| The Beatles – Rocky Raccoon Lyrics | 8 years ago |
|
I'd say this song is definitely a straight forward story about a stubborn man who refuses to let life keep him down. What we take out of that story is entirely up to us. The reason I think this song is so relatable to me is because the main character has hit rock bottom. Lost the girl of his dreams and got bested in a struggle with the man who stole her away from him. Then a drunk doctor tries to bring him back down to earth. Despite all rhyme of reason, Rocky is optimistic about his future and refuses to let his failures get in the way of achieving the things he wants in life. Who hasn't been down in their dumps and wished they could have this kind of attitude concerning their own miserable existence? Rocky Raccoon reminds me that it's okay to fail as long as you're willing to take your lumps and get back on your feet. |
|
| Suzanne Vega – The Queen And The Soldier Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
This song is probably a metaphor for a relationship gone wrong. It's about a woman who has all of these men fighting for her and the one soldier who said that he's done fighting this war (for her heart). A healthy relationship, the girl will come to you. But men always seem to feel like they must battle for her affection which generally causes many women to distance themselves eventually. Some women are messed up in the head and they enjoy watching it because it gives them some power or control. The queen in this instance clearly has some dark secret or issue that she's not addressing. The soldier makes a final plea for her to just be real with him. He catches a glimpse of that weakness and for a moment you feel that she may just finally be his and stop all the nonsense. But as she pushes him out of the castle (her space), she betrays him and casts him aside to go back to doing what she knows what to do rather than conquer her problem and stop the madness. Ever play online games and all these guys flock around the girl? Essentially that. She has an issue with intimacy or feeling of worth. She can't handle not being the center of attention for whatever reason and it leads her to play these games and keep all of these men under her control to validate her own worth. She won't deal with it and when confronted she becomes way too emotional. What the soldier did is what many men face sometimes, a woman who won't be honest and open up. And they eventually get cut off or cut that person off. That's kinda what this song is about to me. |
|
| Modest Mouse – You're the Good Things Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Shoot I didn't realize I actually responded to this already LOL. | |
| Modest Mouse – You're the Good Things Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| I think the song is just about how a guy's situation puts him in a place where he can't really appreciate the things he has. He mentions all of these lovely things in life that we would enjoy but we're not in a situation or circumstance where we just can't enjoy it. So towards the end of the song he pretty much just gets so fed up with it that he would rather just not deal with it anymore. Because they're great things to have but he just isn't in the best place right now. | |
| Modest Mouse – Night on the Sun Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
To me this song is about growing up in a place where nobody ever changes or wants to change. The singer is reclusive because he has no other company so he is essentially just cycling his own essence in and out of his body (thinking a lot to himself and keeping to himself). He's saying to turn off the light because it's night on the sun because he wants to pretty much turn off his own awareness that there's more to life than what is around him. However, because nobody has any ambition or awareness he just wants to turn off that part of himself because it's keeping him from being able to relate to the people around him. He wants to be engaged and interact. That's why he's telling people to freeze their blood (their essence) and stab it into him. The metaphor signifies that even if he doesn't like it, at least it is some kind of stimulation in his life and better than getting lost in his own head all of the time. In this existence of his, he wants to find a way to make it all okay but it's hard. Even if he closes his eyes, the sun is still there burning brightly. Even if he wanted to unknow that there's more out there in life, he can't. So he talks about his environment during the last part of the song. He states that the town is underground, meaning it is really isolated and small. Even with all of the things stirring around in the world, nobody there cares. And they don't want him to care either. So he resigns himself to believe that he's just a crazy guy. That everything about this town is fine. Essentially he minimalizes his feelings and just deals with the world around him as "alright". At the very last part of the song he says that pretty much, we all die anyway. His own self-defeat is ultimately defined in this line. Who gives a shit what I think or what's happening here or anywhere else? We're just going to end up dirt in the earth anyway. Still, no matter how much you try, the sun is always going to be there burning bright despite all of your efforts to stop it from shedding light on your world. It's a very beautiful song and I could be wrong but I feel like listening to it often for the past 3-4 years gives me some credibility lol. |
