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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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That still doesn't explain the "China" part since China is NEVER mentioned, and neither Rhianna nor the members of Coldplay are remotely Chinese. |
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| Florence + the Machine – My Boy Builds Coffins Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This is about the stupidest thing I've read here. Do you have any evidence of Jesus building furniture? Do you have any evidence of him not building coffins? He was a carpenter; that can mean a lot of things. Your sudden jump is illogical and absurd.
Also, a lot of things/people make furniture. The Amish make furniture, so maybe the boy is just anti-Amish. Automatically jumping to the conclusion that her boyfriend is Satan is both ridiculous and a pathetic overreaction without ANY actual evidence. Ideas like the ones you're spouting are what make Christians look like complete idiots. Although I like your comment about brainwashing; the pot shouldn't point fingers at the kettle.
And those "dark" references you're finding are from Flo's gothic lit influence. If you actually had any idea what you were talking about, you might be able to say something intelligent. |
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| Anberlin – Closer Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Says the man pushing his views on others. Not all interpretations are equally valid. Using the information we have about the band and the lyrics themselves, the Christian explanation seems most likely, especially since the relationship explanation is nonsensical and schizophrenic.
Grow up and get over your anti-religious knee-jerk reactions and have a good life. |
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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Their voices might sound amazing together if Chris Martin actually had a significant role in the song, but unfortunately he's backgrounded for most of it. Their voices could sound great paired, but Chris would actually have to be singing for us to notice.
The meaning, on the other hand, is flat-out pathetic. The woman needs to get over it and grow up to respect herself instead of defining her life based on her douche bag boyfriend (yes, the lyrics DO imply that he's an ass and pretty much completely at fault here). I'm pretty sure he's not crying over leaving her clinging, needy backside behind; maybe she should grow a personality and a sense of self-worth instead of defining herself based on men and her relationships with them so she doesn't get hurt by guys like this (especially since she seems to have poor taste in men anyway).
Hell, if she became an independent, confident woman with her own life and personality, she might be able to attract the sort of guy who isn't a complete douche and user instead of dating guys like this and then crying over them leaving (when it's really not a tragedy since he was worthless anyway). Instead we have some whiny girl stuck in the past lamenting over the jerk who broke her heart and imagining an impossible future because she's already edited out all the emotional crap he put her through. Her self-revised history ensures that she'll never learn and will make the same stupid decision over and over. It's pathetic and a sad day for women everywhere. |
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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Also, I like how everyone is rating my comments down but can't actually respond to them. Good job on not being able to counter my arguments, guys. |
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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Exactly! So many people don't seem to understand that a big part of Coldplay's appeal is that they're NOT a pop band; they're an alt band with their own sound. This sort of syth pop is a dime a dozen, and we don't need ANOTHER band doing it. New pop artists are autotuned into popularity ever day. Good alt band rarely surface, and achieving Coldplay's level of success is almost unheard of.
If some other people actually like this pop stuff, that's their prerogative. They can keep it. But those of us with some taste beyond junk pop would like to keep our good bands good, and it's a pretty big loss for us to see a band like Coldplay buckle because we have so few successful artists to begin with. And I think the worse part is that the album isn't terrible. It's just bland. It's almost more of a blow because it doesn't seem like a fluke that way. |
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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This is cute, really. Yeah, it's all music. And Twilight is a book, too. Just because it exists doesn't mean its good. What should be important is the artistic merit. And seeing as how this is a complete rip-off of a bland, cliche pop style, I can't find much artistic merit in there.
I'd agree that a new sound would be a good thing and would show versatility, but this isn't a new sound. It's copied from every other pop artist. Coldplay has made their own sound up to this point, but they let their style get lost under another overused and banal style in this song and throughout the album. Copying garbage isn't progression or growth. |
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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Look at the reviews; they failed. It's great when a band tries something new, but unfortunately Coldplay is trying EXACTLY what everyone else has tried. Going all pop/syth isn't a new style; it's been done to death/ Coldplay has, until this point, consistently changed their sound in a creative, unique way between albums. For some reason, this time they decided to copy every pop and R&B artist out there instead of making their own sound. |
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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This song exemplifies why Mylo Xyloto is Coldplay's worst album ever (and that's a fact, not an opinion; look at the reviews).
