| Gorillaz – Last Living Souls Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| I think this song is more about isolation than about social commentary. The viewpoint character feels everyone else is "dead inside" because HE is feeling dead inside - he cannot connect with anyone else, so it's like walking through a world full of zombies. He freaks out at the end because he knows his inability to connect is coming from him somehow, but doesn't know why and doesn't know how to change it. | |
| Marilyn Manson – Cake And Sodomy Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| I've never actually heard this song, but just now, reading the lyrics, I'd say it isn't about glorifying sex, or about trashing religion...it's clearly about trashing *hypocrisy*. Specifically: the hypocrisy of those who talk about God and goodness and purity in public, but turn around and commit the most violent, vile offenses against the helpless in private. | |
| Billy Joel – She's Always A Woman Lyrics | 9 years ago |
|
The song seems pretty simple to me. There are some people who have a quality about them—call it charisma—so that whatever they do, they do it with such strength, style, flare, or grace that no matter whether it's a virtuous thing or an utterly asshole thing, they make it look thoroughly awesome. They are quite literally *fascinating*, and you can't help being captivated by them (even if you're being appalled at the same time). Like any kind of incredible talent or genius, it doesn't necessarily make the possessor admirable as a person, but you can't help being astounded and awed by it when you see it before you. It's not only women who have this quality, of course, but this song is about a specific woman who does. There's definitely love in this song, but more than that, there's deep admiration for that quality in her—that charisma or whatever—that makes her seem larger than life, almost like a force of nature. |
|
| Al Stewart – Year Of The Cat Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Why yes, the fact that the song attracts a variety of widely differing theories on the internet means that the song itself has no meaning. As opposed to it meaning that the internet is a place where anybody can chime in with any half-baked (or quarter-baked, or one septillionth-baked) theory on the whim of the moment....no, no, that's ridiculous; it must be the SONG'S fault. | |
| Hundred Little Reasons – Big Pink Blanket Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| The bizarre, but cute, imagery makes this jaunty little tune especially memorable. | |
| Laura Branigan – Gloria Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| It's about a woman who's desperate not to be alone—she's constantly pretending to be someone she's not just to appeal to a man, because she defines herself by whether or not she's in a relationship. Her friend is trying to tell her to slow down and chill out—stop jumping whenever guys call, stop putting on an act to please them—she isn't fooling anyone, and it just doesn't do her any good in the end. | |
| Ten Years After – I'd Love to Change the World Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| I was six years old when this came out. I didn't really get anything the verses were saying, but the refrain filled me with terrible fear and guilt--because they were leaving it up to ME to change the world...and I didn't know what to do, either. | |
| Bob Dylan – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
This is the rare example of a protest song that did exactly what it was meant to. On the surface, writing protest songs seems like kind of a weak response to injustice--a case of "ready, aim, sing!" as Tom Lehrer so eloquently put it--but that's because, at its heart, the protest song is a product of despair: a last gasp for justice that everyone knows is not coming. But every now and then, the song itself brings some kind of justice. While William Zantzinger claimed it "had no effect" on his life, in 2001 he was still angry enough to call it "a total lie," and Bob Dylan a "no-account son of a bitch" and "a scum of a scum bag of the earth" that he "should have sued." Clearly, the song haunted him until his dying day in 2009--and that's exactly what it was meant to do. Bob Dylan could not change the fact of Hattie Carroll's death nor change the courts that had let her killer off so easily, but he managed to bring some small measure of punishment to the man in the form of public scorn...and made sure the rest of us knew about what happened, and would not easily forget. |
|
| Bob Dylan – A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
