| The New Pornographers – Miss Teen Wordpower Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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It's about the way music and art can inspire people, and how songs can exist separately from their creators. Our words move aimlessly through Empty city squares Collecting into mobs and Angry like their prayers This refers to a song - "our words" - which has gotten popular and maybe been taken up as a sort of anthem for a group or cause. They breathe the air we Fought to leave behind The artist has had experiences, including some bad ones, and now that they are over he's written songs about them. People discovering his music, probably younger people, enjoy hearing about these experiences and often romanticize them. The "blank adventure" refers to the way a song or piece of art can be interpreted in many different ways. The artist's music is a blank slate of words for his audience to see their own thoughts and adventures written on. I'm not too sure about the second verse, though "We fought to find our thoughts" is probably meaningful (the NP can be so cryptic sometimes!), but "Claims of the crown forgotten" means that he's stopped trying to claim his intentions when writing the song as the best or true interpretation, if indeed he ever did. Finally, "Miss Teen Wordpower" and "nobody knows the wreck of the soul the way you do." These are essentially the reason why his songs are popular - they talk about the suffering and experiences that people go through better than the people themselves can explain. The audience feels as though he is speaking from their own souls, in a way, so they love his songs and claim them for their own. |
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| Regina Spektor – One More Time with Feeling Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I think this is a song about struggling with depression. Your stitches are all out But your scars are healing wrong > The subject of the song has addressed their disease (possibly because a suicide attempt alerted their friends/family and forced the issue?) and tried to get help. In theory they should be constantly getting better since they started getting help, but things keep going wrong and progress is a struggle. And the misery inside their eyes is Synchronized and reflecting into yours > The person's family doesn't fully understand their depression, so they don't get why the person isn't getting better. They're also upset that their loved one is sick. They end up making the person feel guilty for not being able to heal themselves, even if they don't mean to. You thought by now you'd be So much better than you are You thought by now they'd see That you had come so far > The first two lines share a meaning with the above points, but the second two reference how recovery from depression can often be invisible. When you make progress, it takes the form of being able to do simple everyday things. A monumental amount of effort goes into being able to live a normal life, and when you succeed you've just reached the baseline that everyone else is at naturally, so from the outside it doesn't look like progress. Hold on One more time with feeling Try it again, breathing's just a rhythm Say it in your mind until you know that the words are right This is why we fight > The chorus is about finding the strength and reminding yourself why you should keep fighting despite all these difficulties. Sometimes it's so hard that all you can do is take life one breath at a time and try not to stop, but no matter what happens the only solution is to pick yourself up off the ground and fight on. You've got to keep reminding yourself of this until you truly believe it. The combined hospital and acting imagery is another reference to depression. Depression is an illness, obviously, but it also involves a lot of pretending. In order to fit in, keep people from worrying, and even as a way to heal themselves, a person with depression has to fake having normal emotions, which can be exhausting. |
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