Coldplay has lost their sound in a cheesy contemporary pop style in this album. Some songs manage to claw their way back out of pop to touch Coldplay's usual unique spark, but the majority are more pop/R&B than Coldplay. This song is completely pop without a hint of Coldplay in sight. Synthesizers and heavy bass beats overwhelm any presence of the band itself. The interesting piano, organ, and/or guitar parts that we expect from Coldplay get lost in 8-bit synth, and the song loses its Coldplay sound under a deluge of overused synth-pop noise. The lyrics are idiotic and immature, and the sound is boring, repetitive, and uncreatively copied from typical pop music. For a group that has had so many different, unique sounds over the years, hearing them do someone else's sound is sad.
Here's to hoping that Coldplay gets out of this rut and gives us something of X&Y or Viva la Vida quality next time around. I've been on board with Coldplay since Rush of Blood (when I finally earned my own money and could buy music), but I'm disappointed with this. I hope Coldplay can turn this around; it would be a shame to see a good band like Coldplay become another cookie-cutter pop band in the sea of banal music. |
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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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That's deep, man. Maybe you should actually come up with something to say next time, for example, why the song is great. We've told you why it sucks; tell us why it doesn't. |
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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This isn't a Coldplay song, it's a Rihanna song featuring Chris Martin. Rihanna dominates the vocals and the style; the entire band is lost under the syth. Chris Martin sings backup vocals to Rihanna's lalala, and the rest of the band is out to tea while a Super Nintendo synthesizes the music. Where's the piano, organ, or guitar that we've come to expect from Coldplay? I sure can't find it. I thought the entire point of being a band instead of a single vocalist was that the entire band contributed to the song, but I guess I could be wrong.
And the lyrics are so shallow and uncreative. We at least got interesting images in songs like "Speed of Sound," "Clocks," and "Strawberry Swing" even if they were fairly straightforward, but this song is just lazy. Wow, she can complain about her jerk boyfriend just like every other female pop singer on the planet. Do they all date complete bastards and feel that they have to share their poor relationship choices with the world or something? The entire song is such typical R&B that, if it weren't on a Coldplay album, you wouldn't be able to tell it was them. Such a disappointment after the brilliance of Viva la Vida and Prospekt's March. |
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| Coldplay – Princess of China Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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So freaking true. The rest of the album was okay (not exactly a compliment after how well they did on their other albums, but at least not terrible), but this song is horrendous. Why did they leave this on the album, and who at their recording studio or record company didn't listen to this and tell them how utterly awful and misplaced it was?
And I wouldn't even say they needed Rihanna for her popularity. Coldplay is wildly popular; I'd guess more so than Rihanna. I live in the middle of nowhere (Iowa), and Coldplay has a big enough fanbase here to actually make a (sold out) stop here on their Viva la Vida tour a couple years back. I don't think Rihanna's ever stopped in the middle of flyover country for a concert. They're famous enough that they don't need to play this game of featuring other artists to sell their albums, and they're certainly famous enough to keep their own artistic control of the song if they do feature someone else. This song doesn't have any Coldplay in it; it's all Rihanna. It would sound far more appropriate on one of her albums than here with all its synth garbage. |
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| Anberlin – Closer Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Why do people get so defensive when someone starts talking about religion? We know the members of the band are Christian; you'd have a hard time explaining many of their songs without bringing that fact in. I'm tying the songs into the lives and beliefs of the band; it's not me being all "Go Jesus." If I did the same thing but talked about a band's home city or their abusive childhoods, you wouldn't have even commented. But for some reason, people get all uptight when someone mentions religion and feel obliged to discredit that explanation by saying it's only personal and couldn't possibly apply to the song. Maybe you'd like to argue about talking about religion in reference to Tolkien or John Donne, too?
