| Elliott Smith – Stupidity Tries Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Wow, sorry about the spelling. I could at least be consistant. | |
| Elliott Smith – Stupidity Tries Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I've been trying to figure out the "Savannah shoulder raised a cheer" bit, and am coming up blank. Any theories? And then the line in Georgia Georgia, "Your arsenal of excuses you never told her when you walked out on the Savannah shoulder, with your veins all full of beer, thinking well at least now everything is clear, but oh man, what a plan, suicide..." Since "Stupidity Tries" seems to be in some capacity about sucess (financial success, success in the music industry...(?)) and "Georgia, Georgia" doesn't at all, I'm having trouble with the connection. So he's walking out on the Savannah shoulder and his plan is suicide and then this is raising a cheer... so he could be talking (somewhat bitterly) about people glorifying his depression and seeing him as this privateer who is sailing across the sea of trash that is 90% of popular music? This is my best theory. Please, someone, back me up or shoot me down if you have a better one, because I analyze too much and this is bothering me. |
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| Elliott Smith – True Love Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Oh god this song. "All I need is a safe place to bleed..." It's obviously, and heartbreakingly, about drug addiction, in my opinion. And I love that he can portray the bleakness of rehab in so few lines. "Puke it up so the doctor can write me a new prescription" -- the physical discomfort of the actual treatment, "Tranquil as a dove, people that have lost their true love" -- the isolation of feeling lost and being surrounded by equally lost people. And I agree with cheetohman. The last part is clearly: Take me up my lord Take me up today Take me out of this place Take me up with you today. Which could be interpreted as a plea to god for death, or could be interpreted as a plea to the "heavenly bodies above" to "take me up" (let him get high). I suspect it's meant to be both, anything to "take [him] out of this place." |
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| Elliott Smith – Pretty Mary K (Dead Imagination) (Either/Or demos) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Is it not fairly accepted (everywhere but the Pretty Mark K page on this site) that the Figure 8 version is about his mother? This is obviously a different song, but some of the images -- the "little boy in blue" (I took blue to mean sad here) and "crying black and blue" (which implies both emotional and physical injury) -- make sense. I don't think this song is about religion, but the last two lines are obviously a religious reference. In my religiously-ignorant mind, I assumed the Pretty Mary he was referencing was the Virgin Mary, which I took as a counterpoint to the image of the prostitute. Of course, n0thingends may be right and the reference is Mary Magdalene (which probably makes more sense). Either way, I think the prostitution is more about selling yourself than it is about actual prostitution and the walking on water is more about redemption than it is about Jesus. But then "I'll be with you soon just as soon as I pay" throws a bit of a wrench into my mother theory, doesn't it. And it kind of sounds like he's paying to walk across the water with her, which I don't understand. But I usually get caught up on the genius of "I'll be waiting still impatient with my dead imagination" and don't listen properly to the end of the song anyway, so it doesn't really matter. |
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| Elliott Smith – Condor Ave. Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"And someone's burning out, out on Condor Ave. Trying to make a whisper out of you" Aside from the moth/lightbulb bit and "What a shitty thing to say," my favorite lines. I love the double "out" (sadly, one of the aforementioned mistakes in this transcription of the lyrics). I agree with rubio -- he must have worked a long time on this song because every word is just so carefully chosen. Meanings, images, the way the words sound together... it's all just spot on. |
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| Elliott Smith – Pretty (Ugly Before) Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I suspect he really is talking about doing drugs in this one. But I don't think that's what the song's about exactly. I think gu13 got it right when he said "Depending on something external to you to make you feel good, addiction in a word." It's about feeling pretty (and I don't think he's just talking externally, here) after feeling ugly for a long time, but knowing it's not real, it's only temporary ("And I'll feel pretty another hour or two"). | |
| Elliott Smith – Don't Go Down Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I took the "snowball in hell" line to mean she's rapidly melting, being destroyed by where she is (physically, emotionally, whatever). I haven't decided for sure what I think the whole thing means, but it does seem to be about a relationship with someone he relates to (because he's faced the same problems) and that he tries to help her overcome her problems. And that it falls apart either because something happened to her or because he can't save her or because he's scared of something... the line that's confusing me here is "the globe been spun." I think we have to be careful interpreting drug references. It's so easy, with Elliott, because of his reputation for drug use and because he actually does reference drugs in some songs. But not in every line of every song. And I think that some of his drug references are metaphors for something more abstract. The line could literally read "I was shooting heroin" and he could mean something completely different. Or he could mean it literally and also 5 other ways at the same time. With this song, I'm not sure. I suppose it could go either way. And while we're at it, I'm not entirely convinced the girl isn't something else entirely. It wouldn't be the first time he's used a relationship with a person as a metaphor for something else (Miss Misery, for example). So really, I've added nothing except that I don't know what the song is about. But that's what's so amazing about Elliott Smith's songs -- they have so many layers. |
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| Elliott Smith – Waltz #1 Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I've always vaguely suspected this song might be about his relationship with his father, more from the title than anything else. Since Waltz #2 is about his mother and step-father, I've always taken it's title as a reference to his and his mother's waltz (so to speak) with father/husband #2. So it stands to reason that Waltz #1 would be about "waltzing" with father #1. It sounds far-fetched when I put it like that, but the similar titles connect the two songs for me in more than just a structural 3/4 time sort of way (particularly suspicious is the placement of Waltz #1 after Waltz #2 on the album). In any case, I agree that Waltz #1 is about a failed relationship, and that it's beautiful. God, this man's music breaks my heart. |
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