| Regina Spektor – Human of the Year Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Karl Marx - Interesting connection. I like it! | |
| Regina Spektor – Pavlov's Daughter Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I think this song is about free will and shame: 1. The gravediggers calling her name seems like contemplating suicide. 2. I think she is putting a "bowl there to my ear". She is saying she has been listening for God for years but still hasn't heard him. 3. She is fed up with religion in this part referencing songs about angels. I think Babylon mean the neighborhood, but also implies she is looking for a one night stand (whore of Babylon). 4. Lucille as Lucifer. Sees everything you do and judges you for it. She is ashamed. Of course the is using an NYC apartment building as a metaphorical setting - putting abstract characters into a tangible place. 5. I think Regina talks about Pavlov's daughter to show that not only dogs have instincts and hungers beyond their control, we are all animals. The drooling and hazy dream and "not a... not a" dialog sounds an awful lot like doing drugs. I think she is saying we should not feel shame for our natural urges, yet that is precisely what religion does. Sex (and gay sex), masturbation, drug addiction, bodily waste, and depression are all things most people are ashamed of. Society, Religion, the Devil, some part of the individual, is saying they are something to be ashamed of. But, like Pavlov's daughter, we are out of control. We are a combination of genetics and conditioning and innumerable factors (no free will). This isn't a free pass, we can change our own lives if we want, but we should never be ashamed. Pooping, for instance, we don't need to change. I recommend you never stop (even after you're dead). There are lots of books and videos questioning or denying free will. I know Sam Harris talks about this topic. Maybe the book she read what one of his? |
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| Regina Spektor – Human of the Year Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| i agree, it is certainly "and you've won" | |
| Regina Spektor – One More Time with Feeling Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| it really doesn't matter if someone is "wrong." they aren't going to be tested on this. People should take whatever they can from art. Sometimes investigating the artist's original intent but usually it is much more valuable to figure out what the song means for you and how it helps you examine your own life. | |
| Regina Spektor – Baobabs Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| it is a type of really big tree. i think its found in africa. you can google it for images. | |
| Regina Spektor – The Calculation Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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i wonder if knowing the faces of the strangers in the pages mathematically refers to quoting from the Bible (John 3:16) with the names and numbers. I think the countertops could be a sort of alter in in many different explanations, but I like this one a lot. I'm wondering if the macaroni part isn't more cynical. Perhaps she is saying that mankind made these constructs (religions/churches) that are like computers that do all of the heavy thinking for us so we can just live our lives. This sounds like something Regina might critique. I'm wondering what you, or anyone else, thinks about the kitchen motif running throughout the song. The kitchen cupboard, the granite counter tops, and maybe the burning too. Why would someone/God go to the kitchen to get Time? opposed to the end table next to the couch or a toy chest. |
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| Regina Spektor – Time Is All Around Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| ps- i'm in my 20s so i hope i'm not just projecting :P | |
| Regina Spektor – Braille Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| i have always felt that this song is very cinematic. i always imagine Britany spears sitting on the floor, pregnant, with matches, haha. but yeah, i don't think the turpentine is for the soup. i think turpentine and patches are just quick and dirty ways to "fix" things. not enough paint? thin it out. tear your jeans? just patch them. they aren't really fixed, they are just kind of fixed. and thats how she has been living her life. just getting by, she is disappointed in her life choices and maybe some of the short cuts she had to make as a result. | |
| Regina Spektor – Human of the Year Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I get the feeling that, like many of you have mentioned, this song is about a funeral. It seems like it should come after One More Time With Feeling, where the man dies in the hospital bed and he now finds himself entering a cathedral. Karl (the every man) has died, like everyone does. Regina seems to be like a guardian angel who has come to usher him into Heaven. She even does some angelic singing followed by some sly singing... She is a very patronizing angel with a bit of sarcasm. Karl is afraid of death and she wants him to accept it. Going to Heaven means becoming part of a prestigious group of people... all of the saints (the men with golden bald spots from the icon paintings) are up there. I think this song might be mocking the “celebration” factor of funerals. She is definitely using sarcasm in this song but I don’t think it is as harsh as some have suggested. I think she takes issue with the falseness in religion. The use of “brother” as if all christians are actually part of one big family is a lie to her. She suggests to Karl that the traffic is actually saluting him, this is another lie. Funerals are a time where people come together to only talk about how wonderful the deceased was, as if thats the whole story. The church has had their big party (their “celebration” of life) full of compliments and lies and cold cuts and now they will go back to their regular, silent lives where there are no compliments and no one is human of the year... until the next one dies and the party and lies begin again. |
