| Angus and Julia Stone – Yellow Brick Road Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Wow, what a beautiful song. I read it in a similar way to most other comments but I think there's a massive significance to the line 'I lost my mind long ago, down that yellow brick road' (as another commenter said previously) and 'just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down', which is pure poetry to me. The way I interpret these metaphors is how dominant cultural narratives are fed into our psyches 'long ago' - when we are small children, the stories that keep us addicted to the endless pursuit for pleasure, which, as beautiful and romantic as they are, keep us separated from who we are (the way we feel) and actually bind us to the suffering of obsession (a bit like what Marx said about religion), having 'lost our minds' because addictions are destructive (it's in the definition) and the beauty of being high is an illusion. I think in the second verse the line is: 'Took a train to the river/ where I dove right in' Which refers to how we easily dive right in to the stories we are sold (because it's easy, as well as being a massive natural instinct to seek pleasure and avoid pain). He personifies 'Hollywood romance' as the 'skinny dippin' girl', an end that will never be obtained (living happily ever after/permenance...), and true enough she breaks his heart, because the perfect life of pleasure that is being sold is a ruthless delusion. Amazing! |
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| Modest Mouse – Steam Engenius Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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For me this song is about the age of reason, or birth of modern science and technology versus the religiosity from whence it came. The lyrics polarise science/religion and point to the irony of a nihilistic science which vehemently rejects theology yet cannot be divorced from it, as it is that which induced it's own inception. I love the line 'I spoke for you in binary at volume and for dizzying length'; a play on binary code used by computer technology and the binary nature of language and belief systems (duality). This metaphor is continued with 'both halves are in half like a joke trying to make another joke laugh/ haha/ stasis is what you got/ like a rickshaw being pulled around by another rickshaw' and 'I didn't want it/ you gave me deity/ it was you' both lyrics describe how each pole (science/religion) won't ever be able to resolve their differences, whilst being mutually inseparable. This is because binary opposites create and reinforce their opposites by establishing their differences as their definition. It's like check-mate, and incidentally, a chess game is an incredibly apt metaphor for binary narratives such as these. The power of modern science is tremendous technological advance and 'knowledge' but it isn't able to give us the purpose in life which we so desperately seek or explain our speculative consciousness. 'What a waste of time/ what a waste of space/ what a wasted effort' is also descriptive of the modern scientific, nihilistic narrative. It reminds me of an Einstein quote: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind'. What a wonderful lyricist! |
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