| Morphine – Empty Box Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I love these lyrics. In strict logic, he apparently gave her everything, but I think the song meaning is the opposite. This woman, like many people, spoke illogically, but her meaning was clearly something many men have heard from many women: she is bitter because he never gave her as much as she wanted, and she is giving him "one last chance" to make it up. His "screw you" response was a big mistake. After the crystal-clear "big mistake" line, the lyrics get oblique but I think they describe the damage her consequent anger did to his spirits. His dark, damaged tone of voice on the lines "Sender was a woman" and "Big mistake" convey his feelings about female rage. The empty box he crawls into is a wonderful paradox, suggesting both a life raft and a coffin. He would choose to die to find respite from this storm. |
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| Metric – Patriarch on a Vespa Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Hey most everyone seems to agree that it's an anticonsumerist, anticonformist, feminist "Live It Out" message, but a lot of people are having trouble fitting the second and third verses with that, because they aren't quite getting Emily's edgy black humor. "Fear of pretty houses" etc. It's the people obsessed with having pretty houses that suffer from fear related to them. "I'll never have a house as pretty as this one on TV," etc. Emily says liberate yourself from these fears/anxieties by not sweating whether you have or don't have a pretty house, a baby yet, etc. "Patriarch . . . crushed " Yeah, feminists popularized the dire expression "patriarchal society" but that was decades ago, long before Emily was born. Within the past couple of decades, the most frequent use of "patriarch" is synonymous with, say, "geezer." Somewhere on the continuum between lovable and laughable. The patriarch who chooses to ride a Vespa is living it out. Good for him! Oops, it killed him. (Edgy black humor.) Still good for him: he was living it out, up to the very end. Happy ending. I'm a patriarch, by the way. |
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| Soundgarden – Fell on Black Days Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This is a special song to me. It came on the car radio when I was on my way home after a month alone in a spectacular fire lookout, back in 89 or 94 or whenever this song was new. A month alone always makes one sensitive. I was stunned, listening to this song. I was in tears. And then I couldn't find out who or what it was, not for months. I had listened to one of Soundgarden's early albums and I wasn't impressed; I'm still not, with their early work. It just isn't there yet. They're amateurish. So eventually I found out, and got the next two albums, and love them. So when I first came to this thread and read it, I couldn't believe that no one but me hears the first stanza tell how things used to be fine, and "now I'm doing time," and no one but me thinks, "This is a convict singing." You know, as in "doing time?" That's where the expression comes from. Does anyone out there know that? Unable to fly? Hands tied? Well, one person got it, he was reminded of when he was arrested, but wasn't clear that that's what the song is about. So then I had to ask myself if it made any difference: either way, prison is being used as a metaphor for a bad time, so does it matter? My way, Chris Cornell who was never in prison is singing a song for millions of listeners who were never in prison, and he chooses to use prison as a metaphor which will help make it more vivid for us to think about depression. Everyone else is just hearing the everyday cliche "doing time," which is most often used to say that a person is bored with their life and vaguely supposes that something may come along sooner or later to engage them fully in their own life. It hints at a bit of self-pity for a person who is merely unengaged in their life to use an expression originally used by convicts to describe prison terms. But the rest of the song offers plenty to convey the idea of deep failure and depression. Still, I think it's more dramatic and poetic to hear a prisoner regretting a life fallen on black days, and its his own fault for having harmed others. And he remembers his early promise, his potential for good. The anguished chorus, How would I know that this could be my fate? PS. I've never understood "Sure don't mind the change." What change? The change in his life that the whole rest of the song describes is tragic for him. |
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