| Radiohead – 4 Minute Warning Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Like many Radiohead songs, these lyrics are allegorical and expressionistic. Yorke frequently uses apocalyptic or otherwise disturbing imagery and metaphors to describe his inner experience. Some examples are "Idiotheque," "A Wolf At The Door," "My Iron Lung." The beauty of Yorke's songwriting style is that his lyrics are powerfully evocative while maintaining a sense of ambiguity and mystery. I have no idea what he really had in mind when he was writing these lyrics, but I can still picture the images vividly and can easily relate the FEELINGS (terror, desire to escape, willful ignorance) that he expresses to my own personal experience. |
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| Radiohead – Just Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Like many who have posted here, I interpret this song as a metaphor for depression. I never thought too much about the lyrics of this song until recently, when I experienced a period of depression. Suddenly, something clicked and I felt I had realized what Yorke was trying to express in this song. Depression is a "stink" that "comes like a comet" and "sucker[s] you but not your friends." Anyone who has experienced depression can relate to this sentiment--the feeling that you've been hit out of the blue by something horrible, and you're stuck in this horrible place while all of the people around you seem to be happily carrying on with life. Depression "get[s] to you" and "teach[es] you how to be a holy cow." You end up feeling like you're a prophet bearing a profound truth about human existence. The video for "Just" illustrates this idea in the form of the man who keels over and then refuses to explain why. When another man trips over him, the first thing he says is "Jesus, I'm sorry." We can read that as a subtle reference on the part of Radiohead/video director Jamie Thraves to the fallen man's belief that he is a kind of existentialist messiah, a "Jesus" for our atheistic era. "You do it to yourself, you do, and that's what really hurts." When you are depressed, you wonder if the existential crises you are dealing with are self-created. The part that "really hurts" is the guilt you experience when you think about all of the people who have it so much worse than you in life. Meanwhile, you feeling like you're making a choice to obsess and suffer over the facts of the human condition, with which everyone around you seems to be comfortable. "You changed the locks three times, he still comes reeling through the door." Depression personified: he stalks you, always lurking behind your door. There are moments when you feel like you've found a reason to live, an answer to the insidious questions that keep creeping into your consciousness and preventing you from functioning in everyday life. But each time you think you've "changed the locks" and figured out a way to carry on, depression bursts in once again, and he's just as debilitating as before. I also think the music video is partly Yorke's nightmare of what would happen if he shared his depressive thoughts openly with others. When depression first hits you, before you talk to people about the thoughts you're having it seems like you're the first person to ever have them. So the fallen man is an alter ego of Yorke, literally struck down by the weight of the profound truth he carries. He resists when people ask him to tell them what's wrong: "You don't want to know, please believe me." Yet the music video also suggests that the most debilitating truth is not the nihilistic nature of existence. The man who tripped over the fallen man proposes this: "You don't think there's any point, right?...That we're all going to die?" But the fallen man replies, "No," and then finally relents and tells them why he is lying on the sidewalk. What does the fallen man say? Since he denies that he believes life is meaningless, it seems to me that he instead tells them the essential notion of Sartrean existentialism, i.e., that yes, there is a purpose to life--but "you and no one else" are responsible for figuring out what that purpose is. It might be the burden of existential responsibility that fells the entire crowd of people at the end of the video. But of course, this is just one interpretation. Both the song and the music video are highly ambiguous in their meanings. And I think that's what makes them both so powerful. Thanks for reading! |
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| Fleet Foxes – Your Protector Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I have done my research into the personal life of the song's writer, Robin Pecknold. Robin has an older sister, Aja, who manages Fleet Foxes and whom he is very close with. Since several FF songs are about his brother Sean, it is reasonable to assume that this one is about Aja. Perhaps Aja went on a weeklong trip, and is now returning. ("She left a week...coming home.") Maybe Robin suspects she learned something or did something that she is keeping secret. The rest of the song doesnt fit so well with this theory, but the beginning does, I think. |
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| Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I can't believe I never thought of that! When you consider the pack as a pack of foxes, it makes a lot of sense. Plus, this song could be the band's theme song! |
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| Fleet Foxes – Silver Dagger Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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This is a really beautiful song. Like some other FF songs, it just has this yearning within in it that I can't place; it sounds like it belongs in an America of long ago that may never have in fact existed... Robin Pecknold said in one interview that he wouldn't consider releasing his White Antelope songs commercially, which I think is a shame, since there of the same quality as FF music. |
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| Fleet Foxes – Isles Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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It's actually, "Silver the shores of Isles of north." |
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| Fleet Foxes – False Knight on the Road Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Fedallah is correct about everything. I would add that the song is basically a proverbial confrontation between a (Christian) child and Satan, under the veil of a Knight. The Knight is continually challenging the child, and the child responds by holding steady both in his position on the road, and in his willpower. I believe that the "strong staff" is actually a walking stick, that the child will use to aid him on his journey. The rest pretty much speaks for itself. |
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