| The Legendary Pink Dots – Pennies for Heaven Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Playing off the idea that you can't buy your way to heaven, yet many religious groups and leaders have done things apparently for the sake of profit. It's a rather common theme of Legendary Pink Dots' songs, especially on "The Maria Dimension" - trying to sift through the religious imagery and norms to see what's really behind it. | |
| The Legendary Pink Dots – True Love Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I actually find this song pretty frightening - maybe it's because of the frantic-sounding musical background, or the fact that the song's lyrical speaker is so willing to do anything for the object of his affection, or that last stanza that abstractly suggests their relationship is abusive, apathetic, or otherwise unhealthy. The scariest line, to me, is "If love is really blind/I'd pluck out both my eyes for you" - a symbolic metaphor turned into something extreme, painful, and disturbing. The title of the song - "True Love" - it gives the impression that love is measured by how far you're willing to go for someone who may not even truly care about you. Which is true to an extent, but it shouldn't come with the willingness to hurt yourself for no reason, just because someone says you should. Frightening stuff, yes. But I enjoy it anyway. | |
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Cloud Zero Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I agree with the interpretations regarding addiction (especially in light of the lines of the addressed person losing their money and friends - spending all their money on whatever it is they're addicted to and having the addiction and behavior alienate the people they know). An interesting thing, though, is the title of this song and its placement on the album ("Any Day Now"). It comes right after "Waiting For the Cloud", and its title is "Cloud Zero". What's even odder is that, to me, "Cloud Zero" sounds like a musical and atmospheric sequel to "Waiting For the Cloud" (well, the first and last parts, not so much its middle part). And yet, the lyrics to this one don't in any way make me think of "Waiting For the Cloud". There's probably no relation between the two songs - after all, I have noticed that Edward Ka-Spell has (or had; more in the past, I think) a habit of using clouds as symbolism or lyrical imagery. At any rate, it's a very pretty song, in a sad and wistful sort of way. It's relaxing to listen to, and it has calmed me down many a time from intense and unpleasant emotion. |
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| Throbbing Gristle – Zyklon B Zombie Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| While we're talking about Velvet Underground references, I'd say that the "kiss the shiny leather" is derived from "kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather", a line found in the Velvet Underground's "Venus In Furs". That's what I first thought of, anyway. | |
| Black Sabbath – Hand Of Doom Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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You know the Velvet Underground song "Heroin"? Is it just me, or is this sort of like Black Sabbath's equivalent of that? Also, about how the Vietnam veterans would have had access to heroin because they were in Asia...I should have been able to have made that connection, but I never even though about it until now. |
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| Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi's Dead Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Ha, I totally agree with everything everybody's said about this being the REAL goth music as opposed to Marilyn Manson and the similar singers and bands parading under the label of "goth". To me, goth music means Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nico, and their ilk. To me, goth music is pretty much the same thing as post-punk; pretty much my favorite kind of music. (By the way, I'm a teenager - 15 years old at the time of writing - which means that at least we're not ALL listening to that dreadful stuff they insist on calling goth. Some of us still appreciate the old school stuff.) Anyway, regarding the song itself - I once heard that it was supposed to be sort of a parody of old horror film cliches, but some see it as celebratory of said movies. I don't know enough about Bela Lugosi to say how this relates to his death or life or anything. I always thought that when he sang "Undead" he was really saying "I'm dead". When I realized that the word was "undead", though, I decided that it probably meant that, although Bela Lugosi himself is dead, the influential films he acted in are still around and in that regard he is not dead. |
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| Siouxsie and the Banshees – Happy House Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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At first I thought the song was about escapism, specifically the kind that comes with living in or being in really unpleasant circumstances (like Siouxsie dealing with her alcoholic father or something), but still pretending that everything is alright. I could work this out based on the music that went along with it. It's very creepy, and not at all the comforting Happy House it'd have you believe. "There's room for you if you say 'I do'" means that the people she knows can join in her little world, if they play by her rules (that is, not acknowledging the rules). But should they refuse to do so and do something to shatter the version of the world she's constructed, she will exclude them from this reconstruction of her circumstances. "Don't say no or you'll have to go." The drugs idea works as well, based on the "waste a day" part. If you go with that version of the song, then it's about people who take drugs and are aware of the negative consequences but don't care and pretend that nothing bad will come of it. I always figured that drugs could easily be a part of it but didn't have to be the whole thing. Then I heard about the mental illness interpretation. I listened to the song with that idea in mind, and it made great sense to me. It all still applies, what I've just interpreted, but in a different way. I like to think of songs as having lots of different meanings at once. All of these ideas could be totally valid at the same time. I don't think it's so much what the song is about, period, so much as it is what the song is about to YOU. That's my idea. |
