| Yeasayer – Glass of the Microscope Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| This song seems to be about oil and how our reliance on it is both killing us and degrading our quality of life. "Yesterday was nice / And today looked fine" -- everything seems OK right now, but the fact is that it's not "all alright." It's pretty fucking bleak because we're being slowly killed by gasoline fumes without realizing it and without CHOICE, since the politicians don't make laws with their citizens' well-being in mind, they do so in favor of their greed and the demand for oil. Also, to be "under the glass of the microscope" makes me think that people are really being trivialized and objectified by this whole process. If people die, get cancer, lose their jobs because of an oil spill, what does it matter? We're just pawns in this game. We are like tiny, powerless organisms in a petri dish in comparison to the structures that entomb and use us--politics, consumerism, the demand for oil. Perhaps the lyrics "Tilt your head back, don't choke" is a wry call to maintain our dignity in the face of these forces, even though they're ultimately too much for us. | |
| MGMT – Of Moons, Birds & Monsters Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I totally agree. To me, this song comes across very deep, and trying to address the condition of the vast majority of people. One part that spoke out to me. To catch a monster We make a movie Set the tempo And cut and cut its brains out It will inspire on the burning pyre My interpretation of this is that the monster represents what we fear in life, and in order to resolve our life's fears, we create things (art). "Set the tempo" is the creative process being controlled. The art ends up representing the killing of the monster, so it's not just catching the monster. I think it's trying to show this as the wrong way to create. The next line, "it will inspire on the burning pyre" is saying that this art is not art that truly inspires, and the only worth it has is to be burned and rejected. So yeah. People create things but in the completely wrong way, and as art it has no worth. Just look at the movies that come out these days. Silly romantic comedies about woman never beeing able to find the right man, and in a spectacular fashion, she finally finds the right one. And you know how slf-pitying single women eat it up these movies... but they're contrite and made for making money, they're not meant to create something beautiful. And along with the communication and letting it flow... maybe that's art, an attempt at communicating something special and true about life like our common fears to other people. Not using art as a way of trying to destroy the monster, which is not meaningful because it's destructive. I hope it makes some sense! sometimes I'm a bit too philosophical. |
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