| Destroyer – Kaputt Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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thanks for the corrections. he does sing "i wrote a song.." but it's so fast.. and you're right about him reminiscing here and on the other albums (though he'd probably deny it).. just had a thought.. perhaps the modern condition is that we've been doomed to reminisce.. btw, you've probably seen the video already.. since when did destroyer have music vids? |
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| Goldfrapp – Some People Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| i want this song played at my funeral. | |
| Florence + the Machine – Blinding Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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"snow white's stitching up the circuit boards": such a powerful, vivid line.. i imagine snow white up in a dark tower, kneeling in front of a marionette version of herself, trying to connect it with wires, trying to revive it.... or, or, i imagine the person in front of a tank of embryonic fluid, and in it, is a clone of herself... "my eyes flew open" is the moment the "monster," the other version of herself finaly awakes.. i say "marionette" and "clone" because sounds like there are two voices in this song, extensions of the same person, just as the monster was an extension of frankenstein... neither dead nor alive, in this zombie-state... |
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| Cut Copy – Strangers In The Wind Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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a slow-burner, this is.. and a gorgeous one, too.. there's something magnetic about the sounds here.. the opening is pure mood, diving into the wilderness, into a "forgotten West" vibe, with its "aahhhs" and riffs.. then Whitford breaks into "these hands / like strangers in the wind".. so yearning, yet forlorn.. and the synth beats with the stadium-like dazzle of the interlude.. not since "The Past and Pending" have i heard such a fireside combination.. |
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| Alicia Keys – Doesn't Mean Anything Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| i find the lyrics quite trite, but got the song on loop cuz her delivery and the low-keyness of the arrangements is catchy. | |
| Imogen Heap – Swoon Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| same here! that's my fav line from this song.. it's just so silly and immi's delivery is ecstatic, which makes it all more great. | |
| Bat for Lashes – Seal Jubilee Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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a song of stark beauty, up there with pagan poetry... i sense analogies between the inevitable struggle within Nature ("Birds they raised their young...") and the fulfillment/emptiness of post-coital bliss ("lying quiet next to you"), though the "black snow" bit still evades me... |
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| Destroyer – Bay of Pigs (Detail) Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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nope, not a useless post.. yes, there is a contrast which i didn't notice till you mentioned it :) interesting direction Bejar has taken us, with revisits to the ambience of Your Blues (part. "Certain Things You Ought to Know") and "Streethawk II".. |
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| Camera Obscura – The Sweetest Thing Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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consider that "lucid" has more than one meaning.. for example, 1. "completely comprehensible" and 2. "shining" tracyanne & co. are nerds, but this is so good. the "lloyd" of my maudlin career. infectious. |
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| Neko Case – This Tornado Loves You Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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would you categorize these peculiarities as a good thing, or bad? yes, her songs follow atypical song structures, but that's one of the things that makes her music so good imo. |
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| Frou Frou – The Dumbing Down of Love Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| i love ur interpretation. as poetic as the song itself, yet it's sad too.. | |
| Goldfrapp – Black Cherry Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| nope, it isn't just you... was hearing the blake as well. | |
| Emiliana Torrini – Sea People Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| the best 1:14 of music i have ever heard. | |
| The Flaming Lips – The Spark That Bled Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| i think these interpretations take the song a little seriously (nothing wrong with that, though, as the thoughts here are pretty deep already).. what hits me in the head with this are the first three lines, delivered with a tempo that is also repeated at the end... anyway, the idea of looking up at your head and SUDDENLY realizing that you're bleeding can be painful, traumatic, can elicit a blood-curdling scream... but ever thought that there could be something absurd, something funny, about that? that's the vibe i get... i mean, we suffer and as victim think the world is ending when it's happening to us (in converse, we will--maybe--laugh if we are the witness)... but ever find yourself getting hurt and laughing about it?? | |
| Coldplay – Chinese Sleep Chant Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| yup, was thinking My Bloody Valentine the first time i heard this. great song. | |