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| Nirvana – The End (The Doors cover) Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This is quite easily one of the funniest things I have ever heard. At first I didn't get it, but then I listened to it again, and it was funny. This is such a perfectly Kurt-like thing to do. For anyone who wants to hear the song but hasn't, it's on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZthOZi-U0Y |
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| Talking Heads – I'm Not In Love Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I wasn't paying attention to the lyrics when I first heard it (maybe because the lyrics were pretty hard for me to hear in the first place). I thought "I'm not in love" really meant that he WAS in love, but he was denying it (maybe because he thought it embarrassing to be in love? It made sense at the time). Now, reading it, I think it has a different meaning. I think it's more about how you might find yourself liking a person, but you're not sure if you're really in love with them. It might seem kind of weird to some people who have never experienced a love relationship before, but given the right experiences, a person could understand that idea quite easily. David Byrne seems to write a lot about complicated and slightly odd experiences in human relationships and humanity in general. Incidentally, when I first heard More Songs About Buildings And Food (the first Talking Heads album I ever listened to), I didn't particularly care for any of the songs save this one. Now Talking Heads are one of my favorite bands. |
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| Current 93 – Anyway, people die Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I'd say that this song is typical of what David Tibet usually writes. That is, it sort of sounds like some inner musings shared with the listener with some religious themes, mostly pondering themes like life and death and how everything works. I suppose you could say that all the little symbols and pieces of imagery used in the song represent specific things (and I have a pretty good feeling that the bit about a cross appearing between a stag's horns refers to Saint Eustace, who became a Christian when he was hunting one day and had the same vision). I prefer not to really try to figure it out. It's rather confusing, really, and I don't think I really have all the knowledge of the symbols to figure it out properly. Who knows, I wouldn't be surprised if some of it made sense only in Mr. Tibet's mind. No offense to him or anything, but he often writes like he's insane - which I not only don't mind but I like. It always makes the narrators of his songs sound like they're insane. (Most people who are familiar with my musical tastes know that I'm fond of music that seems to be made by lunatics or else really was.) So I take it as sort of an idea of him thinking about death and people dying and the way that works, and him phrasing it in terms that make sense in his mind. That's what it means to me. |
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| Janis Joplin – Buried Alive In The Blues Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I've never seen the lyrics to this song until now, actually. It was an instrumental on "Pearl" (the album on which it appears). As far as I heard, the lyrics were never recorded because Janis died before she could sing it. | |
| Pink Floyd – Lucy Leave Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I don't believe the song was written about drugs (psychedelic or otherwise). I think that it was written as simply a bluesy love song, no more than it appears to be. However, I found out about this song because my best friend and I were talking about Pink Floyd, and she mentioned this song, and I said, "That title seems like it predicts something..." ("Lucy" is sort of a codeword we have for LSD.) She thought it was funny and so did I. So later I decided to read the lyrics, just to see if they could be interpreted as having some sort of drugs meaning. (Yes, I am in the habit of taking songs and interpreting them to have other meanings that they obviously didn't. Not always about drugs; just things that they suggest to me.) Sure enough, they did. My belief regarding the meaning of songs is that if you want to think a song is about something, then that's what it's about to you. If this song makes you think more of drugs than love, then that's what it means to you. If it doesn't particularly make you think of drugs and you think it is what it seems to be, then that's equally correct. I think that the meaning of songs is pretty much subjective, and that whatever you think of when you hear a song or read its lyrics, that's what it means to you. |
