| Third Eye Blind – Semi-Charmed Life Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Good call. Sex and drugs, drugs and sex. Dysfunctional meth-fueled sex, in this case. It all rolls together. You can't separate the two. It's so good at first, but it never lasts. There's always the "crash", and more meth, and more sex, and then it starts all over. Eventually you fall apart and forget who you are. Now you hold me And we're broken Still it's all that I want to do. |
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| AC/DC – Hells Bells Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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The "thunderstorm in Jamaica" story is correct, but I didn't know it at the time. I had always assumed it was an expression of how truly powerful and evil a terrible black severe thunderstorm or hurricane or tornado is. It's almost like Satan himself is up there, throwing lightning, laughing at you. Keep in mind, the energy released by an AVERAGE thunderstorm is roughly equal to a 20-kiloton nuclear warhead. When I saw AC/DC live, they definitely had big fans to create wind and a huge strobe for the lightning during this song. "I'm rollin' thunder, pouring rain" "See my white light flashing as I split the night" "Hell's Bells, Satan's comin' to you Hell's Bells, he's ringing them now Hell's Bells, the temperature's high Hell's Bells, across the sky" Listen to this song on top volume the next time you get a strong thunderstorm and tell me I'm wrong. |
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| Wesley Willis – I Smoke Weed Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Damn, dude's stone cold. "I jack my mother for dope money." hahaha | |
| Wesley Willis – Fuck With Me And Find Out Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| No shit, man. Gingerbread sounds like a real dick. I'd want to bust him in the chops too. | |
| The Doors – Back Door Man Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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TheFranzFerdinand is correct about the original meaning of the "pork and beans" vs. "more chicken than any man ever seen". That's a classic poor rural Southern black blues cultural reference, in that the Back Door Man is bragging about many housewives he's gotten to short-change their husbands out of the good meat with their dinner because they like him better. The concept of somebody "getting the best" of your wife is a similar idea, in that the Back Door Man is bragging about how he gets the best food and the best sex from any lonely housewife he wants. "Eating chicken", is, of course, also a blues double entendre for cunnilingus. Also: "little girl" is just a Southern blues term of endearment for whatever chickie he's banging that day. It does not actually mean a child. Duh. "The men don't know, but the little girl understand" means literally that in his experience, the husband is generally clueless to his presence, but the lonely housewives ALL understand what HE'S all about when they meet him. The whole song is just a big brag, basically. "I'm the stud who your wife's fucking while you're at work, I do it all the time, she likes me more than you, I ate all your good food and snuck out the back door and you're too stupid to do anything about it." |
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| Ben Folds Five – Battle of Who Could Care Less Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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"Well this should cheer you up for sure / See, I've got your old ID, and you're all dressed up like the Cure" is Ben breaking the guy's balls a little bit. During the 80s his grumpy hipster friend was obviously a Robert Johnson-emulating Goth. Because it was cool at the time. Now that's not cool anymore, and he's emulating something else, and would presumably be mortified to see himself looking so "uncool" with his stringy long black hair and such on his old ID. |
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| The Mountain Goats – No Children Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Oh, and the biggest reason he curses and despises her so much is because the very fact that he has to continue seeing her face every day is because HE is a cowardly, weak little man. He can't walk away, because he's too depressed by now to do much but be miserable. So he just sits there and takes it and gets more disgusted and depressed. "I hope you die. I hope we both die." Think about it. | |
| The Mountain Goats – No Children Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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People think this is a satire because they've never been in a situation where they imagined saying this sort of stuff about themselves and the person they're with. It's exactly the kind of thing millions of the married men in the world say when they're drunk. You've never swallowed bitterness all day, every day, and just smiled and then felt this kind of ugly, honest hateful bitterness come bubbling out of you when you get a few in you? People who suppress their true feelings for whatever reason tend to say some pretty ugly shit when they let their real feelings come out. PS - The people who have mentioned that this is the Alpha Couple (from the album Tallahassee) is correct. Examined in the context of the rest of the songs, this is most definitely not a loving relationship. |
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| The Mountain Goats – No Children Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It perfectly encapsulates what it means to hit rock bottom in life with a person that you've bonded to on a basic level. Imagine your worst enemy being your conjoined twin, with no hope of ever improving things. The lyrics are the words of someone who is existing in a living Hell that he knows he will never be able to escape from, except through booze and the blessed hope of death. |