|
| Modest Mouse – You're the Good Things Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| This song is about how the good things in life are right in your grasp, but reality keeps you from ever enjoying it. Instead of dealing with the frustration of never getting to enjoy the good things, you'd rather just tell them to go away so they stop taunting you with the things you can't have in life. Hence he's so happy and willing to help bury them away from life. | |
| Modest Mouse – Novocain Stain Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Pretty straight forward song. It's about the distortion of time. You lose your memories slowly till they're just sentences in your brain rather than living images. TV kind of replaces that when you look at some of the imagery of old farm life or the past. It's always dramatized or hollywood-esque and distorts our memories of things. All the while things are also changing around you as the smaller, simpler things are replaced by larger, corporate, complex buildings. Overall the song is about how quickly the old ways are dying and how quickly the new things are replacing them to the point where the old ways never seemed to even exist or matter. | |
| Modest Mouse – Baby Blue Sedan Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Overall theme I think is trying to adhere to a standard way of being and feeling completely different from that on the inside which ultimately leads to an unfulfilled feeling that devastates a person internally. | |
| Modest Mouse – Baby Blue Sedan Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I also think it's no coincidence that this song was added to the vinyl edition of the Lonesome Crowded West. | |
| Modest Mouse – Baby Blue Sedan Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
"A nice heart and a white suit and a baby blue sedan And I am doing the best that I can" I think it symbolizes the empty promises of the American Dream. You know, breadwinner father who brings home the paycheck. Has an ideal family, a lot of material goods. It's common for men in today's world to feel a bit disempowered with the family rapidly changing. Woman now working and the wage gap slowly closing. Men in America are losing the masculine image they used to have. Hence doing the best that he can signifies a desperate struggle. Most men nowadays express masculinity superficially through status, resources, and especially material. Masculinity represents any sense of worth in western culture. "All the eunuchs, they were standing in rows Singing, "Please stud us out just as fast as you possibly can" " Eunuchs are men who can't reproduce. In today's society we'd probably see them as woman-like or men without their manhood anymore. Demasculated. The fact that there's multiple eunuchs shows that it's not a single phenomenon. They're unmasculine men looking to look appealing to women. Studding out I think is more of an exaggeration for how desperate they are to seem like men again. "Sad song, last dance and no one knows who the band was And Henry, you danced like a wooden Indian" Someone mentioned Bukowski writing about a wooden Indian so I don't get this reference since I couldn't find it. "Except this one mattered and I felt it had a spirit And I shot the story because I didn't hear it that way" Suddenly he feels something that matters but the way he's been stuck in his thinking keeps him from accepting it. Since I think it's about masculinity in a lot of ways, guys tend to be divorced from their emotions in American culture. Not that they don't feel, we all do. But it's considered wimpy or gay to openly admit feelings and somethings even being in love and opening up is hard. For a guy who ends up finding something like that it seems normal to dismiss it and avoid having to leave yourself emotionally open. So masculinity keeps you from getting too close for comfort and you're emotionally unavailable or try to be. "And it's hard to be a human being And it's harder as anything else And I'm lonesome when you're around And I'm never lonesome when I'm by myself And I miss you when you're around" This is pretty straight forward. There's a lot of ambivalence. Contradicting feelings. Guys like to be by themselves and stick to themselves. But when around someone they love they might still hold onto that independent almost isolationist way of being. Deep down though they long for something deeper but can't bring themselves to admit that. The title itself is a car, which is often a symbol of true manhood. But it's baby blue which is a girls color. This also fits the entire overarching theme. |
|
| Modest Mouse – Blame It on the Tetons Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
