| Elliott Smith – Mr. Goodmorning Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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"I saw you with Mr. Goodmorning, some velvet rope on the curb/ he gave me the stormiest warning, he hung around like a sign that said 'do not disturb':" Elliott's mother welcomed Charlie, his stepfather, and laid out the red carpet for him. She had a new baby and needed someone to help raise him. For Elliott though, living with Charlie wasn't happy. I believe that Charlie is "Mr. Goodmorning," as he is typically associated with sleep, dreaming, and night time in Elliott's songs, as this is when Elliott would be taken up to their attic and abused. Victims of child abuse are often told that what they remember was just a bad dream. E.g., "no bad dream fucker's gonna boss me around," "red-hot wet, swollen cheeks, fall asleep," "mostly they'd meet when he was asleep and have some sick exchange," "Charlie's got a band in his hand, a rubber loop that says 'Im the man you really want, so just act natural,' don't try to tell me your bullshit schemes, cause I have no idea what you mean, no idea, I'm just trying to sleep," etc. "You made the interior landscape you see me walking through/ you and me in the ruins of ruins, all of the beautiful things that I made once for you:" Elliott wrote a lot of beautiful songs, but many of them are associated with painful memories because they're about Charlie, either directly or indirectly because they're about the painful feelings of abandonment stemming from his mother basically choosing Charlie over him and Elliott subsequently moving to Portland, Oregon to live with his father. Charlie's actions had so much of an effect on Elliott's thinking that he "made his interior landscape." |
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| Devendra Banhart – Shabop Shalom Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[meudwen:49772] Great reply, but if someone is "in" their Talmud, I would assume it means they're studying it with some devotion | |
| Melanie Safka – Brand New Key Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[artoseybycy:49732] What a wonderful story | |
| The Band – When You Awake Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[DRO1539:48943] I agree with this, except the line about Moses sounds to me like the author saying that one can't change God's will no matter what they do. The "hanging on a string" always makes me think of a person's soul leaving their body, like when a person dies on the operating table and they can see everything that's going on from above their own body. | |
| The Band – When You Awake Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[AlkalineTrioFan:48942] Interesting, "AlkalineTrioFan" thinks that people have no taste in music. | |
| Robbie Fulks – She Took a Lot of Pills (& Died) Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[bstokes:48794] Coward! | |
| Sparklehorse – Gasoline Horseys Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[amodestproposal:48785] It's a motorcycle, Mark was really into bikes and used to hang out with a biker gang when he was a teenager. A "Sparklehorse" itself is a motorcycle, and he has a lot of references to bikes in other songs like "Spirit Ditch." | |
| Loretta Lynn – Fist City Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| Obviously, Loretta is jealous of her man for having slept with this woman, and is trying to communicate that she would also like to have relations with her, including fisting. | |
| Ariel Pink – Dayzed Inn Daydreams Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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I'm surprised this has no comments. To me it's a song about the sacrifices one makes as an artist, and the possibility of success eluding the artist within his or her lifetime. Ariel, at a time when he was "too young to fall," i.e. before life grinds a person down, "heard the call" of the artist. This line reminds me of Steely Dan's "Caves of Altamira," wherein Donald Fagan describes the prehistoric men "before the fall, when they wrote it on the wall, when there wasn't even any Hollywood. They heard the call, and they wrote it on the wall- for you and me, we understood." The cavemen were also called, and they left their cave paintings, which still resonate with modern people, as art is universal. Like Fagan's prehistoric man, Ariel, in this song, dies without achieving the recognition that he may or may not desire, but survives "in a thousand future lives" who appreciate his art. Unfortunately, distilling the essence of his very being into song has left him tortured, and he dies prematurely. One can see that this is somewhat common among artists who really live and breathe their art, like Kurt Cobain, who is referenced in the song's lengthy bridge section. With the "I'm Broadway Kurt Cobain," Ariel is expressing his fear that his art will be sold as a commodity after his death, and perverted into something that is the antithesis of its intention. It's humorous to imagine a singing, dancing, Broadway Cobain, but the truth is that Cobain's legacy has already been perverted and sold for lecherous documentaries, cash-grab box sets, and cheap, sweatshop T shirts available at places like Walmart. For Ariel, Cobain seems to be exemplary of what this song describes, an artist drawn to create something of meaning because of a higher calling, putting his soul into that something until it wears him away both physically and mentally, but then his work is given meaning after his death, but it is a twisted and perverse meaning. Anyway this song slaps IMO |
