submissions
| U2 – Ultraviolet (Light My Way) Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I love the last through runs of the chorus in this song when the ethereal, larger-than-life spacious stuff is going on in the background. So epic. |
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| U2 – I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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I was quite disappointed when I first heard this song, it kind of seemed too poppy and contrived for U2, and the lyrics seemed kind of soft--it seemed U2 had served me a piece of cheese. It really began to grow on me after I saw how they did the club version live.
It's grown on me immensely; there's a lot of subtle detail in the lyrics. The first lines aren't just a happy image about rainbows and peace--it's drawing a contrast between Bono and his wife Ali. Bono is constant rebel and can never rest, meanwhile, he's saying she likes to live peacefully. However, the next lines say how there's a part of Bono that really wants to retreat into quiet reflection when he's signing "Sunday Bloody Sunday," and there's really a part of Ali that wants Bono to slap himself when he writes something like "Grace" or "If You Wear That Velvet Dress." It's about never being too sure of yourself, about reserving the right to be more than you have been--that's what I think Bono's trying to get across with the line "the right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear," despite the fact that this line has more of a novelty-shock quality than a profound poetic nature like I wish it did a little more.
Oh yeah, a little shoutout to Bruce Cockburn (as in God Pt. II) with the darkness/sparks of light line. |
submissions
| Creed – What's This Life For Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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I kind of agree with Creedrulz, he's saying you don't have to overcome the world. It could also mean that Scott believes that God is gracious enough to forgive a child who commits suicide, kind of along the lines of the idea that they were never given a chance to grow into a state where they could know reality. Obviously, I don't know the real story behind the song and it could have been about someone who committed suiced as an adult--I don't know. I myself, though I am a committed Christian, am somewhat unsure even of what I think of whether God forgives suicide. I definitely empathize with people who commit suicide though.
By the way, does anyone think about what "God damned" even means? God literally damned the "score," that is, the account of wrongs each person has done--he washes it away for those who want it. The phrase "God damned" isn't in itself really bad at all, it's only bad in that saying it without thinking who you're talking about is the creator of the universe. I don't even know if it qualifies as taking "God's name in vein" either, because God's name isn't "God"--it's "Yahweh," or "I AM."
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submissions
| U2 – Stand Up Comedy Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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Wow...that's quite the post there. While I, as a fellow Christian, respect your passion about defending the Gospel, I think you might be missing just what the song is referring to.
The "helping God crossing the road like a little old lady" reminds me a lot of the passage in 2 Samuel 6 where God struck Uzzah dead for reaching out to grab the Ark of the Covenant when the oxen stumbled. Uzzah's intentions were fine, but he forgot that God is the most powerful force in the universe--that he is infinite and mysterious and does not actually live contained in a box, and that such a box therefore does not need to be cradled like a newborn child.
The people who I feel are "reaching out to grab the Ark" or "helping God across the street like a little old lady" in the most visible sense today are those who make it their calling to revise and propose possible scenarios through which both God could have used evolution to create life, as if it's too inconceivable to imagine a God who didn't do things this way, who really created a perfect world the way He said He did, and THEN things started degenerating after the Fall.
Invert the chord now. There are people who claim that Scripture is 100% no-nonsense, not poetry and nothing but a textbook. This is clearly not the case. I believe that the Bible is the God-inspired Scripture. But it is not a textbook. It does not have a logical, topic by topic format with subheadings and bullet points and definitions. When addressing the Big Bang Theory, why is it so beyond our imaginations to consider that God saying "let there be light" may be quite similar to an explosion from a single point? Doesn't the idea fit even better with God than with some nothingness turning into something? Doesn't a Godly worldview have a larger upside anyway?
I don't say this to convince you that this is clearly the way it is. I'm not asserting that I know exactly the lab-report process by which God created the Universe. I'm just saying that it should not be our mission to do this as we recognize that it's not what we're called to do. That's the point. We have to get over the need for certainty here. Faith has to be rooted in a reverence for awesome power.
