submissions
| Amanda Palmer – Runs in the Family Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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I'm thinking it's about feeling helpless about your mental illness BECAUSE of its diagnosibility. It gets treated like it's a sprained ankle or a sore throat or something, a lot of the time, and that almost brushes it off. How can I phrase this? It's like saying that it's less real, that you're less in hell, because it's got a name in a textbook somewhere and they can give you some pills. Like oh, you caught depression from your mother's side of the family, as if it were the chicken pox. At the same time, though, there's this big taboo about it, as if there's something deeply wrong with you if you happen to inherit it, so it's kind of a double standard. Is it an understandable, treatable malady, or is it a mysterious dysfunction that sets you apart from society? Should she blame her family genes, her life, herself? Society gives some pretty mixed messages, especially in terms of saying one thing and acting like another. I think it's largely criticizing the view of it as something you ought to just get a prescription for and shut up about like it's some kind of shameful family secret. |
submissions
| Amanda Palmer – Ampersand Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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I skipped over this song, initially, because "Runs in the Family" had caught all my attention. Now that I've really listened to it, though, it has to be one of my favorite songs ever, and frankly I wish I had written the last stanza, several years back.
It's about how easy it is to let someone else (especially someone crazy) dominate your life until you're practically shoved out of it, and until everything you do is done to accomdate the other person, because they're fragile and they NEED you, right? and if you upset him/her by leaving, then it will be on you if something happens to them. I think this song is a major rejection of that, in particular. It's saying not only that she doesn't want to be so dependent on someone else, but that she doesn't want someone else that dependent on HER, anymore--that ultimately everyone is their own responsibility, and that there's a differece between being willing to die for someone who is your equal partner (who loves you for YOU and not for being their imagined savior), and allowing yourself to be killed off by becoming so enmeshed in an unhealthy relationship. |
submissions
| Rhett Miller – Singular Girl Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i think this is about being in a relationship with someone who won't open up to you, but seems to do so with everyone else. she'll even tell the television, but not you. so you try to convince her she can trust you by telling her how much she means to you. |
submissions
| Tom Petty – You And I Will Meet Again Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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I like this song. It feels like a bittersweet goodbye, to me--knowing things can't work at the moment, but that maybe someday they will. I think it's about the moment you decide to let go and stop trying to control your entire life, and trusting that things will work themselves out. |
submissions
| Clem Snide – Jews for Jesus Blues Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i love this song; it's so winningly tongue in cheek. being from the virginia/tennessee border myself, i can appreciate his inspiration for it, too--there are a lot of people who seem to feel bullied into believing in jesus, like if they doubted for even a second, he'd show up at their door and kick their asses. i recently made a mix cd of religiously-themed songs by secular artists, and this was the first track. |
submissions
| The Dresden Dolls – First Orgasm Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i wouldn't say that i LIKE this song, per se, but perhaps that's because i can relate to it a bit too much. not in the literal sense, exactly, but in feeling so flat and lonely that not even your own sex drive interests you. it's about as interesting as the rice chex you're eating, or checking your email--just something you do out of habit. i don't think it's even really about masturbation being empty so much as it is about having lost interest in your own life. |
submissions
| The Dresden Dolls – Thirty Whacks Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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other people keep telling you they're there for you, but in practice, never seem to really care.
"you're always telling me that you're dying to know, but you're not really listening."
on the other hand, if you do confide in them, they begin to treat you like something fragile and unpredictable.
i think this song is about the helpless, angry feeling that arises from being trapped in a cycle of depression. you know you're going to ruin your personal relationships, because nothing can stop someone who has loss interest in fixing his or her life--"it's no mystery, you should obviously go."
and in the background, there's always the bitter knowledge that you technically could fix your life, even though in the everyday, you feel too overwhelmed to do it. |
submissions
| Thom Yorke – The Eraser Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i think this song is about a relationship between two people, though not necessarily a romantic one. it's about realizing how depressing it is to be knowingly using someone else, and knowingly allowing them to use you in return, possibly because you feel you deserve it. eventually, though, no matter how much you try to "erase" the reality of the other person and see them as an object, your guilty conscience will become louder and louder, and their presence will infiltrate your entire life.
my main complaint to this being about global warming is the use of "you." it's possible, i suppose, but it seems like a very strange choice to refer to an environmental phenomenon as if it were a person; the lines "you know all the answers, so why do you ask?" or "you're like a kitten with a ball of yarn," for instance, wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. unless global warming is the speaker, which is even funnier. |
submissions
| James Blunt – Tears And Rain Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i think this is about reaching the point where even the good things in your life are only a distraction, because you've let the problems fester until they overwhelm everything else. |
submissions
| Glen Phillips – Duck and Cover Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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this is one of the most beautiful songs ever, especially if you hear a live version. the lyrics never fail to make me feel better about life. |
submissions
| The Avett Brothers – Hand-Me-Down Tune Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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this song is incredibly sweet. it's that helpless feeling you get when you love someone so much that you doubt you deserve them...when you want to create something perfect for them, and find that you're always falling short.
a pretty end to the album. |
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