| Shriekback – (Open Up) Your Filthy Heart (To Me) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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A love song to a city, a city filled with "shame and ignorance" but still beautiful and mysterious. It used to be much greater than it now is, but even in decline the singer loves it and wants to know it down to the core. Which city? Maybe London... maybe somewhere in India? I lean towards something connected with Great Britain because of the "mad dogs and millionaires" line connecting to the Noel Coward lyric ("mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun") which is all about British colonialism. It's a city that these colonial types have tried to change (either a city being colonised, or if London the return of the people who made it wealthy through the colonial system), they've tried to make things "sordid and so bland" with their "banalities," but the city resists that in its core. In spite of the attempts to make it "younger and more free" the city is "perfect" as it is, and the singer longs for the "filthy heart" which has been untouched by these attempts to Disneyize the city by making it pretty and new and just like everywhere else. |
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| Trembling Blue Stars – St. Paul's Cathedral At Night Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| A break-up song, short and bittersweet. She sends the narrator a postcard, he obsesses over what she really means by it, and then they meet and "now I don't have to read between the lines" -- it's over. They break up in an empty movie theatre, then he walks home. If you connect this to the other songs on the album he probably treated her pretty badly ("I know I'm in no position to miss her") but it doesn't help; he still wishes it wasn't over and wonders "what she was thinking" -- maybe wondering if she's regretting ending it? | |
| Barenaked Ladies – War On Drugs Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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@ds_null: I can't help but think of all the people I know who don't want to take anti-depressants etc. because it'd be 'boring' not to be suicidally depressed, self-hating, self-injuring, etc etc. I think the "War on Drugs" refers to the many facets a term such as 'drugs' has -- the war against illegal drug use that spills into the societal condemnation of those who take any sort of medication to make themselves feel better. It's a huge continuum, really, between dangerously addictive physically self-destructive drugs, and self-medicating with alcohol or pot, and taking something like Prozac. Everyone's just trying to make themselves feel better, to quit living in that "Hell on earth," but as a society we condemn the action wholesale and speak of them with contempt instead of trying to be loving, compassionate, and understanding towards those who are in pain. I do love this song. It took a bit to grow on me, but now it's one of my favourites. |
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