| The National – Conversation 16 Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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silver city - Hollywood, silver girls - starlets & co. (from "silver screen") "I was afraid I'd eat your brains" - turning so mindlessly hungry for feelings/real interaction that he becomes aggressive searching for them "Had my head in the oven so you'd know where I'll be I'll try to be more romantic I want to believe in everything you believe" - "head in the oven" can be a reference to Sylvia Plath's suicide; as a confident liar, he'll go to extremes to appear unchanged, pretending to still have the same emotional depth as he did before the "black dreams" in order to keep his interlocutor happy and unconcerned, for instance by trying to enjoy the same sort of poetry as he did before he changed. On the topic of the interlocutor, presumably the narrator's significant other: they "never believe the shitty thoughts" he thinks, but he now equates romance with swimming in a fountain (reference to the scene in the Trevi Fountain in La Dolce Vita?) and they barely keep the charade going until their friends are gone. He tries to get lost in them ("fall asleep in your branches"/arms) because they're "the only thing [he] ever want[s] anymore", the connection he has to reality. In my interpretation, Conversation 16 is a song about admitting to your lover that you've (been) changed for the worst and asking to leave the bad influences behind together. The narrator struggles, first to keep up appearances and later to mitigate the damage they're doing to the relationship, but after the admission, the only course of action left is to leave it to their significant other to decide if it's worth salvaging. It's a plea, I think: This is what I've come to be, you're all I want; let's run away from here. (On a side note, the title makes me think, for some reason, that the first 15 conversations were aborted attempts, as their partner wasn't ready to accept the truth. This one in particular matters because he finally gets the point across. Of course, it could all be in his head. He could be looking at someone and wishing he was coming clean before he's left alone in the silver city.) |
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| The Weakerthans – Without Mythologies Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| The myths the narrator alludes to are used to describe a relationship in which he couldn't let himself go completely. He loved someone and he built a wall between them - now that the relationship is over, he wishes he'd set her free (like a river that can rage, carve its own path and run away) rather than see her rooted in place or still as a statue. At least that's my mundane interpretation. It's a very powerful song, gives me chills every time I hear it. | |
| Sparklehorse – Getting It Wrong Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| After Mark Linkous' suicide on March 6, I started listening to this song again. A lot. I find it ironic that the lyrics "Ophelia in the creek / Caught up in the sticks / Some things can't be fixed" saved me from doing something stupid a few years ago, and now they fit Mark's death so well. Amazing song; I can't decide whether it's resigned or sad or angry or just an observation: it's very noticeable when beautiful things are destroyed. "Set your woods on fire" sounds like a reference to self-sabotage, or is it just about cutting losses for the observer? Ambiguous and beautiful. | |
| Jack Off Jill – Vivica Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I just realised how much this song reminds me of the characters from the novel Silk by Caitlin R. Kiernan, especially of Spyder and Daria (Daria with the relationship and Spyder with the tattoos/sleeping pills/nightmares). JoJ is a great soundtrack for any C. R. Kiernan novel, actually. Same mindset. | |
| Placebo – Devil In The Details Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I think Cameo is right. Maybe the "he wrote the songs/that I hoped to write someday" part means wanting to write passionate songs, but only getting intense feelings from drugs - making drugs the fuel for creativity. If someone decided to write a song, they'd be pretty damn disappointed if the only experiences powerful enough to mention were chemically induced. Empty life, "wasting all my time", makes sense. I love the way he sings this one. |
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| The Smiths – Rubber Ring Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song restored my faith in music several times. It was loving The Smiths that first got me into music journalism, which is my bread, butter and passion. I didn't lay on my bedroom floor, but I was certainly in awe. That feeling of wide-eyed wonder also restores one's faith in things that don't involve chords, does it not? And therein lies the true beauty of it. So here's a toast to "dancing and laughing and finally living" - cheers to the teenagers in us, and may we never become more profound than we were then, for that way madness lies. |
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| The Bastard Fairies – A Heathens Lament Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Self-explanatory lyrics, but they're so spot on for certain situations that they verge on perfection. | |
| Bono Must Die – Saving Betty Picture Face Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Obviously about 'stars' that grew up wanting to be famous. It's from their entourage's perspective. They pity and resent the famous one, but she's getting what she wanted. It's like the universal anthem of artist's personal assistant. It also reminds me of my scene friend who got into modeling and was simultaneously happy and depressed and empty. And pretty. Picture-face indeed, but nothing behind it except blind hunger for more more more, more meaning, more exposure, more money. I played this at parties and most people danced, but some stood back and watched and listened to the lyrics. They drank more than the others. | |