To me this has always seemed like a collection of images and impressions, things the singer saw and heard and felt in the course of his travels, that made a deep impression and stuck with him. "A white ladder all covered with water" could be something seen during a flood--a ladder, a sign of people repairing or renewing, washed away by the forces of nature and chaos. "A black branch with blood that kept drippin';" someone fell on or was pushed onto a branch and was injured, and afterward the blood dripped from it as if the tree itself were injured, the red blood falling from the black wood creating a stark and memorable contrast. The "young woman whose body was burning" is not necessarily meant to be taken literally--her body could be "burning" with the strength of her emotion (desire or fury or passion), which she feels so strongly it comes out in her every movement or gesture. The more metaphorical images like "ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken" were things he felt--everywhere he went people talked and talked, but no one came close to expressing what they truly wanted to say. Most of the things he remembers were grim or bleak; only one thing he encountered--the girl who gave him a rainbow--spoke of hope or real beauty. And so now he has a mission: to go out and try to change things, to reach others who feel as despairing and helpless as he does now, and give comfort or reveal truth however and wherever he can. |
|
| Billy Joel – Big Shot Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| The way I heard it, Billy Joel witnessed a fight between Mick Jagger and Bianca at a restaurant, and he wrote it from Mick's point of view. It must have been a doozy, because this is one of the most gleefully scathing songs ever--the POV character is really enjoying telling this woman how much of an ass she was. | |
| America – A Horse With No Name Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
The whole "Horse = Heroin" thing really springs from a whole different equation...the one that says "the 1960's and 70's = drugs; musicians do drugs; people on drugs write things that sound strange; therefore, all 1960's and 70's songs with strange lyrics = songs about drugs! Q.E.D." (Q.E.D., in this case, meaning "Quoting Endless Dumbsh!t.") However...there's another metaphorical horse that fits the lyrics of this song even better than the creaky old drug interpretation: the shaman's horse, which is another name for the sound of the drumbeat that carries the shaman into a trance state, into the otherworld on a visionary experience. Such a horse has no name because it isn't flesh and blood, it's a spirit horse made of sound. To me the song is about a kind of vision quest in the desert...or else a mundane trip that (due to a little too much sunlight or too little water) became a visionary experience to the traveler, and caused a spiritual awakening. |
|
| Martin Page – House of Stone and Light Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I agree, it's about spiritual transformation, but I think it's definitely about a Buddhist path. That doesn't mean that someone from other traditions can't find meaning in it, though. It's a beautiful song with a gentle, transcendent sound, about coming back to yourself and finding serenity inside. One of my favorites. | |
| Chris De Burgh – The Lady in Red Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
It never ceases to amaze me, the nonsense that people can come up with when they want to badly enough. Have you ever noticed that the more simple and innocent a song is, the harder people will work to come up with a "nasty" interpretation? It's as though the very presence of innocence is an affront to them, and they become like angry little monkeys flinging their poo at something they don't understand. Silly little monkeys... ;> This song could hardly be simpler or more beautiful. It's about seeing a woman you know and realizing as if for the first time how beautiful she is and how much you love her. It doesn't matter if all the men in the room are really asking her to dance, the singer thinks they are, assuming that they can see the same incredible beauty in her. The song is about that overwhelming rush of love or infatuation, so intense that it's physical, that we've all felt at one time or another in our lives. I don't know if this song was written about the artist's wife or mistress; it doesn't really matter. The emotion it conveys is pure and universal (whether the choices made after it are or not). I don't know what it is about the words, the music, the arrangement, or the vocal delivery in this song, but they work together beautifully, and I've never heard such a perfect expression of that that one emotion. Poe said that a perfect story or poem was one in which every single part of it works to create a "unity of effect or impression," a single, intense feeling or mood in the reader's or listener's mind. By that standard, "Lady in Red" is a perfect song, and nothing else said about it really matters more than that. |
|
| Al Stewart – Year Of The Cat Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
Is there any song that people DON'T say is about drugs...? le sigh. I think sugargriz nailed it. This song is a fantasy...in the same way that women have a fantasy of meeting a "knight in shining armor," men have a fantasy of meeting an exotic woman in an exotic place and being swept away into a strange world as foreign as it is dangerous and beautiful. It's about life lived in film noir tones in places hidden from most Westerners, where the romance is watered with world-weariness and the dim smoky air scented with mystery intrigue, full of anachronism and contradiction. Even the title, Year of the Cat, is an enigma, being from a lesser-known Vietnamese variation on the Chinese calendar...it sounds both strange yet almost familiar, at odds with the vaguely North African/Near East feel of the setting yet plausible in those places where travelers from everywhere and anywhere come to trade, to conspire, to escape. It's a dreamlike interlude in a man's life, a detour down an unfamiliar alley that breaks him out of his regimented life (bus and tourists) and draws him into an underworld that lies a half-breath beneath the world of the familiar, the safe, the prosaic. ...and "a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain" has to be one of THE most vivid and seductive images ever written, don't you think? ;) |