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| Crystal Castles – Alice Practice Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[vivalapandabear:47459] are you still obsessed with Christians? do they still make you seethe uncontrollably? do you still think random songs are about Christianity? | |
| Slayer – Silent Scream Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[ScreenNameNeeded:47154] This is very insightful. I was just listening to this song again and thinking about how much I like the lyrics from South of Heaven and how much I like the "death is fucking you insane" lyric specifically just for how wild and graphic it is. I decided to look the song up on here and am glad I saw your comment 11 years later. Death IS literally fucking her insane. | |
| Elliott Smith – New Monkey Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[futuremoth:44614] Another person from 12 years in the future here to say that I love this interpretation, and that it really resonates with me. Although many of his songs do reference drugs, and the drug references here are pretty heavy-handed, Smith did say himself that they are typically just part of a grander metaphor and not always literal- in my opinion they're typically both, as they are in this song. Similarly, it's usually all-too-easy to see Charlie in his songs' antagonists and adversaries, but underneath the surface one may find that the deeper meaning of a song might "click" for them by extrapolating said antagonists' characteristics onto society at large. Anyway, there's not much else to say that @[futuremoth:44614] didn't hit on in their excellent interpretation of this song. I will add that on the west coast of the U.S., heroin is very commonly referred to as "black," which is shorthand for the prevailing variety of the drug east of the rockies, called "black tar," and I have zero doubt that Smith was aware of this double meaning within the opening verse. My buddy and I, both ex-addicts, used to cover this song and during the height of our respective addictions, we would derive much amusement from changing the lyrics to "I'm addicted to black/need a pat on the back." | |
| Thin Lizzy – Dancing in the Moonlight (It's Caught Me in Its Spotlight) Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| That's awesome dude I wish my graduation song was about getting addicted to heroin. | |
| Thin Lizzy – Dancing in the Moonlight (It's Caught Me in Its Spotlight) Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[Comrade_Liar:42958] Thin Lizzy are like, the epitome of late '70s hard rock. It's funny how people think having an instrument from the brass family can turn a song into jazz; as if this were Steely Dan or someone and not Thhin Lizzy. The phrasing utilized by the saxophone is also purely blues-based. | |
| Gray Matter – Burn No Bridges Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| @[adrianadrian:34471] my hass is out | |
| Kate Bush – Cloudbusting Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| @[eveningthought:33122] I always thought the exact opposite of that particular line; to me it sounded like someone desperately trying to convince themselves that something good is finally going to happen. I love that, though, how we can both listen to the same lyric and draw opposite conclusions. | |
| Kate Bush – Cloudbusting Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| @[J_R:33121] Back in the day, things like watch faces and yo-yos were painted with paint that turned out to be highly radioactive and caused a lot of cancers. So what made it special quite literally made it dangerous, which is why she buried it. The songwriter would have been too young to remember this herself but I absolutely love her for the reference; she was so incredibly clever. | |
| Kate Bush – Cloudbusting Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| @[exobscura:33120] And when you die, your entirely pedestrian thoughts will be remembered by exactly no one. | |
| Kate Bush – Cloudbusting Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| @[mastacre:33119] [citation needed] | |
| Sparklehorse – Pig Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| I love this song. when I was addicted to heroin I smoked way too much speed once and had a minor stroke and couldn't use my right leg for almost a month. it was extremely painful and I was really mad at my stupid self and my stupid fucked up body that didn't let me do anything. this song reminds me of that RIP mark linkous. | |
| Big Star – She's A Mover Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| @[aserty:32492] I know this is super old but have you ever heard the expression "crocodile tears?" I think that might be the actual meaning of that line. Anyway I think a lot of the song is tongue-in-cheek: the line about Catholic school, "she tells a man go to hell, and where that's at is where I'm coming from." We (men) all love a sassy woman who isn't afraid to tell a man off until the second we're actually dating her. | |
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