| Thom Yorke – Hearing Damage Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| My first reaction was that this song was about schizophrenia also. The few few lines really point to this: auditory hallucinations "pushing you off the path"- I have heard a schizophrenic refer to their illness in almost exactly the same way, so I agree with you about that. However, I wonder if you could expand on your idea when you say "the drunken salesman is the schizophrenic". How so? | |
| Our Lady Peace – Happiness & The Fish Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| This song is basically about being fed up with the general phenomenon of fake happiness. Everyone pretends to be happy all the time, even though we all know this obviously isn't the case. Even when we are sad, we sort of invent a happy character in ourselves and just act as this happy character in order to get through social situations where we don't want to admit or show how unhappy we may really be. This song refelcts how the narrator is fed up with having to constantly play this character in life since that is not really who he is. He feels cheated in that he doesn't even really know who his friends really are because most of the time they are just 'playing their characters'. He is also fed up with his own character. The song really reminds me of the song 'Today' by the Smashing Pumpkins, which Billy Corgan wrote about the day he finally gave up on his 'character' and decided to just accept who he really is. Both beautiful songs | |
| Our Lady Peace – Superman's Dead Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song definately goes far deeper than just bullying. Just look among some of the very first lyrics "Do you worry that you're not liked?" or "You're happy cus you smile but how much can you fake?" To me this song is about feeling insecure and more importantly about the frustrating realization of how fake people are in general. Everyone generally feels scared and insecure about tons of things yet the vast majority of them would never let this show when they are around others. Here the narrator is showing his disaffection towards these people in general. The very resounding repetition of "Alone,alone,alone,alone,alone..." is a reflection of this feeling. The narrator's (perhaps Raine, perhaps not) disillusionment with people causes him to feel totally alone, because his previous faith in people was ultimately replaced by a feeling of disgust with how fake they all are. "Superman's dead" could simply refer to the death of his faith in people, or could arguably refer to an actual degradation of people (morally, socially, whatever) in general in these 'tough times' of ours. As for "the world's a subway", I always thought of it as meaning that the world is very fast-moving, full of strangers who would prefer just to get to whatever destination they're looking for without much consideration for the people they see on the subway (in the world) with them. Although I really liked one of you folks' ideas when you said that this line was referring to life being a train/ path towards the next world. Its somewhat disappointing to think of OLP lyrics in a religious sense since I'm an atheist, but actually its quite fascinating to look at it that way. YOu should remember to take anything Raine himself says about these songs with a grain of salt. OLP songs are very intricate and complex creatures, and cannot be summed up in a few quick sentances, despite what MUCH music interviewers may want you to think. Raine gave the answer he did because he can't really get around having to answer to the media, so he had to say something and I'm sure he wasn't planning on fully capturing every detail of the song's meaning in that interview where he said its all about his brother and beavis and butthead. It does provide some interesting insight but ultimately if you want to find out what any song is about, listen to it and analyze the lyrics carefully, don't just look up an interview where the artist is forced to sum up his masterpieces in a few seconds. Also, I don't think there is any correct or incorrect interpretations of song meanings, although some are certainly better than others. |
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