| They Might Be Giants – Shoehorn With Teeth Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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"Teeth" is often an idiom for consequences. For example, if parliament passes a law requiring all natural blondes to register with a government agency, and the law does not specify any consequences for failure to register, then you might say "the law has no teeth." If the law is amended to specify jail time for those who fail to register, then you might say the amendment "gives the law teeth." To me, "shoehorn with teeth" means a way of enforcing conformity or compliance under the threat of penalty. I've never understood the "plane can never land" stanza, but the guy in the song would use his shoehorn with teeth to keep women in their objectified places, prevent the fact of his mortality from spoiling his fun, and basically make everyone else just STFU. |
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| The Decemberists – The Island: Come and See; The Landlord's Daughter; You'll Not Feel the Drowning Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I like lyricists who leave some room for interpretation much more than I like listeners who are pedantic about meaning, so please don't take me for the latter. This is just what I hear. It seems to me a song about imperialism, and perhaps about the birth of America. The intro is all swagger, the sound of marching feet and the ring of steel. "Come and See" is part sales pitch, part warning. The ominous Caliban in the crib is tended by Shakespear's voice of anti-colonialism and a member of a mythical aboriginal South American tribe. Will we not go home again because this is our new home? Because we will die first? Or because we are entering a place that will change us and it irrevocably? The rape in "The Landlord's Daughter" may at first be seen to be driven by a thirst for wealth (for sable, silver and gold). But like pirates and empires, who also find it easiest to justify their courses in economic terms, the rapist cares more for the act of the conquest, the exercise and proof of his own sick power. "Thou wilt deliver" is more important than whatever is being delivered. And "You'll Not Feel the Drowning" says more about the lying, cynical speaker than the little fool (who may be a dying soldier of the empire, asked to believe that her sacrifice was for noble reasons, or a victim of the invasion, being told that the carnage was all for his own good). Compare the dimes with the lush, inviting scenery in "Come and See", or the silver and gold, free for the taking in "Daughter". After the conquest, what does the little fool get? The thinnest and smallest of coins, not even the silver dollars of tradition, but ten cents. Empire, after all, is for the emperors. |
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