| Of Monsters And Men – Dirty Paws Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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I see it as a story of battling heroin addiction. The bird is the son's natural kindness. The bee is the behavior that is caused by a bad heroin addiction. The dragonfly is the son's creative spark, which tends to get repressed and displaced by addictions. The "creatures of snow" might reperesent attempts using bad designer drugs, from head-shops, as a demi-legal substitute. This really doesn't help. The highs are forgettable, and they don't really help curb an addiction. Dirty Paws might refer to the son using magic mushrooms or some other non-addictive hallucinogen to manage the Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS). There is some evidence for psilocybin being helpful, under the right conditions, at treating bad addictions. The dragonfly obviously came back, so whether you like how the son did it or not, he recovered. If no actual shroomery was actually involved in the inspiration for this album, then while that is certainly possible, I would be highly surprised. |
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| Therion – The Perennial Sophia Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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Lilith is a figure from Jewish kabballism, although her name actually translates literally to "night." In modern paganism, she is thought of as symbolizing an empowered female, generally including sexual empowerment and independence. A painting of Lilith by John Collier, who was strongly antagonistic toward mainstream Christianity, refers to this perception. It is really a frontal assault on the madonna-whore complex. The madonna-whore complex is an impairment, in men's ability to think about a woman, in which some men are incapable of both being sexually attracted to a woman and also respecting her as a person. This song, on the other hand, elevates a sexually desirable and empowered woman to a state of reverence, heralding even an outright sexually predatory female as being deserving not only of esteem but perhaps even of reverence. The band is based in Sweden, and Swedish women are among the most empowered in the entire world if not THE most empowered in the entire world. Furthermore, songwriters in the heavy metal genre are notoriously liberal compared with the rest of their cultures, and one making references to a notoriously feminist symbol in modern paganism, a thousand times moreso. Anything these people write is probably a deliberate and direct slap in the face of mainstream conservative Christianity's concepts of morality. It is designed to instill mortal fear in conservative Lutherans in a culture in which religion, especially conservative interpretations of it, is on the defensive, on the ropes, and halfway unconscious. |
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| Queen – Under Pressure Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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People on the edge of the night? The average age for a homeless person to die is 47, and it's 43 on average for homeless women. These people will pass away, on some cold night, without anyone ever having tried to just find out who they are, what they might have had to say to this world, or what they might have been through. It's not something that one person can stop. They have died in the moments that I have taken to type this. That's the "edge of the night." And Freddie Mercury, at times during the song, played the role of the common person, who hides from the truth and tries to explain it away. He played the role of someone who pretends that life is really full of fun and confetti and hides from what is really going on around him. This is commensurate with Mercury having never really come out of the closet as a gay man, even when everybody and his pet dog knew. With Mercury, I think he uses lyrical genius to make literal thoughts sound like metaphor, such as making a sinister scaramouche character sound like a symbol of something else. No, it was just that he dreamed about men doing the fandango, and this obviously terrified and tormented him. It was very simple, and the reason he didn't come out and admit that this part of his sexuality was that he had not really processed it that far, himself. He couldn't acknowledge to himself what he really liked, so how could he possibly acknowledge it to others? Likewise, he was torn between his family, who wanted him to be a religious man, and well-meaning friends, who wanted him to be emancipated and be what they thought must be who he truly was, which just left him feeling helpless. He was telling us the absolute, most literal possible truth about what was going on in his head, right down to the tragically genius ways that he hid the truth from himself. He was always honest with us, but he was never really honest with himself. That's how I see him. Well, going back to "Under Pressure," Bowie was talking about people living on the streets, and Freddie admitted that he had been selfishly turning away from it. He admitted that he had been blind. He explained that he had tried to "sit on the fence," which means what it has always meant, trying to please everybody by not taking a stand. He acknowledged the anger that he had really created in others because of this, saying that sitting on the fence doesn't work. And Bowie's words were also very simple. He had spent part of his life trying to know and understand people who lived at the margins of society. He was just saying simply what was in his heart in very simple words. To me, the most literal interpretation just works for me, and it makes the music more beautiful for me. |
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| The Velvet Underground – All Tomorrow's Parties Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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It's sung by a slightly gifted German songwriter who had a clear mean-streak (as in using a lot of racist slurs in spite of clearly having far-left beliefs), sounding a little like she was giggling partway through to my ears. It was written about an attractive blonde girl whose thuggish Polish boyfriend had threatened one of her friends. Polish. German. From "The Merry Minuet," by the Kingston Trio, "The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles!" Remember that gem? That's what I'm thinking. Anyway, that's what leads my thinking on Nico's probable interpretation of the song. Now, how Lou intended it might be slightly different. I'm just listening to her vocal-English (a little spin on the concept of "body-English"), and I have a feeling she had a slightly more vicious interpretation than even Lou could have intended. Nico reminds me a little of Janis Joplin, based on what I've read about her. |
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