submissions
| Morgan Page – The Longest Road Lyrics
| 7 years ago
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@[kuroineko:27975] You're OK. I don't speak any other language but English and those lines make basically no sense to me either. |
submissions
| Beth Orton – Roll The Dice Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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Your are listening, I believe, to Beth and William Orbit finishing the process of breaking up, right there in the studio, in real time, with her having finished the lyrics sometime before, at a point when she basically knew it was over and he didn't yet. Right after this album apparently the two don't cross paths or have any contact for years. He was a kind of a notch in her belt. Nothing can compare to someone falling in love with you and she put a spell on him to make it happen. But it's kind of automatic behavior, not true love, just wanting to possess him. Well, not just wanting that, she did love him "the way that I do" just as he did the same - I'm not saying he was as into her as she makes it sound in the song, with him loving her more since he "began losing you". Maybe (I"m not as sure) she can say the same thing in a way, that she loved him in a way, the same way really, but she was aware they weren't healthy for each other before he was. Despite being kind of ambivalent they were both passionate at the same time.
IMO Finley Quaye totally ruined the lyric with his edit, made it basically a straight breakup song. It's more than that. It's a confession that she manipulated him. Other songs on the album make it clear that his lifestyle didn't leave him time to give her the attention she deserved - before he was in the jet set he was just a flying music bum - that was how he paid the rent. I could be wrong about the details but I think I have the general picture correct. |
submissions
| Vertical Horizon – We Are Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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Things going poorly in Matthew's relationship. That line "seven days and not a return" gives it away if it wasn't already obvious. She don't text, she don't Skype...she is just not that into him.
Maybe the coolest thing about the lyrics is the lovers on the radio. I'm pretty sure this is similar to, like me `falling in love' with Beth Orton (when I hear Roll the Dice you betta believe it). |
submissions
| Grateful Dead – Jack Straw Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[KvonNJ:20032] Yes if you listen to who's singing when your explanation is the simplest and makes the most sense. Except that I think that Shannon is the one who's slowing Jack down, and they both gotta be on the run. Shannon's vicious alright but he doesn't have the stamina to keep up, and now they need to be on the getaway pronto. Plus I think Jack is the one who's "done shared all of mine", by then everything Jack ever had was used up and spent by the two of them. This way, you understand, Jack has every reason in the world to kill his friend. It was maybe even an act of mercy if Jack figured that "one last score" guy was gonna pound slowpoke Shannon to smithereens anyway. |
submissions
| Steely Dan – Dr Wu Lyrics
| 9 years ago
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@[Song:9195] boy I saw on Janet Wu's FB page where she shouts out to SD about exactly what Song boy says. |
submissions
| OceanLab – Satellite Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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@[jambomdaman:5151] "I inspire the dreams that guide you, baby"...thank heavens I am not in such a crappy relationship. However apparently you are right, according to http://www.davepearce.co.uk/interviews/oceanlab/ - forgive me for not upvoting your answer, and now the song is ruined for me. How I wish DJMega was right - that it's the moon - at least the moon has a right to speak from above. Absentee boyfriend thinks he controls her..."you pray to me"...horrible, pathetic. |
submissions
| Steely Dan – Rikki Don't Lose That Number Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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Thank you, Rikki! I have an idea the name might have originally started as an affectionate name for Erica/Erika. Nameplayground.com counted people named Rikki at some point and there were more than 4000 of them. How many are males? Answer: "0.00%" and nameplayground has the remark "exclusively a girl's name". |
submissions
| Steely Dan – Dr Wu Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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BTW a few things. Boston TV reporter Janet Wu, on he FB page for 25 Sept 2013 indicates "They don't talk about it, but my dad was the Miami (Biscayne Bay) heart surgeon who saved his mom. They apparently loved him and his name." Right now I see zero evidence that anyone ever got Fagen off smack and don't believe the Washington DC acupuncturist story. Another thing, Fagen indicated that Wu is the "personification" of the drug, fine. But it makes no sense to try to wake up a symbol - in poetry an extended personification that goes on for line after line can certainly mean there is a character, it's not just some symbolic name. In fact it makes more sense if you say that Katy is just a symbol, since she doesn't exactly appear in the song, she's just referred to - my interpretation works if by chance you don't believe Katy is a person. And anothet thing, IMO "you" hever refers to Katy - he's addressing the doctor all the way through, the guy who helped him begin again...he's talking to an unconscious stoned person. In the interview I think it's entirely possible Fagen misremembered - they were all stoned, all the time, and it was Katy who, human female or not, is the symbol, and Er. Wu a human character. Everyone agrees Wu refers to some actual human, someone who in real life was not an addict or anything like that - thus imagine my surprise when I saw "you" stoned. |
submissions
| Beth Orton – She Cries Your Name Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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I believe you are listening to the dying embers of whatever relationship the two of them had, Orbit and Orton, it's almost burnt to a crisp right there in the studio while she's recording Superpinkymandy (where this song appeared 3 years before Trailer Park), right there while he's producing it. Like this song, the song Where Do You Go also echoes the loneliness that arises when your lover is traveling - presumably he's hustling in and out of airports where he's spreading production goodness around, I mean his name is on tons of albums and EPs at the time, early 90s, easy enough to believe he's got the frequent flyer thing going. That said, she wasn't exactly a homebody herself - she tells a story of going to Thailand and he comes and gets her and convinces her she has a singing career ahead of her. But that's in the past by this time.
