| Arcade Fire – Wake Up Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Most of you guys are right about this song being about the loss of innocence. However, you've all missed the significance of the first stanza. The song is about trying to reach all the people who have suffered through some sort of traumatic experience as children in order to caution them about what will happen if they do not confront their past traumas. There's a particular "something" that "filled up [the narrator's] heart up with nothing". It's not a general, continuous process of maturation he's referring to. This "something" could be some sort of trauma, whether emotional, physical, or sexual. Presumably, the narrator was a child when this happened, and the authority figures in his life did not want to acknowledge that the "something" had happened. Instead, they punished the child for expressing his despair over the trauma by "telling [him] not to cry". One of the only ways people who have experienced traumatic events can continue to function in life is to block out the memory and the emotions associated with the event. They end up being detached from a crucial part of who they are, leaving them feeling that their life is a lie. Because they "see [their life] is a lie", they do not benefit from the warmth of other people's company. Another symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is that seemingly insignificant things can conjure up memories of the trauma and send the sufferer hurtling back into the terror they experienced at the time. So, you end up with "children [who] don't grow up" emotionally. Their bodies mature and "get bigger", but their already damaged hearts continue to "get torn up" by new situations that remind them of the past trauma. Even when these individuals do manage to form relationships, they end up having seemingly extremely irrational reactions to everyday life that make it difficult for partners and friends to handle. Because of the significance a friend or partner takes on over the course of a relationship, a person does almost become god-like in that one person's actions can greatly influence the other's mood or outlook. So people with PTSD from childhood trauma end up feeling like "little gods" whose difficult behavior drives away the people with whom they've formed a relationship, "turning everything good into rust". To wrap up the accounting of the symptoms of PTSD described in this song, a sufferer's brain is so consumed with replaying and worrying about the past trauma, that it has no time or resources to think of the future. Intense bouts of panic from triggers can come on like "lightning bolts". Sufferers lose the ability to imagine a future. "[They] can't see where [they're] going to be...[They] can't see where [they're] going", aside from knowing that they will die like everyone else "when the reaper, he reaches and touches [his] hand". To understand this song, all that is left is the stanza where the narrator tells the "children [to] wake up". He is telling the emotionally-stunted children hiding in the bodies of grown ups that they need to confront and examine the "mistake" that happened to them as a children. If they don't, the "they" who traumatized these individuals as children will win and continue to torment them for their entire lives, until their "summers turn to dust". For as long as traumatized people don't take the steps necessary to heal, they're going to be a danger to everyone with whom they get close. The final "look out below" is a warning to the people who will be the partners in these future relationships. |
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| Gomez – In Our Gun Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I'm pretty sure this song is about how humans will typically try to pass the buck no matter what the situation, but still feel entitled to bitch and moan about how someone else somehow dropped the ball. In the first stanza, it seems like there are a group of people sitting around a fire when another person stumbles up and tries to explain himself. The group's first response is that of a professional critic. The stranger's first words could've been more inspired. After they realize the guy's hungry, tired, or frozen, they have the decency to offer him a seat and to let him put his feet up, but they still demand that he entertain them with stories. When we know there's gonna be "hell to pay", humans would rather "hide away" and "run away" even though we know "we're to blame". However, all we're doing is trying to do is dig ourselves out of a bottomless pit. At the most, we'll "destroy on command all who came", but then quit before providing a replacement. |
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| Bob Dylan – Sugar Baby Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I can't figure out the references to Darktown, but overall this song seems to be about a man trying to get on with his life after having his heart broken by a Sugar Baby. She's probably younger than the narrator (as suggested by him calling her a "baby"), and thus has less experience dealing with people with whom she's intimately involved. The narrator was blinded by her charms at first, but then he possibly had to turn "his back to the sun" because she just became too much to handle. Now that he's regained his sight and that his sense has returned, he can see what "everyone in the world is up against" in terms of resisting Sugar Baby's come ons. I think before he reached the state of mind this song represents, he had "tr[ied] to make things better for someone," but he ended up "just making it a thousand times worse", perhaps by "pushing too far". He now realized there's nothing more he can do, so he's telling her to move on as well, but not without getting in some jabs and trying to get her to "see what she's done" -- that she's "got a way of tearing the world apart". The stanza about bootleggers hiding their stash and whether or not people can live with their memories may refer to some past event in Sugar Baby's that she has not confronted. He predicts that if she doesn't start doing something to change her ways possibly by "Look[ing] up, look[ing] up" and "Seek[ing her] Maker", she's gonna go through some personally apocalyptic experiences. I think an older man narrates this due to his peacefully resigned attitude towards love. Even though he calls existence "a dirty trick" and laments that "happiness..can leave just [so] quick", he ultimately believes that "love's not an evil thing". However, you gotta appreciate the fact that Dylan didn't make the narrator so wise and settled that he couldn't resist telling her she ain't got no sense or brains. |
