| Regina Spektor – 20 Years of Snow Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It's interesting that the father and the daughter are both dying breeds, but for different reasons, I think. He's a dying breed because he's sequestered from the world, tired, waiting out the rest of his life. She's a dying breed because she's about to change, leaving behind her twenty years of cold clean for the softness of moss and mouths. Although I don't really understand what the navigators and their mappy maps, or pissing on sugar cubes, have to do with anything, or what they mean. Well, maybe the navigators and maps and moldy heads are the people who need some outside source telling them where to go, instead of relying on their own head to make decisions. But pissing on sugar cubes? Still puzzling. |
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| Regina Spektor – Après Moi Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I love that this song is so powerful and yet so wide open to interpretation. For me, it's interesting revisiting it. When I first heard it (and commented here), I was completely caught up in the immanent breakup of my long-term relationship, so that it was all I saw. It was a very narrow, specifically personal interpretation of a very broad song. Still, I'm surprised there isn't more of that personal interpretation going on. Most of the comments here are rather academic. |
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| Cold War Kids – Audience Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I think the only part that's sung differently than the lyrics in the booklet is after the Mojave desert - sounds to me too like "sing for the sun" I dig this tune. I first heard it after buying the album, playing it in my car on the way home, windows down on one of the first mild days of the year, deep blue evening sky and streetlights gliding by, moon high above - I was their audience of one, and the world seemed right just then. |
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| Natalie Walker – Waking Dream Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I interpret it as being about unrequited love, wanting to be with someone and being able to fully imagine it to the point where it seems real, and then realizing the mess of reality. I guess lost love would fit with this, too. Love is a lot like a drug that way, one that can get you higher than you ever would have thought possible without it, and lets you down really really hard. This song is actually sharply painful for me to listen to, gorgeous as it is. |
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| Cold War Kids – Against Privacy Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I can kinda see the whole anarcho-syndicalist thing... but I feel like the privacy refered to is not private property, but private thoughts. "We will talk about welfare,/ we will talk about sex/ Talk about the Pope in Prada shoes,/ Nobody gets upset" It seems more about laying it all out on the line and not worrying about how other people will take it, not getting bent out of shape about other people's opinions. Sounds like advocacy for intellectual intercourse. I love it. | |
| Dirty Projectors – Useful Chamber Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| This sounds like a love song. And, I gotta say, it's my kind of love song. | |
| Dirty Projectors – Cannibal Resource Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I'd be hesitant to say that this is "obviously" about any particular thing, though maybe you know something I don't... The vegetarian stance is an interesting idea (btw, herbivore v. carnivore - "v." = omnivore), as is the Iraq war slant. It seems to me that specifics like this are usually reflections of the opinions of those doing the interpreting. My own personal interpretation is looser than those. I hear it as being about the general thoughtlessness and fear and anxiety that pervades human behavior. Which includes inhumane treatment of animals, and war, but also more mundane things like road rage, boring jobs, gossip... Ultimately, it seems hopeful and empowering. We're all trying to get along in the world. | |
| Led Zeppelin – Celebration Day Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think IsmAvatar's got the right idea. It definitely sounds political, but I think in an even broader sense than the racial Civil Rights Movement. That's clearly part of it, but since "her name is Brown OR White OR Black" it's more about everyone, and the way racial tension can become a tool of oppression of all people. And let's not get so angry about other people's musical tastes. I don't really know why someone would bother to leave a comment about a song they don't like, but we don't have to bash their choice of band (or tell them to brun [sic] in hell) because of it. I like Pink Floyd too. A little more floaty, but still good. |
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| Regina Spektor – Après Moi Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Oh, wait... lucifermoose already filled in my missing gaps a year ago on page 2! Makes sense, and it fits in with being afraid of being so emotionally invested in another person. But I disagree that the narrator has so strong feelings while in love. Quite the opposite, I think she is afraid of the strength of her own emotions, and doesn't allow herself to feel them fully, and denies them. Perhaps this latest relationship she's fleeing got a bit to far under her skin, and that's why the fracturing of the lines at the end happens - she's close to falling apart (which is the whole point of the song). It's about the strange dichotomy of strength and weakness, and how vulnerability can actually make you stronger. Most people, including the narrator (and, sadly, me), don't live their life this way, but put up all sorts of emotional and psychological defenses - walls, shields, barriers - to "protect" themselves from other people. But in the end, the stronger your armor is, the weaker you are underneath it. |