|
| Beyoncé – Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
Wheee-ooo! Have we got some music snobs here or what? The last time I heard so many complaints about "meaningless songs" it the late 1970's, and my maiden aunt was railing about the B52's...LMFAO! It's dance music, y'all! It's repetitive so you have *more time to dance to it.* Sure, you can complain that it doesn't have complex and varied lyrics--you can also complain that a hang glider doesn't have bathrooms or an in-flight movie. In other words, if that's what you want from it--YER DOIN' IT WRONG. This is a fine little song with a fantastic beat, dynamic vocal harmony and brilliant production. The lyrics are a wonderful verbal slap in the face to players who have double standards about what they do and what their ex does. It's the most irresistible dance tune I've heard since Miami Sound Machine's "Conga," and the video is purely amazing to watch. Beyoncé...yer doin' it RIGHT. |
|
| Bricklin – Walk Away Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
I'm pretty sure it's "Ah, the rain may wash us down," not "daily washes down." I also think it's "should've known they WOULD come back now," but I'm not as sure about that one. |
|
| Johnny Cash – Flesh and Blood Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
This song shocked me (in a good way) when I heard it playing in my local "Tuesday Morning" store. It's so...nakedly sensual? I didn't expect that from a song recorded so long ago (I should know better by now...). All I remember about Johnny Cash is that my dad played some of his songs on guitar when I was a preschooler; but after hearing this, I know I need to take a closer look at the Man in Black. To me the singer is saying that the pleasures of solitude and communing with nature are fine and good, but in the end he's a man and he needs the raw erotic joy of making love to the woman he treasures even more. The imagery he builds up of the outdoors and his relationship to the wilderness is beautiful, touching, and full of wonder, but then the refrain hits like a blow to the gut, making the joys of Nature seem pale and thin, no substitute for the richer, thicker pleasures of joining in "flesh and blood." It's a paeon to Nature, ultimately, to human beings as creatures OF Nature, showing that what we call our "base" instincts are no more (and no less) than the purest expression of wonder in Nature that we can know. It shoves the visceral intesity of erotic love in your face, while simultaneously raising it to the highest of sacraments. It's quite remarkable. |
|
| The Kinks – Mr. Churchill Says Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
Absolutely nothing...except not being occupied by Nazi Germany. I may be just a Yank, but it seems to me that was still a worthy achievement. |
|
| Olivia Newton-John – I Honestly Love You Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
I consider this one of the most...honest? sincere? true? authentic?...maybe I'd just better echo the lyrics and call it "pure and simple" - love songs ever written. It's beautiful in the way that simple truth is, and its genius lies in the unaffectedness of its lyrics. It isn't at all what people think of when they say "poetic," but that's what makes it profoundly brilliant poetry. I can *kind of* understand why people want to sing it at their weddings, because it has that utter genuineness that no other love song I know of really expresses. When I was in the throes of my (unrequited) high school crush, this was the song that ran through my head because the refrain seemed to say it better than any other words I knew. (I just avoided thinking about the last verse at the time - such is the power of love-inspired blindness! I guess that's what the "sing-it-at-our-wedding" folks are doing, too; but nowadays I consider the song's tragedy part of its intrinsic beauty, and I don't think you can really separate the two.) |
|
| ABBA – Like An Angel Passing Through My Room Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
Hasn't everyone felt like this one time or another? Drifting in a state of mental and emotional quiet, where thoughts and feelings seem like whispers rather than shouts...you can just let them come and go, observing them rather than trying to avoid, control or direct them. There's a hint that this may be the quietude that comes after intense emotion (the calm after the storm), but it may also be that the storm was years ago and the viewpoint character is simply seeing long-past events in a new perspective. The word "reverie" is defined as both "a state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing" and as "an instrumental piece suggesting a dreamy or musing state." I adore how this song seems to evoke both meanings. |