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| Band of Skulls – I Know What I Am Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I don't know about other people, but in my case, it's because I was unable to find a copy of the album in physical form, so I downloaded it off of iTunes so I could listen to it, but as a result had no lyrics to read from and had to rely on what I heard. (Though, I kind of had a feeling that what I thought I heard was bound to be at least somewhat incorrect.) So that's why I posted these useless lyrics. | |
| Robyn Hitchcock – The Man Who Invented Himself Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I've heard that this song is supposed to be about Syd Barrett. I don't actually get it, myself. I'm a huge fan of him (Syd Barrett, that is), and I don't really see how much here pertains to him. Well, no...I suppose you could take the second verse to be talking about how his nervous breakdown was believed by some to be partly caused by his fame, which is ironic, seeing as he probably fully intended to make it big ("he landed right on target/But the target rolled away/And it left him pointing nowhere). And the last verse also makes sense, somewhat...in the sense that it's the sort of thing that would have been applicable in his situation but not in a specific way. Alright, I sort of get it. It probably makes total sense in Mr. Hitchcock's mind, which, as an artist, I can understand. (You know, saying all this has probably made me sound really weird somehow...) | |
| Talking Heads – The Girls Want To Be With The Girls Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Hmmm, nysh has a pretty good, simple explanation for these lyrics. I actually didn't think it had anything to do with love/sex/romantic relationships at all. Maybe it's just because I was thinking about the song in terms of what I see in my own life, but I thought the song was about how girls primarly tend to prefer other girls for friends. Sure, they'll talk to the boys and socialise with them as they must, but girls prefer their close friendships to be with other girls. Hence, the girls want to be with the girls. Well - I don't know, I'm kind of making an over-generalisation here, and I'm only really talking about what I see in my life. Most of the girls I know don't seem to be interested in befriending boys, unless it's with the intention to become "a little more than friends" (y' know?). I'm perfectly aware that it's not always that way, and that some girls prefer boys as companions (actually, I'm a 15-year old girl, and maybe it's just got something to do with the developmental stage I and my contemporaries are in, and that I'm rather atypical in most respects, but I kind of prefer boys to girls because I understand them better). But I mean, in general. I just realised that that all came out as an overly wordy way of saying "this song is about how girls prefer girls to boys for friends". |
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| Patti Smith – About a Boy Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| If the song is indeed about Kurt Cobain, then I'd be pretty sure that the title is in homage to an early Nirvana song, "About a Girl". Of course, knowing Patti Smith, if she wanted to sing that song, I doubt she'd rewrite it about a boy. (That's a thing I like about her.) | |
| Death in June – All Pigs Must Die Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| *does so* Oh, NOW I see what it would have to do with the song. Thank you very much for explaining that for me. | |
| The Gothic Archies – The Tiny Goat Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Hmm...this song is really weird, musically and lyrically, even for the Gothic Archies. I usually don't interpret lyrics, but since no one's said anything about it, I suppose I'll take it upon myself to do so. I don't think the song is literally about a goat. I think the goat represents a person, sort of the ugly loner type, if you get what I mean. The first part may be about this guy as a kid; he knows several other kids from school or something (I don't know), and he's going to have a birthday party, so he gives the other kids invitations. But, as it sometimes happens, none of the other kids thought his birthday was important enough to remember. I think that if we use this theory then this part represents his realization, from an early age, that people don't like him. He percieves himself as a "tiny goat" that no one wants. The second verse shows him as an adult. He falls in love (presumably with a woman, but Stephin Merritt IS gay, and given his songs with the Magnetic Fields, it could be with another man - I'm going to assume it's she for conveniency). She doesn't seem to want him, however, because he's a tiny goat (that is, social outcast with nothing going for him). He waits twenty years for her to tell him she loves him, but nothing happens. She doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with a tiny goat. I think that swallowing lye is actually him committing suicide by poisoning himself. It wasn't an option for him earlier because he was a kid, and kids usually wouldn't think of killing themselves. But now he's an adult and he knows suicide IS an option. So that's how his story ends. I actually thought the line "one would rather be a tick than be a tiny goat" was "I would rather be a tick". It doesn't really change much either way, though. I think that the end is someone who somehow knew the Tiny Goat, and deciding he would not want his life to end up that way. It also gives him a new view of the world; it's a nasty place, a leech crawling down one's throat. That's my two cents on the song. |
