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Modest Mouse – Wicked Campaign Lyrics 10 years ago
@[CDCF:5558] I really like this idea, but I will take it one step further. It doesn't even have to be a CEO or whatever. It can be just any person in a westernized country coming to terms with their own impact on the earth.

I recycle, I drive a prius, I try do what I can but at the same time I realize that as an American I live a lifestyle that is totally unsustainable in the long term when viewed on a world population level. In other words if everyone in the world lived like me we would have run out of resources looooong ago. That is something that I struggle with, and I think that Isaac is struggling with that too on this album.

submissions
Modest Mouse – Be Brave Lyrics 10 years ago
Dang can't edit my post. To go a bit further on the title and chorus, I believe Isaac is speaking to the generations to come, telling them they better be brave, because things are gonna get scary.

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Modest Mouse – Be Brave Lyrics 10 years ago
To me this is another song on the self destructive nature of humans. This time Isaac seems to point to the growing problem of overpopulation specifically.

"As sharks in sheep's clothing, pumping with our hips
Filling every single corner with our soft little gifts of ourselves
Getting carried, so, so carried away"

We as a species tend to view children as a wonderful gift, rather than a danger. We are unwittingly overpopulating the earth and filling every little nook and cranny with too many human beings.

"I am not afraid to be dead but it's scary for me to stay
From day to day, from day to day to today
Be brave, be brave, be brave, be brave, and be brave
Be brave, be brave, be brave, be brave, and be brave"

To Isaac or the narrator dying today is not nearly as scary as the prospect of living in some unspecified future time when things have gotten really dicey. A time in which overpopulation has resulted in the depletion of resources, and perhaps lead to unspeakable wars over water, food, and land.

"At the Parthenon
Ants were climbing 'round
Every head of bronze
At the Parthenon"

Comparing humans to ants covering everything....

"Well the Earth doesn't care and we hardly even matter
We're just a bit more piss to push out its full bladder
And as our bodies float down onto all their rocky little bits
Piled up under mountains of dirt and silt
And still, the world, it don't give a shit"

To hear some people describe it today humans are going to bring about the end of the world, but this could not be further from the truth. The earth will live on long after human beings have wiped ourselves out, or rendered the earth incapable of sustaining us. Can we bring about our own destruction? Absolutely. However, to think we will bring about the end of the world itself is perhaps thinking a bit too highly of ourselves.

Love this song and the album theme in general. I'm a big fan of the HBO news show VICE, or as I like to call it "the most depressing half our on television". I'm also fairly pessimistic about our chance of survival as a species, so this really speaks to me.

submissions
Modest Mouse – Lampshades on Fire Lyrics 10 years ago
I view the lyrics much like many others here do. Man is a self destructive force devouring all resources and moving on rather than creating a harmony with his environment.

To me though Isaac is going even further. The song is taking place in a fictional future in which man has made interstellar travel possible. We has long since ruined earth, and now we simply go from planet to planet consuming everything in our path. Human beings' survival is now entirely in the hands of the scientists who are constantly in search of new planets/technology/whatever that can provide more fuel for the fire.

The album definitely listens as if Isaac just finished watching a Vice marathon

submissions
Conor Oberst – Zigzagging Toward the Light Lyrics 11 years ago
Actual lyrics, as taken from the digital CD booklet:

I’m blessed with a heart that doesn’t stop
My mind is a weather vane it spins around just like a top
Knows what the winds of fortune bring in the season of the witch
Home is a perjury, a parlor trick, an urban myth

Oh how the circumstances change
This world of smoke and steel and compromise and meter maids
I’m going to leave here for too long
Zigzagging toward the light I’m off to sing my bounder song

True love it hides like city stars
Nothing to gaze upon or contemplate how near or far
If it comes it comes quite unannounced, a momentary glance
Lit up by sun or moon by bonfire or ambulance

Then how the circumstances change
Feels unmistakable with no idea from where it came
But you will know it when it’s gone
Zigzagging through the night half dead you sing your bounder song

Save for the bounder whose word is never kept
A bandeau of flowers to stave his mind and bloom when he forgets

It’s true that shadows tell the time
On sunny afternoons on crowded sidewalks passersby
I’m in a queue that stretches out far as the eye can see
It forms a figure eight and goes on for eternity

Oh how the circumstances change
I fly by interstate across a purple mountain range
I’ll find a place to come undone
Zigzagging toward you now I sing out loud my bounder song

submissions
Conor Oberst – Kick Lyrics 11 years ago
The lyrics as posted are incorrect. Per the CD booklet actual lyrics are:

