| Pixies – Mr. Grieves Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I find this song quite straightforward. 'Mr Grieves' seems to me like a straightforward name for death, and I agree that 'Doolittle' as in Dr. Doolittle seems to have that function of being an in-between, a communicator. In some of my poems I use the name "Mr.Todd" for death (that is after a music teacher at my school, but it is a pun for 'Mr.Tod' (death in German). I have also used the term 'Grinner'. However I also took it that this song could be a positive message, that if you grieve, you don't have to get so depressed that you kill yourself. However that is a personal meaning, not really supported by the song. |
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| Andrew Bird – Sovay Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Actaully, looking at the lyrics and comments to other songs on this album, it seems to me that there are a number of songs - see the comments to 'Banking on a Myth' - that reference the Vietnam War, Corporatism, and the Record Industry. So I think that my comments are supported. In this context the title 'Mysterious Production of Eggs' would refer to the way that creativity emerges within this unpromising environment, so it may be that many of the songs are connected with that. | |
| Andrew Bird – Sovay Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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It seems to me, being myself a lyricist and poet, that people are being really far too literal in their interpretation of lyrics. It is a mistake to look for specific meanings, particularly in the words of someone like Andrew Bird. He's about sounds, he is about feelings, he is a surrealist - which means that things are not intended to have literal meanings - and,although a brilliant lyricist, he also has the fault of reaching for easy rhymes. So the songs are intended to evoke feelings and moods rather than be specific. The way I take it is just that he was thinking or tossing around the term 'accidental suicide', and looking at some of the meanings and associations with that, when he realised that it was a heavy-handed metaphor. Which it is. The word 'Sovay' I didn't know, but I always took it to be the name of a woman. Then he drifts on to the baby-boomers in their boardrooms, the boards of directors, who he thinks are still living in the '70's and full of dangerous gung-ho attitudes. He thinks this whole 'Ride of the Valkyries' approach to business, this get-out-and-conquer-'em approach adopted by corporations, is a product of 70's thinking and is so useless and inapplicable to our times. Hence what happens is that the 'heavy-handed metaphor' becomes the one used by these folk - that is the metaphor of business as war. That is the metaphor which is 'heavy-handed'. Business is not war. That is too heavy an approach to business. In this way, the term 'heavy-handed metaphor' points both backwards and forwards? That is, it emerges out of something, then it points forwards to something else. That is the way that you write, when you write songs. So it doesn't really appear to me to be an anti-war song. I think if anything, it is an anti-corporatist song. Basically the song is the re-creation of a vaguely anti-corporatist mood. I think that is closer to its meaning insofar as it has one. It may have emerged as the result of thinking about some music industry dispute, something like that. Please also don't take what I say as an attack on Andrew Bird. I think he is one of the best songwriters of his generation and I love his work. But many songwriters write in a rather vague way, using sounds, impressions, feelings, moods...and it seems to me that is far more what Andrew Bird is all about. |
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| Andrew Bird – Fake Palindromes Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I love this song and it is one of my favourites of Andrew Bird's, who I think is one of this generation's best lyricists. However everyone seems to agree that the comment 'I want to tie your wrists with leather/and drill a tiny hole into your head' is made by the speaker of the song, whereas I have always taken it as being made by the girl, because the verse starts with 'she says'. Alternatively I just take that metaphorically, as in 'I want to see what goes on inside your head'. But I think a lot of us have had the experience of going out with a girl who at first seems very beautiful and lively, but turns out to be obsessed with death. Perhaps a drug-taker who has taken overdoses ('You could have died, you should have died). That is the way I take the song anyway. |
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| Andrew Bird – Fake Palindromes Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I love this song and it is one of my favourites of Andrew Bird's, who I think is one of this generation's best lyricists. However everyone seems to agree that the comment 'I want to tie your wrists with leather/and drill a tiny hole into your head' is made by the speaker of the song, whereas I have always taken it as being made by the girl, because the verse starts with 'she says'. Alternatively I just take that metaphorically, as in 'I want to see what goes on inside your head'. But I think a lot of us have had the experience of going out with a girl who at first seems very beautiful and lively, but turns out to be obsessed with death. Perhaps a drug-taker who has taken overdoses ('You could have died, you should have died). That is the way I take the song anyway. |
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| Andrew Bird – Fake Palindromes Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I love this song and it is one of my favourites of Andrew Bird's, who I think is one of this generation's best lyricists. However everyone seems to agree that the comment 'I want to tie your wrists with leather/and drill a tiny hole into your head' is made by the speaker of the song, whereas I have always taken it as being made by the girl, because the verse starts with 'she says'. Alternatively I just take that metaphorically, as in 'I want to see what goes on inside your head'. But I think a lot of us have had the experience of going out with a girl who at first seems very beautiful and lively, but turns out to be obsessed with death. Perhaps a drug-taker who has taken overdoses ('You could have died, you should have died). That is the way I take the song anyway. |
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