| Joan Osborne – Spider Web Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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This song confounds me. She wrote it and recorded it while he was still very much alive. I do believe he died blind, so it's not really a circumstance that was going to play out, but it seemed like she was kinda zeroing in on the guy for some reason. Now the man did struggle with drugs, but I don't think that's what the song is about. She doesn't say specifically what her beef is, other than that when he re-gained his sight he lost touch with the music. For the rest of us, we might listen to this and see Ray as an extraordinary talent with an affliction that may have helped him develop that talent, so we might hear this song and think hard about what we might have to sacrifice in order to have the level of musical soul in Ray Charles. But I can't ignore the persistent slight that it appears to be against the man. Like when she says "C'mon, Ray." It could be she just ran with the image in her head. But the fact that he was still alive when she recorded it just seems like she thought he was already gone. I'd really like to hear Osborne herself explain what was up when she released this monumental pop album. I've listened to the entire album, very loud, many times. A lot of is absolutely unforgettable. |
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| Tori Amos – Icicle Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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Well, she's obviously masturbating. But she doesn't leave it at that... that would be too simple and straightforward for Tori. It's a compilation of thoughts and feelings that she put into one song and as such may not be something any of us can really understand -- it's very personal to her. Clearly the girl in this song is a sexually experimental girl, wrestling with sex as if it were somewhat incomplete, unsatisfying, and leaving something to be desired, yet full of guilty pleasure (being purged of its guilt in real time) as well. I think the wrestling with the changes within her is why she is focusing on the icicle and the seasons. Because she's coming out of the cold and giving into the heat of her desires. As females go from an asexual mind to a sexualized mind, they accept certain things about themselves that are counterproductive to certain aspects of their childish ego -- the loss of innocence. I'm going to leave the rest of my thoughts out of this and stop it there. I wish there were more grown-up women, like Tori, who confess to the duplicitous realities of the female mind and soul. But every once in a while we get a very vague and blurry peek into the truth when all others lie. God bless you for this, Tori. |
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| Suzanne Vega – The Queen And The Soldier Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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I've been listening to this song since I was young. Then I listening to a professor interpret this song using Jungian analysis in a class called Psychology of Women. I feel she missed it completely. The holy grail of feminine intuition - accidental introspect. I think even Suzanne Vega herself didn't realize where this song came from. So I will tell you what I think it is really about. The Queen and the Soldier The Queen is the homunculus inside all of us that makes meta-choices for our bodies and life. Sometimes we get a rare glimpse of how our minds contrast with other functions of our bodies. I believe the Queen is experiencing her monthly menses, and one of the "soldiers" in the "army" of eggs she was born with "came knocking upon the queen's door" (women often perceive when their ovulation begins) and descended "down the long narrow hall" of her reproductive system into the chamber where the queen resides every month to decide whether or not she will find sperm and carry a child to term. "With her tapestries red." "But she never once took the crown from her head." She doesn't want to be unduly influenced by the soldier's innate, singular sense of purpose. She knows exactly why he's there. He is not able to do much about it. Therefore he is dutifully subservient to his Queen. He said, "I am not fighting for you any more." Her egg has left her ovaries and will never return to the safety of her army. "The queen knew she'd seen his face someplace before" - She would perceive each of her eggs as nearly identical members of her regiment. "And slowly she let him inside." Why slowly? This indicates the passing of time as the egg descends. Other interpretations of this line would not make much sense, but this fits perfectly. He said, "I've watched your palace up here on the hill And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will Only first I am asking you why." Those four lines are so starkly painful in my interpretation of this song. Here is a woman who struggles so madly against her womanly purpose in life, but she realizes her body has the evolved instinct of what it is and wonders why she won't fulfill it. The soldier will be expelled from her system if it isn't fertilized. She could easily fertilize it, but the soldier knows well that his queen is predisposed not to. It's the unfertilized egg desperate for life asking... ~ Why? ~ "She asked him there to sit down." Why is this mentioned? Because the egg is being controlled by the design of the reproductive system and its descent path, not the other way around. "He said, 'I see you now, and you are so very young But I've seen more battles lost than I have battles won' " He has witnessed all the other eggs descend and die. "And I've got this intuition, says it's all for your fun And now will you tell me why?" She has been sexually active, but won't allow herself to conceive. "But her face was a child's, and he thought she would cry" The Queen knows she's fertile, but she thinks she's too young for a baby. "And she said, ''I have swallowed a secret burning thread It cuts me inside, and often I've bled.'" This reference to the Queen "swallowing" a "secret burning thread" could refer to taking birth control pills (perhaps they made her bleed more)... or perhaps it refers to her feminist beliefs that she should not become pregnant until later in life. This we should not stab wildly at and hope to someday get help on it from the author. "He laid his hand then on top of her head And he bowed her down to the ground." Again this imagery is difficult to parse. If the soldier is an egg inside the Queen's body, she's stretching the allegory rather thin to have the egg's hand on her head, bowing her to the ground. Perhaps she is doubled over in menstrual pain as the direct result of the soldier's clear and ready "fighting" stance within her. " 'Tell me how hungry are you? How weak you must feel As you are living here alone, and you are never revealed' " Most likely refers to her empty womb and having the instinct to feed it for 9 months (and she'd no longer be alone). "But I won't march again on your battlefield." If you're listening to the song at face value, it sounds like he's rebelling against her and controlling her. But if the soldier is her ovum, he's completely powerless and simply informing her that he's about to die, and it's up to her (though her mind is already made up) to decide otherwise. "And he said, 'I want to live as an honest man To get all I deserve and to give all I can And to love a young woman who I don't understand Your highness, your ways are very strange.' " Like a rejected lover, he is trying to appeal to her sense of right and wrong to not go through with the choice that she is so predisposed to make. The unconceived child promises to love her and give her all the love and everything that a baby brings to a mother's life. "But the crown, it had fallen, and she thought she would break" Her biological imperative is clearly overwhelming her ego's stability here. "And she stood there, ashamed of the way her heart ached" She's already decided to allow the egg be naturally, violently flushed out of her, but a sense shame in not fulfilling her womanly duties has presented itself in uncertain terms, completely frontally confronting and challenging her authority over her body and her life. "Out in the distance her order was heard And the soldier was killed, still waiting for her word And while the queen went on strangling in the solitude she preferred The battle continued on..." The one soldier dies, but she's still a woman, and making babies is still her innate purpose, and until she changes her mind and allows it to happen, she will struggle in her soul against her biology. What a powerful moment of deep human self-awareness. If I'm right. |
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