| Eagles – The Greeks Don't Want No Freaks Lyrics | 7 months ago |
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I really don't think they are referring to a gang rape in the verse with the sorority girl. It says she was a "perfect little sister... UNTIL", which implies that she damaged her own reputation. "Found her in the bushes with the boys in the band" doesn't sound like a rape at all. You wouldn't use that sort of "nudge nudge, wink wink" language to describe it if it were forced. She simply snuck off with them to have sex, because she is not at all the "perfect little sister" that everybody thinks she is. Otherwise, this is a pretty lousy throw-away song. I remember when the album came out. There was no way it was going to be anything but a let-down after the meteoric success of "Hotel California", but The Long Run was even worse than a let-down. It sounds like a band who is burned out and putting out an album because they have to. And I have read a few interviews with Henley and Frey that indicate that is exactly what it was. I particularly remember hearing "The Greeks..." when I bought the record, and thinking it sounded like it needed more verses and some more melody or a solo or something, but they just didn't want to bother |
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| Jackson Browne – I'm Alive Lyrics | 9 months ago |
| I don't think of this as a "break-up" song at all. He's going to go somewhere where he won't hear her name. The last verse is particularly bold, talking about the time and tears he wasted on her and turning to face his torment, saying "Baby you lied". The lyrics are from somebody who is post-breakup, has finally got their head together, and is ready to head back out into the world. It is a very positive, uplifting song, really. For someone in the midst of a break-up, this song gives them hope that there is life and love on the other side. | |
| Jackson Browne – I'm Alive Lyrics | 9 months ago |
| @[OTTAWASENATOR:53345] I cannot find any mention anywhere of "I'm Alive" being inspired or related to Phyllis Major's suicide, and since the song came out 17 years after that tragedy, I find it hard to believe. | |
| Jackson Browne – Sky Blue and Black Lyrics | 9 months ago |
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There are so many subtle, deeply meaningful emotions conveyed in his choices of even single words in these lyrics. What an understatement to say it's a "great song". For example, "far too simple beauty Of the promises we made". Note the "too simple". When they were young, their promises were beautiful, but were unrealistic, so the beauty was "too simple". Browne is really good at this, saying a lot with just a few carefully chosen words. Another favorite moment of mine is the line: "I could never see how you doubted me When I’d let go of your hand" She had given him the world. They were a couple. But as the struggle goes on to "need to be separate and a need to be one", he would pull away occasionally, and never realized that every time he let go of her hand (figuratively, just meaning he pulled away to himself), it would plant a little seed of doubt, and those doubts grow over time until you aren't sure that the two of you are "one" anymore. Bit by bit, his independence was pulling them apart and he didn't see it until it was too late. When he's writing this song, he can now look back and see how it all came undone, but it is too late to save it: "the moment has passed by me now". And now, for the rest of his life, he will remember and see her everywhere. Yes, Mr Browne, I agree. "That's the way love is". |
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| Avril Lavigne – Sk8er Boi Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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This is a really well written, well-arranged song. A great effort from Avril Lavigne. The meaning is pretty obvious: boy meets girl, she snubs him because he is rough around the edges so she and her friends look down on him, he goes on to be a big rock star with a new girlfriend, and new girlfriend has her "ha ha ha" moment because she got the guy in the end. I didn't think much more about it until many years later. But now... -- The song is undermined by what a 20-year-old would write, which you would have to expect since Lavigne was about 17(?) when she wrote this. But stories like this are never so simple. Step back and think a minute. -- Her friends and the new girlfriend think the skater boi is so great because.... why? He's a rich famous rock star now? How many young people become rich and famous, marry and then completely self-destruct because none of it is real and they aren't ready for any of it? -- 5 years later, the first woman is home, feeding the baby, ("she's all alone"). Was the first woman really the "loser" because she found somebody else and has a baby now? The song is trying to knock girl #1 for "judging" him. But maybe she was right. He's a "punk", she "does ballet". She was attracted to him, but realized it was a mistake because they were too different. Who says they aren't both better off the way they are? |