For me this song kind of ties in with the "Bankrupt on Selling" song. Overall it's a song about giving credit where credit is due. The first part talks about his dog having the power to do things but not doing it. Nobody gives you credit for not doing something bad, even when it's a good thing. In the second part he seems to be looking for a scapegoat or a distraction. We try to act a certain way expecting some kind of result as if we deserve it. The third part is kind of obvious. He uses actors as his example as they win all the rewards and get all of the credit when there are cameramen, writers, producers, etc. that make it possible for them to stand there. In American society celebrities are a really big deal, especially actors or people on TV. He insinuates a room with a window, looking for a way out. It's kind of like tunnel vision. We see and focus on a single thing but we don't see everything. Yet at the same time we give credit to the one thing we do see with little to no recognition to the others. The fourth one talks about the spider web and the spider. Then about language. The idea is that we react to problems when they happen rather than preventing them. For example, we knew 20 years ago (probably longer) that we'd hit peak oil somewhere around now. But now that gas prices are hitting highs and oil is no longer a viable resource for longevity we are reacting now. But it's too late to make a smooth transition to alternative sources of power and we didn't bother trying to prevent this problem in the first place. We're careless and blame it on other things instead of ourselves as if these events just came out of nowhere. The last part is a little difficult but I think it's about changing our perspective on things. If you're a building burning or an ocean drowning, you're in a state of chaos and won't act rationally. It's inevitable that time is going to snuff us out the way we're doing things. A cloud is light and hovers over all of that, able to look down at it all. "Bankrupt on Selling" is a song that just talks about the two-faced nature of man and the frustration with living with that truth after losing the innocent perspective you once had. I think they tie together well just because America would like to tote it as an idealistic nation that is perfect in many ways but we tend to have the habits described in this song. In other words, we're not the perfect image we'd like to sell to others and each other. |
|
| Modest Mouse – Bankrupt on Selling Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Oh and the title of the song "Bankrupt on Selling" I think tells us on how he can no longer be sold to. In other words this realization of his over the true face of society and people in general has caused him to wise up. He can't be sold to anymore by actors or businessmen trying to act like your friends when they're not. The fake people can no longer win him over. He's seen past the illusion of life he was presented when he was younger. | |
| Modest Mouse – Bankrupt on Selling Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
This song seems to be about seeing past the outside appearance of western society. Not just physical beauty but through the false image people try to get people to see, the idealistic picture of a moral being. But in reality everybody is self-centered and looks out for numero uno. When he mentions college he just talks about society's value in it and how college somehow automatically grants you more of that false image to people. As a college student, just from observing other students, it's not true that college will make you somebody worthy of praise. You don't become an intellectual unless you really dedicate yourself to your studies and apply them. Most college students are more concerned with partying and cramming for tests they'll forget about afterwards. From my experience anyway. I think the last line about his lover is a metaphor for his innocence. Back when life seemed like it was full of possibility and seemed optimistic at youth, it becomes tainted as you grow up. The tone in his voice kind of highlights the conflict of knowing all of this but still clinging on to a love for life. Even though he's slightly depressed over this realization he's trying to find a way to cope with it. |
|
| Modest Mouse – Missed the Boat Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| The last few lines talk about how we have a lot of potential to do what we want to do, but we ourselves lack the experience necessary to actually get it done. | |
| Modest Mouse – Missed the Boat Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| When he talks about the little man telling little jokes and getting tiny laughs it's an obvious reference to the need for some kind of entertainment to keep ourselves from getting bored even if it isn't really that great. It might be a stretch to say that this keeps people from really thinking about how much better life could have been if they didn't miss the boat and how little they would have had to rely on mediocre means of entertainment and distraction. | |
| Modest Mouse – Missed the Boat Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
The song seems to talk a lot about the past. Tossing away opportunities we used to dream about for more mundane occupations and looking back on it in a regretful yet rational way. But many people truck on and try to convince themselves they have everything and that they are perfectly happy. If you look at society and our obsession with being happy all the time and making it a goal, we really don't want to admit we aren't. That there's something wrong with us. Missing the boat is obviously just a realization that there have been a lot of missed opportunities and a lot of potentials that could have been reached. Grown-ups sort of stop dreaming the things they did as children and may often believe it's too late to do anything to change that. It coincides with their Ocean Breathes Salty song a lot too. |
|