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| The Gothic Archies – Walking My Gargoyle Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I've heard that Stephin Merritt wrote this as a homage to his pet dog. Apparently the dog looks unusual (I think it's a pug or something, one of those weird little dogs), which garners a comparison to a gargoyle. But Mr. Merritt still loves his little doggie, and it doesn't matter to him that people stare at it when he takes it for walks. So I suppose he channeled the feeling of walking his unusual dog into this song, only writing it about an actual gargoyle, so he could humorously use references to common horror/gothic stereotypes (like the gargoyle helping with his mad scientist research). I never really bothered to rank them, but I think this is probably one of my favorite Gothic Archies songs. It's impossible for me to feel sad when I'm listening to it, really. |
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| of Montreal – I Felt Like Smashing My Head Through a Clear Glass Window (Yoko Ono cover) Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This is how I feel when I'm having a nervous breakdown. I remember being at the doctor's office once, and my mum was telling him about how I'm anxious a lot. And this song was playing in my head, and I saw a clear glass window in the wall. I recall thinking "I feel very much like smashing my head through it." I picked up a tissue box with the intention of pretending to throw it at the window. Except I really threw it on accident. Actually, I believe that I too would rather have my parents dead than insane. I feel the same about everyone I know who's close to me. I know I'd certainly personally rather be dead than crazy. |
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| of Montreal – Tim I Wish You Were Born a Girl Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Pathetic? Now that's interesting. Please, tell me what you find pathetic about it. I'm genuinely curious. | |
| of Montreal – Tim I Wish You Were Born a Girl Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I used to feel this way about one of my friends. When we first met, we basically became best friends right away, and I ended up falling in love with her on total accident. Her name is Nikki, so I suppose I'd have to change the title to "Nikki I Wish You Were Born a Boy". (Interestingly enough, her name goes along with "Nicki Lighthouse", another of Montreal song, the lyrics of which remind me an awful lot of her.) Though, actually, I never really wished SHE'D been born a boy; I wished that I had been born a boy...but the idea's the same. Mind you, I USED to feel like this. I don't any longer. I still love her a whole lot, mind you, and possibly even more now than I once did. But these days I've become perfectly fine with the fact that I'm a girl who's in love with a girl. I thought it was really bad at first which was why I wished one of us were a boy. But I guess I've sort of taken the advice of another of Montreal song, and now I'm not ashamed of loving another girl. No, they should never feel ashamed... |
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| Oingo Boingo – Little Girls Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I don't know if that's correct, and I've always heard the story about the movie directors (as related by Lockstockinsam), but I think that story is hilarious! I'd actually feel really good somehow if I found out for sure that it was true... | |
| Weird Al Yankovic – The Weird Al Show Theme Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| You know, if it doesn't make sense to you, I don't think that's a problem. It isn't supposed to make sense. It's supposed to be totally random. It's not that you're missing the joke so much as it is you're not quite thinking in the right frame of mind that you need to understand the humor. | |
| The Decemberists – The Abduction of Margaret Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Here's what I think. I say The Hazards of Love is sort of like a musical or an opera of sorts. You know how in some musicals, they'll have different tunes that reoccur throughout the whole thing? (I would say it's an overture, but I really think that the overture from The Hazards of Love is the title track.) I think that when Colin Meloy wrote The Hazards of Love he had that idea in mind and thusly styled it as such. I personally like it because it gives the songs some common musical themes. That's what I think. | |
| Sweet – AC/DC Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Well, AC-DC sure doesn't refer to the band of the same name. In fact, it's a slang term for bisexual. (I don't know if bisexual people consider it offensive; I use it self-referentially but I may be rare in that regard.) Well, now you know what the whole thing at the beginning about her having girls AND men is about. The line about her not being able to make up her mind could have something to do with the somewhat common perception that bisexual people are just people who can't figure out if they're straight or gay. (It's not always like that, everybody!) For some reason I really like the line "she's got some other woman as well as me". Such a great genderbending song. | |
| R.E.M. – Femme Fatale Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| R.E.M. didn't write this song. It's a cover of a Velvet Underground song. (Not that that's got much to do with the song's meaning. Just felt like clearing that up for anyone who wanted to know that!) | |
| The Magnetic Fields – Mr. Mistletoe Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| It is a depressing Christmas song, which is actually rather appropriate. Apparently, people get depressed, divorce each other and commit suicide during the holidays more than any other time of year. That's ironic, because Christmas is supposed to be a happy time. But the fact that Stephen Merritt has written a Christmas song about holiday despair instead of cheer is interesting. Christmas songs are usually happy, but this song shows Christmas in a painfully honest manner, from a depressed person's perspective. I understand that completley. | |
