| The Tragically Hip – In View Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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I always just thought this was just a song about Gord admitting he never gets around to calling his mom as often as he should, but maybe I'm projecting. "I am of you And you are in everything I do" He has every intention to but he never thinks of it at the right time. Even so, no matter how absent-minded he is about reaching out, she's still omnipresent just in the way he approaches and thinks of the world in the meantime. I love that when he finally does call, the phone just rings and rings. "I've been meaning to call you I've been meaning to call you Then I do Phone rings once Phone rings twice Phone rings three times" We beat ourselves up when we forget to reach out to those who are important to us, thinking the other person is sitting by the phone desperately waiting for the call, being wounded in the heart by imaginary mind-daggers. When there's no answer, it's almost like a pleasant surprise/reminder that people have their own lives and not everything in their world revolves around our own self-diagnosed shortcomings. "I trust you and that makes you true I don't care if it isn't the way it is... I lose, things change but never in your eyes" True or not, no matter how much of a fuck-up he might turn out to be in real life (or how much it's just internal neurosis), the one person who can always see past it and not care is his mother. That makes it all ok when he does finally get a hold of her. Anyway, this song always makes me want to call my mom when I hear it. (Thanks Gord) |
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| Natalie Merchant – San Andreas Fault Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Well, maybe "word for word" is a bit much, but its still pretty striking. | |
| Natalie Merchant – San Andreas Fault Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I always listened to this song with the notion of the earthquake being quite literal and killing the protagonist/dreamer from the first few verses. It also would function as a demonstration though as to how a random, senseless tragedy or disaster can destroy the dreams of people going about their daily lives, with no greater purpose or meaning than the damage it causes. I love how the lyrics themselves take a hard right turn halfway through, becoming about something entirely different than what the first half is setting up. The point at which the change occurs "San Andreas fault moved its fingers through the ground" becomes itself a faultline in the song, breaking it in half and changing all that came before into something almost unrecognizable. I also love her choice of words to express the quake itself there - using almost gentle imagery to contrast what would necessarily be a very massive violent moment. I feel like I have to add - I heard this song again today and it instantly brought made me think of the American teacher that was just killed in the earthquake/tsunami over in Japan this week, along with so many others people. It seemed to me her story could be told almost word for word by this song. |
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| The Tragically Hip – Thugs Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Payne is actually fairly right. Except maybe about the fume sex thing. Though one can hope. The song is about being in a relationship that is bordering on emotionally abusive. Though the narrator and his (wife presumably) are going through the motions of life together (painting a room - nursery maybe? possibly, in light of the nest lines), they are only barely communicating - only discussing the bare essentials they need to function: "You do the rolling, I'll do the detail." The verses are his inner monologue as they work. "With you its spiders, For you its me" is pretty obvious in that he feels anything he does is enough to set her off. "Thugs in perpetuity" is him thinking this is all there is: they are destined to beat each other up forever. "The cat's indifferent or he's just furious. It seems that he's never neither" is a pretty damn accurate description of what it's like being with someone who is depressed or passive-aggressive in a relationship. The second verse is him wondering why they are together in the first place. She chose him as the one to build her nest with... But was it because she thought he was the best qualified, or was it literally because she liked his hair the best? Finally, he's just thinking what comes down to the heart of the matter: "Ruby, honey are you mad at your man?" More info on what some of the lyrics are referencing is out here... http://hipmuseum.com/thugs.html |
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