| Cake – Pretty Pink Ribbon Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I think that this song speaks about the double standard of the sexes (the negatives for both sides). I know some people would love to think it's about breast cancer, but it's doubtful. As interesting as that would be, that interpretation is based on (at worst) a loose association with the title, or (at best) one or two phrases ("your cancer would eat to the bone," and "...bury the sick ones...") "Without the pretty pink ribbon You'd end up just like me Without the pretty pink ribbon You'd float down to the sea" Without your femininity and all it implies to others, you'd be no different than I am and you would suffer the way I do. "Without the pretty pink ribbon You'd say just what you pleased Without the sticky little kitten You're ticket could never be free" If you were male, you wouldn't feel censored, but without your lubricated pussy (because that's what "sticky little kitten" means, ladies and gentlemen, not anything cancer-related) you also wouldn't get so many free rides (free admission, fewer traffic tickets &c). "Without your tight little denim Your virtues would all go unknown" Without your womanly curves and feminine sex appeal (as in a woman wearing tight jeans that show off her ass), no one would praise you for you accomplishments (real or imagined). "Without the room that you live in Your cancer would eat through the bone" I, personally, think this is an allusion to the feminist writing "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Wolf. It's about if a woman has no place to call her own where she can think and create and be herself, she is stifled and will be driven mad by her own inability to express herself and be a whole person. I think the cancer reference here is extraordinary because cancer is literally when cells multiply too rapidly and without developing enough in a small area that these mutated under-developed cells choke the life out of that small space and eventually spread to other areas where the do the same thing. This I feel is an exceptional metaphor for being creatively and intellectually stifled until you feel your thoughts and unexpressed emotions will make you explode. "Your muscles would bulge underground Your demons would all be around Without the pretty pink ribbon You'd end up just like me" As a woman, your strengths would go unacknowledged and your weaknesses would surround you, visible to all. "Without the pretty pink ribbon You'd end up just like me Without the pretty pink ribbon You'd burn all these dying leaves Without the pretty pink ribbon You would lift this steaming herd You would kill all the sick ones You would bury them deep in the earth" These verses stump me some. My bet guess is that without you femininity you would be as violent and aggressive as I am and as angry about this injustice as I am and you'd do something about it by taking out all of the trash as it were. Clearing the dead leaves and killing off the sick (metaphor) in society and burying their ridiculous ideals and assumptions so they no longer existed. |
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| Mr. Bungle – Pink Cigarette Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song focuses around a man who was left by his wife/girlfriend/lover. It's not clear if she cheated on him. Many think it is implied by the line "Your kiss goes everywhere, touches everything, but me." It's also possible that it is an expression of his feeling isolated after losing her love. Whether she cheated on him, or simply grew tired of and fell out of love with him, it's implied by the "hush me, touch me" lines that she was cold towards him while they were together, both physically and emotionally. The touch me is obviously a plea for physical contact, so it stands to reason that the "hush me" is a plea for emotional contact. He is asking her to stop him crying, screaming, what-have-you; to quiet and console him. The burns on the sheets are both literally from her cigarettes and a figurative representations of every time she has hurt him, scarred him, ruined him. "All these years I've been your ashtray [but not today]" Though he sees her as having hurt him and used him, he is refusing to let his hurt continue. At the same time, he either blames himself for her inability to love him or is ashamed by his inability to move on ("I'm hoping the smoke/ Hides the shame I've got on my face"). The "perfume, the wind and the leaves" &c. lines are memories. "Cognac and broken glass" links later on to "Lipstick, a slap on my cheek/ Your eyes cried at last/ told me everything I was afraid to ask." and sound to me like a fight between them. Most probably their last fight where the relationship-ending confession came out. When she leaves him and he is alone, he finds a smoked cigarette in their bed with her lipstick on the filter making it a "pink cigarette." This item both represents all he has left of her, and something so insignificant that routinely got closer to her than he ever was able to, and it haunts him. "Now I'm dressed in white/ And you've burned me for the last time [this ain't the last time]/ You'll find a note and you'll see my silhouette" He's pure, purged of her and the constant longing he feels for her love and closeness. Or at least he will be soon, once he kills himself. The method? Lighting himself on fire in her bed. It is at once a tribute to how she has hurt him in the past, makes him closer to being the thing she was closest to (her cigarettes) in an effort to finally make her see him, and mimics the way she left her memory in his bed when she left by creating a burn in her sheets shaped like him. The countdown is him screaming as he's being burned alive and waiting for her to find what will be left of his corpse when she returns home. The beeping is a heart monitor that eventually flat-lines. |