|
| ABBA – I Let The Music Speak Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I love the contradictory imagery in this song - it reminds me of the phenomenon of synesthesia, where one sense stimulates perception in another sense. | |
| ABBA – Happy New Year Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
The first time I heard this song, I was ecstatic - finally there was a good New Years song (besides the ancient "Auld Lang Syne") out in the world! But when I heard the last verse, it ticked me off so bad - by including the "end of a decade" and the year "eighty-nine" in the lyrics, they *ruined* its staying power, making it useless for every other year afterwards! Did they not realize it was in a position to be *the only pop song about New Years* ever recorded? It could have been a classic, a perennial hit played every single December to this DAY, but they blew it. I don't usually get this worked up about a pop song, but a missed opportunity of this magnitude makes me want to tear my hair out. Even now, if I thought they'd listen, I'd beg them to slightly change the lyrics and re-record this - there's still not a good pop New Year's song, so the niche is still wide open. Somebody, please, remake this with a slight rewrite! With (say) "end of an era" instead of "decade," and the final line as "In the endless grand design" or something, this song would be virtually immortal. |
|
| ABBA – Dancing Queen Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
I was only ten or eleven when this came out, we played the 45 on my cousins' little red plastic kid's record player (the one with the flashing lights in the speaker on front), and hearing it through a tinny speaker still takes me back there, to the time when I first started to really appreciate music. It was the first ABBA song I ever heard, and it seemed like the ultimate expression of the exhilaration of dancing. To the guy who was confused by "rock" and "jive" appearing in a disco song...sorry to disillusion you, but disco IS a form of rock - more akin to the old-style rock'n'roll of the 50's & early 60's than to the psychedelic rock and early metal of its time, but still a subset of rock. Rock has tried to cut all its ties to disco in its struggle to be taken seriously, so disco has become its disowned, red-headed stepchild, but you can't ignore the family resemblance. As for "jive..." the divisions between genres of American music aren't so obvious to people in other countries. Plus, "jive" was entering white slang and was used somewhat generically for a while.... |
|
| ABBA – Does Your Mother Know Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
I was already an ABBA fan, but I had never heard this song before my roommate showed me that hilarious bit from *Johnny English*. I immediately recognized their sound, though, and promptly went searching for it online afterwards. I really like the way there's like two different (and very different-sounding) refrains - the rockin' "You can dance with me honey" followed by the oddly chirpy little "Take it easy" bit. The contrast between them is weird - it shouldn't work, but it does, and gives this song a unique character that makes it one of their more distinctive tunes. The killer bass riff doesn't hurt, either. |
|
| ABBA – Fernando Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Or perhaps they were just using the Mexican Revolution as a blind to talk about the Spanish Civil War - in the same way that M*A*S*H* used the Korean War as a front to comment on Vietnam. | |
| ABBA – Soldiers Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I always thought it was about war, from the point of view of those who don't fight - they're frightened by the violence, but recognize they're part of the events going on around them, they have their part to play (whatever they think it to be). | |
| ABBA – Two for the Price of One Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Yep, some guy's sexual fantasy blows up in his face - he thinks he's getting a three-is-company deal, but she really means "take me, and my mom comes along." Straight up humor, with a little "take that!" to guys whose minds immediately go to the naughtiest place when they read something. | |
| ABBA – Waterloo Lyrics | 13 years ago |
|
The song "Waterloo" is ambiguous enough that you can apply it to several situations, but I think it's clear that it was NOT intended to refer to domestic violence in any way (in the early 70's? No chance) OR to surrendering oneself to Jesus (nice thought, but ABBA's not a religious group). Nor is it about Napoleon (it's just using Napoleon's legendary defeat as a metaphor). I think it's clearly just a song about a girl letting herself fall for someone else - for one reason or another, she resisted having a relationship with them, but they hung in there, and now she gives up and admits she likes them. It reminds me of countless "Will They, Won't They?" romantic subplots in the movies and other media, where the couple starts out antagonistic towards each other, but have obvious Unresolved Sexual Tension, and finally end up together. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.