| Placebo – The Never-Ending Why Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Major calamity strikes (routinely). Time passing is a pastime. We're doing whatever we want but is this all there is? The never-ending why just hangs on, unfulfilled, obstinate... At least, like Truman Burbank, the song's asking the only relevant question. |
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| The Fray – You Found Me Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song is emotionally powerful due to Slade's vocals. If you read it as a poem; it's bland (and a little broken: why would the call come TO 1st and Amistad in the second verse--that's God's location, not the author's. Also, I haven't found anyone that can find an allusion derived from 1st and Amistad and it would be really disappointing to find out they just used that because it rhymes with God). The Fray's website lists the last line of the 6th verse as follows: "You got some kind of nerve taking all I want!". It was interesting to learn from online interviews that several of the band members came from Christian music backgrounds but didn't feel like every song needs an overt/preachy theme. Definitely no preachy theme here. The intentions of the songwriters are pretty clear (if Wikipedia's sources are accurate) that the song is about frustration with God, although I think they avoid interpreting the part about "losing her" which I imagine comes from something personal going on at the time. Although I'm not knocking the song for taking issue with God, it should be noted that alot of the feeling of being the justified martyr comes from a distorted sense of scale. That is, the setting is a casual conversation with a smoking, indifferent "god". Regardless of your specific religion, the use of the word "god" generally connotes a very (if not all) powerful/knowing being. "You Found Me" attributes this ability to god since he is expected to know and fix the problems of the author. That being said, the song pushes god past condescension and into every-day Joe status. It's a little like a toddler complaining to her parent by proxy in chastising Ken doll in the playhouse. Assuming this god could create and manage something so prerequisite to our existence as the sun, the rest of the song would seem a little silly if we imagined the setting more "on his turf", say, in the midst of this normal-sized star. How would the conversation change if 1st and Amistad was a peephole into a place which could contain 1,300,000 earths like ours and produce 5,000,000 tons (=3.86e33 ergs) of energy every second? You can't even look it in the face from earth; how would it be to "chat" with a being capable of firing it up or quenching it with a word, who amazingly, also cares to hear what we complain about? |
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| The Fray – You Found Me Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I would agree that the general theme is a frustration with God and the tone is bleak. Regardless of whether you worship God, entropy, or yourself; it would be highly contorted to come off with a "happy-ending" interpretation--especially in light of the songwriters' comments (summarized on Wikipedia). | |
| 3 Doors Down – The Champion In Me Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| This is a prime example of how much the music can empower the poem. These lyrics are middle-school but the song altogether definitely works. Motivational message with driving music = good work-out song. | |
| Dredg – I Don't Know Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Flowing, powerful song; the vocals almost force you to pay attention to the lyrics. Concerning the anosticism: "Well I don't know what to believe anymore But every now and then I feel a moment of awakening But then it's gone, then it's gone, then it's gone I'm blanketed by the warmth of ignorance" Apparently, the moments of awakening have enough value to create frustration that they don't pan out to more. It seems like the writer is embittered that the awakening is fleeting because although his blanket is warm, he calls it ignorance. I totally agree with: "Cause there's no guarantee Of a god or longevity Admit you don't know anything And give it up" although the "it" may mean more than one thing. It is interesting that we communicate as if a possible-god is obligated to guarantee us anything, as if such a being is on trial by us instead of vice versa. Speaking agnostically, if there really was some ultimate, all-knowing being able to guarantee us longevity, a special place, etc., would it be more realistic to suppose that he must prove himself to us or that we must prove ourselves to him? If the latter, then we may well be in a state without all the answers so that this possible-god can assess what we are really interested in finding out / becoming. |
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| Sam Sparro – Black and Gold Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| One thing that I really like about this song is that it is uses images from evolution to get into the subject matter but is not really about the mechanics of our creation (either scientific or religious). Rather, Sparro makes a personal point: "cause if you're not really there Then the stars don't even matter...Then I don't want to be either". Knowing how the stars got there is not particularly important, for example, if they are eternally snuffed out to you in an average of 74.1 years. If this physical being, lasting for such a brief time, represents our total ability and outcome...kind of depressing compared to the possibility of feeling "a way of something beyond...these golden beacons", something capable of shaping the fish, apes, ocean, starry night, and us. | |
| Kings of Leon – On Call Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Huh...? I'm not against a Christian interpretation by principle; but I don't see evidence to interpret "she" as God or the speaker as Jesus. "...Be there, When they fall, To pieces, Don't you know, I'll be there laughing" --this doesn't sound like the "inasmuch as you've done it unto one of the least of these my brethren" or "turn the other cheek" guy. Maybe the song's meaning could be stretched in this direction if Kings of Leon typically take up these kinds of themes, but I'm not real familiar with them. | |
| Wild Sweet Orange – Ten Dead Dogs Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Ten Dead Dogs seems intensely personal, but several of the concepts are ambiguous enough that you can dive in for your own catharsis. I'm stunned by the depth of the lyric "Belief, believe in me, cause I don't know if reason's ever gonna see why love would come to die, to leave."! I love hearing a song that is honest about a struggle in faith/meaning. Too often, people seem to get this area of their psyche all sewn up in one direction or the other and stop asking the really relevant questions. Does anyone have any thoughts about what's going on in the third verse? Also, I am wondering if the selection of "purple" is coincidental to the association purple has with royalty and the color of robes in which the Roman soldiers dressed Christ. | |
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