| Sonic Youth – Shoot Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I think the song is about a woman who is in an abusive relationship, who is finds out she is pregnant and decides to leave. Knowing she cannot just 'up and leave him,' she gets a gun and points it at him and proceeds to "ask" for money and the car keys. I imagine that while she's "asking" for all of these things, her boyfriend is resistant to her. She is transforming from being the submissive, abused girlfriend to an assertive, independent woman. It can be heard in the shifting semantics of the same question: "Can I have the car keys?" "Can I have the car PLEASE?" "Can I have the car NOW?" "Can I have the car DEAR?" She struggles (even with a gun in her hand) to fully assert her independence. I agree with sorchah, I think the lipstick is a reference to her asserting her newfound independence. However, I think she DOES shoots him. "That was such a surprise" refers to her actually going through with it. She says before shooting him that "I had to see you bleed." I think when she asks for her lipstick, her boyfriend is dead and she's talking to his body perhaps putting the lipstick on in the mirror. She's still "asking" for permission, but she really doesn't have to at this point. I think this part is meant to be ironic. The last line: "You don't know what you almost had" refers to a family. That would have been another person in the house to abuse. She has asked for abortions in the past, but now that she wants to keep the baby, she knows that the only way they can both survive is to kill the boyfriend. |
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