| Vashti Bunyan – If I Were Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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"The woman’s hat can conceal, but also stand out, reflecting uncertainty about whether she wishes to be spotted." (@[No:27196] Good) |
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| Prince – I Would Die 4 U Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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When lovers say 'I would die for you', they are generally not meaning to risk their lives, but using life and death metaphorically. As a metaphor, the saying testifies to the lengths of their devotion. It can say, "You matter so much to me that I would put the sanctity of your life and well-being before my own." It can also say, "I don't have any words to express my love for you, and my imagination can only take me to the furthest line to cross, that limit of my own life." Prince's usage brings something else to the table. He says 'I would die for you / darling if you want me to'. He does not say he is willing to die to save the lover, or that his devotion is so total that there is no limit he would not cross. Rather, he says that the desire of his lover is the most important thing in the world. 'Darling if you want me to'. He is willing to be destroyed at the lover's whim. This is an interesting twist on the previous interpretations, because the sacrifice he speaks of is at the lover's mere desire, not for his or her being. So whereas previously the saying went: I love you so much, I would even die for you, now the saying goes: Your desire (for me) matters more to me than my own life. The song is not seeking affirmation or an answer, such as in the similarly structured song 'If It Be Your Will', where Leonard Cohen sings 'If it be your will / That I speak no more / And my voice be still / As it was before / I will speak no more' with great emphasis on the phrase 'If it be your will' to invite an answer from the lover. Rather, it is a celebration, almost, of the lengths of his devotion, yes, but also the contingency of his being on the lover's desire for him. |
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| Grateful Dead – If I Had The World To Give Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| On second thought, it is interesting that I had the reading I did, when it is quite obvious now that the speaker could be simply saying, I'll give you everything, if only you make me your everything. | |
| Grateful Dead – If I Had The World To Give Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| This is a song about lack between two lovers. The speaker laments that he doesn't have the world to give, and we wonder what else is lacking, or what he wants to make up for by promising the world. The beloved is also lacking, or the speaker wouldn't feel compelled to make this gesture. But the speaker is unsure whether the beloved would receive what he has to give at all: 'Long as you live, would you let it fall, or hold it all in your arms?'. There is ambivalence on the part of the speaker, as well: 'Only if you let me be your world / Could I ever give this world to you'. If the beloved was receptive, would the speaker even be able to give as much as his heart wants to? I think this is the crux of the song. It is not about having or not having the world to give, but rather about the act of giving: whether the speaker can give enough to the beloved, and whether the beloved can receive it. The speaker recognizes his part and says he'll give what he has to give, whatever he can, maybe a tune or two. But then at the end, we are back to that line, the only repeating line in the song: "Only if you let me be your world, could I ever give this world to you / Could I ever give this world to you'. If you let me be your world, could I possibly give enough to remain there? | |
| Tom Petty – Breakdown Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| @[Stakeholdah:18366] While I find your attitude towards women and relationships indefensible, I think your interpretation of the basic dynamic is more on point than many of the others here. | |
| Tom Petty – Breakdown Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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My reading seems to counter the other interpretations, so I will offer it. First, there is a conflict implied: It's alright if you love me It's alright if you don't But they've been through a lot together so the speaker doubts this is the end: I'm not afraid of you runnin' away honey I've got this feeling you won't They've 'said all there is to say' and yet the rest of the song is begging the lover to 'break down and give it to me'. What's that about? I don't think this is about getting a girl to break down her wall, or is a prelude to sex. I think the speaker has endured some emotional onslaught or hostility from the lover that the speaker doesn't understand. 'We've said all there is to say' because the speaker doesn't understand where the lover is coming from. They're at a stand still. But rather than say, 'work it out yourself' or 'come back when you're ready to speak more calmly', the speaker shouts 'Break down and give it to me' over and over. The speaker wants the the lover to express him or herself in any way they can, to 'break down' and let it all out. This is not a conversation. 'Break down and give it to me'. I have a feeling you won't' leave, but I need you to tell me what is going on. I have all night. 'Break down and give it to me'. |