| The Magnetic Fields – Courtesans Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Courtesan is an old-fashioned word that means prostitute. You can listen to the song and try to think of it in that light. It makes sense in some parts that way (like "They don't take love very hard/their hearts are free", "they just go on to the next guy"). | |
| Nico – You Forget To Answer Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Wow...the fact that this was the last song she sang onstage somehow makes it all the more creepy. Not that it wasn't very creepy before. In fact, it was one of the creepiest songs I'd ever heard. In fact, I think the ending is rather frightening. That weird screaming/blowing noise just suddenly ends, it doesn't fade out or anything. (If I'd been recording that song, I'd have had it fade a bit. But that's why it's a good thing that I'm not in charge of recording really good songs.) Before I knew it was about Jim Morrison, I thought it was about the very common problem of forgetting to tell people things and also not knowing how to react when people tell us things. I thought it was about a relationship, where she has something important to tell the other person (the important thing could be just about anything), but whenever she tells him (or her, but most likely he), he has no idea how to react. This causes her to incorrectly perceive that he doesn't care about what she's saying and that he's not listening. Then he's able to react correctly, but then she has something else to tell him, and she forgets what it is, and he forgets what he would say, too. I have those problems all the time. When I discovered it was about Jim Morrison (who was once Nico's lover), it gave it some added meaning to me (because I'm into the Doors). The specific story behind this song is as follows: Apparently, Nico was trying to call Mr. Morrison on the phone, but he wasn't picking up. So she was confused, and she didn't know why he wasn't answering (hence the title). But then she learned that he had died, and the reason he didn't answer her calls was because he was dead. The song made me wonder what it would feel like to try calling someone on the phone (especially someone I loved or had loved once) and have them not answer, only to discover that they died shortly before I called them. It's really a scary idea, and it's scary because it could really happen to you. |
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| The Rolling Stones – Something Happened To Me Yesterday Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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A book I read about psychedelic music mentioned this song. It said that it was about taking drugs, specifically of the psychedelic variety. The drug trip was what happened to the narrator the day before. This is why he describes it as groovy and trippy. He doesn't know whether or not it was illegal or whether or not he should tell anyone about it. The seventh stanza basically says that he has no idea what exactly the drug was or why it happened or what it was all about. There's more I could say about it, but that's basically the gist of it. Until reading that book, I had always thought the song might have had something to do with drugs, but after I read it my suspicions were pretty much affirmed. (By the way, if anyone wants to read that book, it was called "Turn On Your Mind". I can't remember who wrote it, but he's written some other books about music. The book is about the history of psychedelic music from the 60's to the 90's.) |
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| The White Stripes – Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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What lifemakesechoes was saying (about how people don't want to take bad drugs but would take similar medicine) made me think of something. This song, for whatever reason, made me think of myself and the medicine I take. You see, I have really bad trouble falling asleep, so I have to take melatonin (which is a tablet that for whatever reason causes your brain to produce a chemical called melatonin, which is naturally produced thing). It kind of makes me think of myself as the girl who DOES have faith in medicine (without it, I doubt I could ever fall asleep at night). But the thing about people taking medication but not wanting to take drugs made me think of my melatonin. You see, melatonin actually contains hallucinogens. (At the risk of scientifically explaining all this, hallucinogens are not always bad, because your brain makes certain kinds naturally, and that's what makes you dream - people who take melatonin often have vivid and weird dreams, and that's why.) I may be wrong, but I don't consider melatonin a hallucinogenic drug. I've never touched "hallucinogenic drugs" and never will, yet I willingly take melatonin every night (something which contains hallucinogens). That just makes me think of that...even though I don't think Jack's really singing about melatonin. Hey, does it seem like a small bit more than a coincidence that the song right after this features Jack telling a girl "all the medicine I give you you use on pain pills"? And I think it's brilliant how he sings "acetaminophen" (which I cannot hardly spell) like "I see the medicine". I love it when people intentionally put words and phrases in songs that have double meanings when said slightly differently or thought to be different words. That's brilliant. Jack White is a good lyricist with cool ideas. |
