submissions
| Crash Test Dummies – Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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There is no need to evoke child abuse as the secret message. Except for certain forms like allegory poetry is not a game of substituting one thing for another, which it is then the task of the reader to decode. I think this song is quite literal in its meaning. The first boy has his hair turn white, one of those mysterious phenomena that can indeed result from a traumatic event, and are visited upon individuals unprovoked, as if by the hand of God. The second stanza evokes one of the great traumas in the life of shy children: having to take off your clothes in front of others. In this ritual, children scan one another and in their innocent cruelty pick up and comment upon whatever makes someone different, in confirmation or rejection of that person's normality and ranking in the group. The poor girl whose birthmarks are being commented upon feels like she has to defend herself by offering some explanation, even if there is none, underlining the bewildering nature of fate contemplated by the first stanza, to which is added the element of human cruelty: our inclination to judge, the cruel nature of "normality". In the third stanza the child is called upon to account for what would otherwise be viewed as the behavior of someone who was crazy outside of the context of a pentecostal church, another instance illuminating the powerless of children and the randomness of fate. All children go through these or similar existential traumas growing up, from which the song takes its considerable power. Even now, decades later, I can feel what that feels like. Depending on who you are and how you well you were able to adjust or not, the scars can run quite deep. |
submissions
| They Might Be Giants – The Mesopotamians Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Right. The Mesopotamians are explicitly identified with the Beatles. So there might be an implied commentary on the laughable antiquity of music from that era, in comparison with the light-as-air, smart, untroubled, post-modern music of groups like TMBG. The David Cowles cartoon version on YouTube certainly plays up the idea of a kind of absurdly outmoded, disintegrating, irrelevant past. This is a really great song. |
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