| Neko Case – I Wish I Was the Moon Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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"god blessed me, I'm a free man" implies the (free) will that we all have, our ability to choose, but "with no place free to go" suggests that we are also bound by our choices... it implies the power of choice to bind us in the feelings and consequences that follow our action... these lyrics could mean several different things, but my guess is that the song is about a person who thought they wanted something, and prostituted themselves ("I sold myself")... now they are racked with hunger, regret and loneliness ("but I woke just the same")... and maybe this person is afraid of becoming an outcast if others knew what they did ("no free place to go")... they feel trapped, but they feel they cannot relate their feelings to any person... the heart is not in their chest; rather, it is outside, on watch ("in my lap")... faith in love's redemption is leaving the person as they try to figure themselves out ... but the spirit tries to hold on... and so Neko has us turned to Nature, to the moon... this sort of reminds me of "Fear and Love" when Skye Edwards sings "love can stop our fear / fear can stop you loving, but it's not always that clear".. |
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| Neko Case – I Wish I Was the Moon Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| "chimney falls and lovers blaze" brings to my mind the image of the two lovers falling out of the lightning-struck tower often found in tarot decks... the tense of "falls" could be pointing to that moment, the low-point, when the speaker realizes that he (or maybe she) is "lost" after having "sold" themselves, and the flood of loneliness accompanying this realization... the entire song is steeped in a kind of loneliness, but it's a beautiful solitude (amplified, of course, by neko's vocals and the guitar/string work here), much like the image of the wolf or coyote on the ledge, looking up at the moon... here, it is neko "howling" that primal feeling, the knowledge that one is always alone ("thought that I was young"), the innocence that always has been lost.. | |
| Neko Case – This Tornado Loves You Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| changes posted | |
| Neko Case – I'm an Animal Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| changed posted | |
| Goldfrapp – Pilots (On a Star) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| er, i meant John, not Felix | |
| Goldfrapp – Pilots (On a Star) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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this would be so apt in a cinema adaptation of "Cat's Cradle"... i'd imagine Felix in the plane, on his way to San Lorenzo, with this song playing on the soundtrack... and again, when he meets Mona for the first time... and, maybe again, after the world's been frozen with ice-9 at the end... |
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| The Decemberists – The Bagman's Gambit Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| this song turned me onto the Decemberists. love it when Meloy breathes out "you were there and gone." | |
| Morrissey – November Spawned A Monster Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| kinda random, but for me, this song will always remind me of a girl/classmate i knew who had a bf bound to a chair.. things around her and with him were kinda shit because of it... kinda sad. i even made a mix for her and included this song. | |
| Morrissey – November Spawned A Monster Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| wow, i can see that now.. i don't understand it (having never sat down with a person with CP) but i can see the analogy. | |
| Neko Case – This Tornado Loves You Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| just had another thought, the tornado as love unrelenting... though we run to escape its destruction, it keeps rolling and twisting along ("so I picked them up and crashed them down") without fault... Neko may be making a distinction between the tornado/Nature, whose (love) continues, and the boy/humans, who love on condition, start/stop love on whim... | |
| Neko Case – This Tornado Loves You Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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indeed, the tornado IS meant a literal one (as Neko insists) but her playful resistance against metaphor throws us into a dichotomy, pitting us against the forces that run throughout this album: Nature and Nurture. hudsucker's point is well-taken; Neko IS smart and this song is an extension of her "I don't write love songs" attitude... but Neko's resistance, strangely, reinforces the metaphor... in love and, especially, in love songs, we like to think in metaphors.. so a straightforward interpretation of this song would a man who is running away from a destructive relationship, hiding from a crazy, obsessed woman but taken literally, we get a picture of love that is absurdly comic: a funnel of wind searching for its love, who is in hiding.. then we think 'how is this possible? a tornado loves?' -- for we know what happens when we love it and "come into the light" to meet it: we are gone, vaporized or smashed up like the transformers and trailers... thus, love becomes a hunt, a tragically sad and empty one ("carved your name across three counties," the path of destruction "sixty-five miles wide").. the agony of unrequited love fuels the tornado's chase, but this obsession ultimately reveals a relationship in flight ("your rails have always outrun mine"), an escape from love's entrapment and disintegration... by the end of the song, "he" is safe from harm, "still warm and breathing"; our pained heroine/tornado is left alone and crying "What will make you believe me?" as soon as we begin to laugh at this, we realize we've been thinking in metaphors all along... (have we been conditioned into thinking in metaphors? -- the "nurture"?) to love a tornado, we have to be prepared to die with it -- right? .. but, love as death, as a tornado, is the very thing we resist, and run away from... thus, love becomes "literal" in this song.. it IS Nature -- formidable, destructive, unrelenting as IS the cyclone's eye... |