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| Tom Waits – The Ocean Doesn't Want Me Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| It kinda reminds me of that bit from Seinfeld where he's talking about how the ocean is like a nightclub that's always trying to throw you out. | |
| The Dismemberment Plan – OK Joke's Over Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| This is definitely one of most badass songs to come out of the DC punk scene. It's rare to find a song with such swagger and that rocks so unapologetically in the indie world . | |
| Arcade Fire – My Body Is a Cage Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Actually, someone posted corrected lyrics further down and they don't say he was dancing. However, it's still important that there's still someone standing with him, and it bolsters his belief that his mind holds the key. | |
| Arcade Fire – My Body Is a Cage Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It's very unlikely to be about a physically crippled person. Only in the most spiritual or metaphorical sense can a crippled person's mind hold the key to setting their body free. Instead, I think it's about someone who suffered some sort of traumatic experience and who is now experiencing inexplicable panic attacks which are causing him to not do what he pleases. However, he's aware and hopeful enough to believe that the explanation for and solution to these panic attacks is held within his own mind. Importantly, towards the end of the song he mentions that he'd been dancing without realizing it. Not only that, presumably whoever he loves is "still next to" him. Probably he had an unconscious fear that by dancing he would be abandoned. It's two small steps, but they're significant enough to send him off into euphoria, asking for the rest of his spirit and body to be freed. |
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| Gomez – 78 Stone Wobble Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Zaphod is on the right track here. This song is about how overrated it is to remove the filter between your brain and your mouth. See the song "Lives" by Modest Mouse for a similar sentiment. There is this idea that completely honest communication ("open-hearted surgery") will solve all your problems. Similarly, there's this idea that you need to be really brave to have a "breakdown" that involves spilling your guts and getting in touch with your emotions. I believe he is trying to say that in fact it's much easier to have verbal diarrhea than it is to find other more constructive ways to deal with personal problems that do not burden other people ("eat your words or hide 'em in the dirt"). |
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| The Thermals – Power Doesn't Run On Nothing Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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To me this song is about how as people get older they come up with more elaborate rationalizations for their actions, but in the end, we do the same selfish things we did as kids. In that context, this song isn't necessarily only about America. Instead, it's about a more general human behavioral pattern that everyone the world over should be wary of both in themselves and in others. |
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| The Thermals – Back to the Sea Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I see this as him saying that the human species' capacity for religion and faith are the flip side of being "evolved". So he's stating his preference to turn his back on standing upright and to crawl back to the ocean from which all terrestrial animals evolved. Essentially, he's calling into question the idea of human superiority over all other organisms. | |
| The Mountain Goats – No I Can't Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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To me, this song always seems to be about those relationships where one person tries to buy the other person's affection by giving them all sorts of things. The receiver really appreciates everything he or she gets, but ultimately, that appreciation does not translate into affection for the giver. The receiver continues to attempt to transmit the message by saying "Now I have everything I need," which means that he or she is satisfied and does not need "you", the giver. |
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| Doug Martsch – Dream Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I would say no, since, according to All Music Guide, this album was recorded in 1999-2000. It is kind of astonishing that this imagery appears though, sort of like Jesus Etc by Wilco. | |
| Elliott Smith – Everything Reminds Me of Her Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Generally speaking, I cannot understand Elliott Smith songs. I love his music, but his lyrics are usually so general that they could mean almost anything. However, for this song, I think it's pretty clear. He dumped a girl, and to be honest, it wasn't that big of a deal (" I never really had a problem because of leaving"). Yet, on this one particular night, he just cannot get her out of his mind ("But everything reminds me of her this evening"). The second stanza ("So if I seem a little out of it, sorry/But why should I lie?/Everything reminds me of her") is his response to whoever he is hanging out with that night, when they ask "Dude, what's goin on? We're having a good time and you're just sitting around staring at the wall." So he explains his story about dumping the girl and about how now he's upset because everything reminds him of her. They don't understand why he is "staring into outerspace, crying" when he is the one who ended it. Elliott Smith, being the sensitive guy that he is, probably has a lot of moments like this, where he gets sentimental and his friends want him to snap out of it. He gets tired of their sermons which last so long that he can actually watch the sun move down past a church steeple. When they're done, his response is "Sorry, everything reminds me of her." I'm surprised how no one has mentioned that the title of the next song is "Everything Means Nothing To Me", which to me means that he is trying to convince himself to move on. He's already dumped the girl. Get a hold of yourself, man! |
