| Peter Gabriel – Solsbury Hill Lyrics | 21 days ago |
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Hmmm, when I heard this song a few times, it evoked a completely different kind of imagery for me than Peter struggling with his departure from Genesis. In fact I still have trouble seeing that. I get a completely different image. My image is of a teenaged boy in some kind of trouble, either due to his behavior or mental health or both, being in a mental or criminal facility. And the man referred to in the lyrics ("He was something to observe...") refers to his father who has come to take him home. "To keep in silence I resigned...": In such a situation the boy has nothing to say to his father when he meets him. They both are aware of what is happening and his father perhaps doesn't have the words to say "Welcome back!" as many fathers have trouble expressing themselves to their troubled sons (which may be why some sons get so troubled...). I could imagine "Solsbury Hill" being inside the facility the boy is staying at (a large facility indeed) so he and others might climb it sometimes for exercise to get a nice overlook at the "city lights". "Had to listen, had no choice": Being in such a facility, the terms of your stay and what you are allowed to do are dictated to you by the staff. Hence this line. To me this seems like a far more realistic interpretation of the song in that it seems to conform to this imagery. However far be it from me to argue with the author of the song who obviously knows his original intent for the song much better than I. I suppose you could call the foregoing an "imaginative re-interpretation" of the lyrics. |
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| The Cars – Heartbeat City Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I see this as being a love song. 'Hearbeat City' is a place inside the singer (or subject of the song, as it is sung from his POV). Jackie is back in his life and now he can start feeling again, as some who are in love will say that they lose the ability to feel (ie, feel dead inside - a form of defensive separation from one's feelings and internal state, which can lead sometimes to severe depression) when they are heartbroken-- or living outside Heartbeat City. The subject could just be very in love and thus very relieved when Jackie comes back or he could be a codependent who without someone in his life loses his own internal focus and sense of being, as well as a loss of being in touch with his feelings, or if a codependent, his identity. The heart is metaphorically the place of both one's feelings and true sense of self - one with a 'big heart' has both a good sense of their own feelings as well as a solid sense of self. The subject gets his Jackie back, he gets his heart back, his sense of self and his source of happiness-- and so he is back in 'Heartbeat City'. | |
| Coldplay – Viva la Vida Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I feel that this song is about Napolean, no escaping it. I found the answer myself on Yahoo! Answers (and another Yahoo! Answer suggested it was about Jesus Christ, also a case to be made for that as well) and while there are also cases to be made that it can be about a member of the band and an allegory to his own life, or about people generally, as they, say, grow older and lose their power in society and face death and their regrets, etc., these just don't hold up as well as the argument that says this song is specifically about Napolean. The details point too much to it. But indeed, like anything so well-done, it can be subject to multiple interpretations and so, feel free to make of it and conceive of it how you will. Personally I choose to view it multiple ways and I think the band may indeed have had that in mind but Napolean will always be the first idea that pops into me head when I hear it. | |
| Genesis – Home By The Sea Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I respect the opinions others have rendered. While it could be a description of a person's experience in a hanted house, I don't think ther eis enough congruence between the lyrics. Some of the lyrics support it but others portions clearly point to something else, even if Phil Collins menationed the idea of a haunted house in one of his concerts before playing the song. Certainly he may have been having some fun with the audience, musicians like to do that when fans start speculating about their songs' meanings (Neil Peart of Rush loves messing with the fans this way, for example). As for it describing a person who is schizophrenic, sure, that is plausible and more likely than the haunted house theory. However there are also too many other references to things that are closer to the idea that this is a description of life in not just a retirement home, but more like a nursing home, that is billed as "The Home by the Sea". Such fluffy names for nursing homes make it easier for people to leave their decrepit parents there but that is all they do. However I have an inkling that this is a dual-image song, with two pictures painted in parallel. One is of the nursing home but the other, hold onto your hat, is a painting of life in a prison. In this case, I think it is a prison that the inmates don't belong in at all, such as a concentration camp the kind the Nazis used or maybe a gulag used by the old USSR. Examples of where I think this is hapenning in the song: "Climbing thru a window, stepping to the floor checking to the left and the right" - Attempts to escape, not possible by most decrepit, disabled people in nursing homes. "shadows but no substance, in the shape of men round and down and sideways they go" - Refers to the guards as they prisoners see them in the night (or only see their silhouettes). He specifically refers to men in this line. Proson guards in such a place will 99.9999% of the time be men. There are a few rare cases where the guards were women (ie, some of the guards in the Nazi camps were women, but very few). If this were a nursing home, the shapes would definitely include people of both sexes. "adrift without direction, eyes that hold despair then as one they sign and they moan" - Typical of description made by survivors of concentration camps and gulags, how prisoners would simply lie or sit around together suffering with maladies and hunger and cold, sighing and moaning sometimes in unison. "endless days of summer longer nights of gloom waiting for the morning light" - People forced to work without rest during the summer will certainly feel the days are endless. Older people have a tendency instead to view time as passing very rapidly, due to the natural tendency to do this as we age, as well as due to mental impairment. Also, the morning light in a gulag or concentration camp often brought relief in one sense but dread in another. Nazis would go through a gruesome routine of checking prisoners for "fitness" and killing a number of them each morning, then sending the rest off to do whatever. But I do believe the intent here of this song was to draw a parallel between life in a nursing home for an elderly, slowly-dying person, and a prisoner in a place like a gulag or Nazi concentration camp. I think it's a bit dramatic though. At least in a nursing home, you have 1) lived a very long time, 2) cannot complain you didn't get cheated out of time on this Earth or that no one cares about you (otherwise you'd be on the street dying slowly there) and finally 3) when you need help, you will get it, even if not right away. Life for a person in a gulag is alot worse for someone in a nursing home. I'll take the Home by the Sea over Bergen-Belsen any day. |
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| Rihanna – Disturbia Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Please elaborate... how do you get a fight club from these lyrics? | |
| Rihanna – Disturbia Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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When I heard this my first thought was that it was about schizophrenia. There is too much imagery in the lyrics that suggests she is having a different experience of reality than would be covered merely by a panic attack, though arguably, that is a valid possible interpretation. Perhaps the song is meant to convey the sense of helplessness and fear that comes of any emotional or psychological problem a person may have that includes anxiety and whose symptoms tend to arise suddenly. That covers a lot of possible conditions, which may be why she uses the word "disturbia" rather than the name of a particular condition. |
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