| Radiohead – Fitter Happier Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I can't help but notice that the robotic voice sounds strangely human on the line "Enjoy a drink now and then." Just the way he enunciates it, especially "now and then", it sounds more human than any of the other lines in the song. | |
| Radiohead – Exit Music (For a Film) Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I once knew a girl who was being abused physically by both her parents and her older sister. To complicate matters, I was desperately in love with her. This CD dropped into my life right about that time. So even though it's not an official interpretation, to me this song will always be about going to her house in the middle of the night (I did often drive by her place at 2AM on the way to work), waking her up and just making off with her. "We hope that you choke" is pretty much literally what could have happened to her family for all I cared. |
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| Bush – Straight No Chaser Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I always felt like this song was about trying to keep a straight face when everything around you is falling apart. I've been there more times than I would care to recount, but suffice it to say, Always be there, face I live with. Now even living alone, away from all that, I can still feel that face leftover from All the fallen down angels, raw pain distress Of course it wasn't my pain, and all I ever dreamed about was getting away. I think in many ways, the hope of getting away was what kept me going. It's all in the way we know that we could have it all But in the meantime, war on all sides. One of the most disarming things about the song to me has always been that first violin note, the one that comes out after he sings the title of the song. I don't know a lot about music, but I know a 6th note doesn't usually belong on top of a root (first) chord. Yet the dissonance of it just works so beautifully. Drinking life as it comes, straight no chaser, that's the easy part for the narrator who's surrounded by people who need to chase it up with smoking, drinking, or just whispering curse words to themselves on the job (don't even get me started on that person. Haha) I climb inside my own awesome head and build a system of valleys and motorways, e.g. my new life away from these people. Then suddenly it changes up. "It's all in the face of what we thought we knew before." Apparently some new information has come into the picture that changed what we thought we knew. It could be one of two things. Either you're finally getting some insight into what makes those around you seem so miserable, thus leading you to understand them better, and then it doesn't bother you so much anymore. Or #2, something terrible happens to you and turns you into one of them. Cue the nonstop deluge of crazy violin. But it's too late, not like you can control everything. Either way, you keep on driving. I never understood the line "Hair left morning wet" before until I read it here, but it's fascinating to know now that that's what the line is. My best guess is like a previous poster pointed out, hair still wet from the morning shower and it hasn't quite dried off yet. So even when you leave, the misery doesn't just up and disappear like that, it kind of sticks with you. Yet still, how wonderful it was to get away. Even Gavin seems more than resigned to his fate, "Nothing like losing you." When I lost those people, my life went back to being a lot smoother than I had ever remembered. Note the absence of the dissonant violin note on the last verse. It's gone, yet somehow you still expect it to creep in because you've grown to expect it, even though everything's fine now. I'm sure this didn't make a lick of sense, but it's fun to play around with the possibilities anyway. |
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| Bush – Communicator Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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It's amazing to see that other responses to this song have filtered in through the years. I will probably never meet anyone in real life who even knows that this song exists. And what a fascinating song it is. I used to think of it as one of the most forgettable in the early years. If it were possible for slumps to have pinnacles, this song very much felt like the pinnacle of the late-album "slump". But sometimes when your thoughts about a song get that extreme, you are forced to take a second look, just to be sure. Well, it's definitely the same spacey "lost" sort of melody I remember from before, and I still think the random "bursts" of guitar that come out sound oddly close to someone snoring. Even the frequency of the guitar "bursts" is akin to that of someone breathing irregularly in their sleep. There is a period of silence, then they snort some more. (I notice a lot of use of silence over this whole album though.) Then, of course, there's the final "burst" which essentially is the sleeper snoring loud enough to wake him/herself up. I agree with one of the above (below?) posters that this song very much sounds the way depression would sound if it could make a sound. Depression with a shot of ambivalence. "Wonder if I met my wife" is such a strange lyric to me. It's like one of those random things you think while in the throes of daydreaming at work or something. I have another sort of strange bit of imagery that somehow filled in a gap in my imagination for this song. It has to do with the "Splinter left, focus right" segment. I keep wondering why it is that he feels the need to repeat the words "Focus right" so many times, until it occurred to me that he only repeats the words "Focus right" when there is guitar feedback following the last time he said it. Which led me to think that the guitar feedback was in some way signifying that whoever (or whatever) Gavin was trying to tell to focus right wasn't doing it. Which then got me to thinking about him in space, stuck inside of some kind of spaceship that wouldn't always obey his command. So sometimes he would try to look around (looking for his wife?) in space by commanding his ship to turn or look left (why the use of the word "splinter", I don't really know), then he would tell it to look to the right, but sometimes the spaceship would stall. And the sound of the guitar feedback is the spaceship stalling, so he tries again, a little more assertively, "Focus right!" but he has to do it literally four times on the last chorus (if that even IS the chorus) to get it to work. No wonder he can't find his wife, he's lost in space riding around in a spaceship that doesn't work. The fact that I used to play this album alongside Starfox 64 on my Nintendo 64 is probably why I tend to associate so much of this album with space in the first place though. |
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