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| Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| The Weathermen got their name from this song, not the other way around. | |
| Tom Waits – Come on Up to the House Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I agree that this is probably one of my favorite Tom Waits songs. However, I also think it's message is a little bit more twisted than the warm, fuzzy one I thought it had at first. I think it accurately describes the feeling a person has when he or she feels down and that "the moon is cracked and the sky is broken". Yet, what does it mean to "Come on up to the house"? In the last stanza he talks about "the forces that are inside you". Now, I could be reading too much of my own personal situation into this, but this speaks to me of someone struggling with some sort of ingrained emotional or psychological problem. Later on in the stanza, he says "Well you know you should surrender but you can't let go. You gotta come on up to the house." This seems like a fairly hopeless message: You keep wanting to struggle for survival, but 'There's nothing in this world that you can do'; just let go of the strife and 'Come on up to the house'. As much as I would like this to be an uplifting song, I feel like it is advocating the ultimate "surrender". He stresses that "The world is not my home. I'm just a passing through." While this might be a reference to some sort of detached, Eastern approach to life, the rest of the song doesn't really reference Taoist or Buddhist thought. Instead, I think it is suggesting that sometimes a struggle is just too hard, but not to worry because life is only transitory and somewhere there's a house where everyone is welcome. |
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| Built to Spill – You Were Right Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I always took this song to be a slam on Bob Marley and his rose-colored view of the world. I'm not positive that I'm familiar enough with Bob Marley to make the sweeping generalization that his view of the world is rose colored, but I think it's safe to say that Doug Martsch doesn't necessarily believe "Everything's gonna be alright." Even strictly within the context of the song, the only lyrics he disagree with are Marley's and the rest of the lyrics he quotes are more or less cynical or pessimistic. The closest Doug Martsch has come to agreeing with Bob Marley off the top of my head is in the song off the Built To Spill/Caustic Resin EP where he says "In a world that's so bad, it's not hard to feel good." To add a personal note, this song is probably most single-handedly responsible for the loss of my belief in the idea that "Everything's gonna be alright," terrorist attacks and natural disasters notwithstanding. |
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| Built to Spill – Else Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| There is an interview with Doug Martsch I read a couple of years ago where he specifically talks about the "Just this side of love" line. He cites it as an example of the kind of lyrics he comes up with sometimes and he has no clue what they mean. However, I think in that same interview he talks about how his wife comes up with a lot of lyrics for him, so this is not to say all Built To Spill lyrics are meaningless, but to take them all with a grain of salt. | |
| Guided by Voices – Glad Girls Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Like most Guided By Voices songs, I have no idea what this one is about, but I feel safe in proclaiming it to be one of the greatest songs .(period) | |
| Godspeed You! Black Emperor – The Dead Flag Blues Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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I think this song takes on added significance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, it relates much more to Hurricane Katrina than it does to September 11th. One of the most important keys to this song are the last two lines. "I open up my wallet/ and it's full of blood". Anyone familiar with the Labor Theory of Value can easily recognize that the song is talking about how money represents the labor extracted from human beings--their blood. Therefore, earlier in the song, when he talks about the "machine bleeding to death", I take it to mean that the supposedly well-oiled machine that is capitalism is hemorrhaging money (blood) through government corruption and individual greed. All the apocalyptic imagery describes what happens when the entire system breaks down because "the government is corrupt" and we the people are too distracted to do much about it because "we are all so many drunks/ with the radio on and the curtains drawn". This song is actually based on sound scientific economic theory. It does not go so far as to indicate what specifically causes the collapse, but as we can see from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it can be anything. It only takes one event to throw an increasingly fragile system into total chaos. |
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| Tom Waits – Burma-Shave Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Just thought I'd add that Burma Shave is some type of shaving product. Apparently the company used to advertise by posting Burma Shave signs all along the highways. | |
| The Decemberists – California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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The December Revolution occured about 90 years before the Bolshevik Revolution which that movie is about. The Decemberists (or "Decembrists" as I'd always seen it written before hearing about this band) were attempting to bring in Western European political ideals, while the Bolsheviks attempted and succeeded in bringing about a Communist Revolution. Someone call the nerdstore. They're all out of me. |
