| Tove Lo – Habits (Stay High) Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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@[xenophon49:21102] No, she means she is literally picking up fathers of small children while they are watching their children, and later having sex with them. In this song, which entirely avoids metaphor, much less euphemism, it's absurd to believe she'd use metaphor -- and a bizarre, unknown metaphor at that -- to describe the LEAST socially unacceptable kind of sex mentioned in the song: Picking up men for casual sex at a bar. There's absolutely no euphemism, or even metaphor, in this song. At that was her intention. Also, the following line would make no sense if it were 'picking up guys at bars for casual sex': "Loosen up their frow, make them feel alive" doesn't make sense for a bar pickup. Her point is that she is engaging in degenerate behavior to cope with her loss. Picking up fathers while they are watching their children at a playground while their wives are at home is seedy, degenerate, and destructive to herself, with the DANGER of radiating destruction outwardly to the guys' families. And that's the entire point of the song: self-harm, and potentially social harm, due to extreme emotional pain due to loss. |
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| Lorde – Royals Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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This is my favorite interpretation of this song I've seen yet. (My own input is more of the subjective, 'emotional reaction' variety.) I'm not sure I entirely agree with your take on that cited verse, though I agree it's the pinnacle of the "action". You hear it a bit more literally than I do. I hear her mocking the culture she is describing, even if light-heartedly. Though I admit, your interpretation is completely legitimate. It's not unusual for a song to have a sudden break from the context it's worked so hard to establish by contradicting it, and that's what seems to be happening here. It would definitely be a skilled lyric that created the peak of its crescendo of meaning in the very part that flips it on its head. Come to think of it, I like your interpretation better, and -- given 'Death of the Author' -- it doesn't really matter what the writer intended; therefore, yours is the "correct" interpretation, as far as I am concerned. Also, I'm glad to see someone who understands lyrics above and beyond the pedestrian, "street-level". Nice job! |
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| Lorde – Royals Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I really like this song! But it reveals one of my worst fears regarding music and changing times: that younger audiences will see music from the context of the superficial, materialistic, vapid and devoid "content sans content" of mainstream music since the late 1990's. I want to tell every 16-year-old worldwide that every song is NOT, in fact, about gold teeth, Grey Goose, or any of those other things I know nothing about and could not care less about... I am glad Lorde is rejecting those anti-values, and that gives me hope. That fact allows me to enjoy this song. But every time she sings "everybody" in this song, I tense up and want to scream, "No! It's not everybody! Not even close! Until just a few years ago, those values were virtually unknown in music, and in fact they were the antithesis of the Rock & Roll aesthetic for decades..." I want to explain to them, especially the kids from all over the world who look at the images of the U.S. they are sold in the media, that it's not really like that here. All that stuff is just the posturing of one subculture, and it's rooted in a historical legacy of race, economics, and culture... and that it's not "racist" to reject the anti-values in Rap and R&B songs. I'd say, "First and foremost, be true to yourself. Be who you are, and nothing else." I realize my desire to reach every kid is futile, but I take heart in the fact that Lorde hit #1 with a song that explicitly rejects those anti-values. She is true to herself in this song, and true to the place she comes from... and she is reaching millions upon millions, tacitly giving a new generation permission to be true to themselves, too. And that makes "Royals" the most positive song I've heard in a long, long time. |
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| Syd Barrett – Here I Go Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I listen to this album, "The Madcap Laughs", maybe four or five times a year, from beginning to end, and each listen is a different experience from any of the previous. Then I put on "Barrett", and it's the same 'different' experience. Each album has several emotive peaks. I can't identify the major pinnacles on "Madcap", but I am sure it's not "Here I Go". This song might actually be the technical nadir of the album. It's a rare type of song for Syd Barrett in that it's a face-value song -- not surreal, nor even abstract, and not stream-of-consciousness. He is telling a story much like a conventional songwriter would, generally chronologically, using words, terms, and references the listener immediately understands. He starts with a speech-act intro, informing the listener who this story is about, and what the emotional conflict of the song entails. *She* rejects him, and not only that, but she does so, as any Pink Floyd and/or Syd Barrett fan understands, because he is not in Pink Floyd anymore. It's all pretty straightforward from there. I imagine that she is a groupie type who wants to excitement of being with a Rock star, and doesn't have time for a low-key, solo singer-songwriter -- a genre that had not quite taken off in 1970 when