| The Smashing Pumpkins – Mayonaise Lyrics | 1 month ago |
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The lyrics are "broad strokes" but to me they convey regret, disappointment with oneself, maybe lost love. "Pick your pockets full of sorrow, run away with me tomorrow" to me says he's talking to someone who was equally damaged and troubled and wanted to "save" them and thereby save himself. "Mother weep the years I'm missing, All our time can't be given, Back" - this can refer to regrets of all kinds, wasted opportunities, that kind of thing. I love this song and it's lack of specificity means that we can all connect with it in our own way if it speaks to us. |
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| Frightened Rabbit – Swim Until You Can't See Land Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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Considering that Scott died of suicide by drowning, I take this song as him contemplating that fate due to heartache/heartbreak. He was a great songwriter whose lyrics were often messy and uncomfortable, but he got his heart out on the page. He rarely sugar coats anything or worries about anything but getting his raw feelings out. |
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| Idles – A Hymn Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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It's all about shame, if that's not obvious. It's not all obvious, as to what he means with each line, but it just shows how shame runs through us in many ways we don't always recognize. "I lost 10 pounds for the wedding" is maybe my favorite line. I lost 10 lbs. because I'm ashamed of how I look, and it's a common thing for people to starve themselves for weddings. Now, we can replace "shame" for "vanity" if you like, but it's just a different side of the same coin. |
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| Beck – The Golden Age Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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Knowing that this album was written regarding his divorce, the underlying sadness and melancholy of this song is pretty clear. It's him feeling aimless and untethered and not knowing what to do with himself. He's numb, and drives around at night thinking and reflecting. "Let the golden age begin" is him mocking the idea of being in the prime of his life but dealing with this emotional devastation. Easily one of my favorite songs. |
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| Elbow – Montparnasse Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[alf1053044:41730] \r\n\r\nI forgot to add, I also love the line "Don\'t talk like we\'re stuck in a lift" - meaning, awkward, stilted, disconnected small talk, or no talk at all. Meaning he can feel the distance between them. | |
| Elbow – Montparnasse Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| So many great lines in this song:\n\n"I\'m squeezing my words like I\'m icing a bump" (NOT "bomb")\n\n"We\'re all the hero when directing the scene\nBut therapy for liars is a giant ice cream"\n\nAnd the repeat of the phrase "swatting at memories of you"\n\nTo my mind this song is about a failed relationship, possibly long-distance, or possibly the two traveled together and so the locations mentioned bring up memories. I love the way Garvey\'s lyrics are impressionistic, he adds little details that give things a specificity.\n\nThe phrase "your heart could easily power three of me" (not "easy") is basically saying that this lost lover had "a big heart", it could also be referring to them being strong. But the kicker in the whole song is "therapy for liars is a giant ice cream". Wow. That is a genius lyric, and if you\'ve ever been in a relationship with a narcissist or compulsive liar, then that line should resonate with you powerfully.\n\nI love this song. It\'s got such melancholy and is bittersweet, mourning a loss but also recognizing the bad with the good. | |
| Elbow – Station Approach Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[spdrmnky:41294] I agree. Such a great way to put it. | |
| Elbow – Crawling With Idiot Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| Just a beautiful song. It should be "Your blue collar pride" not "you\'re"; "And your loose cotton cool" not "you\'re".\n\nThe narrator sees someone in a seedy bar filled with drunken louts. Clearly he feels "above" them, but he especially feels that this beauty he sees could do better and desires her. He feels he would be better for her than the "idiots" she seems to hang out with.\n\nTo me this is a beautiful evocation of that feeling we\'ve all had where we\'re lonely and see someone who makes us feel longing and an ache to be with them. It could even be someone we know and have a crush on. But in this case it\'s a stranger in a bar. | |
| Elbow – Powder Blue Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| I\'m not sure where anyone is getting a car crash out of this. "China white" is heroine. "Smiling on the tiles" - she\'s on the bathroom floor, probably puking from the heroine. "They\'re trying to ignore us" - meaning they go out in public and people don\'t want to deal with the two druggies and want them to go away. "Proud to be the one to hold you when the shakes begin" - withdrawal symptoms.\n\nIt\'s about drugs, not a car crash. | |
| Elbow – Seven Veils Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| To me, the key to this song has always been "the way you kissed me when you lost another valentine". The protagonist either kissed or had some kind of romantic encounter with someone who was on the rebound. It was something that was meaningful, perhaps, to him, but he recognizes that it\'s nothing meant to last. So, "go sail the seven seas", and the roses and sun, etc. means that it\'s not a romantic thing. It doesn\'t have those kinds of signifiers where it feels like all the world is in harmony with your love.\n\nIt was just a fling. | |
| Elbow – The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[broadpath:40194] Yes, CV, not TV | |
| The War On Drugs – Buenos Aires Beach Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| I love this song and the flow of the stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Sketches of memories tied to a vision of a former lover on a beach. She\'s gone on to other men, and maybe this has been a pattern in the past. \n\nHe and this former lover have disappointed each other repeatedly. This is like a reverie going through someone\'s mind as they watch a sunset at the ocean, and they\'re remembering another trip to the ocean in happier times. | |
| Jane's Addiction – Jane Says Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| A song that can be taken very literally to be about heroin addiction - "I\'m gonna kick tomorrow", "kick" means get clean. Kicking a habit. \n\nGets her dinner up on St. Andrews, takes her dinner from her pocket - she scored heroin, that\'s her "dinner". | |