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| Tally Hall – The Bidding Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Has anyone else noticed that the melody they hum during the introduction is almost identical to the chant of the Wicked Witch of the West's guars in the Wizard of Oz movie? | |
| Tally Hall – Taken for a Ride Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"Marvin walked into a helpless land and wondered lightly am I happy, is this happy Following the footsteps left by man he stepped to reprimand the mystic, who's sadistic took a step into the elevator who said guess i'll see you later, don't you worry fifteen flights that lasted nights and days that spent without a cent for creatures, with their beat shirts" The 'helpless land' is Earth. He, like every other person, wonders about happiness in the context of 'Is this really all there is?' 'Following the footsteps left by man,' (doing what other people have been doing since the awn of time), he blames 'the mystic' (God) for not receiving the happiness he believes he deserves or was promised, thinking maybe it doesn't exist at all and it is just a false promise told by a sadistic power. I think the elevator symbolizes the passing of time in his life in which he doesn't o anything or accomplish anything, only ages; heading to his estinations (death) without actually going anywhere, so to speak. "I'll see you later," then, applies to the many that will come after hi whol will have the same mindset, who will also waste their life wondering why they aren't happy and believing they can do nothing about it. In the case of the "creatures with beat shirts," I believe the following definition of "beat would be the most helpful: Beat -- adj. of or belonging to a group of young persons, esp. of the 1950s, rebelling against conventional attitudes, dress, speech, etc., largely as an expression of social disillusionment. "listening to painted whispered light on top forgotten hill" This piece, I believe, is meant mostly to be descriptive of something beautiful so as to represent the simple everyday beauty that people take for granted rather than finding happiness in them. "Next the stranded senate of the white brick house with flowers asked some questions for their story all feeling now he took his bow and left the stage of time with no answers to no questions lonely paperbacks that wanted just a taste of feeling to implode them before living tiptoed to the wooden sign that said now take your place in line for happy, this is lovely" When he dies, he dies without ever having learned anything. The people he leaves behind are the 'stranded senate' looking to live vicariously through his memories in order to enhance their own life-stories. Waiting for him in the after-life, he meets the souls that have yet to be born, otherwise known as the 'lonely paperbacks.' They wait excitedly to begin living, wanting "just a taste of feeling" to know what living is like before they start it on their own. They are happy, and excited for the happiness they are promised when they begin their lives. "This is lovely." "one secondary smile to go that extra mile to make me feel today to make it go away the chemistry is gone taken for a ride far away from you no longer left inside" Overall, this song is about disillusionment with life. A faked joy keeps us going. We pretend to be happy, to know hapiness, in order to ignore the fact that we're not. The chemistry, the spark, in our love-affair with life is gone, and we feel tricked ('taken for a ride'). "The actor with his world renowned was thinking 'bout his last real day of silence, was it over or is it just we all think that our answer isn't real it's just a picture of a letter bumble mumble make the rounds no matter what you'll seem profound it's useless just to worry something normal happens somewhere far away in clouds so please just stop thinking this is happy" I'm not sure about this verse. I think it has something to do with going through the motions in our lives without living; for example, talking without speaking or saying anything important. "There's no secrets in the door just a moment doing chores" In the end, there is no mystical secret to life and happiness, just living it. "And there's something and there's something and there's something and there's something next to nothing and there's something and there's something but you're gone" We get so close to finding a reason to be happy, we can almost touch it ('there's something!'), but, in the end, most of us don't see the joys of life before it's over and we're 'gone.' |
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