commands him. --Note: "se fue su madera" is probably not the lyric, because if you wanted to say "he lost his wood" you would have to say "se le fue la madera." But maybe that's the lyric and *nigg3rism* was right - it's just ignorant gringo spanglish... --I translated "porqueria" as "complete mess" but it's also a ridiculous situation that makes you mad... like if someone screws you over you're like "what a porqueria!!!" (about the situation, not the person) It seems he's reminiscing about Surfer Rosa (Surfer Rose), a fun and crazy girl he surfed with back in Puerto Rico, who he was head over heels for, but now she's in his past and he's far away from beaches and has a sucky new life; he doesn't just miss his old life as a surfer - he also misses Rosa. |
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