| Regina Spektor – On the Radio Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I think this song is about the AIDS epidemic that hit a lot of communities really hard in the 80s and 90s (November Rain came out in 1991). It's about dealing with the loss of friends and lovers to this unexpected tragedy and having to think about your own mortality for the first time, and moving on and not letting the grief and guilt break you or stop you from living your life. | |
| Regina Spektor – On the Radio Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I think the song is about the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s, so yeah, kind of a similar idea. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Genesis 30:3 Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Hmm. It's really interesting coming here and getting the Biblical context of the song. Thanks for explaining that! When I listen to it, to me it seems like they're talking about a couple who lost their baby -- that's why people are coming to visit and try to cheer them up, and why they're "the last ones of their kind," because they have failed to reproduce. They're going to try to stay together even though it seems impossible to imagine being happy together again. I don't know how to fit that in with the Bible story, though. Especially because I don't really know my Bible. Any ideas? |
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| The Mountain Goats – Song for Dennis Brown Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I saw it as having to do with the sense of fatalism that comes with addiction. Like, some people will point to the story of a great hero or artist who died of an OD, and use it as an example of a tragedy that could be prevented by saying no to drugs. But if you're addicted or have an addictive personality, you hear the story and think "well, if it killed a great like him, what chance do I have?" I think that also resonates with the concept of the album as a whole, growing up in an abusive and dysfunctional family. I think the speaker in the song is pretty much writing himself off as not having a chance to be any different from the previous generation. |
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| Regina Spektor – Après Moi Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I see it as being about trauma, and struggling to get over it. IMO she's saying that she can't give in to despair because that would be like admitting that she's letting the person who hurt her win. Thanks to the people who provided the Russian translation! Really interesting. |
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| Metric – Calculation (Theme) Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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One thing nobody has mentioned is that the synth line in the song is a sine wave -- the aural interpretation of the graph of a trig function. It underscores the song's theme of the relentlessness of numbers; I think it's supposed to be a little frustrating to represent the frustration expressed in the song. Other than that I agree with the other comments -- searching for romance and passion in an automated world where we're increasingly distanced from anything natural, including each other. At first I thought "half the horizon's gone" was a reference to the 9/11 attacks, but on second listen I think it means that we've obscured the natural horizon with man-made structures. It's harder for us to find anything that speaks to us in that really primal way, the way the ocean or the mountains do. |
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| TV on the Radio – Dancing Choose Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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A flash tattoo is a tattoo that someone chose from the wall of the tattoo shop, instead of doing research or creating a custom design. Generally it's something generic like a star, butterfly, "chinese proverb" or whatever. People who are serious about tattoos tend to look down on flash because it is seen as shallow and without individuality. I heart TVotR, and I think this song is a really fun takedown of yuppies and conformists that is also kind of ironic and doesn't take itself seriously. I think the "keep your dancing shoes off mine" lyric shows that in the end they're on the same dance floor, participating in the same system, even if some of us are more aware of it than others. |
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