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| Regina Spektor – Samson Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I don't list this song at the top of my favorites of hers, but it certainly tugs my heartstrings more than any other. I cry every time. At different places, depending on how I'm feeling. Sometimes it's as soon as the first "I loved you first." Sometimes it's later, but I can never get past "but they're just old light" Somehow, that line is one of the most tragic. |
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| Cold War Kids – Pregnant Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think it's about lies, but also half-lies. Someone lying, but making their own truth known - "tricks of the trade to make a whisper a shout". The lies are sweet, innocuous sounding things, but their underlying, implied (and yet plausibly deniable) meaning is very hurtful - "deft as a surgeon's knife carving through bone" |
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| Cold War Kids – Hang Me Up to Dry Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I have to admit, my first attempt to look past the laundry was a purely sexual interpretation. A sort of "leave me alone, woman! I'm tired after such a long day" take on it. But I suppose I'm just easily distracted. And dirty. Now I see the relationship metaphor in it. I think there's something I'm missing about the line "I'm pearly like the white-whi-whites of your eyes". Why pearly? And the fact that he's talking about the whites of the eyes - it's a strange part to focus on. |
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| Regina Spektor – That Time Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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BellaCaracol has hit the nail on the head with this one. The tone of the narrator is light, but that comes from the carelessness with which she has been living her life, and the lack of seriousness she has toward fairly serious things. The pigeon could be a mirror of their lives (or specifically of her boyfriend's life) - their recklessness will ultimately be their downfall. But this darkness starts IMMEDIATELY! The first line is her finding a human tooth. That's messed up, dude. And then it drastically alters in tone to fun sexual games. I think every line beautifully paints a portrait of a girl who is leading a fun, frivolous, dangerous, careless life. She is thoughtless about many things (like smoking, mooching off her friends when she's broke, the tooth - "hey, remember finding a piece of someone's body? That was fun, huh?"), but she has a desire for depth (Shakespeare) that's easily derailed (abandoning Shakespeare for cereal boxes), and she has compassion (trying to save the pigeon). She's got a better chance of turning her life around than her boyfriend does. With all of these things that she's been doing, what has he done? He was involved in deciding to kiss anywhere except the mouth (gee, I wonder where his suggested kissing place was?). And the lyric with the pigeon should read "OUR building's playground". So he lives there too, but she's the only one trying to save the poor bird, and she has too bury it alone, too. Then he ODs. Then he ODs AGAIN. I like to think she leaves him after this. |
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| Regina Spektor – Après Moi Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Wow, I'm pretty surprised that no one else got the same meaning from this that I did. It was the first meaning that came to me when I heard it, and I feel confident that it's right, or at least the main interpretation: It's a break-up song. The narrator is leaving someone she used to love but no longer does, and is hardening herself against the emotional pain she is about to inflict. The fear of feeling empathy for that pain is was causes that millitary march feeling, and why she has to repeat "I must go on standing" - for fear that she may break if she allows herself to take responsability for hurting someone who had been so close to her. She rejects this responsability with several lines: Apres moi, le deluge; After me comes the flood -I'm leaving, what happens when I'm gone isn't my concern. You can't break that which isn't yours -Your heart breaks on its own, it's nothing to do with me. I'm not my own, it's not my choice -It's not my fault that I don't love you any more. I don't have the meaning of the "Be afraid of..." section quite as nailed down, but I still think it fits. The narrator is afraid of her strength being taken from her, her own heart being broken by the one she is breaking now. But it's illogical: the lame don't really inherit your legs, and so on. The fact that the vulnerable emotion of the song is in another language is another defense. I love this song, all pain and fear and bad decisions. |
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