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| Regina Spektor – Laughing With Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I've heard her talk about the song and she has said that it is not pro or anti anything. she is like that a lot, which is awesome. the best art presents a question to its audience to answer for themselves. I think she is, as you say, just making observations of the relationships between humans and God. I think she is noticing that it is easy for people to laugh at the sillier parts of religion (and i think this is her actually giving a bit of a jab at religions' and society's silly interpretations of God) when everything is going great. Then she points out that in moments of terror, as you mention, people still turn to God for help. I think she is also taking notice that poor people are often more religious. People who don't know where their next meal is coming from are forced to put more faith is God because they have terror on a daily basis, where as many of us only think of God during the turbulence in an airplane. I think this is a needed insight, because many people look at the uneducated, poor, religious as just stupid people and the enlightened, educated, rich folks think they have evolved beyond religion and God (bill mahr, grr). She is saying, hey, people who believe in God need God, that doesn't mean they are stupid. We all need God sometimes, even if we don't believe in him. We make him silly sometimes, but he's ok with that too, he's always there for us to pray to even if he isn't really there at all. | |
| Regina Spektor – Laughing With Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| it seems like you are coming closest to what i believe the meaning to be. I've heard her talk about the song and she has said that it is not pro or anti anything. she is like that a lot, which is awesome. the best art presents a question to its audience to answer for themselves. I think she is, as you say, just making observations of the relationships between humans and God. I think she is noticing that it is easy for people to laugh at the sillier parts of religion (and i think this is her actually giving a bit of a jab at religions' and society's silly interpretations of God) when everything is going great. Then she points out that in moments of terror, as you mention, people still turn to God for help. I think she is also taking notice that poor people are often more religious. People who don't know where their next meal is coming from are forced to put more faith is God because they have terror on a daily basis, where as many of us only think of God during the turbulence in an airplane. I think this is a needed insight, because many people look at the uneducated, poor, religious as just stupid people and the enlightened, educated, rich folks think they have evolved beyond religion and God (bill mahr, grr). She is saying, hey, people who believe in God need God, that doesn't mean they are stupid. We all need God sometimes, even if we don't believe in him. We make him silly sometimes, but he's ok with that too, he's always there for us to pray to even if he isn't really there at all. | |
| Regina Spektor – One More Time with Feeling Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| i think you are generally right with this interpretation. LIke orbital, i tend to think the balloon and light are more about setting the seen than actual metaphor, but you could be right. I think "This is why we fight" is saying "this is why we fight to stay alive." Our family wants us to fight, begging us to hold on, and we feel like we haven't lived up to our potential. this song is a lot like chemo limo... basically the same topic. altho, i picture a woman in chemo and a man in this song. meh... | |
| Regina Spektor – The Calculation Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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also, i think the cold, bloodless, stone hearts means that they've never been in love before. and i think the granite countertops plays into the perfect love calculation. you know, how everyone is supposed to buy a house in a subdivision with a two car garage, stainless steel appliances, a fished basement and, of coarse, granite counter tops. |
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| Regina Spektor – The Calculation Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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This is my interpretation: The couple are acting out what they’ve learned love is from the media. He gives her half of his free time. They divide up their emotions. They let the computer (the media) tell them what a relationship is supposed to look like. It gives them the calculation for perfect love. The part about cutting out their hearts and smashing them together symbolizes both the sexual act and fighting. I think both are sort of violent interactions of two people coming together and opening up. After going through the motions of a relationship the two actually fall in love. I think the like about the fire burnin’ them up is about the feeling of all consuming passionate love. They “didn’t even know that love was bigger” than the cutesy stuff they saw in the media (you know.. romantic comedies) but there is passion and burning and the fire that comes with both sex and fights. Kinda kinky. |
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| Regina Spektor – Time Is All Around Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| This songs makes me think that it is about how a woman in her thirties (or older) begins to see relationships. She has had a break up and now she is alone, again, maybe it is even a divorce. "time is all around, except for in my clock" and noting that leaves "dry up" are references to the biological clock, i think. "lover's to unlock" suggests that people are waiting around for prince charging to make them happy, that love will make life worth living, but she she finds herself getting older and without anyone to love. She doesn't want to have to love someone to feel happy or fulfilled. She imagines a cat, a symbol of a spinster. She says that people say she's changed, and she has. She has changed from a person looking for love to a person content in her own happiness. People who are settled down with a family might not understand that because their family is everything to them, but she is telling them that she has found something else. She doesn't need the love of others to be complete. She knows that with her age she has grown (more beautiful in all ways) and that she is happy with her transformation and doesn't need a lover to validate her. | |
