submissions

Metric – Dead Disco Lyrics	14 years ago
This is the quintessential Metric number, it's about music and musicians. Musicians are trying, but "all we get" is remodeled, old, dead stuff. It's about the hunger for music to be original and about something. Even against something (a face to blame). Musicians go for the look they're supposed to have (pants down, tits out), but they forgot the music. Quite an admonishment.

submissions

Metric – Wet Blanket Lyrics

14 years ago

Like many Metric songs, I think this is about being a songwriter. The Wet Blanket, the Body Leech, is the person who judges musicians for label purposes. He is the exploiter, the brick wall, who is stubborn and tells them to take their phony sophistry elsewhere. He is old-fashioned, and talks down to them, with a clenched fist. He tears musicians down. The "she" is not Emily Haines, but another musician being exploited. She is happy he wants to break it (break what? the contract). But she keeps falling for it, she keeps on the "vegetariate sing-along" and thus loses herself. The very pacing of the song and the "doo-doo-doo-doo" shows that there is both anger and a humoring disdain for this reality of today's music. This is, again, not a song about relationships or any such thing, but about the expectation of recording studios and the big labels against the aspirations of artists.

submissions

Metric – Monster Hospital Lyrics

14 years ago

I think you are right! Wow. I didn't know the story, but having read it now, I can say that this song isn't about any "war" but about songwriters fighting the big labels and not selling out. Using Bobby Fuller as a symbol of how the industry "kills" the artists. It fits the general Metric emphasis on writing about musicians and music itself. The "war" won because they signed up with a label. They held her hands down, she signed up, she was "bad." Amazing! It is an intensely clever critique of the music industry and its greed disguised as a war protest song.

submissions

Metric – White Gold Lyrics

14 years ago

This is a complex song about the life of a musician who doesn't know where true value is (porn or sirloin is what they get). It's a reflection taken as they do cocaine (white gold) with an aspiring actress. They are the piss-poor because they spend their lives away (white gold) and lose their friends and loved ones over a blind quest for fame. Hence the airwaves and the airlines (touring). The waitress/actress tries to warn them that they are replaying history, but the response is that they're in the same boat, she hasn't "beat" them in her path. The musician thinks they can make their lives different, "make it right," but they have to admit that because of the white gold, their vision is strained.

submissions

Metric – On the Sly Lyrics	14 years ago
cmerick is absolutely right. If you understand the components of the song, it's that she's messed up her life and made for the type of inspiration that will lead her to find sympathy from an audience (love her on the sly).

submissions

Metric – Help, I'm Alive Lyrics	14 years ago
And she trembles because they (reviewers, audiences) are observing, she is afraid of stumbling (musically). The "eat me alive" is the criticism. It is most definitively not about zombies, even if Emily joked about that herself.

submissions

Metric – Help, I'm Alive Lyrics	14 years ago
This song is, as I've heard Emily Haynes explain before, about being able to keep writing and rocking. She needs to feel alive to keep going and defining herself. She won't let the music die. She's young, she's alive, she's got plans, and she can still rock. Thus the allusion to a fundamental tool of musical instruments (and hearing!): the hammer.

submissions

Metric – Grow Up and Blow Away Lyrics

14 years ago

In my view, as with many Metric songs, this one is also about musicians, originality, fame, writing, and trying to get an act together. I don't think there's a pregnancy involved here at all. They were born to play with each other (two by two, from the womb). "To the holiday there is no holiday" - they lead a life of party and entertainment. I don't think it's "from the womb to the holiday" as that means nothing. There was fame ("life") but like many musicians, as they age, they "blow away" as they get consumed by drugs, alcohol, and depression, they feel like dying. She's diving in bars and both are trying to write and feel inspired. She's writing "in blood" due to her depression, drinking, he's deep in "mud" and he is thinking starting a family might stabilize his life. She doesn't think family is an answer, she wants to keep writing. They should be helping each other out. She needs drugs for depression ("his drugs"), he needs help getting out of typical rockstar controversy (a shovel for the mud). Ultimately, the song leaves these musicians in this state, they were "blue" but are now "grey." They have lost their luster.

* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.