| Lovage – Herbs, Good Hygiene & Socks Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| The character might not like social conventions, but they're definitely not rebels. They follow rules sarcastically and conscientiously. And they know their breath mints, shower gels and clothes detergent, and their rubbers and all the things they need not to stand out (bad smell = metaphor?) | |
| Lovage – Everyone Has A Summer Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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So true... everyone has a summer they want to remember. I love how they're talking about the one happy passion-filled summer - but it's ruined by them clinging to the past. A bit too plausible for my liking, but brilliant. This is the way I always wanted it to be like (It won’t be Not... not as long as you insist On living in the past) 'Cause that’s pain, you dig? I don’t care how cool you are |
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| Nick Drake – From The Morning Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| It makes me remember all my friends who died, especially the summer when I mourned them. It was the happiest summer of my life... I was awake every night and went to the mountains with a bunch of people and everything was so in tune, we didn't do anything unpleasant that whole season. And it felt that in doing so we were honoring those who died so young, burned out fast but could still make us smile. We all thought (though none of us said it) that we should make a promise to mourn like this when each of us dies, that we're all remembered as we were. I had my own girl and boy to mourn besides the friend we'd all lost, both of mine junkies, so I kept asking someone to play this song on their guitar because the girl had loved it and shown it to me, and the boy had loved it too, and he might've given up at 14, but those were 14 years lived with a thirst for everything. I knew that if there was a day of reckoning I'd be right there next to him. "Yes, I lied and I cheated and I took drugs and I was impure, but I loved well, so open the gates for me." Whenever I wanted to give up afterwards I thought of him in a white hospital robe trying to hold on to my hand while they were wheeling him away, and I know that he'd never forgive stepping out of this coil until you're good and spent, struggling to breathe from laughing, struggling to see from crying, with your heart so full you can barely stand it. | |
| Gregory and the Hawk – Boats and Birds Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I sent this song to all of my exes as soon as I left them. "Letting someone you love go because they can do greater things elsewhere" has always been my modus operandi... On a different note, I put this song on in my mom's car a week before she filed for divorce and left me with my dad so she could live with her lover. She cried in traffic and had to pull over. I didn't understand it at the time, but after she left I didn't resent her - because of those tears. This song means a lot to me. |
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| Lovage – Anger Management Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| gods above and below... this song is pure sexual tension. lovage is incredible. | |
| Serge Gainsbourg – Lemon Incest Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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this song is so beautiful and so taboo... L’amour que nous n’ f’rons jamais ensemble Est le plus rare le plus troublant Le plus pur le plus énivrant Exquise esquisse Délicieuse enfant Ma chair et mon sang Oh mon bébé mon âme makes me feel dirty just for listening to it. so wrong but so right... serge liked playing with our minds. |
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| Serge Gainsbourg – La Décadanse Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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jane and serge... such a sexy song. i used to hear it all the time at my parents' parties when i was growing up. it was the soundtrack to many a late-night afterparty at my house as well. dancing as a both substitute and prelude to sex... Que tes mains Frôlent mes seins Et mon coeur Qui est le tien |
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| The Age of Rockets – H. Soft Escape Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| If H stands for heroin, then this is a very accurate song. If not, it's still beautiful. | |
| The Age of Rockets – Fearsome Though We Are Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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It's about the way despair feels perfect sometimes. "Fearlessly we brave the darkest streets that we know. Living dead, We don't heed a word that they say. Fearsome, though we are... I still have one on you" - Fearless not because we're brave, but because we don't have anything to lose. |
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| The Age of Rockets – Actors/Ghosts Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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To me, it sounds like the middle of a bender. Being drunk/high in a hotel bathroom, thinking you're not worth loving. Actors/ghosts refers to going through the motions of a meaningless existence. I found this song after my best friend wrote "we were made for broken arms and empty hearts" in a club bathroom back in August, and people started signing their names underneath. Words of the prophets written on subway walls? |
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| The Age of Rockets – avada kedavra Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I think riley490's interpretation is correct. I love the strings at the end, but the intro is a bit long imho. Reminds me what one of my friends wrote in a letter: "You're not lost if you're still moving; you're not a coward if you keep hoping; and I'll always remember you young and free and beautiful, I'm the portrait to your Dorian Gray. So live and love and die the way you want to, because to me you'll always be just like you were last night." I was 14, she was 19, and she died a few days later in a car crash. I panicked when she didn't call back until they told me what happened. This song made me cry the first time I heard it, it's beautiful. | |
