| Cake – Pentagram Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
Well, the sacrificial imagery, tying in with pentagrams, naked dancing and ashes of dead babies is plain enough. It's drawing on the stereotypical imagery of satanic/pagan ritual. Pagan societies are also often known to have a coming-of-age ritual, where a boy achieve his manhood and is reaccepted into society. Moreover, Roman pagan coming-of-age ceremonies in particular were often supplemented with visits to local prostitutes so as to confirm a boy's passage. This lady lives 'down below our floor', which could mean she lives in the apartment below our narrator and she *could* be a prostitute. The fact that her 'feet are dry with the ashes from dead babies' suggests to me that she takes the boyhood from young people so that they can be men and the 'dead babies', i.e. the childhood innocence that they once had, they leave dead in her apartment once they're gone. BUT. The analogy to ritual is ironic, because they've 'passed the test just like all the rest but never really understood the reason why they took it in the first place.' So then we have a coming-of-age ritual, in some sense, which has no meaning. The verses of the song build up this woman's power and significance for young boys and then the refrain tramps it back down again. Apparently, they've gained nothing from their experience with this woman; they don't even know why they did it. Then, our narrator is implicated. At the beginning of the second verse, he resists this woman: 'Your feisty eyes won't make me fall apart. Your turquoise and silver won't weaken this old heart.' But he's tempted. Then he succumbs: 'I fell to the ground on a windy, windy night.' And he's passed the test too, just like everyone else but it has no significance for him. It sounds to me like it's a song about losing your virginity to a woman in a empty, impersonal encounter. Young boys who are virgins are often envious of boys who are not as they're perceived as more 'manly' or 'grown up.' But when the times comes to actually lose it, it's just a banal and pointless experience and doesn't really lead to anything better. |
|
| Cake – Italian Leather Sofa Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
I've just read all these comments. I am very surprised that no one has yet pointed out that an ELECTRIC SAW seems to be whirring along in the background at the song's beginning and end. An electric saw is serrated (has teeth). You move it back and forth and, indeed, it requires very little force to cut something with it. There have been some very intriguing interpretations of the serrated edge on this discussion. The one I like best is that she's cutting cocaine and putting the rest in the freezer, but the problem with that interpretation: most razor blades do not have serrated edges and you wouldn't want to use a razor that *did* have serrated edges to cut cocaine because you wouldn't be able to cut accurately. The serrated edge could be a vibrator too, a lot of the descriptors fit, but the part about the tray and the freezer wouldn't make much sense then. So, how about that hypothetical murder plot? Did she marry this guy for the money and then kill him and cut him up with an electric saw and put his bloody body parts in the freezer? That's honestly what I always imagined when I listened to this song but even that interpretation doesn't make much sense when we get to the 'when she gets what she wants...' bit. I can't imagine what you would want to do with your dead body in your freezer other than throw it in your trunk, take it out of town and bury it in a field, asap. Except, of course, if you want to suppose she's a necrophiliac but there's not really much lyrical support for that interpretation (unless, as one contributor suggested, this song is somehow a *really obvious* reference to the movie, NEKRomantik, which I have not seen). So...I don't know. But I can't escape the conclusion that the serrated edge is an electric saw, because we seem to HEAR an electric saw in the SONG. Now...maybe she has a *metaphorical* electric saw, which means she knows just how to cut into this guy's mind to squeeze more money out of his bank account. Does she keep it in freezer because she's 'cold'?...I really don't know. But, as for the 'she doesn't care whether or not he's an island' part, I think a looser interpretation of 'no man is an island' makes sense: a man who's an island is alone, is not connected to anyone else. She doesn't care whether he's alone (i.e. whether he's all hers, an island inhabited by one) or whether he sleeps around with other women (i.e. he's not an island, he's connected to the mainland and has lots of other hookups besides her). She doesn't care 'just as long as his ship's coming in', which is to say, just as long as his money keeps coming to their household for her use, everything's cool with her. But we all seem to agree that, whatever the serrated edge is, the song is about a highly materialistic couple. He's in the relationship for the sex (presumably on his sofa); she's in it for the money. As long as she gets lots of cash so she can go out and buy expensive clothes with her rich friends, she's getting what she wants. That horn solo *is* pretty awesome, isn't it? |
|
| Cake – Mr. Mastodon Farm Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
Wow, lots of good interpretations here. I especially like the one about songwriters and sampling. I also believe this song is about songwriting but I think John McCrea is actually making fun of himself and all songwriters for finding meaning in every insignificant detail of life and using it as fodder for their songs. It's worth noting that in these lyrics, the birds achieving a horizontal flight at the last second aren't *actually* symbolic of his entire existence because he imagines it 'due to a construct in my mind.' And therefore, it's silly that he feels it's important for him to rush to the window and make sure that the birds will actually manage to fly, because, in reality, it won't have any bearing at all on whether his life will 'fall'. Mr. Mastodon is him. He finds snippets of ideas in everything, even something as meaningless as birds falling past his window and he 'cuts the swatches' out of all this material around him. Then, it becomes the subject matter of his pretentious songs. So...why is he called Mr. Mastodon Farm? Is he actually, in some symbolic sense, 'farming' mastodons, like one farms sheep, and cutting their wool for swatches? That's perhaps a little far-fetched. I'm somewhat in agreement with Pandorus and Poindexter here: Prehistoric man did not understand causation. The nature of the world seemed arbitrary to him. He didn't know, for example, that an eclipse was caused by an alignment of the sun and the moon. When he saw strange, natural phenomena like this, he would likely have concluded that a god was angry directly at *him* and sending a message. Today, we have roughly the same psychology as prehistoric people, the same 'construct in our minds', which means we're occasionally liable to make the same mistakes as they once did. For example, when we see ordinary birds falling and think that they somehow constitute a significant message about our lives. So, I think John McCrea is making fun of the silly, quasi-superstitious way that songwriters see meaning in life when they witness insignificant events that are not actually a personal message to them. These songwriters think much like prehistoric mastodon farmers who believe that a god is threatening to smite them when the moon passes before the sun. Instead of writing a song about birds falling from his windowsill and representing his entire existence, Cake wrote a song about a guy who *believes* the birds are symbolic. It's typical Cake, turning lyrical cliches inside out and showing how they make musicians seem awfully silly. Another example of this would be Sad Songs And Waltzes. Instead of writing a bitter breakup song, Cake wrote a song about a guy who wants to write a bitter breakup song but regrets that it won't sell. Hope people find this helpful! |
|
| They Might Be Giants – Purple Toupee Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
Thanks to commenters, they helped me with the song! I agree that the verses are about a person or persons with fuzzy memories of the 60s (as a note I think it's hilarious that the narrator conflates Malcolm X with Martin Luthor King Jr.). It seems to me that the song is playfully satirizing the 60s hippie culture which, in the 60s believed themselves to be important and transgressive and bringing change to the world. Alas in the present most of them are all washed out and have no clear memory of what was going on in the 60s or even what they were trying to accomplish ('we're on some kind of mission'). And today, they're older, they've been absorbed into the system they were trying to transgress ('now I'm very big, I'm a big important man') and they're balding and losing their long hair and have to wear colorful toupees instead and the only part of their mission that remains is looking goofy! I don't think the song satirizes hippie culture in a mean-spirited way. I think it's more lamenting the way the dreams of the 60s turned out to be empty promises, how the world has since stayed mostly the same and how nobody even remembers anything truly important from that time. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.