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| Jackson Browne – The Naked Ride Home Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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I never felt like the couple in the song were married, or were even in a relationship (I know about his interview, yes). So even though Browne may have not intended is this way... It reminded me a lot of how girls and boys cross paths in high school. It sounds like so many "non-relationships" I have known from that time, both involving me and just involving friends. The guy is pursuing a girl, she doesn't care about him and she doesn't care that he is enamored with her. She took the dare purely because it was a dare. She has no emotional connection to it and couldn't care less that he sees her naked in the car. She just wants to be able to say she has done it. In fact, it's almost insulting to him because she has absolutely no fear that he will do anything agressive toward her. She sees him as a puppet. and yet... he tries because he's "too far gone to care". That idea continues in the line where she brushes aside his caress and speaks of "all that she'd not yet done"). She knows he wants her, but feels no obligation to respond to it or even acknowledge it, because it's more fun to keep stringing him along. They get to her house, where she bolts from the car without a word, as if to say, "Well, I've done that. See ya." And he is left to see her turning on the lights. The "light that would eventually dawn" is him waking up to the fact that she will never care about him and he's letting her make a fool of him. "Forcing me to decide" just means he has to decide to stop waiting for her to want him, because it's never going to happen. |
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| Jackson Browne – Fountain Of Sorrow Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| A few of you have it right, because you've seen Browne's comments on it in the video of his Austin City Limits concert. I just want to focus on the one little line at the beginning where in that moment "where his camera happens to find her", there is 'just a trace of sorrow in your eyes'. That is such a painfully truthful line, and I bet everybody has experienced this. Someone who is sad or suffering can often keep up appearances in front of friends, family, and even their lover. But when a camera snaps a photo, it can capture that moment where the person's guard is let down and their face shows how unhappy they truly are. I have seen photos of my own self that show this as well as photos of other people. And it can't be unseen. The eyes never lie. You can see in that instant that a person is really unhappy, and it's pretty gut wrenching. Such a brilliant little vignette Browne uses to open the song. | |
| The Brooklyn Bridge – The Worst That Could Happen Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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Jimmy Webb's songwriting, and the Brooklyn Bridge's performance, are superb on this song. But while the lyrics are supposed to be emotional and tug at your heart strings for the guy who loses the girl, they really gloss over the ugliness of the whole idea. "I'm never getting married, you know that's not my scene". What the heck is that supposed to mean? He is too immature and selfish to commit to her. THAT's what it means. And we're supposed to feel sorry for him? When he says, "A girl like you, needs to be married", what is THAT supposed to mean? What is a "girl like you"? The whole thing just reeks of a guy who wants it all his way. Even while he says, "I don't really blame you" , the choice of "really" in there is a back-handed insinuation that he DOES blame her. Ewwwww.... He's just a user who expected her to hang around forever without him making a commitment and now that she's getting married, he crying the blues. |
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| Paula Cole – Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[emmavr4:51395] Hollywood versions of cowboys certainly were nice and respectable. They were brave, chivalrous, honorable. That's why her examples are John Wayne and the Lone Ranger. | |
| Paula Cole – Where Have All The Cowboys Gone? Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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I always heard the song as a two-layer criticism of traditional gender roles. It may be hopelessly unfair for a woman to have a "cowboy" husband, because she gets stuck doing all the drudgery, cleaning and child rearing, But on top of that, even if she accepts that role and the work, the husbands aren't living up to their end of the arrangement. She is raising the children, doing the laundry, and wearing her new dress - the dutiful wife. And what's he doing? Getting drunk at the bar every night, losing his job, and ignoring her. In other words, she held up HER end, now where's her "John Wayne" ? |
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| The Bangles – Manic Monday Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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@[davidrharris72:51227] I think it fits. The story opens with an entire verse about her rush to work and worrying about not getting paid. In fact, except for the little part about her boyfriend coming over, the song is mostly about work, being too tired and rushed, and not having enough money. People think of it as a lighthearted song because it has a poppy chord progression and it was sung by cute girls. P I bet 90% of the people who know and love this song don't know ANY of the words in the middle except, "Night. Last night", "bedroom voice" and "C'mon honey, let's go make some noise" |
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| The Bangles – Manic Monday Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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Boss? Isn't the line, "BUS is already there", as in, "Blame it on the train, but the bus is already there" She's late for work, and can't blame it on the train being late because the bus, which is presumably slower in a morning commute, is already there. |
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| Smash Mouth – Walkin' On The Sun Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[Stone:47438] Free And worse, while there was some dangerous LSD usage in the 60s, most of it was relatively harmless pot smoking. Now, the phony attention-getting "rebellousness" manifests itself in meth, crack, and and whole slew of seriously murderous drugs. | |
