submissions
| Metric – Dreams So Real Lyrics
| 5 years ago
|
|
To me, this song illustrates the grieving process you go through (often more than once) when you realize that your conviction and passion for something has emptied and left you feeling disillusioned and disaffected. This theme is recurrent in the song, starting when Emily says, "thought I made a stand. Only made a scene." At first the writer felt powerful and loud, but that feeling has morphed into a sense of weakness, impotence, and shame. She never believed the fight would go out of her, and now that it has she questions how forceful that fight was in the first place. She worries that she overestimated herself from the beginning. She wonders if she should have been feeling this sense of defeat all along ("seems like nothing I said ever meant anything"). The apathy and exhaustion she's settled into feels like the natural state of things ("anyone not dying is dead, and baby, it won't be long"). Even when she was young and full of vitality, that vitality was being drawn away from her, and losing it undercut whatever blessings it gave her in the moment. Take "though the point we're making is strong, play it stripped down to my thong" (not the lyrics listed here, but that's how I always heard it). Even when she believed in her message, she was often forced to compromise in a way that took away some of its impact. She believes that years of these compromises have taken away from her impact as well. She wants back her passions and her illusions, and she's jealous of the people in her life who still have theirs, even though she knows they can't hold onto them any more than she did. |
submissions
| James – Getting Away With It (All Messed Up) Lyrics
| 7 years ago
|
I personally don't think "Daniel's saving Grace" refers to a man rescuing a woman -- I think it's possessive, as in, his saving grace is out there. He needs to find her not because she needs him, but because he needs her (He was all but drowning). She seems unattainable (out in deep water) but he's desperate to make it to her because he believes she's his last chance at redemption and wholeness. As he is, he feels useless (all messed up). She's incapable of saving or curing him, but she's helped him to become more at ease with his brokenness, and he accepts it now. I see this song as a lullaby for people who believe they're damaged beyond repair (Are you aching for the grave?/That's okay).
His "Saving Grace" didn't drag him out of the water, she just made it more bearable (Now they live like dolphins) |
submissions
| Jump, Little Children – Violent Dreams Lyrics
| 7 years ago
|
|
The narrator is spending the night waiting to find out whether someone he cares about will survive. She's in the hospital not because of an accident, but because of something she's done. Maybe she attempted suicide, maybe she just hurt herself, maybe she had a heart attack due to an eating disorder or overdosed. The narrator's obviously anxious, and he wants her to get better, but at the same time he's angry and resents in equal measure that he can't do enough and that he's being asked to do too much. Although he isn't culpable for the woman's actions, he still feels responsible and thinks he could've prevented it if he'd been better somehow, if he'd been more available or more insistent that she get help (Something I said/Something I did/Is bringing on this violent emergency). However, this isn't the first time something like this has happened (One more day/I'm always taking the dive), and while he's doing his best to be patient, he's preoccupied, he hasn't slept well the past few nights, and he's angry that she's put him in this situation again. He wants to help, but he also feels like she's asking too much of him by making him watch her suffer and wonder whether she'll survive over and over (All it takes/Is all I can give/All my waking hours). Although he's frightened and he feels wronged, he's not willing to give up on her yet -- partially because he feels a sense of duty towards her, and partially because he honestly loves her. |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.
