| Leonard Cohen – The Stranger Song Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I find this song to be absolutely brilliant the way Cohen integrates the symbolism of poker to parrallel men who use women. In the first verse he's talking about a man trying to sway a woman saying that it's true I was a player and all players you've met said that they're through playing everytime they wanted to be with you and that it's hard to trust a man like that, because he wants the sky to surrender. The first chorus is pretty clear. He's talking about past men again and about their dirty ways of waiting and watching for the moment to take utter advantage of you (when you begin to trust/love) so as to keep his cards face up on the table and attempt to show that he has clean hands. The second chorus is just a continuation of the first and a finish of what the "dealers" have done. Talking about how they'll say how you have broke them of all of their bad deeds with your love and kindness and then behind your back they take out their routines and mark off what they've already said and need to say next to get you vulnerable. The next segue he focuses on himself again saying now here I am, ignore my dreams for the sky to surrender as if it's someone elses problem. He's an ex-player who you've seen dispatching cards with a golden arm (meaning he was pretty good at it) but now he's rusted (meaning he's done with it) and he wants to instead be a lover. And she hates to see this tired man giving up on his dreams, but then she kind of takes notice of some smoke curling deception perhaps, as some sort of foreshadowing. It's obvious that at this point she's wanting to help him but still skeptical. So she quickly makes the decision, but it doesn't strike her until she realizes that she can't close him out now, the deal is done and set. And he's telling her to open her heart and don't be afraid, you're just a stranger to love. And in the next two verses he's leaving and trying to convince her that he was never a player, and offering for her to come join him in his getaway. She's confused and isn't quite sure anymore whether he does love her and wants her to come, or if he's just taking her for everthing she's got. "When he gets like this you don't know what he's after" She decides that she'll trust him and meet him someplace and jump out on a limb in spite of everything she's experienced. Then the last two choruses are the same as the before ones where he was describing to her what all players do to women in the end, and trying to profess that he's not that way, only this time they're literal and he is playing her and he has left her and he explains to her "I told you I was a stranger". Just the icing on the cake to call her a dope. Truely amazing lyrics. |
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| Modest Mouse – Wild Packs of Family Dogs Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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A wild pack of family dogs would suggest , to me, a unity of domestic people in an organization, probably religious. In the first verse I can picture this topic of religion coming up perhaps at the diner table or just alone somewhere with dad at which point dad metaphoically shoots his gun to make the problem go away, but appearently only creates a deeper and more secretive curiosity. As my own dog ran away, makes me feel like he was betrayed by one of his own friends who bought into religion and he's left speechless, hence "I didn't say much of anything at all". The sister who was taken away and eaten up by the dogs was appearently searching for the same answers as the brother and assumably became disenchanted with all of the debating and reading and questioning with little answering. Perhaps she went insane in a serious degree or maybe she committed murder on herself, either way something very serious has happened to the sister in this passage. The sarcastic "ok" at the end of every verse here tells me that the author is feeling very apathetic. This is obviously a very serious topic to him so he's not trying to make fun of himself. He's just not sure what to think so it's kind of a way to say "yep". "My mother's crying blood dust now" I suppose if you cried hard enough you could cry blood in a hyperbolic sense. If you cried that hard for that long then I guess you would be crying blood dust because your tear ducts would stop producing. I believe this crying is tied in with what has happened to the sister. The dad quit his job, well I guess he was fired part is likely about the dad purposely not giving a fuck at his job site because of his little girl's mishap and he chose to be fired by not focusing, so in a sense quitting. In the end he's horribly shaken and confused and it seems he's waiting for the same thing to happen to him that happened to his sister "down by the mudlake". And when he dies he doesn't go up the the glowing sky, only the dogs do, suggesting that he fears everyone will go to heaven but him and so you begin to feel the author's fear and guilt of not loving a god, but an utter endlessness of questions which are unanswered for his faith to exist. The dogs all recieve their rewards of heaven and god. By him stating this would probably conclude that he believes that they're all good doggies to a god that probably doesn't exist in his alter ego which declares that there is not god, and so he's sarcastically saying here comes your reward, nothing. Or perhaps he's just simply saying what the lyrics read, "They'll all recieve their rewards" and maybe he feels that he won't and that upsets him. The possibilities are endless. |
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| The Moldy Peaches – Jorge Regula Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I have a very different take on it. I think that they're reenacting and satirically portraying the boring aspect of "normal" mankind. Kind of a way to say I'd rather be a heretic standing by myself than a conventional idiot. Everthing in the song is routine and recycled behavior which is not something common among MP songs, and the name Jorge Regula resembles Jorge Regular. Since people must make fun of their lifestyles daily they must have compiled this song as a way to make fun of them for being normal. | |
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