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| The Byrds – Mind Gardens Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I know exactly what this song is about (at least to me) because it's about the exact same thing that happened to me. The garden in the song is symbolic. It seems to represent the narrator of this story. The song's title seems to indicate that the garden is specifically his mind. However, I am more inclined to believe it represents the part of him that is able to give and receive love and feelings...his heart, you could say. But that's just because that's the side of it I identify more with. So he goes on to describe the garden, his mind (or you could say his heart - it's actually more or less the same here), and how it flourished and thrived in the sun. I think that describes the good times in his life, when everything is good and he's happy all the time. But then winds come and threaten to destroy his garden. I take this to mean that bad things happen in his life, and they threaten to destroy his "garden" because with the bad times come sad times for him, and he is no longer as happy, emotionally speaking, as he once was. The wall that he builds represents his way of dealing with these bad times. Because he feels as though he is being hurt emotionally, he builds an emotional wall of non-feeling. He tries to protect himself from having hurt feelings by not feeling. But instead of protecting his mind garden, it ends up almost destroying it when times are good again. He almost loses the ability to feel and have friendships ("it would have died"), but he decides that the risk of being hurt again is not as great as the desire for friendship, so he tears down the wall. The garden still lives. Why do I think the song's about that? Well, because that happened to me. When I was 12 (I am almost 15 now), I became depressed because of bad school situations. It took me a year to finally overcome my depression. But during that time, I built a similar "wall" around my own "mind garden". Because other people had caused my depression (or so I perceived; really, I'm just predispositioned towards depression), I figured that keeping myself out of friendships would solve the problem. But it didn't, so I just got sadder. Finally I tore down my own wall, and my garden still lives. When interpreted that way, it actually is very remniscent of Pink Floyd's album "The Wall" (in which case, what Pink Floyd takes a double album to tell, the Byrds could accomplish in one short song). I have no clue if that's really what the song means. To me, it seems unquestionably to follow my interpretation, but that's just how I see it. I apologize for boring everybody with my life story in the third paragraph. But that's just the way I see it. At any rate, I can tell that the song's mind garden, whatever it is, seems to be a very positive, natural, living thing that dies with too much protection. But in the end, the garden still lives. |
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| The Clash – Clash City Rockers Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Woah...that's actually kind of an interesting idea... | |
| The Residents – Moisture Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Maybe. I don't really know for sure, but "death" in this song could be a metaphor or symbol for something else. I know that a lot of songwriters like to use something that seems to have a really obvious meaning (like saying that she died) but really means something else. What it means in this case, however, I don't pretend to know. |
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| Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Benny the Bouncer Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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The basic story: Some guy named Sidney pours his drink on the bouncer's feet. The bouncer gets mad and a fight ensues. "Savage Sid" uses a switchblade as a weapon, whereas Benny the Bouncer uses a meat pie. (You've got to wonder, where's the logic in that?) Sid wins (unsurprisingly). He stabs the bouncer in the head. He dies (unsurprisingly). But then he goes to heaven and so now he's the bouncer at the Pearly Gates. Presumably, he is not using pie as a weapon anymore. It's actually a pretty funny story...at least it is to me... |
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| Pink Floyd – Looking Through the Knotholes in Granny's Wooden Leg Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| All I can say is that I'm really glad that they changed the name to Echoes. | |
| They Might Be Giants – Whistling In The Dark Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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The lines "be what you're like, be like yourself" make me think when I listen to them. To me it seems to imply that being like yourself is harder than being yourself. It's easy to be yourself. That doesn't take much thought behind it. (Well, not for me anyway...) But being what I'm like is harder for me. It makes me think of all the people who kind of stop and think, "Who AM I, anyway?" I know I've thought that. Other people have too. It sounds to me like that little part implies that the person this song is about is having trouble figuring out who he is and how to be like himself. That's just what I think, though... |
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| David Bowie – Queen Bitch Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I think that the other one you've forgotten in "An Occasional Dream". I heard he wrote it for Hermione. (Interestingly enough, it's on the same album as Letter to Hermione.) | |
| Barnes And Barnes – Fish Heads Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Fish heads...this is one of my favorite songs ever. And this is coming from somebody whose favorite songs can generally be described as prog. Fish heads! I remember the first time I heard this song. I was in a car with my then-best friend (we're not friends anymore). Her mum, who likes Dr. Demento, put a CD with this on it on. My friend protested loudly, as she hates this kind of thing. But I was mesmerized. Now I've memorized the words, learned how to play it on accordion, and sing it with my sister all the time. Life doesn't get any better than that. |
