| Talking Heads – Listening Wind Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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@[loupgarous:15086] Hey, if you want to be mad at the writers of this song, you shouldn't be mad at Peter Gabriel. Be mad at the Talking Heads, who wrote this song, not Peter Gabriel, who had nothing to do with this song, your opinions of him aside. Secondly, the music in this song is so eerie and creepy and alienating, I don't think we're meant to sympathize with Mojique, but actually observe him from a distance and try to make more comprehensible the incomprehensible. Thirdly, I noticed that you posted this two days ago, (which was cool, because all the other comments are from so long ago!) and I thought it was worth saying that you posted this comment in a greatly different world than David Byrne and company were living in when they wrote this song, probably in 1978 or 1979, given that the album came out in 1980. At the time this song was written, Americans had been only just recently started to become aware that we weren't beloved around the world, following soldiers' experiences in the Vietnam War in the 60s and early 70s. It's also possible that the Iran Hostage Crisis was also happening when this song was written, which was another bewildering event of anti-American sentiment that we suddenly had to deal with. Most Americans couldn't even tell you where Iran was before the hostage crisis. Before these kinds of events, the U.S. was used to being seen as the liberators and builders of civilization (post World War 2 Europe and Japan, for example) and was quite shocked by growing evidence in the 70s that actually, there were many foreigners in the world who felt that the American government and American businesses were exploiting them and their civilizations and that they were feeling pretty desperately angry about it. This was a wholly new perspective for Americans to deal with, and I think that as long as this violence was off American soil, American artists like David Byrne were curious, fascinated to understand why people hated us so much in places like wherever Mojique is supposed to be from. Back then, with no violence on our soil, it was much easier to sit back and contemplate the motivations of a terrorist acting out violently in a foreign land far away, because you couldn't imagine it happening to you or your family. It was incomprehensible, and they wanted to know why. 9/11 changed the way many Americans, including musical artists, thought about this sort of stuff. I don't think David Byrne would likely write a song like this today, especially since the Talking Heads were a New York City band. It would just be too close to home, I think. 9/11 has perhaps for forever changed the U.S.'s perspective on terrorism and the motivations of terrorists. I think it's made it really hard for us to contemplate more than one view, our own. That's understandable, because terrorism is frighteningly evil and destructive. But I do think this tendency towards seeing only our own perspective when it comes to the violence that affects us is actually unfortunate. While we certainly don't need to sympathize with a terrorist who's going to blow up a public place (like say, my beloved Boston Marathon (which my dad ran in six times and my brother was near the finish line when it was bombed), because they made the decision to take life. But I do think the more we can understand about how someone becomes a terrorist, the more likely we have a chance of predicting and stopping terrorist acts, and maybe, if we're lucky, prevent a person from turning to terrorism at all. Otherwise, we're left pretty powerless, our only option to be left forever chasing the terrorist plots as they form. or being blown up, then spending all our money and energy going after the culprit. Everyone knows prevention is the best cure. And you can't prevent what you don't understand. So while I do agree with you that this song doesn't include the perspective of victims of terrorism, I don't think it's showing a lack of sympathy for victims. It's just not talking about them at all. There are plenty of other songs out there that cover that. Not every song has to do the same thing. And I actually support the existence of a song like this, because it gives me a window to explore how my attackers might think. Because knowledge is power. :) If you didn't give up and read all the way through this long, long, comment, I just wanted to say thank you for making the effort and therefore for treating my comment with respect. I hope you feel that I treated your opinions respectfully as well. |
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| Gotye – Somebody That I Used To Know Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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@[lftmnsch:328] I just finally paid attention to the lyrics of this song recently and found them intriguing and came here to see what others thought. Just wanted to say that I found this to be by far the best interpretation of this song out of every one here on this site. I agree that the singer is expressing the point of view of someone who held the girl at bay during their entire relationship and it sounds like he thought he was holding much more power in the relationship. I was particularly struck by the line "Like when you said you were so happy you could die." To me, that quote sounds so disdainful on his part, like whether or not she actually said something like that, that's how he chooses to remember her feelings for him and her experience of their relationship. It's such a teenaged cliche - like he thinks she was shallow and cliched and maybe even not nearly as smart as him. Most importantly, he thought she was way more in love with him than he was with her. All he remembers about their relationship is love being an ache and a sadness, nothing good, while he thinks she thought of their relationship both very deeply and importantly, yet also with the depth and intelligence of a Hallmark card. It's really a briliant little line that sounds throwaway, but I think it isn't. And I find it interesting that despite his supposedly feeling the relationship was unsatisfying and doomed, he never broke up with her; she's the one who broke up with him. And despite his supposedly being relieved it was over, I agree with you: he's clearly not over her, and in fact her decision to break up seems to have fueled his interest in her to greater heights, in a totally dysfunctional way. He sounds less upset that they are not together anymore and more upset that she challenged his sense of the relationship - i.e. that he meant everything to her and she meant little to him. The way she "[made] like it never happened and we were nothing" challenges his sense that he had all the power between them. He doesn't feel betrayed by her leaving him per se, but instead by her actions in the breakup, which he interprets as a challenge to his belief that he was all-important to her. Anyway, this is long after the fact, but this was such a breath of fresh air in amongst what seemed to me many wild misinterpretations of this song. Just thought I'd validate you, since you only got two replies, while others that I felt were blatantly wrong got many more. |
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