| The Jam – Carnation Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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I think this is a song about capitalism and its negative impacts on people in a broad sense. The following lyric in particular leads me to think this is a criticism of the selfishness and cruelty of the system: "I trample down all life in my wake I eat it up and take the cake I just avert my eyes to the pain Of someone's loss helping my gain..." Also it should be noted that Weller has been a committed socialist for most of his life (still is today) and a lot of his songs reflect his politics. In addition, the symbol of a red carnation and a red rose have been symbols of the socialist and labour movement both in North America and in Europe (possibly;e elsewhere too) for a long time. |
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| Front 242 – Headhunter Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| This seems to be a critique of how capitalism brutally treats human lives as expendable and subordinate to the bottom line of profit. | |
| Propagandhi – Oka Everywhere Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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So yes, this is about the armed standoff between Indigenous peoples and police / troops near a town in the Canadian province of Quebec called Oka, often refferred to as the "Oka Crisis." The "girls at work" segment of the lyrics, if I had to make an educated guess, is kind of talking about how in Canada, there is an ugly underbelly of racism but it tends to be less obvious than in other places like the US. Also I think it speaks to how Canadians have a reputation for being polite and nice but in reality that sometimes hides more negative attitudes towards minorities. The "imagine fighting that 550 years" I believe refers to how at the time this song came out, it had been roughly 500 years since Columbus first landed in the Americas, and started his genocide of the local Indigenous population, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Arawaks and enslaving many more. |
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| Gang of Four – Return The Gift Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| To me, although they lyrics are a bit opaque, this is a song about the existential crisis faced by workers. "It's on the market, you're on the price list" talks about how as workers, we essentially have to sell ourselves and our labour on the open market. I've always undertood the "please send me evenings and weekends" as a worker who desperately wants time off from the daily grind of selling his / her labour, and when one considers how this has always been a central issue with union organizing (ie the fight for the weekend and the 8 hour day) as well as GOF's generally Marxist inclinations, this interpretation makes more sense. Just my take. Great song though, that rhythm section is absolutely bangin here. | |
| Creedence Clearwater Revival – Run Through the Jungle Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| I'm surprised how off the mark everyone is here. It has nothing to do with the Vietnam War, unlike "Fortunate Son." This song is about gun violence in the USA. From the wikipedia article, this is a direct quote from Fogerty. "The thing I wanted to talk about was gun control and the proliferation of guns... I remember reading around that time that there was one gun for every man, woman and child in America, which I found staggering. So somewhere in the song, I think I said, '200 million guns are loaded.' Not that anyone else has the answer, but I did not have the answer to the question; I just had the question. I just thought it was disturbing that it was such a jungle for our citizens just to walk around in our own country at least having to be aware that there are so many private guns owned by some responsible and maybe many irresponsible people." c'mon guys do some basic research first. | |
| The Jam – Scrape Away Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| This song is meaningful to anyone who is young and who holds left wing views. There are always those on the right who will critique young leftists for being naive, or old ones for being dinosaurs, wealthy leftists for being hypocrites, or poor ones for being jealous. Essentially Weller is calling bullshit on the old conservative trope that all people get more conservative as they become more worldly. Weller vehemently disagrees, and says that it is not worldliness, but rather bitterness, hatred, small-mindedness and "twisted cynicism" that might cause a change in values. | |
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