submissions
| Vampire Weekend – Ya Hey Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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Um I'm actually religious and your comment that "this is most certainly not one" is sort of presumptuous unless you are Ezra Koenig. |
submissions
| Vampire Weekend – Ya Hey Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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Like Mostlyghostly said, it's about Yahweh, or God. It basically seems like a breakup song with God. Ezra is mocking God for continuing to love everyone even as the world stops believing in him. He points out all the contradictions of "God"- he is portrayed as this awesome figure who loves us all no matter what, yet sometimes he does silly and seemingly pretentious things like tell us what his name is, and refuse to stop bad things from occurring to the people he loves. So Ezra is over God. Yet, there are still times in the darkness where he feels the presence of some higher being and "can't help but feel that he's made some mistake." And sometimes he feels God in music, which is what he is describing in the spoken part. But he still can't get over all the silliness of the idea of God- "Who could ever live that way?"- and thus has lost his faith. |
submissions
| Ben Folds – The Frown Song Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This song is basically "The Ladies who Lunch" from that musical with Elaine Stritch put in different words |
submissions
| Neon Trees – Animal Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I always thought this song was about two best friends (possibly same sex) who are trying to fight and deny their attraction to one another. "Here we go again, I kinda wanna be more than friends," like they keep having these urges to jump each other's bones but it feels too unnatural so they fight them. They feel "the chemicals kicking in," because no matter how unnatural it feels, it really is just a natural impulse, but they're too afraid to act on them so they "want to run and hide." But deep down they just want to "take a bit of [each others's] hearts," just go for it and be with each other, and eventually they realize that "they both can't fight it." Just my interpretation. |
submissions
| Vampire Weekend – Diplomat's Son Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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After Rostam's comments, it is clear that it is a gay relationship that the song is referring too. Looking back at the lyrics this actually makes much more sense- lines such as "I know you'll say, I'm not DOING IT RIGHT" become much more illuminating. But as far as the rest of my analysis, I think it still holds and in fact the 'daughter' of the local family being a 'son' only strengthens the argument, with the 'never having a feeling I could offer that to you' making much more sense in this context. This local son is curious, to say the least, about his friend the Diplomat's Son, and when the son starts to make some sort of advances toward him right as he's planning to make his move and steal from the family, the son of the locals can't resist his temptation. He "smokes a joint" and "[finds himself] in bed" with his best friend, Simon, AKA the Diplomat's Son. When he wakes up, Simon is gone, possibly having been discovered by his father the Diplomat, and Simon tells his family that it was the local boy who seduced him. The local family is cast out from the house and the narrator never gets his chance to steal from the family. The parallels to the US seducing the Caribbean/Latin American countries still stand.
Dressed in white with my car keys hidden in the kitchen
I could sleep wherever I lay my head
And the sight of your two shoes sitting in the bathtub
Let me know that I shouldn't give up just yet
^^Those are the lines I struggle the most with. I think maybe its him being sexually tempted towards sleeping with his friend (dressed in white, I.E. a virgin, at least with boys, wanting to do it) but also seeing his "two shoes sitting in the bathtub" for him to clean, perhaps, makes him realize that he is always going to be the servant boy unless he takes action and this "let['s him] know that he shouldn't give up just yet" on his plan to steal from the family, even though he now has this new option to sleep with his friend. The "car keys hidden in the kitchen" part i can't quite decipher though. Any thoughts on how this could fit into my interpretation? |
submissions
| Vampire Weekend – Diplomat's Son Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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I think it has something to do with a diplomat and his family living in a Caribbean or South American country in the early eighties. They have a family of locals who run the house for them, and the daughter of this local family befriends the young son of the diplomat. As they get older their friendship develops into something more, and the diplomat's son wants to sleep with the girl. But in reality this girl has been plotting to steal from the family and hadn't really thought of her friend in that way, but now that he seems to be coming onto her, she is reconsidering. So she is torn between her plan to steal from the family and run or to have this one night stand with the diplomat's son. In the end she gives into her desires and smokes pot with him and then sleeps with him, but then she wakes up to find her best friend gone. And then, and here's where I'm really speculating, the boy's family finds out and his parents are disgusted, the boy probably blames the local girl for seducing him. And that last verse finds her at her house in the town or village or whatever on the river in the winter, watching as the diplomat's car drives by and regretting her missed opportunity and the fact that she let her desires overtake her rationality. And it could even be a larger metaphor for the way the US "seduced" these tiny Caribbean/ South American third world nations into forming economic "partnerships" (i.e. sleeping with them) in order to take their resources, when the country (the girl) would have been better off just managing their own resources (the girl taking her chance to steal from the family.) Or I could be totally off base and reading way too much into it haha. But the album is titled Contra, and VW has made hints that these types of ideas are a part of their thematic approach to this album, so you never know. But that's just my take on it, I'm interested to hear what others have to say. |
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