| Jane's Addiction – Then She Did... Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| One of my favorite Jane\'s songs. Mourning a lover/friend who died young and ties it to his mother\'s suicide. \n\nPerry has a way with words - he can evoke such emotion and gives us these sketches of memories that are often open to interpretation. \n\nThe coda is, of course, devastating, asking the deceased to say hi to his mom. "She was unhappy just as you were". Gets me every time. Such a simple statement that ties the song together and brings it home. | |
| Jane's Addiction – Summertime Rolls Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| This has been one of my favorite songs for a long time. The lyrics are just sort of impressionist sketches of an afternoon spent with a loved one. The mood the song creates, the way it builds, that classic bass line, the way it breaks down to just the bass at the end - it\'s all just about perfect.\n\n"Her nose is painted in pepper sunlight" is just a fantastic line. | |
| American Music Club – Crabwalk Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| Such a great song - there's a subdued, dreamy version that was on (I think) the same EP as Chanel #5. | |
| American Music Club – Chanel #5 Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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To me this is about someone who's getting older and is lost in a shallow, indifferent group of people - a "scene", maybe a club scene? I don't know. But it's someone sinking into depression. "Still I guess some things seem better than Lying in a bed an old child made" Growing older but not being mature, and not happy. |
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| American Music Club – I've Been a Mess Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| Just one of the greatest ever written - Mark Eitzel waiting for his lost love to bring him back from the dead. | |
| American Music Club – I've Been a Mess Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[InfantTyrone:38176] He did a live set on Morning Becomes Eclectic on KPFK before 60 Watt Silver Lining came out, and did this song, as well as an amazing version of Wild Wild Sea that had some different lyrics from the album version. Anyway, that performance was completely brilliant (as he so often is live) and was perfectly captured. I had it on cassette tape from the broadcast but lost it, and it used to be on youtube (audio only) but it's disappeared, which is too bad. |
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| American Music Club – I've Been a Mess Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[daydreamss:38175] Amen! | |
| American Music Club – Firefly Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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This verse always gets me: Tell my why you don't sleep anymore Tell me what you sit up all night waiting for Are you waiting for loneliness to paralyze Are you waiting for Sister Midnight to unleash the tide I think "the overwhelming dream that's killing us" is that the object of his affection (or a friend) is pursuing something that's driving them apart. The "overwhelming dream" could be a career, or could be drugs or something else harmful, as in something out of a bad dream. |
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| American Music Club – Blue and Grey Shirt Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| I've never heard Eitzel's comments on the meaning, but to me it's always been about waiting for someone to come home that isn't coming home. The reason could be infidelity (I've been in a scenario reminiscent of this) or they're somewhere else and you miss them, or because they're gone. | |
| American Music Club – What Holds the World Together Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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Such great lines in this one. My favorites: Bearing the names of the winners who walked away From the games that the slaves love to play To replace the air and the sea, leaving you no way to fly to me and That keeps this watery weariness in our bed and Sets up more windmills that all waste my time missing When it should just be your lips that I'm kissing Mark Eitzel is a genius. |
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| The Low Anthem – Charlie Darwin Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[greysquirrel:37872] I agree, and I don't think it specifically has to do with capitalism (not that that's a bad interpretation). Darwin wrote about evolution. So I think the "system built to fail" is humankind's evolution. It's a song of despair and lost hope that humans will learn and evolve past the current state of things. To me it expresses exasperation that humans are so self-centered and destructive to our only home - and to each other. |
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| The Low Anthem – Ghost Woman Blues Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[Yanoplathizo:37871] I think that sums it up pretty well. |
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| Elbow – The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[alf1053044:37335] Thinking about it a bit more, "I must've been working the ropes when your hand slipped from mine" - "working the ropes" could be taken to mean he was working - maybe his status has large demands on his time. So he must've been working when his partner decided they were through with him. And it seems implied that maybe he was too busy to notice that the relationship was over. |
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| Elbow – The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[Broadpath:37334], that's an interesting observation - and CV makes more sense, but in the live version it really sounds like he says "tv", which can be interpreted as he spends his days "living in a box", looking out through a window/screen. Just a thought. I like them both. "Not so far to go", to himself - he's at the top, so he's almost there - maybe saying to himself "why aren't you happy, you've got what you want?" The first verse is about his present situation and wanting to get out, questioning the how and the why. "Searching for a face that I know" - can mean he doesn't know anyone, feels all alone - or maybe he's looking for his lost love. Did his job cost him his marriage/relationship? We don't know, but we assume he wouldn't be lonely if he still had this person in his life. The second verse - "I must've been working the ropes when your hand slipped from mine" - he's remembering someone he lost, and blames himself. He was supposed to be in control of the situation, or providing safety, but failed. I take "mirrors and smoke" as just a simple juxtaposition of the common phrase, so "living on mirrors and smoke, it's a joke, a fix and a lie" means he thinks his life is a sham and he deceives people about his happiness, and hides his actual feelings of loneliness. Then we get "Oh so far to fall" - he aspired to something but he's not happy, so that realization has caused everything to crash down for him (mentally). Or it's a mocking reference to how "high up and successful" he is. His status is meaningless to him at this point. In the live version, the gentle rose line becomes "simple, gentle, binding, endless love". In other words, send up a prayer in my name that I'll find true love again and can find happiness. What an amazing song. |
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