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| Rick Wakeman – Julia Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| They're not historical. As far as I know, it's from Rick Wakeman's album about 1984. Julia is one of the characters in that book. (I'm not totally certain what this is from, though...) | |
| Oingo Boingo – Stay Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Wow. The main idea seems to be that it's about suicide. But I always thought it was a love song. I always thought that it was about his girlfriend leaving and him wishing she wouldn't go. I think I heard that interpretation somewhere before, so I always assumed that's what the song was about. But then again - now that I know that many people think this is about not committing suicide, that makes more sense to me. I can easily see how you'd get that meaning. (And here I thought there was a lack of songs that try to get people to consider not killing themselves...) | |
| Oingo Boingo – Wild Sex (In the Working Class) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| If something is really fun, you might say it's "a gas". It's a colloquialism that always confused me. So after five, he gets to have a lot of fun. That's basically it. | |
| Oingo Boingo – Dead Man's Party Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I'll agree that this song is thematically similar (and a bit lyrically similar too) to No One Live's Forever. But I almost want to take it a step further than that. Although I wouldn't call Dead Man's Party any sort of "concept album" all the songs somehow strike me as having some kind of common theme. It is most prevalent in those two songs, but I actually somehow want to believe that it's a theme common to all of them. That said, everybody seems to have gotten the interpretation right. Especially greedyskunk. A Dead Man's Party is a rather frightening way to look at life, but that's kind of what it is. I kind of see life that way too, me being slightly morbid and thinking with some consistency about death. (As a result this song appeals to me.) "Waiting for an invitation to arrive" is basically saying "waiting to die" (if you think the party represents death at all). Which is a scary thought, but one I'm familiar with... And I have finally figured out what it means to leave your body and soul at the door. I was reading something once that proposed that humans are composed of three parts: body, soul and spirit. (And this is actually a somewhat commonly accepted idea.) Your body is the physical you. That's the part that keeps you in the third dimension, so to speak. Then there's your soul, which is your personality. Your soul is the part that makes you you. When we enter into friendships with somebody, we're befriending their soul. That's the part we like about them. The spirit was described in the book as the part that would allow you to enter an afterlife (although the book specifically was talking about Heaven, being as that it was in a Christian context). So you're basically leaving your physical body and your personality at the door to enter the afterlife. ...That's a scary idea... |
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| They Might Be Giants – Exquisite Dead Guy Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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DavidGrimmer, warmPhase, maddsurgeon and CecilaDarling have all mentioned the Surrealistic or Dadaistic game of Exquisite Corpse in reference to the song's title. I believe the title does have something to do with that. I mean, where else would you get the idea to call a song something like Exquisite Dead Guy? (They probably changed it to Exquisite Dead Guy because it doesn't sound as scary as Corpse. Or it sounds funnier. I mean, "exquisite" and "dead guy" usually aren't found in the same sentence.) I would like to note that Exquisite Corpse is a Surrealistic game, and many of this band's songs are Surrealistic in nature. They're not in tune with traditional Surrealism (which is often disturbing, but this stuff generally isn't), but it has the same stream-of-consciousness, often meaningless with hidden meanings nature of Surrealism. Maybe it means something? |
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| They Might Be Giants – Exquisite Dead Guy Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Actually, there are people who still play Exquisite Corpse. My friends and I play it. Granted we don't call it Exquisite Corpse. We call it "Edible Lime" instead...one of my friends doesn't like the original name and thinks it's disturbing, so I changed it to something weird for her. But we still play it. We take turns passing a paper with part of something we've written on it and read the often humorous results. In that way it ends up being rather like Mad Libs but with stuff we made up all on our own. (It was especially fun playing the game with a Star Trek fan who is a friend of mine. References to the show kept popping up in her contributions...) And it surprised me to hear of the drawing version warmPhase is talking about! My father and I played that game when I was a kid! He never called it Exquisite Corpse, but I guess that's not really a game you want your little six year old to be repeating. Just imagine it...asking my friends, "Hey, you wanna play Exquisite Corpse?" (But I never had friends as a child anyway.) But I'm surprised someone else played it that way! I wonder where my dad learned about it. He probably didn't know it was called Exquisite Corpse...he's not really what you'd call a Surrealist of any kind. I explained the idea of Dadaism to him, and he thought it was funny, but that's the closest. But DavidGrimmer, at least you know that people play that game. Granted we don't sit around in a living room (we play outdoors at a park) and we mostly do it for the humor value, but we play it. |
