| AJJ – Fly My Ass Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| This guy is in love with someone who is far away, and he can't wait to get on a plane and join her! | |
| AJJ – Deep Dark Basement Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| A simple and yet amazing song about how witnessing and experiencing abuse as a child screws up one's sense of self and safety even into adulthood. As a kid, the narrator and his mother escaped an abusive situation, but they never truly felt safe or normal afterwards (as mentioned in the first two sections). And because he saw a father figure act like a monster, he struggles to separate that violence from his perceptions of masculinity (section three), and possibly his own identity. | |
| Port O'Brien – Love Me Through Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| I think it might be "an ocean caught between us" instead of "caused." | |
| Here We Go Magic – Make Up Your Mind Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| A song about indecision. | |
| José González – Open Book Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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I'm not sure why the lyrics I submitted were changed - twice - to a less correct version. Here are the real lyrics, as I originally submitted them: I feel just like an open book Exposing myself in this neighborhood Talking to people as if I knew them well Thinking that everyone has gone through different kinds of hell Lately I've found myself in doubt Asking myself what it's all about What am I doing here? What's this leading to? What's the point of all without you? Well I've got promises to keep Like a cat I know I'll land upon my feet Each time I fall Every now and then in dreams By the river 'neath our tree Leaves in yellow, red and brown I hear you whisper in my ear Your love belong to everyone I feel just like an open book A couple of words was all it took In front of a bright white canvas Staring vacantly now free Against my will A drifting vessel in the storm Pushed around from shore to shore I know there's so much left to see I know I've so much left to give But the memories remain Yet the scars don't feel the same Filling pages one by one In the warmth of other suns |
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| Here We Go Magic – Hard to Be Close Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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This sounds like someone who's extremely attracted to a friend. She invites him into her room, but he's nervous because just a casual touch from her can turn him on. He wonders what would happen if he told her about the dreams he has of her. (I used an opposite sex example, but it could just as easily be someone of the same gender.) |
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| Alex Winston – 101 Vultures Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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I can see this as a song about the double standards between guys and girls who have sex. The guy comes away "a legend," but the girl has to deal with "the vultures" who pick apart her reputation and treat her like a terrible person. It could also be about something more serious. Perhaps this is an individual who went through something traumatic with a friend or family member, and is still dealing with the effects of that. I think of siblings or even a mother/daughter who lived through an abusive situation, but one escaped or ignored the abuse while the other was left to navigate the trauma alone. The "vultures" could be the situation or abuser(s) themselves, or be the flashbacks and fears that terrorize the narrator at night. Either way, she wants to know why the other person didn't try harder to save her from them, when they could have and should have done more to help. |
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| Bad Books – Forest Whitaker Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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"We started a fire / That was never supposed to burn out." While another comment referred to this fire as a fight, I think it's the relationship itself. Love is supposed to be a passion that never burns away, but the trend with this couple is a hot and hasty beginning fading into coldness or even hatred. This happens with everything they start - bands, jobs, living arrangements - and eventually it happens to their relationship too. The couple breaks up, either before or after one of them moves to Japan. They both attempt to move on with their lives by dating new people, buying pets, etc. After a significant amount of time (at least long enough to get pregnant and have a baby), one of them starts messaging the other. There seems to still be a spark of attraction on both sides; the fire that was never supposed to go out really hasn't. What's unclear is whether that fire is the passion of rekindled love, or the same destructive flame of boredom - "laziness" and "loneliness," according to the song - that has burned through the rest of their lives. |
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| Laura Marling – False Hope Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Judging by the lyrics in paragraph two, this song takes place in late October or early November of 2012, when Hurricane Sandy knocked out electricity to the lower half of Manhattan. I remember riding the bus into the city from Brooklyn at night (since trains weren’t running), marveling at how apocalyptic NYC felt without power. The most bizarre part was hitting 42nd St, which hadn’t been impacted, and seeing all the lights still blazing at Times Square. It felt so self-indulgent after the somber blackness of downtown, where so many people spent days in apartments and workplaces without power and hospitals struggled to keep patients alive on borrowed generators. We see a similarly jarring disconnection with the song’s narrator. While the rest of the city deals with power outages and relief efforts, she stays in an apartment uptown (a relatively unimpaired area), and her “worst problem” is insomnia. Her downstairs neighbor, on the other hand, is literally losing her mind, but the narrator remains detached, dismissing her plight: “She’ll be all right tomorrow.” Perhaps this is where the concept of false hope comes in. Maybe the narrator really is callous and disconnected, or maybe she recognizes a link between herself and the woman losing her mind. She realizes she doesn't belong uptown, where people and things are still normal, because she doesn't know how to be alone, or how to BE at all. She has more in common with the woman downstairs, and the neighbors downtown, who operate in darkness, disconnected from normalcy by a storm (internal or external) they didn't expect or have time to prepare for properly. The false hope is that this is a phase, a fleeting feeling. By tomorrow, everything will be back to normal. She'll feel ok, the neighbor will be all right, and the lights will come on across NYC, with no lasting damage to the city or its citizens. It's a false hope, and it allows her another sleepless night pretending not to care about the turmoil around and inside of her. |
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| Patrick Wolf – Bitten Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Lucy probably refers to a character of the same name in Bram Stroker's classic novel Dracula. She's a sweet, beautiful young woman whose health slowly wanes as Dracula secretly visits her and sucks a bit of her blood each night. Van Helsing and Co eventually catch on and do all they can to save her, but Lucy's transformation seems inevitable. Despite the humans' best attempts, Lucy finally becomes a vampire herself, feeding on local children. | |
| Florence + the Machine – Heavy in Your Arms Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| This is not about unrequited love. It's two people who love each other deeply, but the singer realizes she's weighing down her partner. Perhaps she has too much baggage, or maybe a mental illness, like depression. "This will be my last confession: [saying] 'I love you' never felt like any blessing ... Whispering like it's a secret / Only to condemn the one who hears it / With a heavy heart." She feels guilty letting anyone get close to her, because she knows her sadness will weigh down them both down. | |
| Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – Nothing But Our Love Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| I see this as a conversation between two people who love each other. One is trying to earn this love, and the other is assuring him/her that (s)he doesn't need to - "my love is easy." Just being together and enjoying that time is enough for both of them. | |
| Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – It's a Corporate World Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Corporations are famous for buying up businesses and land that are failing or unused. Perhaps the author did this with people - friends, girlfriends, in distress. He tried to change them, improve them, make them profitable in some way... He's been patient, but his resources are exhausted. Now he's cutting back - either because he's selfish and only wants what's useful to himself/his "brand," or because he's realized he's expending so much on these people who will never improve themselves, and he needs to focus on himself for a while. | |
| Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – If You Didn't See Me (Then You Weren't On The Dancefloor) Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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According to the commentary on their EP, this song is about people who try to set rules and impose guidelines for things that are supposed to be spontaneous and fun. They wanted to push back against that and kind of shrug and say, oh well, we're going to let loose and enjoy ourselves, because that's what dancing is all about! However, as someone who tends to be sort of shy and inhibited in public, I imagine the other side as not someone trying to set rules and ruin someone else's fun, but just as someone who's self-conscious. Maybe they say, oh yeah, I was at that club...but they don't remember seeing the singer dancing, so really it's a bluff because they weren't part of the action at all. They probably spent the evening on the sidelines, in the bathroom, or swaying awkwardly in the shadows. Hopefully someday they'll be able to actually participate without being scared, as the lyrics mention, or feeling like everyone is watching / judging them. |
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