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| Neko Case – Deep Red Bells Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| this song reverberates with darkness and paranoia... case's voice goes down like a knife, especially when she wails "deep red bells, deep as i've been done"... gives me the chills. | |
| The Decemberists – On the Bus Mall Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Funny thing, I too thought this song was about love between a man and woman, not paying attention to the details of "we're kings" and "the old men who paid in crumpled old dollars" and “we’re two easy targets” Then, finding all these interpretations, the song being a story about a connection between two male prostitutes seems more realistic and accurate (guess I really do pay attention to melody first, and not lyrics) I agree with bookjunkie, who's questioned the nature of the "love" between these characters; the song is delivered so poignantly (as Meloy does with many other songs) and the details are so vivid – with the central line being "but I will not mourn for you..." – that the song would be too simple to be pinned down as "a runaway romance" These boys are victims of circumstance, with their past unmarked and virtually unknown ("no note for your mother"), but they find some sort of closeness in their activities living on the street. Circumstance conceives this connection but it limits, confines them... the bus mall bonds the two (“our hands tightly holding”) but, beyond that, there is probably nothing (“in the bus stop enclosure enfolding” and “in our hovel we fuse like a family”), which makes the story all more affecting But, I get the sense that the boys’ connection is born also out of deception and delusion… Meloy tells the story through one of the boys, pointing to the familiar, yet imprisoning and tragic world they inhabit. it seems like he (the speaker/Meloy) becomes the veteran ho as he tells us of the other boy’s transition into the world of hustling (“your spirits will rally as you learn quick to make a fast buck”)… the other boy’s situation isn’t clear but perhaps he came from a privileged background (“the old school”), depressed (“your pills”) leaving to become a vagrant… there is a calm surety in the acolyte (“your cool was contagious”) but upon entering the bus mall, nonchalance and bravado are turned into loss and vulnerability (“we bit our tongues / sucked our lips into our lungs” and “we were falling”)… there is fear, to which Meloy advises “so take up your makeup and pocket your pills away”)… past life is cast off, becoming another spent in the bus mall… the boys’ direction is only down (“falling”), but in this, there is also triumph, or at least an illusion of it (“we’re kings among runaways” and “we never let the bastards get us down”) Yet even in their triumph amidst dire circumstances, there is a struggle to preserve a sense of youth, evident with the boys, who laugh off the “old” men with “limp dicks”… there is “old” elsewhere – the school, the crumpled dollars, the Chinese merchants, the town – thus the contrast between young and aged, the innocence of beyond the bus mall and the destruction within it, places youth as a theme central to the song… even their “matching blue raincoats” and showboat shoes that “kicked around” paints their youth against the degrading, age-affecting bus mall… although the boys “laugh off the quick tricks” and “never let the bastards get them down” they “suck their lips” and still “huddle close,” their hands “tightly holding”… they find a certain bond in their quick living but it is the very thing that assaults their youth and thus their innocence… Finally, the ambiguity of “I will not mourn” suggests a resignation, even indifference, on the part of the speaker… whatever bad comes – sadness, regret, degradation – the speaker will not cry for his whore-in-arms, as they have both chosen this life… thus, the world of the vagabond is linked by a fragile thread of connection, with the truth of those connections in doubt… the bus mall – as its prostitutes, bums and runaway teens – is an ultimately lonely and forsaken place The song resists lament, yet it evokes tragedy worthy of lament. My favorite off “Picaresque.” |
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| The Delgados – The Light Before We Land Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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your interp is speaking to me now, so thanks jisty... trying to work out my thoughts these days, feeling sick of heart, soul... wondering what happened? was/is there anything there? kinda of feelings... so i've had this song and the rest of "hate" on loop... took me awhile to comment about this, but i always thought of this song: sweeping, the song soars.. i imagine lovers, in the air, falling, holding hands, in a parachute-jump position... somehow the feeling of falling is a little terrifying, but more comforting... falling through the sky, cloud after cloud, with the soundtrack turned off so there's no whooshing of the air current, just being amazed falling and seeing what's around... light, a pale yellow one--"the light before we land"... imagine falling... and just enjoying this falling... its beauty and misery... beautiful because it's miserable... keeping that doubt in mind even though our souls cling onto hope... the light before the darkness... the air before you hit pavement. i have felt this song to be just like that: falling, but not knowing whether you'll hit the ground hard, or alight, and be ok... melodically, this song's got hooks: the distorted guitars, when emma pollocks sings the refrain, particularly "when I feel like I can feel once again" "let me stay awhile" "Soak it in awhile" and "Buy a little time for this head of mine"... came to know this and the delgados because of gunslinger girl... feeling empty, hopeless (but somehow hanging on), the jadedness... it's there in both the delgados are one of my favorites. |