| Smash Mouth – Walkin' On The Sun Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[neolex:47437] Wow... talk about twisting the whole thing to "race". 25 years before this song was written was the height of the hippie movement in the late 60s. Civil rights was a part of that, sure. But this song is NOT just about civil rights. The references to protests, smoking pot, singing and clapping are all clearly hippie movement images. The song lists all the things that happened back then in the 60s, how hippies and protests were sincere, and then comparing that to all the phony attempts to recreate that in the 90s when the song was written. Instead of real protests and innocent drug use (like pot), it was replaced with BS... people marching and protesting all for show, and getting into seriously destructive drugs like crack. | |
| Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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It's a song about trading ideals and goals for complacency, and the writer's sorrow that his partner hasn't learned the regrets that come with doing that. The partner (possibly a girlfriend, but maybe just a dear companion) still thinks they can "tell Heaven from Hell", "a smile from a veil", and so on. I don't see "Wish You Were Here" as a sarcastic remark (as in, "I'm in a rotten place, wish YOU were here instead"). Rather, the writer has learned the bitter lessons of wasting your life being complacent and is now ready to live life to the fullest again, but his partner hasn't, and isn't. The writer is trying to wake up his partner to all they have wasted. He wishes they were "here" - the place he has now reached in his head. |
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| The Traveling Wilburys – Handle With Care Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[Cleanruss:46938] And ironically, he just asked to "come along and watch". But George thought that was silly since, in his words, "Roy sings better than any of us!", so he wrote parts in there specifically for Roy to sing. | |
| The Traveling Wilburys – Handle With Care Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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@[chunkymonkey102:46937] It wasn't a "bet". You have a few anecdotal bits sort of correct, but mostly not. All of this is well documented in interviews with Harrison himself. George needed a track to be the "B" side for a promo single release from his album "Cloud 9". He didn't have anything recorded, so he was just going to go into a studio and fool around with some song ideas he already had, and record something. He was talking about this with his friends, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne at dinner and they asked if they could come along and help. He didn't have anywhere to record it and you can't get studio time on 24 hours notice, even if you are George Harrison. But he knew Bob Dylan had a small studio in his home. Calling him up, Dylan said, "sure", he could come over and work on his song. So like magic, the 4 of them were placed at Dylan's that day. The only other strike of lightening was that George was picking up a guitar from Tom Petty he had lent him, and Petty also asked if he could "come along". Dylan asked Harrison what he was going to call the song, and since they were standing in Dylan's garage, George saw a box marked "Handle With Care" and said, "How about that?" |
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| The Corrs – Breathless Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| Okay, so the lyrics are light-hearted romance fluff, but so what? The song is a vehicle for them to show off the interplay with their voices. The wide melody jumps from low to high to low, the "round style" backing vocals... it's like two ponies playing in a field. Relax folks. Everything doesn't have to be as deep as Quadrophenia. It's just fun, well played, well-sung, well-executed. | |
| 10,000 Maniacs – More Than This Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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I'm surprised by the other interpretations in here. I just started thinking about this song because I heard it in a store today, and was reminded of it. Then I started wondering what it was really about, so I read the lyrics. To me, it's obviously a song about a relationship breaking up because both parties know it's going nowhere. Just look at the phrases. "I could feel at the time There was no way of knowing" "It was fun for a while There was no way of knowing" "More than this You know there is nothing" In other words, even at the beginning of the relationship, the singer doubted it would go anywhere, and now it has reached the point where there is nothing more than this. Haven't you ever found a significant other, only to go along like things are great for a while, then come to the realization that it has gone as far as it's going to go and it's time to break up because there is no more? Upon thinking that, and then reading some other interpretations in here, I thought maybe I was nuts, so I did some more reading. Apparently, songwriter Bryan Ferry wrote this on the heels of a breakup in a relationship. So, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is not some introspective commentary on life, being happy, or anything else. It's a "goodbye". |