| Regina Spektor – Blue Lips Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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i think a lot of this song is about war, not only religion. "And all the gods and all the worlds/Began colliding on a/ Backdrop of/Blue." makes me think of the world wars... the gods of the worlds being the leaders of the countries. "And, marching along the railroad tracks,/They smile real wide for the camera lenses./They made it past the enemy lines/Just to become enslaved in the assembly lines." this part also reminds me of war. i see the WWI/II men walking along the tracks and they are so proud at first, "smiling real wide" and maybe they win the war but in the end they are still slaves, slaves to their nation, their economy, the factory lines, when they get home. I think the knowledge tree is another tie between people, we all started out under that tree in Adam and Eve. But now we have used it to make divisions between us. She often expresses how she wishes religions could just get along together. We have forgotten the knowledge of the tree and only use it as a tool.. the knowledge that is in each religion that is good is being forgotten and only conscienceless people are left. I think she is uniting the people of the world under this color, blue, as many others have stated. I think she is showing us that our smallest veins are blue, our dead lips are blue, and we share a big blue planet. I am still sort of confused about the narrative part of this though... the story of this boy who finds faith and becomes a man... maybe his falling tired is because it is so hard to be faithful in our world. |
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| Regina Spektor – Ne Me Quitte Pas Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| i have a feeling that the song is not a cover of the Jaques Brel song.. but I think it was referencing it. I think it could also be referencing the song "Paris in The Rain." The first song is about the one you love leaving you. The second is about having a fling with someone in Paris. I think the parts that mention Paris (1 and 4) are about Paris and the other two that mention parts of NYC are about NYC. (i don't know of any Paris St in NYC) I think this is about her being on tour in europe and missing New York. People in Paris are often pricks (your my foe), although a bit over stereotyped (walk fast/slow), but the city is still very romantic (in the rain). She talks about the good and bad of both New York and Paris and I think she is calling out God to be with her, to make her feel at home wherever she is... bring back the past to her (christmas past). | |
| Regina Spektor – Music Box Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| i think, as mentioned above, it is important that it is a MUSIC box. I think it does say something about being a slave to performance, not so much in the way earlier stated but that she feels like she has to sing the same thing again and again. (i find it fitting that this is found on her most marketable and successful album AND is used in a commercial... irony? i wouldn't put it past her). I think that it can also be applied to anyones boring life. And, also as mentioned above, I think she tries to find joy in the simple/boring task of doing the dishes. I think there she is able to use her imagination (the plastic voyage). She then commits suicide. It seems like she doesn't really realize the effects at first but then reality and mortality sets in. She really only wanted to escape to her imaginary voyage of plastic and get out of her box, she gets at least the latter. | |
| Regina Spektor – Paris Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Wolfe (i'm not sure about Atwood) hung out in Paris in an artists' commune sort of thing and I think this woman wanted to go there. She made it to Paris but when he man came to take her back it didn't matter what the writers had told her about feminism, she WANTED to be a house wife. She wanted a little adventure, but that would have to wait for her next life, because in this life she had already chosen her position. | |
| Regina Spektor – Oedipus Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| i think this song is about this prince who is just one of many and knows he will never be king. But, one morning he thinks, maybe i should do what Oedipus did... kill his father and marry his mother and become king. This mean s that he isn't himself Oedipus but is from sometime after Oedipus (and in my mind.. a place like Siam where the king would have that many kids). He isn't grossed out about marrying his mother because she has been kept away from him all of his life (because seeing him/touching him was awful). This very distance has created his obsession with her. And then he kills the kind and hooks up with the queen and seeing him/touching him makes her still feel awful. | |
| Regina Spektor – Aquarius Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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she isnt, i don't think everyone missed the point, i think people were saying most of those things... at least when u add what everyone said together. o agree that she is failing at what she thinks he sign is telling her to me (a water carrier) and she is talking to God (sweetunknown can get over it). she doesn't know if she can succeed at what her sign tells her to do but she knows that she can at least do something-- love. i think that she isn't sooo upset about God's lack of help... just asking for more. She talks about losing the water from her hands but still getting some on her lips. I think this shows that she does get what she needs, for an instant, but just can't hold on to it to get security, this could even be a metaphor for money. It seems like Fate has dealt her a bad hand (ice when she needs water), and she might blame God for this, but she asks for more help. |
