| Regina Spektor – Just Like the Movies Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I project my life experiences onto ReSpekt. It's kind of pathetic. | |
| Regina Spektor – Just Like the Movies Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Oh yea, and the last bit about not saying goodbye stems from her belief that love can conquer all, that maybe he'll come back, because love all you need? A belief that's currently under tremendous strain. Her entire philosophy on life and love is being overturned. | |
| Regina Spektor – Just Like the Movies Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I'm keeping it simple. She's had a fairytale romance, and now he's leaving her. He says he loves her, and he does, so she doesn't understand his motivation for leaving her. The bits about her heart eating beats, and people running by are just the thoughts that swim around her head when she tries to stop thinking about him, when she tries to be normal, when she tries to handle what's just happened. | |
| Regina Spektor – The Call Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I'm gonna be honest, I just think it's about beginning a long distance relationship. I can't decide what the last verse is about though. Option one: the song gives hope to the lovers and reminds them that if they work for it, it'll all turn out alright. Option two: the person moving away has given up the relationship because it's too difficult, and the song is saying to have hope that they'll return. Or maybe I'm just imposing my own life on it and praying that the singer's right. :/ |
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| Regina Spektor – The Floor Heard Everything Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I see two main religious references here: 1. Asking a father for forgiveness. 2. Children with hooves, symbolic of the Devil, and original sin with which children are supposedly born. (I think the lyrics are "children came in their HOOVES," as opposed to "HOOPS," but I could be totally wrong). I agree with the abuse suggestion. But I don't think it's about a literal father, I think it's about a priest. The narrator is the abused child. Through the gap in the curtain of the confession chamber, the child can see the feet of the many types of people walking by (all of them people with an obligation to uphold the laws of society, (soldiers, civilians, nurses) except for the children who come in "hooves," sinful children, or "hoops," playful children). But none of them realize what's actually going on. The priest assures the child that he or she is their "favorite," and that what is being done to them is some sort of special redemption, a way to "forgiveness" for the original sin with which they are born (again with the "hooves"). The only witness is the floor. |
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| Regina Spektor – Somedays Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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It's more than just a love song, or a depression song. "Some days aren't yours at all" is straightforward enough; sometimes, life just doesn't work out right for you, and you have a crappy day. Today is not your day. It belongs to someone else. Then it gets more complicated. "They come and leave you behind someone else's face and it's harsher than yours, and colder than yours." You find that yourself doing something harsh and cruel, and you feel as though you're acting like someone other than yourself, someone you promised you wouldn't become. Days like this show up at inopportune times, "all quiet" when you're least expecting it. And they leave with the same suddenness, and you're not even fully aware of what you've done. And the cruel things you do when you feel this way are "so much stronger than the friends you try to keep by your side," the people who you love, but you hurt all the same. "Downtown": that's where you go to drown out your sorrows. You're "not here, not anymore," giving up on loved ones because you don't have the strength to work for them. You leave the girl you thought you loved a note, telling her not to contact you, not to "call," not to "write," because you're suddenly apathetic towards her, suddenly not in love. Drunk, or simply desperate (the vocal change sounds a bit drunk), you tell someone you've just met that you're "in love with [their] daughter," and want to be with her permanently, and "have her baby." You wake up in the morning, lamenting what you've done. Oh, what happened "downtown"? You're "not here, not anymore," you're not yourself, you're not home. You've shunned your home. The girl you thought you loved? She's trying to get through to you, she's calling your name, and trying to find you, and trying to reach you. "I'VE GONE AWAY, DON'T CALL ME, DON'T WRITE," you scream. How could you ever have loved her? You must have been crazy. Of course you didn't. Oh, but what's wrong with you? This isn't like you at all. You're so filled with shame for your coldness. But in the end, you feel you can do nothing about it. You continue to cut yourself away from everyone else, in a vicious cycle of shame and callousness. Wow, I'm really bitter, aren't I... |
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| Regina Spektor – Carbon Monoxide Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Although I think the Holocaust idea is very plausible. I has some echoes of "B.Y.O.S." | |