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| The Beach Boys – Caroline No Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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The song opens with: "Where did your long hair go Where is the girl I used to know" It is extremely interesting that the song starts this way (at least to me). This is supposed to me a "My Interpretation" so this will be based on my personal experience. I know this came directly from Tony Asher seeing his ex girlfriend after their break-up and seeing she had cut her hair. But I think it's more prophetic than that. A woman cutting her hair is an emotional "purging" or "shedding". In my case, "she" had long beautiful hair that she knew I loved, just like the writer in this song. The changing of her personality and losing interest in me was accompanied by cutting it, as if to say, "I know you like the hair, but you are no longer worth it". Just like the song starting out with that symbolic gesture, my relationship was years from completely falling apart when she cut her hair, but even then, I took it as a bad sign, and I was right. So guys, if she knows you like her long hair and one day she cuts it short, beware. It's not just for a "new look". |
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| David Gray – Say Hello Wave Goodbye Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| I'm definitely on the side that says David Gray made this song great. He OWNS this song. Soft Cell's (Mark Almond) version just sounds too much like a synth pop "dance" track, so the brilliant words and story are lost on it. | |
| Pete Townshend – Slit Skirts Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[naomid:41081] These answers are all way overthinking this. It isn\'t some exotic reference to working on oil rigs to escape a spouse. That makes no sense because the rest of the song isn\'t so specific as to be talking about oil rigs. It is about the disillusionment with growing older and apart from your lover. "Refuge in the oil" refers to the man being unfit for marriage, unhappy, and taking refuge in getting drunk. "Oil" as in "well oiled". | |
| Pete Townshend – Slit Skirts Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[naomid:41083] These answers are all way overthinking this. It isn\'t some exotic reference to working on oil rigs to escape a spouse. That makes no sense because the rest of the song isn\'t so specific as to be talking about oil rigs. It is about the disillusionment with growing older and apart from your lover. "Refuge in the oil" refers to the man being unfit for marriage, unhappy, and taking refuge in getting drunk. "Oil" as in "well oiled". | |
| Pete Townshend – Slit Skirts Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[naomid:41082] These answers are all way overthinking this. It isn\'t some exotic reference to working on oil rigs to escape a spouse. That makes no sense because the rest of the song isn\'t so specific as to be talking about oil rigs. It is about the disillusionment with growing older and apart from your lover. "Refuge in the oil" refers to the man being unfit for marriage, unhappy, and taking refuge in getting drunk. "Oil" as in "well oiled". | |
| Pete Townshend – Slit Skirts Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[naomid:41080] These answers are all way overthinking this. It isn\'t some exotic reference to working on oil rigs to escape a spouse. That makes no sense because the rest of the song isn\'t so specific as to be talking about oil rigs. It is about the disillusionment with growing older and apart from your lover. "Refuge in the oil" refers to the man being unfit for marriage, unhappy, and taking refuge in getting drunk. "Oil" as in "well oiled". | |
| Pete Townshend – Slit Skirts Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[naomid:41079] These answers are all way overthinking this. It isn\'t some exotic reference to working on oil rigs to escape a spouse. That makes no sense because the rest of the song isn\'t so specific as to be talking about oil rigs. It is about the disillusionment with growing older and apart from your lover. "Refuge in the oil" refers to the man being unfit for marriage, unhappy, and taking refuge in getting drunk. "Oil" as in "well oiled". | |
| The Moody Blues – Dawn Is A Feeling Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[mo10654667:40922] Absolutely correct. And it\'s more clear if you consider the next song on the album that follows this one, "The Morning: Another Morning", which makes it more explicit:\r\n\r\n"Balloons flying, children sighing\r\nWhat a day to go kite flying\r\nBreezes cool, away from school\r\nCowboys fighting out a duel\r\n\r\nTime seems to stand quite still\r\nIn a child\'s world it always will"\r\n\r\nDawn is a feeling is the moment when the dawn breaks and a child wakes up. Then "Morning..." is the child\'s morning.\r\n | |
| Gin Blossoms – Until I Fall Away Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| @[delight:35643] Doug Hopkins did not write this song, not even the lyrics. | |
| Sarah Harmer – Almost Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| I see this song as very different in meaning from the other interpretations I read in here. It's not a song to an old flame, or to somebody she's "snooping" on. I think it's much simpler than that. She has crossed paths with somebody, she is interested in them. They have met casually or perhaps just accidentally and for long enough that she has the other person's number and has been invited to call. But she is reluctant. Why? I think it's because she is healing from a previous relationship and is wondering if it's been long enough to "get back out there". That isn't spelled out in the lyrics, but the description of the opening scene, where she's hanging around by herself in some diner or restaurant that is closing makes it sound like she is on her own, and stays until closing because she has nowhere in particular to go. And when it says "roused my dreams again", it's not referring to the other person being an old flame. Rather, this new person is rousing those feelings of attraction in her that she hasn't felt since her last break-up. | |
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