| Blue Öyster Cult – Golden Age Of Leather Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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@[cubfever7:25271] This is an example of lyrics from the 1970s which are not quite socially acceptable anymore. In the context of a girl or woman, wanton would mean slut. They had a teenage slut, likely on drugs and/or previously abused to the point that she was too dead to the world to care what was done with her, and they just passed her from one to the other doing what they liked with her. I understand this lyric to describe one last night of unrestrained debauchery (a final outrage). |
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| Dire Straits – The Man's Too Strong Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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This song haunted me from the time I first heard it, but I did have trouble understanding who the "Man" was. From an interview, Knopfler said this was a study in evil inspired in part by Rudolph Hess. I had that part figured out but never saw this as tied to any specific person but more a type of person. In the first verse we are dealing with a self-described drummer boy. He has given orders and directed that people be tortured but it was all in serving a cause, not for himself. He is confessing to what is already known - the acts he did for which he is called a war criminal. He isn't unburdening himself of secrets so much as seeking to explain why he did it and obtain some understanding and forgiveness for this. The second stanza lists some more of his crimes and I agree with Lyrics2Deep that the third stanza is the narrator defending himself that he tried to avoid doing evil. He followed orders where he had to, and he did not relish the tasks he performed for the regime. These stanzas introduce us to "the Man". At first I imagined "the Man" as some enemy of the regime, a resistance leader that the narrator was tasked to break but was only left convinced in the rightness of the resistance over the regime - but this didn't quite fit. Later I came to see "the Man" as more of a Hitler figure. A persuasive man who rose to dictator, binding people around him to the cause he claimed to be working for. The last verse, with the Judas reference really ties this together for me. He served a cause he saw as being larger than himself, doing horrible things for a regime thinking that the ends would justify the means - that the evil he did would allow the regime to survive and grow into something better. Believing that history would judge him as right. But the final verse, indicates that he came to see that there was no real cause beyond the dictator himself, and therefore no real justification for what he did. He turned on the regime which has fallen and he is being judged by the victors for what he did in service of the regime, and the regime's supporters for betraying their leader. The narrator is alone, haunted by the corruption that the regime that he supported - and his old leader's taunt that he and his family had participated in the corruption and had been used too. The song is powerful because we have someone who has committed evil acts and served an evil regime but is not himself an evil person and is capable of moral judgment - so why did he do it? He knows he was wrong, and he isn't arguing otherwise, but that he was human and he was mistaken in his belief in an evil persuasive man and a cause that was was bigger and stronger than himself. We can relate to him because he has this human understanding that his cause was wrong, but can also be repulsed by him because he did these evil acts while being able to tell that they were wrong. And so we see this struggle of the narrator to find peace (make peace with himself) . He desires forgiveness and understanding of why he did it, of how he was caught up in something that he believed in. The Man is the dictator and the cause he claimed to be pursuing (the man himself and the persuasive image he presented) that he served faithfully while keeping his doubts and questions to himself.. |
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| Warren Zevon – Tenderness On The Block Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| This is a beautiful song about parents coming to grips that their daughter is growing up faster than they would like (trying to run before she can walk), and that it is time for them to let go. She wants to go out with her young man and experience life on her own. They're worried she's not ready and she's going to get hurt, and they would rather she wait until she is better prepared. They still see her as a child. The beauty of these lyrics is that the song doesn't present the parents as completely wrong. She isn't ready and she is going to get hurt. But what the parents need to realize is that is the point. She won't get ready for life by staying at home, and they can't always be there to protect her. She needs to get out and experience life, having her day. She'll get hurt, but she'll get over it and learn from it on the long walk of growth to adulthood. | |
| fun. – We Are Young Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I understand that the song has a "feel good" song and people who like it will want to downplay any negativity in the song, but get real. This is a feel good sounding song like Pumped Up Kicks. It's subversive. I think most of us would agree that the song is from the viewpoint of someone who wants to cut loose, party and have a great time tonight without thinking or worrying about the consequences. He's at the bar for the same reason the sunglasses dude is - to hook up with a woman and have sex. His joy after stumbling through his apologies is that he's found "someone" to carry him home tonight. Note that he doesn't mention his "lover" specifically. She's disposable. He sucks up to her with half-ass apologies - think about what the holes in his apologies, or needing to get his story (lies?) straight means. He's got her tonight. Great. But if he didn't get her he'd have to find someone else to "carry him home". Consider that the sunglasses guy seems to have just shown up trying to pick up the "lover". He'd not be asking about emotional hurt as a pick up line, but asking about "what happened to you" referring to a mark on her face which is still there months after the fact, sure. The scar is real. The song is from the point of view of a selfish, manipulative and abusive jerk who is only apologizing to the Lover so he can get back to having sex with her. If he was sincere he wouldn't need to work up a bs story that he needs to keep straight and there wouldn't be holes in his apologies. I figure his apologies would have less holes in them if this was the first time he was apologizing. They've been through this and will probably be going through it again when he gets too drunk and loses it and hits her again sometime in the future. This is a complex song that captures the joy and glory of living in the moment without fear of consequences, while also subtly capturing the carnage that such people leave behind. Living large without any fear or regard for consequences is not much different than living selfishly without any care for the feelings or well being of others. |
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