| A-Ha – Living A Boy's Adventure Tale Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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I’ve been listening to this song for almost 40 years and it is still beautifully haunting. LABAT is about homelessness. It is about a man who is kicked out by his wife and, living on the streets, likens it to boyhood, Peter Pan fantasies. The “lights in pairs come passing by where I hide” is a reference to traffic he sees while camping secretly. Then “change in weather - rain pours down. My head in my hands…” reflects his growing misery at being outside. “And where am I supposed to go now?” is obviously his uncertainty about how long it’ll last. But he tries to make the best of it “singing a lullaby for me…” The line that always threw me off was “I’ve been lost in so many places - seeking love in so many faces” doesn’t fit with the rest of the song or go anywhere, but it may reflect the reason why his wife kicked him out. Assuming the lyrics are tight and Pál and Morten didn’t take too many liberties, the line “one more time, living a boy’s…” means this has happened before or that he’s been homeless before. |
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| Dire Straits – Your Latest Trick Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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@rikdad nailed it. DS wrote elegant songs and I don’t think the lyrics are as straightforward as some people believe. I agree with interpretation that she’s not a hooker but to him she acted like one. She “tricked“ him again, and this last one was a good one (“ I don’t know how it happened - it was faster than the guy cut the flick“) I always interpreted that she left him for somebody whom she’ll probably end up doing the same to. The night scene is chaotic but the city is beautiful and full of promise, just not for the sad night people (“we’re standing outside of this wonderland looking so bereaved and so bereft”) At the end of the night they are all missing the fulfillment they went out to find. The singer is one of them. He ends as melancholic and unfulfilled as the rest of them. |
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| Arcade Fire – Suburban War Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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This song is pure nostalgia! It is about mourning how friendships change or disappear with the passing of years. The singer seems to be talking to an old friend whom he looked up to and mourns how they grew apart. Later in the song he talks about how the same happened to all of his old friends. "Let's go for a drive, see the town tonight. There's nothing to do but I don't mind if I'm with you." He is reconnecting with the friend, one he is comfortable being vulnerable with. Having nothing to do is the forever plight of life in the suburbs and true friends are those you can be comfortable being bored with. He reminisces how much the town has changed. "The music divides us into tribes" As they grew, cracks happened among friendships. In suburban kids, hungry for identity, music choice is often not just about what to listen but about choosing a group; a lifestyle, a way to dress and which friends to hang with and which not to, us-vs-them. The friendships begin to dilute. "You grew your hair so I grew mine." We were playing with identities, you did something cool and I did it too. Then, in the SAME stanza, "You cut your hair - we never saw you again. Now the cities we live could be distant stars" The friend defined himself away from the suburbs and moved away. He looks for him in "every passing car". He misses him. "I've been living in the shadows of your song" He is still influenced by him after all these years. "In the suburbs I learned to drive. You told me we'd never survive so grab your mother's keys we leave tonight." This seems to mean that the friend originally encouraged the singer to leave with him. Let's go elsewhere and LIVE instead of dying here slowly. The singer, in the first line seems to mean: this is my home. It seems like the he never left the suburbs. "You started a war that we can't win" You divided us, and these changes you made left no room for us. As it happens, the town itself is changing fast "they keep erasing the names of the streets we grew up in" and there's little left of what we used to be. "Now the music divides us into tribes. You choose your side I choose my side." You made your choice and became a different person from me, and that choice leaves no room for me. Fine, I'll do the same. "All my friends they don't know me now" You and they no longer know who I am. "All my old friends are staring through me now" (this line kills me) You/they don't see me as before. There's almost a lack of humanity in it; we were FRIENDS, now you don't even see me as a random person, you don't really see me. This song is so poignant to me, ever since I first heard it when I woke up to it with my radio alarm many years ago. 30 years ago, I left home at 16 and with each visit there was a little less of what I had called mine. Eventually most moved away and the neighborhood became someone else's neighborhood several times over. With the few old friends I was able to keep in touch with we have a mixture of hilariousness and mourning. Hilarious because if we were close then we are still close now and those whom I didn't share much with, we still don't! Everyone went on to become what we were. It's mournful to see parents passing away, friends begin to look like our parents did back then, old houses bulldozed and the city change. This song gives me a way to frame that experience. Then I remember that while mourning is sometimes in order, life is happening NOW. |
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