Honestly, get over it. Sometimes you have to come at things from a Christian viewpoint. It's not offensive or a personal thing only; many artists were and are Christian, and you have to approach their lyrics with that in mind to actually understand them. The Christian viewpoint makes sense when consider which band this is, and it's a far better explanation than the convoluted and nonsensical explanations trying to make it about a romantic relationship. |
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| Anberlin – Closer Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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This song is pretty obviously Christian; I don't see why we're getting a bunch of shallow and unsatisfactory explanations trying to tie it into a messed up relationship. This is Anberlin; Christian allusions are their specialty. And this song mirrors a very common experience amongst Christian who have fallen away and found their way back to the faith, and I think it fits this experience much better than some idea of a relationship with a girl with a past.
The song starts with the narrator straying from God and blaming God for whatever position he finds himself in. In fact, the narrator is even questioning God's existence and blames God for the distance between them.
Then, after the first chorus, we see the revelation. The narrator realizes that the separation is his fault. He recognizes his messed up past and the fact that he's been pushing God away, and he wonders if he'll be taken back. He sees that he's the betrayer, not the other way around, and the song becomes a prayer where the narrator asks for help in finding his way back. |
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| Anberlin – Closer Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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How do you not get the Christian theme? It's Anberlin; I'm surprised we don't have an overt allusion in here. Plus taking it from a Christian perspective untangles the entire song easily. |
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| Anberlin – Closer Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Completely disagree. While you could take it as a song about a messed up relationship, the Christian angle fits much better. The lyrics unravel rather quickly when you hit that perspective. |
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| Hem – The Cuckoo Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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This song is beautiful, and I'm surprised someone hasn't commented on it before. It's not a very difficult song, but still.
Really, I think it's just a song of an unrequited love. The verses suggest a man in love with a girl who doesn't seem interested in him, hence why he's building the cabin to watch her in the beginning and waiting for her in the end. The middle verse suggests a lot of wandering in pursuit of love, and it leads to the final verse where he settles down.
The chorus, I think, is just there because it sounds good. Unless the cuckoo has some applicable symbolism I'm not aware of, it just seems to be a nice, earthy chorus to pull the song together. |
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| Hem – Half Acre Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Simple and beautiful. This song is very folk-y, and the meaning couldn't be simpler. It's a song about home, plain and simple. We all have a tendency to find and carry loss and hardship with us as we live and move around our world. The narrator shows how having a home lifts that burden, knowing you're not alone and can always find comfort in that little place. The song is basically just a little reminder of the power of a home. |
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| The Antlers – Stairs to the Attic Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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To start, this album is decidedly under-appreciated and needs more comments in general.
More specifically, this is definitely the culminating point of this album. It's basically a continuation of "In the Attic," the first song of the album. Whereas the narrator is searching for something in the first song (but only the ghosts know it, and the narrator's heard it but can't remember), this song shows him finding what he's looking for and has been looking for in basically every other song in the album.
The lyrics in this song are pretty trippy. The image of the stairs and the doors and such throws out any possibility of literal meaning. Instead, I think we're seeing a moment of insight and clarity, almost a religious moment where the narrator suddenly step out of himself and away from the general self-centered attitude people inevitably have to see himself in relation to everything. He finds himself up on the roof again staring at the stars, and he realizes how small and insignificant he is after searching for his place the entire album |
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| Florence + the Machine – My Boy Builds Coffins Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I wouldn't say it's not deep as the theme is very serious, but it's certainly not very complex. The interpretation is simple, and I'd say you've got it down. The issue with this song is simply that quite a few people have trouble distinguishing art from the events that inspired it, so we have a lot of interpretations that ignore the song entirely. |
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| Florence + the Machine – Blinding Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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This song is kind of an interesting problem to interpret. Some of the lines and images are very clear, while others don't really have any precedent to interpret them by.