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| Steely Dan – Do It Again Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"Handle in your hand" refers to a slot machine, not a "handle" as in an extra large bottle of booze. And the whole gambling thing is a metaphor anyway, as best I can tell. The song starts off in the old west, where he shoots a man for "stealing his water", which is, by the way, a major crime up there with horse-stealing, NOT a trivial matter in those days before public water supplies. Think about how terribly valuable water must have been in places like Tombstone, Arizona! I think it's a reference to screwing his old lady, anyway...same type of capital, major crime...and it fits with the rest of the song. Anyway...the song seems to be about how people throughout history keep repeating the same stupid idiotic mistakes of their forefathers...mostly, not using their judgment and shackling themselves to unfaithful women and then suffering for it...over and over again, forever. Go back, Jack, and do it again. That's my take. |
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| The Smashing Pumpkins – In the Arms of Sleep Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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And, from a detached perspective, it is far better to have known true love and let it slip away, than it is to spend your entire life fucking around like an animal because you can't possibly comprehend what it means to love another human being as much as you love yourself...or more. Think it over. |
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| The Smashing Pumpkins – In the Arms of Sleep Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Unrequited love is real. People have a tendency these days to dismiss it as a "crush" gone bad, but you know, there ARE people who can't just substitute an endless series of lesser mates for the one who would make their lives worth living. Go read about Dante and Beatrice and read these lyrics again. And onegirl_army can go fuck herself. The rich have always loathed the ambitions of the poor. It's ALL too common and acceptable to throw around the labels of "weird", "creepy", "stalker" these days. I guess if you don't have the ability or desire to take a new lover every week that makes you a loser, worthy of only disgust and contempt. Marx was right. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts...rich in love, poor in love...it all ties together. |
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| The Smashing Pumpkins – Porcelina of the Vast Oceans Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I once wrote a poem (long before I'd heard of the Pumpkins) that reminds me a lot of this. It was a fantasy type thing...a sad, pining little fantasy about a goddess, perfect in every respect, who lived on a cloud somewhere far away, and she already knew me, more so than anyone ever could, and was waiting for me...just waiting...and in my dreams, I could see her beckoning...and feel all the pain and tiredness melt away... well, like I said. It was silly and ridiculous and I was 16 and deeply, deeply depressed. But if a fantasy woman is good enough for Dante, it's good enough for me, I suppose. |
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| Dethklok – Hatredcopter Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This was a leaked song off their first album. The addition of Gene Hoglan on drums (versus that shitty drum machine) makes this SO much better, I think. Plus it's got...I dunno...more depth? Sounds more complex than usual for Brendan. |
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| Iron Maiden – Run To The Hills Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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First and foremost: This song rocks. Secondly: The lyrics are about 50% bullshit. I'm so sick of people lumping every American Indian tribe together and labelling them "The Noble Red Man" who was happy and free and clean and industrious till we fucked them over, like a real life version of Disney's Pocahontas or something.. Fact is, we did fuck the Indians. Some of them were decent, industrious tribes. A lot of them, including the Apaches, Mescaleros, Blackfeet, etc. were monstrously brutal savages who practiced torture and rape on their prisoners, valued their men by how many scalps he'd taken, and had been massacring the women and children of any OTHER INDIAN tribe nearby for many years before we got there. Just like different European cultures, there's different Indian cultures. Some of them were Klingons and literally spent their days raiding and massacring anybody who came close. Most of the tribes didn't deserve the two-timing crap they got from us. But at least a few of the ones who got ground out of existence by the US Army were the ones who built their entire tribe on war and murder and had been killing their neighbors for a long time already. Go read the reports of somebody who actually saw what things were like instead of some shithead bleeding-heart "I'm embarassed to be white" cultural anthropologist who wouldn't know a real Indian if he fell over one. |
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| Dethklok – Crush My Battleopponent's Balls Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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All current versions of Dethklok songs are done by Brendan Small and no one else. He uses a drum machine, which is about as obvious as can be. The new album versions will have an actual drummer, Gene Hoglan, with Brendan on all guitars and vocals. Oh, and this song is a perfect example of why sweep picking is God's gift to metal. |
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| Iron Maiden – The Trooper Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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To all of you who suggested this was the American Revolutionary War, or the American Civil War, or any other war which DID NOT INVOLVE THE RUSSIANS AT ALL, I say to you now: please go into your medicine cabinet and swallow 12 of the first tablets you see. Then go find the big white bottle under your kitchen sink and take a nice long swig. Alternately, you could just cut off your balls with a pair of hedge clippers, but the chance you'd survive (albeit sterile) is just too hight. |