| Belle & Sebastian – Don't Leave the Light On Baby Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I've always related to this song. I'm a messed up girl, so my boyfriends used to try to save me from myself. Eventually I broke up with them, but they remained my friends. The idea of letting someone go because you love them and you'll ruin them is so painful and beautiful... just like this song. | |
| The Wombats – Die hard movie Girl Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I caught my husband singing "I could never be the good guy" in the shower this morning. Yes, we love this song. | |
| Ron Sexsmith – Wastin' Time Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I love this song. I'm going to screenprint "where's the crime in wasting time" on a shirt next week. And give it to my husband to remind him to slow down and enjoy the ride. | |
| Ron Sexsmith – Strawberry Blonde Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| My best blond best friend took care of his blond little brother while going deeper and deeper into addiction. One day, when I was out of the country, I got a call from little TC, heavily into pills himself, that his big brother took an overdose and was in hospital. He sounded too quiet on the phone. When I got back, my best friend was in a mental institution he'll never leave and TC was waiting for me sedately on the stairs. He was shipped off to his cold father soon afterwards. This song, to me, is about them, and how secrets stay in the family until it's torn apart. | |
| Sia – Pictures Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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My ex made a video project with this song. It was filmed in his house in December 07 with flashbacks from August, footage of the back of my head as I walked around his loft for the first time in August 07. When the song reaches "you can try to move on, tripped by stitches come undone you can try to move on, or maybe she is the one" there's a bit with our hands on the table, each holding a cigarette, lifting it for a last drag and simultaneously putting them out. It was the last time I went to see him. I'm engaged to someone else now and live in another country, but this song still makes me cry. Yes, it's about exes - the ones you can't let go, and don't want to do that anyway. And it's beautiful, because it ends with that bittersweet line that's hopelessly hopeful. |
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| Woven Hand – Into The Piano Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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There's a wolf in the piano On the white keys - Such beautiful imagery! "Dry bones under animal skin am I" - a man stranded from the light. I love the Christian lyricism of Woven Hand (even if I'm not a Christian). |
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| Woven Hand – Story And Pictures Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Feels like he's talking to the Virgin Mary. Like most Woven Hands songs, it's about faith. | |
| Woven Hand – My Russia Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| It's a prayer. After a sleepless night, the singer passes by the church ("stained glass window," "one eye" - the all-seeing eye) and asks for protection. He draws a line between what he is in flesh - inadequate, everything "he [god] is not" (full of self-righteousness and self-pity) and what he is in spirit - compassion and love "come/from the father above." He feels naked in front of god ("for you know my name/the sound of my new name/as I hold forth nothing worth saving") and asks to be held safe in his hand. | |
| Woven Hand – Last Fist Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| The line "beware of what come natural" is brilliant. | |
| Woven Hand – Blue Pail Fever Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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It's about a quest to find faith. As far as I can tell, the singer is taking a roadtrip alone to "acquaint themselves" with their heart and connect with God. He can't get an answer ("like a voice in an empty house," "speak to me"), but in the last stanza he uses the leaf metaphor to say how God is in him regardless ("we remember always/ that it took place forever/thy kingdom come in/whosoever"). There's a feeling of inadequacy highlighted by the comparison to Jesus ("frozen prayer upon my lips/inside the blood runs hot" - the singer; "he was reviled/yet he reviled not" - Jesus), he being the physical, the animal side of man, while Jesus represents the spiritual, the goal. He yields "in meekness," following the example. I've been a taoist for five years and this song takes me back to my search for the Christian god, the one I stopped looking for because he doesn't answer. So beautiful! |
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| Louis XIV – God Killed The Queen Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I think it's about casual sex at a punk gathering. "God killed the queen" is used as a direct reference to the soundtrack, and "God takes time on it" is sarcastic since that's a very short song they're talking about. The singer is obviously drunk/high - "I think I'm seeing double." The whole beat of the song is just so reminiscent of punk swagger - late punk, when it was merging into the mainstream and it was all about sex and drugs, no more anarchy, just glam poverty. | |
| Elysian Fields – Bend your mind Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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good god, her voice! i have the live version and i also heard them live back in '03, it's on my naughty playlist permanently. Your shoulder blades like sails And your mouth my rosary That terrifies my tail The feral dance of infinity Limbs are singing velvet stinging Seashell pining Dripping sapling nature grappling Tear the binding Wide Spread so wide Flawless lyrical sexuality! |
