| The National – Pink Rabbits Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I love the ambiguities in this. "You were standing in the street 'cause you were tryin' not to crack up" can be read two ways - you were trying not to break down and fall apart, or you were trying not to laugh - and they're both so valid. In this situation - meeting an old lover by chance when you never got the closure you needed with them, as I read it - you'd be in pain and laughing. And "so surprised you'd want to dance with me now..." Do you think she asked him to dance? I can never decide if that's what he's expecting, or if she asked for a last dance in the rain. But yes, simple meaning - he walked out of the party to clear his head in the rain, and there she was, doing the same thing. He was just getting over a rough patch in his life/ a depression/"coming back from what seemed like a ruin," when it happened, and he's surprised that she'd be there and want some closure. He looks back at how they ended and says the mistakes they made were a lot more painful than they ever expected, but he's moving on now/only things about it when the sun kicks out.... |
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| The National – Graceless Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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yes, he's directly addressing the girl. When they premiered this song at All Tomorrow's Parties over the summer, the line was "sweetheart, I've gone through the glass again, just come and find me...." so he's pleading with her that he's fallen through the looking glass/into one of his depressions or journeys into the bizarre parts of his mind, and he needs her to pull him out. I think "there's a science to walking though windows without you" is a reference to how he's practiced at going down these dark paths when she's not there, and he's so dependent on her to get him out. There's a strange combination of love and loathing for the girl in this song. "God loves everybody/don't remind me" seems to be him cutting off what she's going to say to him in advance because he knows the routine so well. "All of my thoughts of you/bullets through rotten fruit" makes it sound as though she's insubstantial and can't grasp what he's telling her. But all the same, he needs her desperately to pull him back from wherever he goes. Only her love can do it. Not even the medicine he's been given ("I took the medicine/and now I'm missing.? The only thing that will work is her voice. "Just let me hear your voice/just let me listen." I think a lot of what Matt writes is just on the edge of depression, or dealing with mental illness....more precisely, he writes about how the burdens and expectations of being a normal person with your shit together and people depending on you ARE so close to driving many people into that illness. This song is about how love pulls us out. |
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| Bon Iver – Minnesota, WI Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Yep. It has to. Re:Stacks is about an absolute low point -- it uses an extended gambling metaphor to illustrate being almost broken by life and unable to stop doing the things that are destroying you, until the slight rise at the end ('the sound of the unlocking, and the lift away') when it seems that he's saying it won't break him. Here, in the song with the refrain "never gonna break," he says that he "did not lose it in the stacks," that is -- he recovered from that. He's saying that even his lowest point didn't break him. |
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| The Mountain Goats – No Children Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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So many take the song so seriously. I had no idea anyone would try to take it seriously. It's so over-the-top depressing that it becomes a form of comedy. I actually LOVE listening to this song when I'm in a fight with my wife, because it takes an emotion I'm feeling (anger at her), pushes it to its logical conclusion (I hope we both die), and makes me realize it's ridiculous...so I end up laughing instead. Yes, I'm a little mad, I realize...but not REALLY mad. It helps me let things roll off. I think the song is comedy, and its brilliant for that reason. |
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| Kenny Chesney – On The Coast Of Somewhere Beautiful Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| There is a live version you can see on Songza -- not sure if what dvd it is from -- where he introduces the song saying "this song is a true story." | |
| Ani DiFranco – Red Letter Year Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I saw it live and she made the Katrina connection very obvious there. She was living in N.O when she wrote this. It's just gorgeous. What I love, though, is the way parenting has woven itself through all of her song writing now. purple references, one continuous unbroken line...that all comes from a children's book called Harold and the Purple Crayon that I'm sure she must have read to Petah a thousand times. A lot of this album seemed to weave parenting into her activism. Powerful stuff for those of us who've been Ani fans all along and have kids now. |
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| Ani DiFranco – The Atom Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I'm pretty sure the line is "summon a congress of angels dressed in riot gear." I saw this live on the red letter year tour and...just...wow...her voice absolutely peaked on this song that night and that experience will never leave me. |
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| Ani DiFranco – Gravel Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I always thought this was the female response to Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road." They both open with the man pulling into the driveway and the woman crossing the porch. In "Thunder Road," he thinks he's being romantic by suggesting there is some salvation in just running off together, even though he admits he's been bad to her. In "Gravel" she's accepting, but with these reservations he'll never know about, about how bad he's been to her. The two songs are perfect twins (well, in Thunder Road he has a car, in Gravel a bike. Otherwise, they're very close). And it mirrors so much about men and women -- men live out stories in their imaginations, while Women deal with the consequences of that. At least, that's how it's always been for me and the women I've been close to. | |
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