submissions
| Tom Waits – Murder in the Red Barn Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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Once again, Waits expertly paints a vivid picture with his words, one of darkness and grime, but it is with his tone that he conveys a clear message. All these images of murder and deceit, and Waits sings it like it’s a tired tale. Throughout the lyrics we also get hints at racial inequality and class discrimination. I reckon the song is ultimately about human culture; how we are all forced to kill a living thing to survive, whether we like it or not, but how we have control of our actions. It’s indolence that leads to depravity. While the story seems to take place in a corrupt farming area, I think the barn really represents the entire world. |
submissions
| Leonard Cohen – The Captain Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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This is, in my opinion, a cold-blooded killer’s confession to his last disciple. The captain has led his team through the war not with the goal of reaching a peaceful conclusion, but of wreaking havoc… and now he has nothing left. Everyone has left him, besides one naïve soldier. The captain thinks he can convince the soldier that the two of them are equally bad, but they are not. “The captain, he was dying, but the captain wasn’t hurt.” In other words, he has never once suffered during the war, because of his utter lack of compassion. Killing others leaves no emotional impact on him, and because of his rank, he hasn’t had to make any physical action to bring about those killings anyways. The soldier takes the insignia in acknowledgement that the captain held no true care for material things. He will try his best to follow that direction, only this time, altruistically. He now has nothing left to lose except for himself. The insignia stands for evil, yes, but it’s just a material thing. He’s not becoming the captain of anyone but himself, in both a literal and spiritual sense. He’s realizing and accepting his mistakes; what he was once a part of— because he knows that he is nothing like the man who led it. |
submissions
| Neil Young – Powderfinger Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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According to Young, the song refers to “the futility of violence”. The “red beacon” makes me think of the siren on a police vehicle. It seems like this boy’s father was involved in some sort of transgression out in a rural part of the states (the location being implied by the names of his family members), and the police somehow found out about it. His father died before the lawmen arrived, leaving this boy to defend his home-- something he shouldn’t even have to do against supposed “enforcers of safety”. It’s clear he’s never seen a police boat before, and all of his instincts tell him to run for his life… and without a moment of hesitation, the lawmen shoot him dead. |
submissions
| Metric – Youth Without Youth Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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It’s about a group of depraved kids living in a decaying society. As they grow up, their twisted “games” begin causing harm to the rest of society. It also seems that through the years, one of their friends died as a result of their carelessness, or maybe police brutality (“they let us go but we lost one”). What the song is saying is that society’s nature is self-sustaining; the kids are influenced by the surrounding calamity, and eventually become the ones causing it, even for themselves. What this could mean in relation to the title is that we should all embrace the inner youthful optimism in ourselves more, because if we try to be muscle-heads, it might just rob children of their lives. |
submissions
| Metric – Youth Without Youth Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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For this song to be secretly equating abortion as murder is highly unlikely in my opinion because Emily Haines publicly supported charities that advocate the woman’s right to choose. “Rubber Soul” refers to the Beatles album, not a condom. |
submissions
| Metric – Blindness Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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This is the best explanation I could come up with, as it makes sense for every lyric in the song:
It seems to me that the narrator is a mercenary that wrongly believed themselves to be acting ethically. They were blindly following orders, believing they were doing the right thing. However, when they actually saw their victims (who were rejoicing in the rain, thinking they had been saved), the blindfold came off and they realized that they were no hero at all. They were simply a fool that took orders and “never complained”. The mission they were on was to kill innocents. The line “tell the survivors help is on the way” are the words of the people controlling the narrator being mocked by the narrator. The line “I wanna leave but the world won't let me go” could be referring to how they feel deep remorse for their actions, but feel obligated not to leave the organization physically or via suicide, due to a contract that they are bound to. |
submissions
| Metric – Speed The Collapse Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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The lyrics could apply to any tragedy, but the most logical interpretation, in my opinion, is that it is about a hundreds-long period of time that showcases human nature and how we tend to ignore valuable indications of disaster. The first verse describes migration away from a country/continent to a new land (presumably describing the American revolution) and how once established, the immigrants heard news about the land from which they came and how it endured war and/or economic collapse (represented in this song by a metaphorical “storm”). Amidst the excitement of their newfound liberty and rapid economic development (“we built a mansion in a day”), they turned their heads and learnt nothing from the story of their neighbors. The song then describes “auctioning off memories”, which further supports that idea of capitalistic tunnel-vision. Living inside of a powerful “mansion”, the immigrants don’t “feel the breeze” of the “storm” that was mentioned earlier, so they assume they are safe. However, the “storm” has already rolled all the way back to them from the shore of their old home, and the same story plays out again. There is an economic collapse as the substance of the storm floods through the “revolving doors” and into the mansion. The revolving door, a post-industrial revolution invention, indicates the time at which this occurs. The doors also represent the phenomenon of a force hitting you from behind; you push the panel in front of you, but if you stop following that panel, you get hit. So basically, we don't help others because we are pushing forwards with our own lives. The result of this is that others won't help us because they need to look out for themselves, as we clearly aren't looking out for them. This forms a cycle, which is represented by the spinning storm and revolving doors. I suppose what this song is ultimately saying is that our division is what will lead to our downfall. |
submissions
| Randy Newman – Song For The Dead Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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My interpretation: A war song likely regarding the Vietnam war. Though seemingly simple at first glance, this song subtly illustrates some powerful messages. The idea of a bloodied soldier left behind to offer their comrades some kind of proper sendoff acts as a means to criticize the governments for not truly caring about the soldiers they send out to fight in war. The lyric “To defend this mud hole” could go beyond the literal meaning, implying that the country itself is no good. But more simply, in the minds of the soldiers, the horrors that take place in such areas seem to only be for the sake of killing each other where the fighting would never affect anyone else, particularly the corrupt leaders. Next, the soldier in the song talks about how their country was afraid for no good reason, and that the bodies of the enemy will stay with the soldiers “forever near”. This is clearly referring to the post-traumatic stress that such things ingrain in a person. The final verse is ambiguous as to whom the soldier is talking to-- it could be their comrades or the enemy soldiers… Therefore, one could assume that the lyric is implying that both sides are just as human as each other, and deserve to be commemorated equally. Great song. |
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