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| Katy Perry – Diamonds Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Poor song, but I like the idea that people who have too relaxed a life end up "pebbles" while those who are under pressure, like carbon, turn into diamonds. "Shining under pressure" suddenly seems much more amusing of an expression. | |
| Metallica – Loverman (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds cover) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| My boyfriend told me this is our song after our second date. When I listened to it I was a bit scared - but by god, he lived up to it! Now I can't sit still when I listen to it. So sexy! Makes me purr. Kickass guitars, the cherry on top. | |
| Metallica – Sanitarium Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| When I was in rehab they made the mistake of letting me keep my mp3 player (with speakers with short wires, not headphones, though, which I now find amusing seeing as I wasn't suicidal). I played this song constantly and the girl in the next room over was so pumped up by it that she shook the bars from her window and ran out to the window to the nurses' common room and started yelling that she's had enough. THAT's good songwriting! She also quoted some lyrics during her rant, which got my CDs and the girl locked away. She's out now - so Marielle, if you read this somehow, my heart goes out to you. Hope you're better and don't need this to stand up for yourself anymore. | |
| The Last Shadow Puppets – Only the Truth Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| About a girl who's got all the tricks down. But I don't think she's just a maneater, I think those claims are for something more serious. I get a picture of a black widow in my head when I hear the song... | |
| The Last Shadow Puppets – My Mistakes Were Made for You Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I get this feeling from the song that he's speaking about meeting a girl when he was getting famous; his fame "put words in her mouth." Afterwards she started being known too ("a face in the crowd, she's not") and that's why a relationship that was powerful ("rock") rolled down the "hazardous terrain" of celebrity. She couldn't "not sting," she was "arrogance," and he couldn't "give her less than everything ("innocence"), so it was over. I absolutely love the title. I think that's what they would say to each other in the end; they got the fame they worked for, and it was a mistake from the relationship point of view, but it was a mistake they did for each other, trying to be perfect. They ended up "scrambling from the blame" in the public eye. Not sure, though, just the way it sounds to me. Amazing song! |
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| Louis XIV – Tina Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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My name's Tina. And all my exes sent me this song after we broke up. Perhaps that's because I sent them "Finding out true love is blind" when we started dating... starting a relationship by telling them they're replaceable and I'm pansexual really isn't conducive to love. Then again... Well I saw you leaving the other night With a dark haired guy on a motorbike And all my friends say they saw you drunk in the clubs Talking really loud about how you're in love I'm engaged to a biker. Coincidence or design?... |
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| The Indelicates – Point Me To The West Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Like most Indelicates songs, it's about "now" compared to "then." Basically, us kids take our cosy situation for granted, forgetting it was earned the hard way. My great-grandmother told me something like this once; her own grandmother had been a suffragette and neither she, nor my grandmother, mother nor I ever voted. Talk about ungratefulness... |
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| The Indelicates – The Sequel to Peter Pan and Wendy Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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The "left-hand path" is the path of knowledge as opposed to blind faith. It's a song about the loss of innocence as idealistic teenagers grow into blase adults. Case in point: "And it's sad to fly higher - Wax wings melting; But we're ever so much more than twenty" - Icarus was young and bold; he died. The speaker obviously didn't; conclusions may be drawn. |
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| The Indelicates – The Last Significant Statement to be Made in Rock and Roll Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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The last significant statement to be made in rock and roll is that it's dead. Teenagers rebelling are premium buyers, hippies' children are wealthy and mundane, fanzines and the underground have become mainstream culture, there is nowhere to hide. |
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| The Indelicates – Julia, We Don't Live in the Sixties Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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It's about the shallowness today. People want to be stars (friends say you've a lovely voice, selling Pepsi) and don't care about the things happening around them. "Write me a letter that I'll never reply to You know what I'm like better than I do Tell me about how you sleep at night Tell me about your consolations Lie to me, say you still fight Tell me death will be alright" - Some of the best lyrics I've heard in ages. I've known this song for years and I don't think it'll ever get old. |
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| The Indelicates – If Jeff Buckley had lived Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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We idolise dead singers (see Waiting for Pete Doherty to Die) because they didn't have the time to mess up. I love the line "And there's a flicker of religion in the chances you take" - the idea that you make your choice and hope you're lucky, that every choice is a sign of faith. "And there is no salvation at the hands of the fates And there is no design to whom death comes to take And the faces in the vapour, they are lies and mistakes" - Death is a fact of life, and just because someone passed on it doesn't mean they were not fallible or should be worshiped. I think The Indelicates are currently the best band out there, lyrics-wise at least. I listen to them and I don't even like twee! |