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| Regina Spektor – Pound of Flesh Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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this is just sort of an observation, but... if you're never sorry then you can't be forgiven if you're not forgiven then you can't be forgotten if you're not forgotten then you must live forever if you live forever you cannot be reborn if you're not reborn then you can't be a baby sounds like Christian talk. Christians talk about forgviness and being reborn and so forth. i think is using flawed logic on purpose to criticize Christian beliefs."Take a pound, take two" which is apparently an allusion to Matthew is also Christian, not Jewish, and sounds a bit sarcastic. which would make sense if she is talking to a Jew-hater. |
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| Regina Spektor – Consequence of Sounds Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| i think that this song is about what it says its about... its about sounds... and words more specifically. she writes her music, the guys on the corner free styling, the media, people living life. so, in saying that... most of u i would agree with. it is certainly about her making art and how that feels. its also about how the guys on the corner are just making noise instead of creating her heavily crafted songs. the part about the 60s and the cubical could be about how although protesting is cliche, it is still important to be heard.. or else no1 will notice when u r gone. my favorite part is about the media, which i think is obviously about fear mongering. | |
| Regina Spektor – Carbon Monoxide Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| i think, after reading the Plath poem that it is definitely inspired by the writing but it is not merely a "remake" of the poem but an allusion. I think the song tells the stories of three deaths due to carbon monoxide: first, a teenage girl in a war torn country during some kind of raid or something (could be WWII, maybe Russia, i don't know), second, two lovers escaping their lives through suicide, third, a daughter finding her father dead in his house, i think an elderly man just because i like thinking that there is a range of ages represented and because there is a noticeable absence of a mother. | |
| Regina Spektor – The Noise Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| i thinks this song is about how we stop listening to God when we become to busy with our lives. | |
| Regina Spektor – Prisoners Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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i think the song could about both prisinors and virgins. i think she is making social commentary on both at the same time. i think the prisinors are waiting for the walls to litterally come crumbling down while the virgins are waiting for sex (the 'trembling' orgasm). maybe... but really i think its more about the prisinors and morality. i always felt that "rise from the mud" was about a prisinors hope the the world will sort of end around him. the walls of the prison will come down and the ones who made the rules will all be dead and he can finally be free. my favorite line is "my momma thinks i'm grown but i'm really just little" |
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| Regina Spektor – Field Below Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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i think this song could be about russia. she left russia when she was 9 for NYC. i think she just misses the country. there aren't many roosters living downtown... i think she could have broadened the meaning tho it is a song of longing for people and places back home... away from the city. |
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| Regina Spektor – Baobabs Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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i think the song is regina's response to the book and her it could apply to a real woman's life. the rose in the book has thorns and tries to act coldly to the prince. regina is worried about letting down her guard too, who will she be without her cool and prickley exterior defense? i think baobabs are the uncontrolable factors in life. they will afect her relationship and later her children. I think the book got regina thinking about children, her own in the future in particular. Life the book warns, she doesn't want her children to grow up to quickly. while the prince does "tame" the fox, i think regina's analogy has more to do with his taming of the rose. this posissioning of regina as the rose is very interesting because i think most readers place themselves as the pilot (the narrator). i love the book, movie, and now song about the little prince. |
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| Regina Spektor – Back of a Truck Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| i think the song is about a fat girl who dies on her porch (monumental arms, her front porch gave way beneith her classified weight, she had eaten her dog and she was back for more). i think she is probably mexican (mother superior with carry on luggage charms refering to a catholic and the whole immigrant thing). i think she worked for miss lucy and was in danger of being deported by the cops. i think the things being sold in the truck are about how people think money can solve all problems... like if u have money u can buy smoke free lungs. i think the back of a head is possibly refering to a brain... because when people buy things they r really trying to buy themselves. we buy the best things and we think that makes us the best. i think regina is saying that the immigrants are here to find a better life but when the girl gets too much of a good things (food-- she gets fat) and she dies. i think the alien pods are drugs... maybe... although maybe regina was taking some drugs when she wrote this song haha... i'm sure she is laughing at this site trying to explain her songs. | |
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