The wound opens deeper on the song Roll the Dice, and they're bleeding all over the mixing board by the finale, Release Me. By '96 she's calling Trailer Park he debut. As if not only Superpinkymandy but the whole affair is something she'd rather forget. Then she's her own act and doesn't perform with him again until a guest appearance 2001 - I kind of doubt if they were much on speaking terms between times. |
submissions
| Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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I always heard "a mosquito, my libido" as, the conformity of the audience is a huge turn off for him. Actually an interesting idea that it really meant that his particular contagious nihilist libido would spread to the pseudo revolutionaries demanding to be entertained. But it's a little stretch. To say it has anything to do with HIV is a real stretch.
Dreamless, he couldn't possibly be making a joke since he didn't even freakin know the punchline, that Teen Spirit was a deodorant. Tons of emotion in there, dissolved a heavy dose of contempt for all the denial that had already snatched any chance he had of happiness. |
submissions
| Steely Dan – Sun Mountain Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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The meaning is a bit obscure but I think not overly so, and the mood is joyous.
A happy Steely Dan song? First, my credentials as a cynic. I do not believe there is meaning in the world, it's just random with a tendency for things to come together just enough to happen but not enough apparently to sustain harmony for long. With that out of the way, here's why the song is crazy happy in a way that transcends your ordinary transient happiness, and is guaranteed for life as "the days or years pass by" even if the only place where you have to sleep "the rooftop is the blue sky". And you have no need for your smartphone (ok back it would have been your Hi-Fi) because this stuff, which is not drugs - there is a very good chance that in this lyric drugs were the friend who "tried to help me in a bad way" - this stuff is perfectly good even when you're out there in the darkest night.
So a hipster might be perfectly justified at this point to say, nah, he's lost it and gone homeless and is OK with it because he's got this spiritual delusion. So it's doubly sad but if he is actually cool with it that's ironic, definitely.
Still, I would say he's sincere in this song because he did get past numerous obstacles after "I lost my way home" to find something solid as a mountain and reliable just as you can be sure that the sun, come what may, will rise tomorrow. Now he has "eyes of my own" that can "take me through the nighttime". The nature of the spiritual enlightenment is debatable but I think that the sun's power and reliability is central to the Rig Veda and maybe to human existence generally and Fagen is rediscovering a timeless truth that just sounds cheesy when I say it. There will be struggles but the power of life persists and that power derives from the sun, whose steady course in the sky is symbol of that truth that is eternal, as long as we expect to live anyway. "Moonlight to guide me" could be just another self-discovered symbol of timeless insight on Fagen's part or he might have been aware of some of the symbolism in Chinese culture where I think the moon can represent clear awareness of our transient nature of going through phases. Fagen might imaginably been aware of the symbol of the full moon resembling a pearl of wisdom, maybe he'd seen a dragon-with-pearl figurine in a Chinese restaurant somewhere.
If I'm right, it's the most optimistic Steely Dan song, though not totally unprecedented. If It Rains also has an optimistic and mystical bent along the same lines "When the sun shines at midnight", though there instead of ecstasy it's just persistence, he will still be singing "if it rains". |
submissions
| Steely Dan – Any World (That I'm Welcome To) Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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The meaning is straightforward, a lonely man has a meaningless job and there is no fulfillment to be had for him anywhere in the area. He really doesn't have anywhere else special to go and starts out tentative, "if I had my way" and "if the folks will have me" yet we listen as he becomes resolved: "Honey I will be there" - and who's that? An unknown (or mythical) honey and friendly folks who are (maybe) out there. "I can see your hands reaching out through a shining daydream" is how come he knows. And he knows that's a totally flimsy reason to believe, but even though still "I must obey this feeling i can't explain away." Me, I believe he is now resolved to act but there could be a cynical interpretation here that he's deluded on so many levels. Why do I believe? Because the ending seems so sincere, in the unknown place he knows is out there, and with the unknown people he longs to have kinship with, his daydream is "a vision of a child returning". Not a return to anywhere he's been but a spiritual homecoming (that he also wrote about in the words to Sun Mountain - but in that song, by then when he's already made his move, it is "all the things I left behind" that if he needs them "they will be there" line emphasized right there! "a part of my mind").