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| Dido – Quiet Times Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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For me, this song is about a relationship in doubt… at least the speaker is contemplating the future of the relationship, maybe because it’s progressed past the initial glow (“we knew how to make each other happy and there was hope of everything”), or maybe because of some difficulty caused by the relationship (“I’ve seen another side of all I’ve seen”) – thus, the necessity of “quiet times” for the speaker to reflect… This song could also be saying that the speaker loves the other person more than that person loves them (“I won’t be taken in”) and it is with the coming of “these quiet times” that they finally realize it… Despite the warm, early morning vibes of this song, these “quiet times” speak of a gloomy end, of emotional distancing… I’m totally feeling this song right now, and the quiet times of my own relationship… |
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| Jenny Lewis – Godspeed Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| wow. for a second, i hear jenny lewis channeling chrissie hynde (I'll stand by you)... both songs are great in their own right. | |
| Goldfrapp – Lovely Head Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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there are two videos for this on youtube.. i personally prefer Version 1 (directed by Wolfgang Tillmans).. there's something about Alison getting angry with a plastic picnic chair that's endearing and subtly comic. |
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| My Bloody Valentine – When You Sleep Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| i mean, the smile of resolution | |
| My Bloody Valentine – When You Sleep Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| * i mean, the smile of resolution | |
| My Bloody Valentine – When You Sleep Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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gawd, i love this song.. i loop it more than the rest.. and because the guitars were pulled back (as is the rest of Loveless), I have to turn up the volume.. hushed, gorgeous, dreamy, fuzzed out (like the album cover), this song is the height of adoration.. the words run into each other, like lovers' lips.. a vibe i get from this is obsessive... i'm thinking Proust's narrator, staring at Albertine's reposed form.. it is anticipation, the moment before pleasure.. 0R, it could be after the fact--after they've *****d--and the speaker is lying beside their (sleeping) other, almost in disbelief "did it really happen?" the giggle of tension released, the smile of sex. maybe the person doesn't know what he/she feels, but it's still there, it's still love..sorta twisted, but still there. |
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| Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| LOL | |
| Hooverphonic – Eden Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| lyrically, this is Hoover at their finest. Sarah Brightman's cover is lovely, but I love the BWPM and SDaLt versions more. | |
| Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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So many amazing things with this song… An alternate, “acoustic” version of this song entitled “Hide and Seek 2” appears on the “Songs for Tibet – The Art of Peace” compilation.. after reading the fascinating interpretations of this song, particularly those about “Holocaust” and “colonialism,” I could see how this song fits for that compilation… but, I’m wondering about the instrumentation of “Hide and Seek 2”.. please correct me if I’m wrong anyone, but isn’t it bagpipes in the background? The song has a Celtic feel because of it.. immi’s vocals are, of course, stunning here, and her voice registers a few octaves higher in this version, but I still prefer the original.. the vocoder effects in Hide and Seek 1 may be “saturated” or “too synth,” but I think it’s perfect for the original.. just like the images evoked by this song’s lyrics, immi’s voice ebbs and flows, “disappears and then appears” through the vocoder, just like children disappearing and then reappearing in a game of hide and seek. (and I just realized it’s also like the mv for this song, with the lights.. they glow and fade, too) The whole thing, but especially Immi’s delivery of “this still life” (I agree that this line could refer to the relationship—“stagnant,” empty and meaningless—but for me, this line literally brought to mind art, as in the form of “still life”.. the memory-images in this song—the crop circles, the oily marks, the busy streets, the trains and sewing machines—find a frame within “this still life”… of all the pictures that were hanging on the wall, there is one particular picture, one particular “still life” that the speaker remembers..), “blood and tears” and “(hide and seek) You don’t care a bit” are my favorite. Simply amazing. |
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| Fleetwood Mac – Sara Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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i grew up listening to FM, but this one is a recent gem for me. now it's my favorite..yes, the lyrics may be a little fragmented (stevie did say it's not only about sara), but the parts, put together, make something so beautiful.. there's just so much emotion, so much love in this song..most songs take a few listens, but i almost instantly fell in love with this one. sara is a reflection, sad and bitter, but i see more hope and love: "When you build your house, call me home/I'll come by".. the house is an image of loss, of something missing ("when..") as well as hope ("I'll come by.."), of waiting, for something/to be..it's like you keep going, you keep living, there is still peace and love within, even though something was lost. the whole song is so good, but around 0:54 (the first time Stevie sings "Drowning in the sea of love...") and around 4:54 (when she sings "then call me, call me / Sara / you're the poet in my heart...") are my favorite moments. This song is the kind that I hope to share with my children. |