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| Amanda Bergman – Questions Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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'I can find in my way baby knowing that this will be over too' This line makes me wonder what might be 'over'--is it their relationship, or something else? The song rests on this vagueness, I think. |
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| Stereolab – High Expectation Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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The dynamic of this song is simple: it is a breakup that is asymmetrical. But the template for the song, who is speaking to whom, is very broad. In other words, multiple speaking positions can occupy the same lyrics. This song could be sung by the brokenhearted, the heartbreaker, or even as a dialogue between both. This interpretation of the song all turns on the generosity of the pronoun 'you'. In the opening it felt clear to me that she is speaking to herself when she asks whether 'you' want to love someone who doesn't love 'you' back. The answer is no. Do you really want To love someone Who does not love you I don't, I don't, I don't, I'm sorry. I don't, I don't, I don't, I'm sorry. This could be sung by someone who is being rejected, but it could also be sung by someone who is leaving her and speaking to him or herself using the pronoun 'you', as above. Consider the leaving lover saying: 'do you really want to love someone who does not love you?'. In this second interpretation, the second lover says 'I don't', no, I don't want to be with someone who doesn't love me, and that's why I'm leaving. In a third interpretation, the song is a dialogue where the 'I don't' refrain is an answer to the question posed by the other. One partner asks 'do you really want to love someone who does not love you' and the other answers 'I don't...'. The same interpretations can be applied to the other lines of the song with very little friction. Given the inherent multiplicity of the song, I see no reason that all three positions can't be at work at different points in the song, depending, perhaps, on what is relevant to your own life while listening. Maybe the brokenhearted is sometimes speaking to herself, sometimes it is the partner, and sometimes, and perhaps the most painful option of all, they are answering each other: I don't, I don't, I don't, I sorry. I don't, I don't, I don't, I sorry. I don't, I don't, I don't, I sorry. |
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| Angel Olsen – So That We Can Be Still Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| One more thought. Time is moving so fast that she wants to freeze it. The masks she proposes to make of her and her lover's hands and faces are monuments that capture time, and won't disappear, like her memories do. The twist is that objects continue to take on new meaning and have lives of their own. They never stand still either. | |
| Angel Olsen – So That We Can Be Still Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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There are two interesting things about this song. She is begging for stillness, yet must be in an uncomfortable amount of movement for its opposite to be desirable. Other people seem to be going places, but she is going through the same motions. Perhaps it is only her thoughts that are moving, or the feeling of her memories slipping away, but it is respite from movement that she seeks; movement is a condition for stillness. The second thing I find interesting about this song is the allusion to death, which upon examination falls apart. When she says that 'one moment you're awake and making a sound / another asleep in your ground', it should not go unnoticed that she speaks of 'her' ground, not 'the' ground. Rather than the terrestrial ground shared by others, hers would be a spatialized metaphor for her emotional life. She then provides the image of the box with her soul in it. One immediately thinks of a coffin. But first, in the broad Judeo-Christian tradition that backgrounds so much of Western thought, we do not think of a coffin housing the soul after death. Then there is the fact that she clearly wants it to be found. Does she even want the box to be wrapped up with a bow for someone to find? Boxes are what we usually wrap. But when she says she wants it 'all' wrapped up with a bow, I take her meaning to be that she wants her past and her suffering to be tied up neatly, even fit for presentation. This is the stillness that she seeks: her past preserved and wrapped up neatly, maybe even memorialized, and her soul hidden away, safe, where it can be found again. Perhaps by her lover, perhaps by someone else. |
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| Leonard Cohen – Be for Real Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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This would seem to be a straightforward song--the singer wants his sweetheart to 'be for real' as opposed to being false, or perhaps hiding things to protect the beloved. At the same time, he sends mixed messages that seem to say 'don't be for real / because I don't want to be hurt...' Consider the following: So don't give me the world today And tomorrow take it away. Don't do that to me, darling. Just be for real won't you, Baby Be for real won't you, Baby What if, for the beloved, their passions are so volatile that they are being for real when they give and take the world in an instant? What if the beloved does in fact feel ambivalent about whether they need the other? Are you back in my life to stay Or is it just for today Oh that you're gonna need me? The speaker claims he can handle the truth, but just as important to the song is the refrain 'I don't want to be hurt by love again'. Near the end, he sums up the contradictory message in a neat package: (I don't give a damn about the truth, Baby Except for the naked truth. Oh yeah) Why is this in parentheses? It makes one wonder about whether the speaker is even being 'real' with himself. |