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| The Indelicates – Fun is for the Feeble-Minded Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Oh god. I love how his song picks apart all these people's idea that "things used to be better in the past": the fifties, all wholesome, had the atom bomb, the sixties, all cool, had the Vietnam war, the eighties, all free, had the Berlin wall. Things WEREN'T better in the past on the whole, and the only things people regret from those times is their own youth. Brilliant! | |
| The Indelicates – Waiting For Pete Doherty To Die Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith - grieving is a form of idolatry and of today's scene, only Pete Doherty would fit the bill. Their songs make us feel we know them intimately so when they die, it's like the death of our confidantes. It says a lot about today's society that a song like this was actually needed. | |
| The Indelicates – Heroin Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Where have all the idealistic junkies gone? I played this at my 18th birthday bash when my best friend wrote me from rehab, "Don't change, you're beautiful and free, you have books and needles and ideas and therapy, it's more fun this way, no one ever changed the world sober and I'll be dead by the time you turn 30 but you're my heroine." So I drank and I danced and I cried for my friends who'll die to this, all the wonderful people who refuse to settle and live long and boring lives. Because it's stupid and self-destructive and wonderful. At least we have our bookshelves and the certainty we won't get old, even if this isn't living but dying. |
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| Jack Off Jill – Choke Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Love, hate, lust it's all the same: the singer is in a relationship that becomes so intense that she can't tell the three apart, and becomes angry with the other person to the point where they want to kill them just to be free. That's how I see it. | |
| Jack Off Jill – Strawberry Gashes Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Both me and my bf's exes were into drugs and self-destructive behaviour, and this is their song as far as we're concerned. To me it's about a girl who's a junkie and self-harms. "Some things you lose and some things you just give away" - you lose your innocence, you give away your freedom. "I dreamt of a devil that knew her" - the dealer. The girl is in rehab ("it's wonderful wonderful here") but she has no will to carry on (strawberry gashes - obv self-harm, "kill me faster"). Both our exes died because we failed to help them; we were junkies and didn't think straight, as much as we wanted them to be well. Mine killed herself when I left her, thinking she'd be better without my influence and his was raped and pushed in front of a speeding car. Both me and my bf subsequently went into rehab and therapy and are now reasonably healthy. I can relate to this song so much... the boy I left her for played this to me and said it's my song... I was abused all through my childhood and have a history of self-destructive behaviour. My strawberry gashes are the scratches left by needles being pulled out of my arms. People tend to try and save me and I can't remember how many times I begged my lovers to kill me when I was high. Amazing song! Can't hear it without sympathising with those who saw me like that. |
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| Belle & Sebastian – We Rule the School Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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It's about tenneaged girls and how they have a freedom in high school that they don't get afterwards. It's a man's world out there, so they should "do something pretty while they can". Fear, boredom, peer pressure, all the things that push one away from "reading the gospel to yourself" seem worth giving in to. They're only there for a limited time. Reading the gospel to yourself is fine, but it sounds disappointing compared to driving from Cali to NY, doesn't it? I think that's what the song suggests. Live. Leave a mark that only makes sense to you. Be good later, you're free and young and can do beautiful things with that. |
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| Carla Bruni – Tout Le Monde Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Problems are universal and therefore rarely admitted openly. This leads to indifference, to which Carla protests: "Il faudrait que tout l'monde réclame auprès des autorités, Une loi contre toute notre indifférence, Que personne ne soit oublié" We all have our messed up times, our childhood issues and unfulfilled dreams. Universal doesn't necessarily mean unimportant. |
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| Carla Bruni – Quelqu'un M'a Dit Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I get a picture in my head when I listen to this song. The heroine is drunk at a party and someone equally inebriated says something inconsequential; that the girl's ex was stupid to end their relationship or that he still loves her no matter what he said or something like that. The song is sung during the ensuing hangover. Lives aren't worth much, fate mocks us and our wishes, we think we can reach luck and it slips from our reach... she thought that man was The One but he's gone. It goes to reaffirm her pessimism. Somehow the idea that he still loves her, carelessly pushed forward by a mutual friend, is something that keeps her together. If "tu m'aimais encore," how could the world be bleak? That's the point of the song. What if? What if it's not all lost? |
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