Hipsters might be entirely justified if they see the singer moving back to his parent's place in Arizona. But that doesn't fit with the back story. It's recorded by the time Fagen's 23, maybe well earlier. He'd spent almost his whole life within 100 miles of NYC up to then and is at that point barking up all the wrong trees in Manhattan's fading music industry. He had to see a move to LA coming when he wrote this, or some part of him did. "A kingdom where the sky is burning."
Sure, most Steely Dan songs contain hella obscure references and in the end half of them are anyone's guess really, there are so many conflicting myths about them, and sure it's unusual but it's not unknown for them to just have a straightforward story line. I mean, there's no great mystery about Reeling in the Years either. More to the point relating to Any World - so is Fagen perfectly frank and straightforward about another personal crisis in his solo number On the Dunes maybe 20 years later. |
submissions
| Steely Dan – Dr Wu Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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"Imagine my surprise when I saw you". Dr. Wu is the last person Fagen expected to see smacked into a trance. Come one, wake up, "Are you with me, Dr?" Now you're "just a shadow of the man that I once knew". I think the "surprise" is because Dr. Wu is a drug dealer who never used to use. Or at least Wu's a very savvy dealer who's also a high-functioning addict. Either way Fagen looked up to Wu as a role model but now turns out Wu's "just an ordinary guy" subject to the same temptations as anyone. Fagen cares about his mentor Wu's sorry state but equally so, being "strung out here all night" Fagen badly wants to know where the stash is.
When Fagen met Wu, Fagen's life had been at a bottom. But it turns around with Wu's help = there's money and Fagen gets his appetite under control, including his appetite for manipulative junkie girlfriend Katy. "The song you used to sing to me": Fagen heads to Biscayne Bay to try to make an `honest' go of dealing himself. But Fagen couldn't keep his own hands off the merchandise after all. So much for "searching for the song you [Wu] used to sing to me". Fagen comes crawling back, has been "strung out here all night", trying to make the connection with Wu, "waiting for the taste you said you'd bring me". But Wu's not the savvy dealer any more, It doesn't matter that much to Fagen that Wu banged Katy, Fagen's over her. What matters is that Fagen needs a fix; and that he'd looked up to Wu, and now here's Wu doped up and maybe dying. That's one tragic bromance, "Are you with me Doctor?"
If (and I say if) Wu had been a shrink or a rehab counselor or like that who helps Fagen get clean, you'd have explain why Wu inspires Fagen to go to Florida - to try to live a wholesome lifestyle? Hard for me to believe. Either way you can feel sorry for Wu but there's nothing to admire about Wu's pathetic, self-inflicted fall from grace. |
submissions
| Linkin Park – Burn It Down Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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This has a very personal meaning for me, might work for someone else - I relate to Kaspar7169, also to lyricalONE - people are fickle, we are the ones who put politicians, lovers, celebrities on pedestals...in every case when the betrayal comes the anger is real...trouble is it goes both ways, it's so stupid for us to just blame the other person when it's each of us who acts in a way that is destined to burn what we built.
On Sept 11 2001 a relationship I was in was falling apart and we broke up a week or 2 later and never had contact again. Incidentally she named Linkin Park as a favorite of hers, and I'd never heard of the band before. I was crazy about her - it's true we weren't compatible - I was more outward focused, she inward
She partly agreed with me we'd all brought 9/11 on ourselves - years earlier I'd argued with some of her friends on the net that something like 9/11 was gonna happen, what with the lame strategy we had (still have) for dealing with the Moslem world (Buy any gasoline lately? Thought so, me too. Stuff burns ya know.) No, I didn't remind her - she went to give blood on 9/12 - there was no blood shortage - I wallowed in a sense of futility...But we didn't break up over politics.
It was really more about hero worship - We started going out after she'd been hobnobbing with a couple of famous authors, one of whom had written a novel about manufactured celebrity vs fame that comes from the street. While she'd lost her taste for the fashionable world of letters, I'd never believed much in authentic celebrity in the first place...to me it's all manufactured in high volumes...her, I don't think she got the whole smells-like-teen-spirit thing until after she smelled it on herself. And by the time I finally caught up with her she'd found herself a guru and carried water for him, still does I imagine...
I really did put it all on the line and she had never really invested in the relationship. She felt I was out of harmony with the universe and for all I know she too felt a kind of betrayal that I wouldn't go her way - to understand is to forgive - but the anger is real from my side, of all the people who had the capability to understand, to kick over the pedstal and struggle against repeating history - for me it's like she throws it all away on someone else's ego - I followed down the spiritual Moose Lodge way of life for a while on my own after without her - it's an ancient tradition and I suppose that sort of thing is still beautiful to her.
I since moved on but buried in the song's message reminded me of our own role in our suffering and of an old hurt after I put too much of the wrong kind of faith in a basically good person who had no relationship potential. I guess I have done that more than once - but out of hope dammit, not trying to be futile - "can't wait to burn it to the ground" in the sense that I act /as if/ I intentionally got in a partnership that wasn't made to last - not that I truly intended to burn it down. Or so it seems to me. Thanks for listening. |
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