Overall, this seems to be a song in which the singer moves form an idealized dream world into the real world. She starts in a dreaming state that she isn't awakened from, even by the classic kiss or the real-world touch that we use to wake sleepers. The big question in the first stanza is who is the "you" who holds her under? It could be a lover, but I don't see and reason to think it is since he isn't mentioned later. I'm more inclined to think that "you" might be a reflection of the singer, part of her own personality that tries to idealize her world.
Now the song really gets interesting. The lines about feeling the revelation through her whole body suggest that this revelation shakes her to her core, utterly upsetting her world. The chorus seems to support this. She can no longer seek the garden, presumably the perfect Garden of Eden where there's no death or anything painful. She also can't call for a boy, making me think that maybe her illusions have to do with relationships and how they work in the world. She expects perfection but now realizes that it's impossible.
This revelation breaks all her walls of dreaming, exposing her to the real world. I particularly like the line "And all my bones began to shake, my eyes flew open." Her very bones shake, implying that her entire world is shifting around her as she wakes to reality.
The most confusing part of the song is the lines about Snow White and synapses. Snow White is interesting because, in many ways, her story mirrors this one. She starts as naive until the witch-queen basically kills her, and her awakening brings her into the real world where she marries (leaving behind her old illusions) and the queen is executed. Circuit boards and synapses are difficult. I think they're both supposed to be metaphors for the mind and how it constructs its world. Snow White stitching circuit boards suggests repairing or restructuring the mind after this revelation; Snow white being important since this story mirrors hers. The synapses slipping through hidden doors is how she escapes, I think.
Really, I think this is a song about a girl (or woman) awakening from a dreamy, unreal version of the world into the real world. The imagery in this is beautiful, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone found a much different interpretation. Some of these images don't have established meanings, after all. |
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| Florence + the Machine – Howl Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Good to see someone else who can interpret symbols and not take everything entirely literally. I think you're getting at the meaning of the song. |
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| Florence + the Machine – My Boy Builds Coffins Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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@Vespertine Finally! Someone else gets the distinction between the song being inspired by the incident and the song being about the incident. I won't dispute that the song is inspired by the incident with her boyfriend, but people are butchering the song by saying it's only about that one incident in her past. It's not a literal, historical account; that incident is simply the inspiration that led to a much deeper song. I'm just glad that someone else can actually interpret a song and not let a simple story get in the way. |
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| Florence + the Machine – My Boy Builds Coffins Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Except that it's not really literal at all... This song may be inspired by the incident with her boyfriend, but saying it's about that incident is a big stretch. Do you think royalty has literally come to his door to ask for a coffin? Personally, I doubt it. There's a big difference between finding what a song is inspired by and fining what a song is about, and a lot of people here haven't managed to distinguish between the two. A good songwriter/author/poet pulls from her own experience when she writes, but that doesn't make her works about her inspiration. |
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| The Antlers – Bear Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Not really, no. The metaphor is very obviously a child; people simply won't step back from the cancer theme long enough to let the song speak for itself.
The thing inside her is described as a cub (a baby bear), and many of the lyrics talk the couple as bears providing food, shelter, and care for the cub. If the couple are being portrayed as bears and the thing is described as a cub, the obvious conclusion is that bears=people in this song, so cubs=babies. You wouldn't call a tumor a cub because a cub is, in many ways, a good thing while a tumor is not, and you certainly wouldn't talk about providing food and shelter for a tumor. Talking about providing food and shelter implies that the couple could keep and care for the cub, and you don't keep or care for a tumor, you do everything you can to kill it quickly.having lyrics that talk about caring for a tumor doesn't make any sense, so having the cub be a tumor doesn't make in sense.
