| Wilco – Monday Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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romanticizing the lifestyle of a young musician trying to make it, fueled by an increasingly worrisome trend towards drug use occupying a key space in that lifestyle compare to come on baby let's go downtown...they're happy songs, they celebrate the bad choices...they are written by men just beginning to grapple with the effects of drugs on their lives |
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| Wilco – Spiders (Kidsmoke) Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| would lay money he wrote this in rehab | |
| Wilco – I'm A Wheel Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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memorializing some of the character defects inherent in active drug addiction I'm a wheel I will Turn on you I'm gonna turn on you, turn on you Turn on you, turn on you, turn on you turn on you, sung tantalizingly but with an ominous bite to my ears, suggests that he might just choose to "turn on you" by bringing you into his sickness |
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| Wilco – Hell Is Chrome Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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To me, this song is fairly explicitly about IV heroin addiction. The devel came in chrome-a needle. He beckoned irrestibly. He offered pleasures beyond your wildest imaginings, complete with complete, blissful comfort and a sense of belonging of having found the meaning of life. And at a time when you need to be thinking about consequences and feeling a lot of fear, the drug takes away all fear. The air was crisp Like sunny late winter days A springtime yawning high in the haze And I felt like I belonged to me this is the greatest description of an early, majestic dope high in popilar song since neil young's after the gold rush |
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| Wilco – Wishful Thinking Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I see a great deal of the meaning in many of the songs on Ghost Is Born, Summerteeth, Being There, to be about Tweedy's experience with drug addiction. Perhaps I am projecting because that is a process I myself have been through. But the relevance is there. And the one biographical nugget we have on Tweedy to my knowledge is his sta in ia rehab center for "opiate dependence"(read:shooting dope) around this time. He was grappling with that demon for several years. That particular demon is an unrelenting one, it will certainly hau, pervadent the art one produces. Tweedy's genius is that he turned his artistic grapplings into songs with opaque meanings that a great many people who've never taken anything stronger than an Aspirin find resonant and meaningful. Fill up your mind with all it can know(dope the ulttntus imporimate elixir, that in the early, love affair perod of addiction fills up yotur mind with what feel like enlightmenment-Zen perfection-and also tends to make thoughtful people like Tweey ruminate on any number of profound insight only to have completely forgotten their mome hours later) Don't forget that your body will let it all go-death is a very palpable presence in an addict. You take your life into your hands every day. you know that you don't ultimately matter. All those thoughts-you can't take em with you) Fill up your mind with all it can know What would we be without wishful thinking(a junkie would be absolutely nowhere without wishful thinking. It is the existential defense against the gravity of their situation, which if grasped too completely too quickly leads to suicide and overdose) Chambers of chains With red plastic mouths The inside of outside No one has found How to unring the bell It's just as well The turntable sizzles Casting the spells(possibly he is putting on a record as he gets high-possibly the turntabl e is the cooker, shaped like a miniature turntable, sizzling as he cooks the solution in preparation for injection) The pressure devices Hell in a nutshell(the pressure devices-syringes?would support my interpretation of the first two lines. could refer as well to the various pressurized mechanisms that the addict often feels are undoing his efforts at cleaning up-forces beyond themselves. hell ina nutshell seems pretty self explanatory) Is any song worth singing If it doesn't help(is his art at all worthwhile if it can't help him with this problem. Music, his salvation, seems to be depicted as having been perverted by his addiction in this stanza. Not a happy, or accurate mindset, but one I expect it was easier to shed once he had expressed it so beautifully) Fill up your mind with all it can know Don't forget that your body can let it all go Fill up your mind with all it can know 'Cause what would love be without wishful thinking Open your arms as far as they will go We take off your dress An embarrassing poem Was written when I was alone In love with you-likely refers to a great love whose been stolen away from hm by his addiction. opening your arms is an interesting first line to the verse) I shook down those lines To shine up the streets I got up off my hands and knees To thank my lucky stars that you're not me(he uses the love poem he unearthed in the previous stanza as trash to clean the street with, debasing his life;s work-and in the process, his thoughts are with the one he loves and his gratitude that she has been spared the personal hell he's experiencing) |
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