this album was recorded. The irony at this point is that she is a groupie type, but doesn't even like Rock & Roll! She also doesn't do the stroll, or at least she doesn't "do it right." Seems like he was better off without her -- which is possibly why he sounds so upbeat, but it also could be because her sister is not as superficial and opportunistic as she is. The sister sees her chance, and invites him in to "play a song," an invitation to which he happily replies, "Yeah! Here I go!" He takes virtually no time to mourn his previous relationship, and I, for one, feel happy for him. Hell with that bitch sister! He goes on to play his entire musical catalog for his new girlfriend, and she heartily approves of his repertoire, and thus the relationship is sealed. He ends the song with the near-future prediction, which does not come true in his real life, but we can imagine it nonetheless in the fantasy setting of this hopeful ditty, that he and the new girlfriend will be married soon, and he won't ever think about his soon-to-be-sister-in-law again. The musical chord progressions are conventional, too, and have a definite pre-Rock feel to them. The music is slightly jazzy, a little folksy, maybe some Music Hall... Perhaps it's best termed Skiffle. It's quirky, yet very accessible -- a style for rather mainstream listeners, except for a trademark 'Syd Barrett Time Signature Change'™ after each verse... This is probably the most conventional Syd Barrett song from his entire body of work, including the demos from 1965. It really helps the fan to understand Syd's mental state after his ouster from Pink Floyd, which was extremely painful, perhaps even destructive to his sense of self. But he had moments, at least, of hope, he had good times, and he still had creative versatility. His sacking from Floyd was the "rejection that kept on rejecting," as this story demonstrates, but enigmatically, he definitely was not the frazzled, unraveling psyche that most, including at least one of his former band members (Rick, bless his heart), believed for decades afterward. |
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| Syd Barrett – Feel Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I submitted the lyric change to "barley grew" in the second verse. The lyrics are something like pointillism-with-words. Barrett uses his stream-of-consciousness type of surrealism to paint an impressionistic portrait that only appears to the listener when it's set to the music. Apart from the music, the lyrics are desolate, lonely, explicitly rejected. But with the music, including the aptly placed reverb effect, the song takes on a grand, romantic ode, nearly majestic in scope -- the loneliness, so stark in a face-value reading, becomes a yearning, perhaps not hopeful, but at least wistful in remembrance. It was Syd Barrett's talent to use the methods and approaches of his "first" art, painting, to achieve what typical lyricists never even conceive. In my mind, when he is called a "genius" -- not unusual when discussing his work -- this type of cross-methodology is what is meant. I can think of no one else who does quite this in songwriting. Kind of like what Jimi Hendrix did with the electric guitar, Barrett blends different worlds that typically don't mix into a synesthetic experience of word-sound-sight. It's not uncommon for a listener to have to develop an ear to be able to hear music on that level. |
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| Elliott Smith – Bled White Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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This song is highly autobiographical. I believe the song is referencing both Texas and Portland as the setting. First, Rose City is a small town in east Texas in the area code 409. But then Portland is known as "the Rose City" and has the MAX Yellow Line, which goes through the Rose Quarter. I'm not sure which one has the "F-train", but I imagine it's probably Portland. Elliott left Texas at 14, supposedly because his step father was abusive and his mother was distant, at least. They may also have had drinking problems. The lyrics from 'Waltz No. 2' seem to have been about his mother: "She appears composed, so she is, I suppose. Who can really tell? She shows no emotion at all, stares into space like a dead china doll..." So he was leaving a really bad scene in Texas. Though he was not from Rose City. I don't know who he knew there, or what he was doing there. His father was a doctor, a psychiatrist. Elliott originally came to Portland to live with him, long after he and Elliott's mother had divorced. Elliott had serious Major Depression problems. He could have also had Bipolar, or Cyclothymia, a lesser form of Bipolar, both of which can occur with Depression, and both of which are very heritable. The lyric "happy and sad in quick succession" could be a reference to Bipolar, or at least Major Depression. It's very likely he got out of the frying pan and into the fire. He escaped his abusive step father in Texas, just to end up with his father in Portland, who may have had substance abuse problems (this is a guess!) and mental illness. Elliott cites having had an interest in psychiatry, like his father, but didn't "have anything to offer other people." Hence the lyric: "I'm never going to become what you became." http://www.sweetadeline.net/bio3.html I don't know exactly what "bled white" refers to. The racial makeup of the cities? I have my doubts about that, though it kind of makes sense. It might just be from some incident or conversation that we will never know. But it's a great metaphor -- the pallor of someone, or a corpse, who has lost blood. |
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