| Regina Spektor – Carbon Monoxide Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This might be a little bit odd. But I feel as though the "we" is self-mockery. I think it's a solitary suicide ("soon I'll go to sleep," not "we"). A relationship has just ended, and all she wants to do is "live her whole life in bed." People tell her she's "sex-crazed," and that she wasn't really in love, and so she feels misunderstood and lost. The socks are a personal condemnation. She's critisizing herself. She never "gets her socks on right," she never does ANYTHING right, and so everything she tries to do undoes itself (the "socks fall right off her feet"). But at last, it seems she can do something right: her suicide ("first time I get my socks on right"). Ironically, she says she feels she's finally "cool." She's been trying to impress for so long, and she mocks herself in death. And then, she remembers her father's sucide (accounting for the "we"). He didn't "have a job to keep" and people accused him of "being lazy," and he became depressed, "living his whole life in bed." Now she's going to join him. She recalls finding him lying dead in his bed, calling out his name ("Come on Daddy"). Now she's going "home" to him. |
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| Regina Spektor – A Cannon Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I agree with p*, for the most part. The singer is an idealist, and a dreamer. She believes in these collassal, romantic, adventurous tales. Eventually, she thinks, she will escape to a bigger, more exciting, almost magical life. But cooped up with the unimaginative, unsympathetic people of her world, she starts to go mad. She imagines a boat sailing towards the shore, for her. She writes off a letter, then runs out and throws herself into the sea, drowning, and no longer waking up millions of times. |
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| Regina Spektor – Lady Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Definitely Billie Holiday. - "Lady" was a nickname people used for Holiday; she also released an album entitled "Lady Sings the Blues." - "Corner street societies" can be used to refer to prostitution; Holiday worked as a prostitute for a short while in 1930. - Though she was childless, her mother had her when she was thirteen and was thrown out of her parents' house; this might account for th references to a "baby." - "No Regrets," and "Strange Fruit" are both referenced, as above posters have noted. - Holiday's drug abuse, drinking, abusive relationships, and likely smoking caused her health to deteriorate, and she died young, age 44. - The only truly happy part of her life was the time spent on stage. Great song. |
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| Regina Spektor – Field Below Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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It feels like taking a walk through a snowfilled Central Park in the morning when the sky is bright but grey, alone, when you used to walk there with someone else on summer days. It was the New York City thing that really made me think of it. Central Park is like this little island of nature in the city, but, especially in the winter, there's still a sense of an urban setting. She wishes she could see "a field below" her, instead of the snow covered in "ancient bruises" (her relationship ended a long time ago, but she still hasn't come to terms with it, and still feels "the ache" of longing) because it would mean that it were still the summer when they had been there together. She wishes she could see "his face below," coming up the hill to greet her. The "sun was never called," meaning that she didn't fight hard enough to save the relationship, and she feels as though she should have done more. |
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| Regina Spektor – Open Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I think the plague interpretation is cool, but I think it's something else: This girl and boy are on the edge of becoming more than merely friends. But they're both afraid of being open, him moreso than her. She's waiting for him to catch up and take this leap with her, to create something "potentially lovely" because they are "perpetually human," and cannot escape love forever. She doesn't want to remain staring out at the snow through the windows; she's gone out to the hill and down the road to experience it herself, but he's too afraid, until the very last moment, on the final chord, where he suddenly gives in to being open. Maybe that's just because I relate all Regina's songs to myself though. :) |
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| Regina Spektor – Long Brown Hair Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song is a six minute orgy of sound. I hate to be morbid and sexual (again) but I see it as a sort of parallel to Nabokov's "Lolita." A man, perhaps in his thirties, finds himself sexually attracted to a young girl. The singer says she has "long brown hair" (she's still child), pauses, then mentions it hanging "all down her breast" (but she's mature for her age). "Why shouldn't it be [him]" to take her virginity? But still, this is no innocent child. She's aware of her suitor's attention, and just how inapropriate it is. "She suck[s] her Capri" (obvious innuendo there) and this clearly isn't her first sexual encounter. The singer tries to justify himself. He hasn't had anything in a while, and this girl is just so tempting ("don't put a beautiful body in front of someone who's hungry"). "Her body [is] free" as well, meaning that he's not paying her a penny for it, but she still goes willingly into the situation. In the end, he knows it's wrong. He gets caught too, from the looks of it. Perhaps he's in prison, trying to explain away his actions to his fellow inmates. It's all got a very lazy, bluesy feel to it, so that's the atmosphere I thought of. An ode to the darker side of human nature that questions what we consider to be taboo. |
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| Regina Spektor – Dance Anthem of the 80's Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Love this interpretation. Exactly what I was thinking. Props to Lugon. |
