| Xiu Xiu – White Nerd Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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i feel like this is somehow trying to deal with white guilt, or the guilt of social privilege. to me it seems like the "white nerd" is being yelled at by some faceless figure of authority telling them that they can't stand for anything important because of the experience their privilege costs her/him. maybe has to do with JS wanting to be political but feeling disempowered as a representative of change or a political empathizer bc he's male, american, white and well-read? if so, that's pretty terribly honest. :) "pigorous" though? really? |
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| The National – Fake Empire Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Good discussion -- I think it's important to remember that a song doesn't have to be meant to have a single interpretation. This is especially true on Boxer, where I think many of the lyrics are meant to work on both a personal level and a political level simultaneously. I see this evidenced throughout by Berninger's frequent repetition of words or lines in two (here, the line of the refrain... admittedly that's not so convincing here, but it's more obvious in other songs), as though his singing of the personal echoes back to take on even greater meaning. There are some really interesting interpretations of this song already on both sides of the spectrum. One line that recently has been stunning me in a really oblique way is "It's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky". I'm still not quite sure what it means, especially since the grammatical structure is vague -- is it "you", or the singer that's falling through the sky? Could it be a reference to falling while dreaming, since he's already said goodnight? And to extend that, could "falling through the sky" be a double-reference to dreaming and living in America -- thus saying in an odd way, we are wandering through America in a dream ("half-awake") state (and thus cannot "keep track" of anything important, whether it's politicians in the news, or those who we love the most)? On a much more personal level, I think the line is just as crushing. How many times have we tried to "ground" ourselves or someone else we love ("keeping track of you") even though we feel completely out of control over the overall situation ("falling through the sky")? Again, this could be extended to the feeling of overall helplessness the common twenty-something has in a deluded, delusional country. |
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