| Shawn Colvin – Sunny Came Home Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| From what I understand, the cover art was what inspired Colvin to write the song. So, the the fire in the song is not metaphoric, but perhaps in the context of story it could be perceived as such. I also heard that she drew inspiration from "The Burning Bed" where the wife takes her kids and burns down the house with her husband asleep in it. The "list of names" mentioned is curious if she did indeed draw inspiration from both of those outlets since neither implicitly state that she was enraged by more than one person. In "The Burning Bed" she turns herself in, but perhaps in this song, she's out to take out more people that she feels wronged her. Oh, and I haven't read any posts about this, but "Sunny" is definitely a metaphor for fire. It is also ironic in that "sunny" usually means someone who is happy. I also believed that she was coming home from a mental institution. Never read anything about that, though. | |
| Līve – Lighthouse Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Is the lyric really "from the chalice of cheap escape?" Knowing Ed, I was expecting the chalice to be named after some Indian religious deity or something. It does kinda sound like cheap escape, but I thought it was more like Chi Piesekape or something. LOL Great song. | |
| R.E.M. – It's the End of the World as We Know It Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I remember reading an interview back in the day that after the "team by team reporters" the lyrics are names of people, not "baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped." I believe they were Atlanta reporters. Anyway, I hear names when I hear that lyric now even though I can't figure out what they are. The lyrics here are the lyrics you find anywhere on the net, but I don't think they're correct (besides the one I mentioned above). For example, the next lyric is "Look at that low plane. Fine. Then." What would it mean to look at low playing? Which follows if there are team by team reporters which was a term TV stations used frequently. If you've ever seen Michael Stipe perform this live, he has a cheat sheet. I'd like to get a hold of that cheat sheet. Back to topic at hand though, most of the song is about the media during the cold war. Media spread the fear of the cold war and everybody thought that nuclear war was going to break out at any time and end the world. But, here we are partying and having fun. That was the 80's for you. The lyric I get the most out of is, "World serves its own needs. Dummy serve your own needs." I feel that's the gist of the entire song. |
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| Night Ranger – Sentimental Street Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Doesn't this song sound like a continuation, or sequel, to Sister Christian? She left in Sister Christian and this song is about what she's doing after she left. Probably not an intentional continuation but it is probably about the same girl. | |
| Night Ranger – Sister Christian Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| She's running away from home to try to find love. The song is trying to reach out to her and warn her that there's a price to pay for running away like that and that the world is not a friendly place. Guys don't want to play. But, she's already gone. She's "motoring." The singer wants her to come back but she's the only one that can make herself come to her senses and return home. | |
| The Rolling Stones – Paint It Black Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I always thought the song was about the loss of a loved one. This is exemplified by the line "With flowers and my love both never to come back." I thought the red door was symbolic of the doors of a church. So, the line "I see my red door and it has been painted black" is about losing his faith. What I'm confused about is "I see people turn their heads and quickly look away." I thought this had something to do with Vietnam and how people treated the soldiers back then. If that was the case, then this is not about a wife or girlfriend. It could be about a father. It could be from a female's point of view. It could even be about a friend. I think that line has given the impression of Vietnam, however, and is why it is in so many Vietnam War movies. | |
| Procol Harum – A Whiter Shade of Pale Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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To those who question the lyrics, these are correct. There is another posting for this song with incorrect lyrics. I checked an original lyric sheet and it had the same lyrics. Now, there are two verses that are not listed here but were not on the original recording. You can only find those lyrics performed live. Someone else posted them earlier stating that the lyrics here were not complete, but, they are complete as far as the album version goes. Now, there's a quote over at SongFacts from Keith Reid that reads: "It's sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story. It's about a relationship. There's characters and there's a location, and there's a journey. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. But certainly there's a journey going on, it's not a collection of lines just stuck together. It's got a thread running through it." Reid got the idea for the title when it came to him at a party, which gave him a starting point for the song. Says Reid: "I feel with songs that you're given a piece of the puzzle, the inspiration or whatever. In this case, I had that title, 'Whiter Shade of Pale,' and I thought, There's a song here. And it's making up the puzzle that fits the piece you've got. You fill out the picture, you find the rest of the picture that that piece fits into." What that means, I'm not entirely sure. One additional quote from SongFacts: The lyrics, "As the miller told his tale" sounds like a reference to "The Miller's Tale," from Chaucer's English novel The Canterbury Tales. This tale is well known to English students as a vulgar or bawdy story, told by the miller. Given this, the line, "And so it was that later as the miller told his tale, that her face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale" is an attempt by a young man, who has just caused a girl to turn pale by telling some vulgar story, to explain away her signs of disgust as due to other things. Such as the dancing, the drinking. Reid, however, disproves this theory. He said: "I'd never read The Miller's Tale in my life. Maybe that's something that I knew subconsciously, but it certainly wasn't a conscious idea for me to quote from Chaucer, no way." |
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