What we are called to do, however, is to love one another. That's the point of this song, I feel. It seems like Bono is singing from both sides of a spectrum, kind of pointing out the folly of both the people trying to extract physics formulas out of the Word as well as the "rock stars" who shout big ideas they don't even know the meaning of. The "Comedy" in "Stand Up Comedy" is in this discrepancy. By the way, I think Bono partially identifies himself with the latter group, though I myself feel he's much better grounded than most songwriter-philosophers.
There are a few things Jesus said no lack of certainty. One is His commands to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind" and "love thy neighbor"--the two greatest commands. He also tells us firmly that He is "the way, the truth, and the life [and that] no one comes to the Father but by [Him]" (John 14:6). These are two pretty important things to know for sure. The rest of the time, Jesus answered most questions with a parable. Why do we feel the need to put Christ's parables in our little converter-notes box to serve our insatiable desire for certainty? |
submissions
| U2 – Discothèque Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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This song is so strange yet so awesome--it's a dance track that kind of questions one's integrity and intentions on a dance floor. Bono said it was a riddle about love--it really is pretty deep. Sometimes I think he's kind of trashing the trash that's dancing in American culture, which he very well may be--I kind of think it's like being lost in the haze of people and bodies and a bunch of different situations and relationships going on all around and wondering, what the heck is going on? What am I looking for? It's kind of like a faint hum of clarity amid a loud buzz of confusion--it's knowing in the back of your mind that clarity is there but accepting that you won't always be able to hear it all that well. |
submissions
| The Killers – Human Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This song is awesome, the lyrics are infinitely deep (I don't quite understand the knocks on poor songwriting), and a point of further interest is that the song deals with what it is to be a dancer, while at the same time, the song itself seems to have the feel of a dancing song. I don't know about anyone else, but I think it would be pretty cool if they played this at my high school dance. |
submissions
| The Wallflowers – One Headlight Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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I saw this song as sort of the despair of our nation. The funeral isn't necessarily representing our nation's DEATH, per se, but it is an image of a lamentation over hardship. It also makes sense to me that the girl is a real girl who has fallen victim to the negative parts of our society (ugliness and greed), and then in the second part, the pickup truck also represents America--the auto industry is what flung the country headlong into economic development, and certainly is a wonderful invention if you look at it like a child, but then, it's also not the most advanced thing out there anymore; we're so proud and fixated on it, especially here in Michigan, where I live. Because we hold it to be the most glorious thing and expect all of our economic success to continue to come from it, public sentiment is by default against the flow of new ideas. That's what I think of when I hear the chorus: "Come on, try a little. Nothing is forever," as in, it's time to move on a continue to be a dynamic society, not just settling for whatever made us happy lately. This also comes to mind when I hear the part, "It feels like Independence Day, but I can't escape this parade." We strike something great by achieving independence and then we create, incidentally, probably, a system in which deviation from a norm is hard to get to, even though IT is really what got us to where we are, not celebrating the here and now. I think the American flag in the video supports my idea as well. |
submissions
| Rush – The Spirit Of Radio Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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Ok, so this song, as said is to underline the growing problem of advetisers wanting to capitalize on ad time. However, I believe this song is much more than that; I think it's an amazing romanticization of something many of us take to be as a secondary medium--the radio. First of all, there's the wonder of its physical possibility--how can music be spread out over dozens of miles invisibly and instantly. That's the first part of the chorus. Then comes the real poetic part--"emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength"--I love the combination of abstract and tangible components here, and it's incredible how well it truly states how one feels when they hear their favorite song on the radio: "It's almost like they knew I wanted to hear this!" and the lost concept of the present one can get while staring out of the window listening to music, the unfolding melody invoking an ever-expanding line of thought. When I first truly listened to the words of this song, it was like a double of the feeling it describes--I felt this feeling as the music discussed this feeling. It's just a universally encompassing song, and I hope everyone can see into that. |
submissions
| Train – My Private Nation Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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To me, the "private nation" is a self assurance learned over time in the midst of a crazy, sordid world. |