Kick you know you're still a kid
And your diet's too full of additives
Passed out on a couch with ashes in your mouth
Dreaming that you're hopping a fence

This world must have it out for you
From the shores of Montauk out to Malibu
The trappings of a name you never could escape
These people want to live in the past
Some golden age that they never had

I thought we lost that Camelot
I thought we lost that Camelot
Some children's story we forgot
Grew old so long ago

Kick it's hard to find a friend
In a place that's so cruel and partisan
You should go in style to Stockholm for a while
Live outside oblivion's lens

Someday you'll have a fine divorce
And a cemetery plot in Hyannis Port
Next time you close your eyes on a helicopter ride
I hope you see it isn't your fault
I hope you know it isn't your fault

I thought they shot that Camelot
I thought they shot that Camelot
Whoever shot this movie-stock
B roll said the show must go on

Laying in an office on an old chaise lounge
Listening to the doctor drone
There is no therapeutic feeling once the shock wears off
You answer every question "No"

Hiding in a hamlet with the shades pulled down
Wondering if the story's broke
Tragedy is prophet once the word gets out
Tabloids at the country store

Searching under tables once the bar's closed down
Said somebody stole your phone
Now there is no one to talk to but these trust fund drunks
Should have brought a chaperone

Kick I'd love to help you but I just don't count
Friendship makes you paranoid
I don't believe in curses
But I just might now you never really had a choice
Like all of your broken toys

Kick you know this life is rich
But pleasure is not the same as happiness
But if you don't collide with the traffic in your mind
I think you'll find your way out of this
I hope you find your way out of this


These lyrics aren't a perfect representation of the recording either, which contains an occasional word added or subtracted from a line, or a contraction where there isn't one listed.

The song is about Kathleen "kick" Kennedy. In an guest column for Q-magazine Oberst wrote "“This song is total projection. I imagined what this person’s life might be like based off a few minutes I spent with her in a crowded bar and some scattered tabloid journalism. It is almost certainly and completely inaccurate on every level but, hey, it’s a catchy tune. And considering what her family has been through its surely not the worst thing ever uttered about them. Mad empathy is what I was going for. All apologies." He's right, the song is quite catchy, and it definitely made me feel sorry for whoever it may have been referencing the first time I heard it.


submissions
Conor Oberst – Kick Lyrics 11 years ago
The lyrics as posted are incorrect. Per the CD booklet actual lyrics are:

Kick you know you're still a kid
And your diet's too full of additives
Passed out on a couch with ashes in your mouth
Dreaming that you're hopping a fence

This world must have it out for you
From the shores of Montauk out to Malibu
The trappings of a name you never could escape
These people want to live in the past
Some golden age that they never had

I thought we lost that Camelot
I thought we lost that Camelot
Some children's story we forgot
Grew old so long ago

Kick it's hard to find a friend
In a place that's so cruel and partisan
You should go in style to Stockholm for a while
Live outside oblivion's lens

Someday you'll have a fine divorce
And a cemetery plot in Hyannis Port
Next time you close your eyes on a helicopter ride
I hope you see it isn't your fault
I hope you know it isn't your fault

I thought they shot that Camelot
I thought they shot that Camelot
Whoever shot this movie-stock
B roll said the show must go on

Laying in an office on an old chaise lounge
Listening to the doctor drone
There is no therapeutic feeling once the shock wears off
You answer every question "No"

Hiding in a hamlet with the shades pulled down
Wondering if the story's broke
Tragedy is prophet once the word gets out
Tabloids at the country store

Searching under tables once the bar's closed down
Said somebody stole your phone
Now there is no one to talk to but these trust fund drunks
Should have brought a chaperone

Kick I'd love to help you but I just don't count
Friendship makes you paranoid
I don't believe in curses
But I just might now you never really had a choice
Like all of your broken toys

Kick you know this life is rich
But pleasure is not the same as happiness
But if you don't collide with the traffic in your mind
I think you'll find your way out of this
I hope you find your way out of this


These lyrics aren't a perfect representation of the recording either, which contains an occasional word added or subtracted from a line, or a contraction where there isn't one listed.

The song is about Kathleen "kick" Kennedy. In an guest column for Q-magazine Oberst wrote "“This song is total projection. I imagined what this person’s life might be like based off a few minutes I spent with her in a crowded bar and some scattered tabloid journalism. It is almost certainly and completely inaccurate on every level but, hey, it’s a catchy tune. And considering what her family has been through its surely not the worst thing ever uttered about them. Mad empathy is what I was going for. All apologies." He's right, the song is quite catchy, and it definitely made me feel sorry for whoever it may have been referencing the first time I heard it.


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