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| Goldfrapp – Tiptoe Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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BC is my fav Goldfrapp album because it's so raunchy, and Tiptoe is my favorite Goldfrapp song (I listen to it more often than the others)... Bedtime Stories made a mv for this one (on YouTube).. unofficial, but it might as well be the official video imho (even though there's no alison) |
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| Destroyer – Watercolours into the Ocean Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Some situations seek redress Some songs go testing, testing I took a picture; I was sick of motion And wore her watercolours into the ocean Bejar could be speaking of three different modes (of reflection): reflection appearing as—or, at least desiring—the end (“redress”), as the beginning (could also be a reference to music, before the jam/playing the ballad, there is “testing, testing”) and as the middle, when he says I took a picture This line is an extension of “listening to strawberry wine 131 times”.. it is love (even if a painful memory) being played back over and over.. “I took a picture; I was sick of motion” really is ironic because we take pictures in order to capture a memory.. when we hit the shutter, we freeze the motion.. but, when we look at the picture (reflection), the motion, what we’ve captured, becomes eternal…we describe pictures (in English, anyway, don’t know about other languages) in the continuous… Instead of arriving at love’s end, or flirting with its beginning, he (the voice of Bejar) is trapped in the middle of love… the voice of love speaks, as if in media res, but I was sick of motion And wore her watercolours into the ocean this could be sublimation—the pain of “131 times” being turned into art.. the speaker “took a photo” (he remembered; we take photos in order to remember things), the memory of her (“watercolours”) and brought it (“wore”) to the canvas (“the ocean”).. he remembered “131 times” and painted a picture…here, then, is resolution, but it becomes—like the photograph—ironic: if art is sublimation, the painted picture is a tragic extension... he’s painted a picture (“wore her watercolours into the ocean”) and that’s what we are left with—a picture to look at, a paradox… the paradox of art. or simply, it could be Bejar saying “F-it, I’m tired of thinking (“sick of motion”), so I’ll just drink it away (“ocean” becomes booze) I take pictures and this part is easily my favorite off the song. Bejar is so aware of it.. I love it. |
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| Frou Frou – The Dumbing Down of Love Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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All of “details” is wonderful, but this song’s probably my favorite off the album, because I keep coming back to it.. I’ve seen immi twice and wished she performed it… Other songs that I listen with this one: Bette Midler’s “The Rose,” Morcheeba’s “Fear and Love,” Bjork’s “All is Full of Love,” Feist’s “How My Heart Behaves” and Destroyer’s “Certain Things You Ought to Know” |
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| Frou Frou – The Dumbing Down of Love Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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This song’s so beautiful and soothing.. … the use of trumpets adds to the reflective tone… when I lie in my bed and watch all the cars passing outside my window, I hear this song… it’s a meditation that uses music (both literally and figuratively) as a mirror… we love, we sometimes have it returned, sometimes we don’t, but the song is more about how we give and give but we don’t get back, so we hold back—the dumbing down of love (“no box of chocolates”)… and then, we wonder why “it’s turning out all wrong”… and then, the mirror—we listen to a song… and we return. We listen to a song, to music, and it gets us through. Music and love are one in this song, and I think immi is not only trying to say that “music is worthless unless it can make a complete stranger break down and cry,” but also that music can help us think about love—that, music is (comfort in the absence of) love, and can be, if we only pay attention (“will you listen?”)…the song could also be, simply, immi expressing her love of music.. …about the Othello reference, I think immi has read and knows her Shakespeare… in the play, “well-painted passion” is Othello calling Desdemona a liar, unfaithful… but this is after he believes the lies fed to him by Iago… basically, Othello “became what he saw” (or should I say “heard”)… he heard Iago’s lies and all he could believe after that was lies and because of it, he was destroyed… in the song, “well-painted passion” mirrors Othello’s jealousy… but here, the “well-painted passion” is the lover, "alone without love,” the Othello-figure and not Desdemona as in the play… if we are jealous ourselves, then we are likely to see jealousy in the other, our partner, lover (“you rightly suspect impersonation…”) …love in its contrary state of jealousy (love as a mirror)… If we don’t listen (carefully), we will be trapped in our jealousy and maybe, be destroyed, like Othello, by it… But music can help get us out of the cycle. If we listen to the music, we can find ourselves, we can find love. immi is singing about just that—she is singing about love, as jealousy (“this tunnel vision”), but also about the possibility of love, of breaking out of our jealousy (“If I tell you what will happen?”), of the need to keep loving others and ourselves, even if others don’t love us back—jealousy becoming the unconditional. And then, music as a catalyst. The final line. |
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