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| Regina Spektor – BYOS Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I thought it might be one of Regina's Holocaust songs. The singer doesn't agree with the Nazis, but they're forced into it. They go along with what they're told to do, because they feel they have no other option. They meet Mata Hari, and they sympathize with her situation. They carry out orders mindlessly, burying bodies, digging up wells, cutting hair and bones and hating every minute of it, but unable to escape. The lines, "well I thought I'd do something nasty as well," and "my invitation said bring your own shovel" has the same tune as the line "brown paper packages tied up with strings," from the song "My Favorite Things" from "The Sound of Music." I thought the reference might be there for a bit of sarcasm, as though to say that the singer is NOT doing their favorite thing, and they detest their own word. Then there's the sarcastic Elvis reference with "Darling I'm all shook up now," inferring that the singer is indeed "shook up," but not because of any love for their job. Quite the opposite. Perhaps I'm being too morbid though. |
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| Regina Spektor – Baobabs Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Clearly based on the ideas of "The Little Prince," but with a little twist, putting things from the perspective of the rose. The Rose has been tamed. She's let down her guard, and let herself be loved. But now her protective thorns are gone, and she's not used to the sense of vulnerability and openness involved in love. She can't put up a front to defend herself anymore. The Prince has to protect her now, because he's now responsible for her. She has to know that she can trust him, otherwise she'll never be able to open up again (and her thorns will return stronger than ever). The middle bit about the city shows us the Rose's past. She's learned to be hard because she saw the evil ways of the world. This love is an escape for her. But it's still dangerous. A beautiful sunset (a kiss, declarations of love) can't really save her from the baobaobs (the cold, cruel world). In the end, the Rose gives in to the Prince and opens up, in spite of her fears that he will abandon her. |
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| Regina Spektor – Back of a Truck Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I instantly thought of this poor, suburban "androgynous Girl Next Door" who decides to run away to the city. She can't stand her old life with her disgusting gym teacher (I felt like there was some sexual connotation there) and her obese mother (who falls through the porch). All she has at home are geraniums, who seem so exceptional (like "alien pods") compared to the rest of her dreary life. She hears about the city through a friend, and she's eaten up the glorified image of it ("she had eaten her dog, and she was back for more"). She hits New York City. There's people from New Guinea and L.A., there's violence, and sweatshops. "The story gets hazy and the hair gets too long" as she falls in with a bad lot, so to speak. "The mothers get whiskey" (drunk) and "the girlfriends get tongue" (fall into prostitution). Everyone sells everything out of a cart or the "back of a truck." They'll sell anything just for a little cash to live, from their own body parts ("smoke free lungs"), to farcical sensationalist nonsense ("alien pods"), to sex and slavery ("the souls of the dead"). They sell ways out of the city too (backs of cars and roadway maps). But at one point, Girl Next Door goes too far. She sells something too valuable, too personal (represented by "the back of a head"). She tries and tries to get it back, but "this is New York," and the people are harsh and hard-hearted. In the end, she's stuck in New York City with nothing. She's still waiting around, trying to get somewhere. But things look very bleak in this cruel, yet glamorous city... |
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| Regina Spektor – Aquarius Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I like all the God-related interpretations, but I don't really think that's what it's about. Meet Quirky Aquarius Girl. She doesn't really confide in anyone, because she thinks she's so odd. She's not sure of much, but she understands love. However, most people won't give her the chance to prove it because she's so unusual. She points out all the paradoxes of her sun sign ("born of a sign that carries water, but in a month that brings just ice"). Now she decides to confide in someone, at long last. She "only talks to them sometimes," but they understand her. She's never really had success in love before ("the drops slip right through her fingers") but this person has seen her through thick and thin ("you've seen me lose all the water from my hands")... and they've realized that they're right for each other. I could be completely off, of course. I just really connected with the song when I heard it, because I related to that particular interpretation. It's like the story of my life. :D |
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| Regina Spektor – Another Town Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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There's this girl who has lived her life in this "other town." She regrets not taking chances, and making the mistakes she did. But now she's moved on (to a different town). She's in a new place, and she's not going to make the same mistakes twice. She's going to come right out and tell her lover that she loves him. No more regrets this time. |
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