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| They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse in Your Soul Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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A friend of mine was listening to the song (I was trying to introduce her to TMBG). I tried to explain. "It's about a child's night light in the shape of a blue canary. Yes, I know canaries are yellow...a blue canary doesn't make much sense. But that's what it is in the song. The birdhouse in your soul is kinda symbolic...it kinda means something like going through life kinda happy, you know, kinda because you're happy about life. Kinda like putting a 'special place' in your heart for happiness." Seeing that she did not understand this meaning as much as I intended for her, I proceeded to say, "It's hard to explain it. I know exactly what it's trying to be about. But it's hard to put into words. You have to figure it out for yourself." I later decided that the blue canary night light could represent some kind of guardian angel. It seems rather far fetched, but I once got to hear a friend tell me how her little brother perceived things of that nature as far as guardian angels and heaven went. She told me the story of his near-death experiences. Apparently he almost died, and told them that he almost went to heaven and "saw the golden cages" (apparently he thinks heaven has a zoo in it and the animals live in golden cages). And my little sister used to think heaven would look like her school, because it was a place she liked and went to every day and felt safe at. After hearing that, it kind of makes sense. And when little children try to make sense of spiritual matters, they kind of have to connect it to things they understand in the physical world. So if a little kid is trying to make sense of guardian angels, she might try to connect it to her night light. It makes sense...if the night light makes her feel safe and she feels like it's keeping her safe from the scary night darkness, then she might very easily connect the function of her night light to the funtion of the guardian angel. Actually, I kind of like that idea. However, let's remember that this IS They Might Be Giants. I know they claim that their songs don't usually have meanings. However, perhaps it could possibly be useful to hear some judgement from another musician. I'm not famous like the Johns are. But I am a musician, and my friends like my songs. My mum was asking me what one song meant. I told her that the song simply had no meaning, when it actuality it was about my depression (I was depressed for a while). I didn't want her to know. Maybe in saying that their songs hadn't meanings, the Johns were trying to make us all question how we perceived the music and how we thought of "meanings". That sounded deep...but it could be true. And, when interpreting songs (which I rarely do deliberately), I take the immortal words that Freddie Mercury said about song meanings as advice. "If you see it, then it's there." |
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| Mediaeval Baebes – Ecce Mundi Gaudium Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I don't know where you could find translations for the songs. However, I do know that the ones that are not in Old English are probably in Latin. If you speak Latin (I speak a very small part of it and can only translate certain lines of certain songs; I attempted to make sense of Gaudete) then you can try to make some sense of it. There probably aren't very many places to find translations, though...the Mediavael Baebes aren't exactly what you'd call "popular" (though I'm glad I found at least one other person who listens to them). It's only really easy to find translations of popular stuff... | |
| Mediaeval Baebes – Gaudete Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I'm not totally certain what this means. It's obviously in Latin of some kind. I speak a little bit of Latin (not enough to translate) and this sounds Latin. Plus, the Mediaeval Baebes sing old Medieval songs, and back then the Catholic church had a bunch of Latin songs in the church. (I think so...I'm not totally certain about the history.) "Christus est natus ex Maria Virgine" sounds something like it means "Christ is born of the Virgin Mary". I think but am not certain that "Mundus renovatus est, a Christo regnante" means something like "the world is changed, Christ reigns". (The Catholic Latin songs had religious meanings like this, of course.) I really don't know. I can't speak Latin very well, and I'm certainly not at the point where I'd be able to translate whole songs in it. (I'm only 14; most 14 year olds are neither able to translate Latin songs nor are listening to the Mediaeval Baebes.) But that's what I think it means. Basically it's the idea that the singer is happy because Jesus Christ is born and he's ruler of the earth. |
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| The Shins – Your Algebra Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| It doesn't irk all of us. I'm a Pink Floyd fan, and I like this song. It does not irk me. I actually like it. So what if the Shins are attempting to emulate Pink Floyd? That's actually kind of a good thing. It shows they've been listening to the band and like them. I'm a singer-songwriter-musician, and I write imitation-type songs all the time. It's a healthy sort of thing to do. | |
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