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| Angel Olsen – You Are Song Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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It is worth reconsidering this line: 'It has been easy to say that I could never lose sight of what my heart truly is' My earlier interpretation had the truth of her heart being the love between them, but could the truth of her heart be something else? Something shameful, something that keeps them apart? I do not think it is likely, given how the song proceeds, but the question is open. |
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| Angel Olsen – You Are Song Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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There is a twist to this song that is not readily apparent unless you take the song as a whole. In the first lines, for example, she says she has found love many times before, and so it is not a surprise that she has found it again. What is such a line doing in a song about the endurance of love? In fact she is not speaking about other lovers, but about the cycles of one particular relationship. When she says 'And I am making an effort to stay with you here / It has been easy to say that I could never lose sight of what my heart truly is', she may be speaking to the difficulty of maintaining their bond even though there have been plenty of times that the truth of her heart - their love - is perfectly clear. The song then proceeds in two parts, naming the conditions ('when you step away') in which they find themselves as separate people. Here Angel Olsen gestures towards what Judith Butler has said so eloquently about loss, even if she doesn't draw out the implications as Butler has done: "...when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us. It is not as if an 'I' exists independently over here and then simply loses a 'you' over there, especially if the attachment to 'you' is part of what composes who 'I' am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who 'am' I, without you?" (from Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence) We must also ask about silence. The lovers are now estranged. It appears that in the past they have spoken to each other through song. Perhaps they sang to each other; perhaps they opened each other's worlds through music. So tightly does the experience of music bind them to one another that even in silence, even with the distance that separates them, even then...There is song. Can you hear me? |
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| Sarah Harmer – Lodestar Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| In response to the interpretation of the lyrics describing a new relationship, I think they could also describe a matured relationship that nevertheless has been unstable in some way. The lodestar may not be the purpose or the goal of the relationship itself, but the signal they each rely on to know that the other is still with them. Sometimes the lodestar goes missing. | |
| Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – The Romance of the Telescope Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| Heartbreak as direct as it comes. The concilliatory beat and chord give wings to the pain. These broken arms, they won't let you go. Can't you hear it? Over decades now the romance has sustained us all. There will be answers. There must be. So rarely did it question itself, so often did it question who we were becoming through it. So many times we were left with an understanding of the circumstances that brought us here, but not closer to truth, or beauty. You want the latter. I wanted the conditions in which beauty and truth could take hold of you. But you won that fight. | |
| Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – The Romance of the Telescope Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| Heartbreak as direct as it comes. The concilliatory beat and chord give wings to the pain. These broken arms, they won't let you go. Can't you hear it? Over decades now the romance has sustained us all. There will be answers. There must be. So rarely did it question itself, so often did it question who we were becoming through it. So many times we were left with an understanding of the circumstances that brought us here, but not closer to truth, or beauty. You want the latter. I wanted the conditions in which beauty and truth could take hold of you. But you won that fight. | |
| Elliott Smith – Roman Candle Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| This song was given to me by someone who I had begun hallucinating. The version of him that lived inside of me was so cruel. He could not be undermined by countless reality checks. He was determined to prevent the real man and I from having a chance together. I've never been a huge Elliott Smith fan, and had never heard this song before. But today I needed to know that we are in this together, and said so. He sent me this song. My tears sing my love for him. | |