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| The Decemberists – California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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The December Revolution occured about 90 years before the Bolshevik Revolution which that movie is about. The Decemberists (or "Decembrists" as I'd always seen it written before hearing about this band) were attempting to bring in Western European political ideals, while the Bolsheviks attempted and succeeded in bringing about a Communist Revolution. Someone call the nerdstore. They're all out of me. |
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| The Decemberists – California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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The December Revolution occured about 90 years before the Bolshevik Revolution which that movie is about. The Decemberists (or "Decembrists" as I'd always seen it written before hearing about this band) were attempting to bring in Western European political ideals, while the Bolsheviks attempted and succeeded in bringing about a Communist Revolution. Someone call the nerdstore. They're all out of me. |
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| The Decemberists – California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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The December Revolution occured about 90 years before the Bolshevik Revolution which that movie is about. The Decemberists (or "Decembrists" as I'd always seen it written before hearing about this band) were attempting to bring in Western European political ideals, while the Bolsheviks attempted and succeeded in bringing about a Communist Revolution. Someone call the nerdstore. They're all out of me. |
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| Widespread Panic – Climb To Safety Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I agree. Even as I've moved on from this kind of music, this song has stuck with me. I put it on whenever my friends are going through shit times. | |
| Modest Mouse – Sleepwalking Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I think I remember reading that the woman who sings on all those tracks was Calvin Johnson's wife or girlfriend. | |
| Sparklehorse – Sick of Goodbyes Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| This song is also performed by Cracker on their album Kerosene Hat. | |
| Bob Dylan – Tombstone Blues Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I've read that this song is an attempt to render musically the same kind of crazy randomness that surrealist artists in the 1920's put in their paintings and movies. This song is full of one liners and verses that are almost by definition non sequitors. From what I understand, surrealists were trying to get people to look at the world differently by placing normal, run of the mill images in unexpected, and sometimes unsettling, contexts. By the way, "The sun's not yellow, it's chicken," may just be one of my favorite lines ever. |
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| The Dismemberment Plan – Memory Machine Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| Anyone else notice an extreme similarity between this song and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? I used to like the idea of a memory machine until I saw that movie. | |
| Neutral Milk Hotel – Holland, 1945 Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I really do not think this song is specifically about anti-semitism, especially considering the second track on this album. It is merely a coincidence that Anne Frank was Jewish. This could have been written about a little girl in the Sudan. I think the point is that terrible things happen all the time, and to a greater or lesser extent, everyone in the world agrees to letting it happen. I also think this song is about human resilience. After 9/11, the verse about "picking up the pieces of the life we used to love" was constantly playing in my head. We gotta do what we gotta do "just to keep ourselves at least enough to carry on". |
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| Wilco – The Late Greats Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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While I don't think Tweedy or any of the other guys in Wilco are too thrilled about corporate radio or the record industry, I don't think this song is really about either one. It seems almost like they are making fun of the people who claim nothing good is on the radio, and that the only good music comes from obscure, unattractive bands. This is further supported by the final verse which expands the subject from just songs on the radio to all songs that could be sung. If the best songs won't even GET sung, what is the point of caring what makes it to the radio? Essentially, I think they are making the point that you can't go through life worrying about these imaginary "bests". I wish I could say I was at this point, but I doubt I was the only person to go online and google the names he mentions in this song. |
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| The Dismemberment Plan – A Life of Possibilities Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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I take this song somewhat differently. The main character is someone who feels like he has to go out on his own to be an individual. In order to maintain "a life of possibilities" he cannot be limited by his old friends and family. He maintains his individualism in opposition to his old acquaintances who try to reestablish relations with him. Yet, in the end, they get tired of the unrewarding effort and move on. It is at this point, when the "hammers" stop tapping that the main character realizes that he is alone and starts to panic. He resurfaces and tries to find all his old friends, but he's been gone so long and not responded to them that they don't remember him. I think this song brilliantly makes the point that, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, the American and Western ideal of self-sufficient individualism is unsustainable. What good is a life of possibilitites if you've got no one to share it with? |
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