| Modest Mouse – Float On Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
After watching this video the song doesn't seem to be about optimism but more of a sarcastic and even satirical take on society. I mean just think about what life is like. We hear bad news all the time and just go on with our lives without really doing anything about it or thinking that there's anything wrong. We try to blot a lot of bad things out for example about where our meat comes from, how the animals slaughtered for it are treated before death, their conditions, the heavy toll it has on the environment, the effects it has on global warming, and that the more people buy the more this goes on. We don't think about it, we don't care, we just want to eat our burgers in peace and float on by. :) Course the symbolism he uses in the video are sheep and television. These two pretty much signify brainwashing. The sheep go on with their lives without a care in the world and not knowing what their fate is or even caring. Just going along with whoever is herding them. |
|
| Modest Mouse – Ocean Breathes Salty Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| It also seems that he's speaking from the experience of being wrapped up in something that you let so much in life pass you by. | |
| Modest Mouse – Ocean Breathes Salty Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I think it's clear that this stems from some loss, but maybe not necessarily a person. In general he's saying that whatever was there is now physically gone but the memory of it lingers. He had to think about it for a long time over whatever is now physically gone and it's personal to him because he refers to it as "you". It could be a drug reference, but whatever it is simply the spark that started the fire. | |
| Modest Mouse – Ocean Breathes Salty Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Also, when he says the ocean breathes salty, he seems to make a yin-yang type of observation. We tend to see the ocean as this vast, beautiful thing and we forget that it's salty as hell. Stop living in la-la land because it makes you forget that there are always drawbacks. | |
| Modest Mouse – Ocean Breathes Salty Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Seems like a lot of their more recent songs are about present day life. Living life in the present. He uses the example of looking forward to heaven and hell, which to some may be the end point and the only thing to look forward to in life. These used to signify the goals of people. His idea is that he hopes there is an afterlife, in other words a pay off for all of the work they put into their goals. But in trying to aim for these goals we have you forget to live in the present. When he brings up ideas like living again and growing old, he is basically saying we don't know what the outcome of the future is. So it is like a critique on those who live life fueled by their goals and expectations that forget that they are living here and now. Kind of like a reality check. | |
| Modest Mouse – Float On Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| "Ignorance is Bliss." If you watch this video you can see a lot of symbolism involving sheep, TV, and the hand over the heart signifying a pledge to the flag. I thought about martial law recently and how when I told people they'd just laugh and nod or just ignore it. I believe this song just marks a level of ignorance people have in being happy when the world they live in is so much darker than that. "Why even care?" He starts yelling this at the end of the song. | |
| Suzanne Vega – Tom's Diner Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I always thought of it as a song about a woman who is distracting herself in life, talking about everything she notices. At the end of the song she gives note to church bells and someone familiar. The whole chorus itself of dooo dooo dooo doo kind of shows she's keeping herself busy. She may also be a sad and lonely person too, which I wouldn't doubt. | |
| Secret Machines – Nowhere Again Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
This song is about how we constantly progress and advance while our simplistic, non robotic home lives degradate because we're conforming to popular ideals and the pace of everyday living. For example, parents that both go to work and leave their kids at home. People who have obligations to fulfill deadlines and forget why they're fulfilling those deadlines. You can see the woman in the mirror reference as a girl who is constantly reflecting on herself and pulls her skirt up constantly but hesitantly. This shows the trend of how girls used to dress more conservatively and eventually switched to more revealing outfits to keep up with the need to look attractive. However, they're still uncomfortable about their appearance. In the morning we usually plan out our days and become stressed out easily doing all this planning every day. The warming the blood flow with poison might be drugs but it could also take the form of some other way to cope with the situation. In other words, a distraction. The rain reference refers to how life is being clouded by this everyday pace of life. He hopes that one day he won't be part of it and can finally just sit back and relax. The colors are obviously a reference to the beauty of that life. He just wants to break out of this routine. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.