| Cocteau Twins – Lazy Calm Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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Here, the speaker and the addressee are sharing a path, but the grief accompanying the path is not experienced together. While I would challenge a view of grief as an intensely personal, idiosyncratic and inevitable process (when in fact, for example, we learn how to grieve, and there are socially sanctioned right ways and wrong ways), the dominant view of grief as one makes the final lyric so affecting. It would not resonate the same way if grief were already thought of as shared socially. So, the speaker suggests, we are in this together because of what we share, which does not extend to how we each cope with something ending. The lyrics could serve as an explanation or defense of one's own behavior in light of this ending. Grieve your own way, and I will mine. |
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| Depeche Mode – Shake The Disease Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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Many have already commented that the speaker can't or won't return affection that we can assume is being offered. Perhaps it is even being imposed by the other. As he says: 'I'm not going down on my knees / Begging you to adore me'. The dominant interpretation of the disease that takes hold of his tongue is that he is tongue-twisted by love. But to me, it is a plea for separation, not union, that propels the song. The metaphor of disease is suggestive of the distinction between the normal self and the afflicted self, the self that must be defended from what is foreign to it, and a loss of control experienced by the afflicted. Is it possible he feels betrayed by his own speech? Whatever grips him in the situation when he is afflicted is not consistent with what he is saying now. He now makes a self-assured plea for the other to understand that he is taken by something foreign to him. It is striking that the repetition of 'Understand me / Understand me' does not invite the other in to share or communicate. When he says 'Nobody knows me / As well as you do', he is inviting sympathy from the other to understand the agony this causes him. But the door to the relationship is closing. In no uncertain terms, there are some people who should be together: Understand me Some people have to be Permanently together Lovers devoted to Each other forever But he suggests that their relationship is now changing: Now I've got things to do And I've said before that I know you have too When I'm not there In spirit I'll be there In other words, even if we are these people, we are now going our separate ways, and you should know this, because I've said it before. This is not the afflicted speech, but the speech that is being defended. It is notably not an apology for things he has said or is not able to say. He uses a metaphor that quite distinctly suggests that speech or action is out of his control. Perhaps when she pursues him, he is unable to defend against her. Perhaps the relationship is the disease. To me, it is a song of immense pain. |
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| Björk – Hollow Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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In the terms she speaks of, lines of descent are unalterable. You automatically belong by virtue of sharing DNA. It is an extreme alienation that yearns to belong in a lineage to which she calls to admit all species. What or who is hollow? For the speaker, there are degrees of access and feelings of belonging. The music is haunting and suspenseful with repetition of minor chords and lyrics fading in and out of the primary voice. Rather painfully, it feels, she is seeking a global kind of belonging that is yearned for ('thread me upon this chain') but not automatically granted by species or kin membership. |
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| Depeche Mode – Strangelove Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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I am most compelled by the transaction of pain in this song: Will you give it to me Will you take the pain I will give to you Again and again And will you return it This line 'And will you return it' gets more emphasis in the song than any other. What is this about? It does not sound like a question posed to the lover (as in, will you cause me pain too). Rather, the speaker seems to rely on the lover for the transformation of the pain he causes (Will you take the pain) into something new (And will you return it). It is almost suggestive of purification. The speaker repeatedly seeks confirmation that the lover will participate in this process. |
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| Cocteau Twins – My Truth Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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The song presents a familiar message that doing hard work and enjoying pleasure are opposed. What will you choose? It is a song about making choices in a relationship over time, perhaps reflecting on the recent past and looking forward to the future. The repetition of 'or' is interesting in light of the early message that lovers can actually have both (Commit to the work of both / If your love has energy / You have chemistry). In my view, the song turns on this 'if' as much as it does on the 'or'. Each choice about how to handle the relationship is more loaded when both/and is also possible. To an impersonal you, the speaker poses a challenge. Does your love have the energy to commit this 'or' to an 'and'? I find it an incredibly romantic invitation to make something new together. Are we up to it? What shall it be? |
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