Basically, implying that the cub could be a metaphor for a tumor is silly, and saying that the cub could be a metaphor for a baby which in turn could be a metaphor for a tumor is even worse. Cubs and babies are the same thing: the young of a species that needs to be cared for by its parents. Tumors have very little in common with cubs or babies other than the fact that they grow inside a person. The lack of connection makes it a terrible metaphor, and a group like The Antlers that seems to be so lyrically skilled could come up with something much, much better and less absurd.
Also, I think people need to listen to the tone of the song. This song is fundamentally different from the others on the album. It has a sort of music box/old memory feel to it because it's done in a completely different style from the other songs on the album. I think the style difference alone is enough reason to consider it in its own right instead of forcing the cancer theme on it right away. |
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| Florence + the Machine – My Boy Builds Coffins Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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While it may be, in some ways, literal, the way it's written up gives it a deeper meaning. This is a song about mortality. Coffins are a symbol of death, and this boy builds them for everyone. Kings and beggars both come to him because, in the end, no one escapes death. Everyone is mortal; the lines about how the boy has built one for him, the singer, and will build one for the listener supports this. The coffins aren't built for work or play because both work and play are, to some extent, optional. The coffins are a necessity; he HAS to build them because death doesn't stop. Every coffin is unique because every life is unique, but in the end everyone ends up dead and buried, and, just like it's a shame to through these carefully made coffins into the ground, it's a shame to see every unique life end and be buried. |
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| The Antlers – Bear Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Or it's a flashback. Providing some depth to the relationship via history makes a lot of sense, too. Nobody is going to compare cancer to a baby to a bear; the links become too forced when you start layering levels of metaphor, and you're going to lose your listeners. Look at the song for itself and then try to fit it into the album; don't try to shove it into a mold it doesn't fit to by assuming that it has to be about cancer. |
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| The Antlers – Bear Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Or it could simply be a flashback meant to give their relationship greater depth by providing it with a history. Using metaphors about pregnancy and abortion and then turning the pregnancy/abortion theme into its own metaphor for cancer is an incredibly oblique way to get at a theme and is guaranteed to lose 3/4 of listeners; a skilled songwriter wouldn't do that. It could be an unrelated story, but since the rest of the album seems to focus on one couple, I think a flashback is the most believable and viable option. |
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| The Antlers – Bear Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I'm just curious how he expects the band to convey any sort of emotion or idea without a narrative structure. The narrative is CENTRAL to the themes he's talking about because it conveys them. You can't have the themes of a story without the story itself, and discussing the story and its characters is the best way to get to the themes they convey. |
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| Broken Bells – The High Road Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I think those are the official lyrics, and the song is about way more than getting high. Saying the song is about getting high is kind of like saying The Old Man and the Sea is about fishing. Sure it's true on one level, but you're really not doing it justice if you stop there. Plus most of the song isn't about drugs or getting high; it's about failing to find and stay on the most noble path (the high road). |
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| Broken Bells – The High Road Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Those lines, at least, definitely point to that idea. It's certainly a way to escape when you've lost your way and find you're somewhere you don't want to be. |
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| Broken Bells – The High Road Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I think you're close to the meaning here, and I'm glad someone is looking past the metaphors to find what they mean. Saying this is a song about drugs doesn't do it justice.
A few things to add. I think the Garden in the second stanza is the Garden of Eden. The formerly perfect Garden is imperfect and now needs sorting out; it needs to be fixed. I think this theme of a messed-up world carries throughout the song, making the entire song (and a number of others in this album) about the ways we cope with an imperfect world. In this song, people escape by conforming. Basically what Potatoflesh said earlier.
Then there's this stanza
Come on and get your overdose.
Collect it at the borderline,
And they want to get up in your head...
I'm not sure the overdose is traditional drugs. I think it's a metaphor, and could be a number of things. The one that first comes to mind is entertainment. You go to the border(line) between fantasy and reality to numb yourself in entertainment. Then everyone tries to get in your head. Media producers try to get in there so you watch their stuff, advertisers try to get into your head while you're numbed to sell you products, etc. |
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