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| Newsboys – Something Beautiful Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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I really like the way this song sounds--it kinds of gives a sense of timelessness. I think this fits the idea of the song well, at least to me, because I think it's talking about the pure and irrevocable pleasure that simple things in life can give you, but the things that are pointed out are just examples, and the wonderful thing is that this song is just a celebration that this world is full of things that can make us happy, even though we might not even realize it sometimes. It's like a celebration of that "YES" feeling when you just did something that you never thought you could do. In another sense, I think that the song is kind of a tribute not only for experiences, but for the ability to observe the world, as in the idea of Ralph Waldo Emerson's transparent eyeballs, and marvel in the detectable wonder that it has, as if it were a painting. |
submissions
| Creed – In America Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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Going along with money becoming people's god,
Don't you find it interesting that the phrase, "Annuit Coeptis", which means, "Providence has favored our undertakings" is printed on money? |
submissions
| Barenaked Ladies – Running Out Of Ink Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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I think this song is about someone (probably Paige himself) who isn't going to be happy until he's the best (I wished that it was me), and then he soon is the best, and immediately has regrets because he kind of sold himself out and is once again wishing he were different (I wished it wasn't me).
Two small things I also liked in the song were the part where he throws the bag off the bridge and then, naturally, wishes he wouldn't have. When he says, "I wish that I could swim, I wish that I could drink", it makes me think that he's thinking of ways to get the bag back: one being to swim down and get it, two being to drink all of the water out of the lake so that he could just walk over and get the bag. I don't know if that's anywhere near the intented meaning of these lyrics, but I think it's hilarious.
I also like the play on words of something "driving a man to drink" from "drinking and driving" |
submissions
| Barenaked Ladies – I Can I Will I Do Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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I think that he knows he hasn't been doing a good job being there for her, or whatever, there's something he hasn't done for her that he should have, because he says "I can and I will" as if he's promising to better, and then, almost as an afterthought, he says, "and I do", as if saying, "wait a minute, why am I admitting I was wrong?" |
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| Barenaked Ladies – It's All Been Done Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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I don't take the time periods mentioned in this song to suggest anything about reincarnation, rather, I think the notable events in history are mentioned to show that the couple's partnership is so familiar and they've known each other so long that even if they think they can go their seperate ways, they can't, because they are fixed together by their relationship being put in the history books, so to speak. |
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| Barenaked Ladies – Down to Earth Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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I think this is another great example of BNL pulling a random topic out of the blue that somehow people can relate to very well, and then writing a song about it. To me, this song seems to be about how you come to admire someone on TV because their character is something you'd love to have in a friend or girlfriend but then you realize how improbable everything is in the character's world and that the actor playing the character is probably has the same faults as those who surround you, and the actor does not even realize that perhaps they would be better off acting more like their character in real life. |
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| Barenaked Ladies – Angry People Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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Maybe this is just because I love literary references, but does anyone else make anything of the "We are all phonies too" as a reference to The Catcher in the Rye? It's kind of funny and it makes sense, because this song kind of seems like an anti-CITR, because the main character is trying to get people out of their innocence (or ignorance). |
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| Barenaked Ladies – Quality Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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I think this song is about some unspecified upper class Americans who think that they are a real big deal just because they have a view that America is the greatest country and everyone else is a step below. I think the person is also kind of in love with everything, having the "it's all good" attitude. This is supported by my theory that the part that says "My quality biology enhanced with high technology" is about male enhancement drugs. Another thing that supports my thought that the person has a skewed viewpoint of America in the big picture is when he says "my...inspired some Greek mythology" -- obviously impossible when Greek mythology existed long before America (and our protagonist) did. Also, there's an error in the posted lyrics; in the end, it should say, "my quality neurology is studied in theology"-- which is another thing evidincing the person's ego, because this basically is saying, "I have the mind of a god". |
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