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| The Offspring – Hand Grenades Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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1st) Blackbird is right, Dexter's got a Bachelors and Masters in Molecular Biology, but didn't finish his PhD. Too bad, he could have had...Dexter's Laboratory? hahaha 2nd) It's not a hand grenade in the normal sense. It's called a Molotov cocktail, and it's more of a firebomb or an incendiary. Rioters throw them a lot. 3rd) Don't make any, because they're illegal. 4th) I'm pretty sure you don't need a degree in molecular biology to figure out how to put gas in a bottle, stuff it with a rag, and light it. It's about as sophisticated as a stick with a nail in the end. |
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| Hatebreed – Kill An Addict Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Hatebreed is not straightedge. Straightedge these days is just another way of saying "Cool kids don't do drugs. See how cool I am with my awesome tats that say "STRAIGHT-EDGE?" Only lu$ers do teh pot." Hatebreed is against ADDICTION, since addiction is about weakness, surrendering of control, and a refusal to take personal responsibility. Addiction doesn't even require drugs, really...everybody's got some kind of crutch they use to prop themselves up because they're too weak to quit it. |
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| Hatebreed – Before Dishonor Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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RATM had a good line awhile back; "Anger is a gift." Hatebreed is 100% about individualism: choose your own destiny, reject outside manipulation, and use your anger as motivation to empower yourself. Most punk and metal artists are like Hollywood actors: they spit the Democratic party line like little fucking braindead parrots. Anger is evil, guns are evil, eat Tofu, save the whales and the fags and the blacks. Fuck that. Hatebreed is about being true to what's in YOUR heart, not what some douchebag on an album told you to believe. They don't like gays because most gays are whiny, cowardly, handout-demanding Liberal bitches. It's got nothing to do with homophobia. It's about the Entitlement Complex. If a gay guy came up to Jamey Jasta and said "I'm a fag and I've never demanded a handout or special treatment. I carry my own life. Want to fight?", Jamey would probably shake his hand. |
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| Hatebreed – Before Dishonor Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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RATM had a good line awhile back; "Anger is a gift." Hatebreed is 100% about individualism: choose your own destiny, reject outside manipulation, and use your anger as motivation to empower yourself. Most punk and metal artists are like Hollywood actors: they spit the Democratic party line like little fucking braindead parrots. Anger is evil, guns are evil, eat Tofu, save the whales and the fags and the blacks. Fuck that. Hatebreed is about being true to what's in YOUR heart, not what some douchebag on an album told you to believe. They don't like gays because most gays are whiny, cowardly, handout-demanding Liberal bitches. It's got nothing to do with homophobia. It's about the Entitlement Complex. If a gay guy came up to Jamey Jasta and said "I'm a fag and I've never demanded a handout or special treatment. I carry my own life. Want to fight?", Jamey would probably shake his hand. |
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| DragonForce – Through the Fire and Flames Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I thought it was just an expression... ...but I do believe the absolute sonic-onslaught of this song actually melted part of my face. Somebody needs to go back and redub all of the battle scenes from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy with Dragonforce songs. |
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| Dead Kennedys – The Prey Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Saturday Night Holocaust isn't a creep-out song, dummy. It's standard-DK political satire set in a dystopia, like a lot of their stuff. Plus it's got a standard punk riff for about a quarter of the song, which this doesn't. | |
| Dead Kennedys – When Ya Get Drafted Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Some of the people on this thread are proving exactly what Jello talks about in "Kinky Sex Makes the World Go Round". It seems like stupid teenagers either protest whatever the cool guy on the CD tells them, or they don't bother to care at all. Start using your own brain, learning a few things before you start talking, and THEN you're entitled to an opinion. |
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| Dead Kennedys – Chicken Farm Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Yeah, it's about Vietnamese and Cambodian "boat people". It says so pretty clearly... | |
| Dead Kennedys – Stealing People's Mail Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I'm not inclined to think Jello's advocating it, because in a bunch of other songs he claims to hate the pointless violence and destruction that's associated with parts of the punk movement. | |
| Dead Kennedys – I Fought The Law Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Baller's right, the fact that White ate tons of Twinkies was supposed to prove he was depressed, and therefore deserving of a light sentence. The Twinkie Defense had nothing to do with sugar making Dan White crazy. And frankly, Jello's either a fucking tool of the media or a lying propagandist for repeating that myth in his spoken word bits. |
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| Dead Kennedys – Moral Majority Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Only in the 80s was the morality movement so polarized. Nowadays, the Liberals are into it just as deep as the Republicans, just without the Christian angle. Tipper Gore, Joe Lieberman anybody? Any DK fans remember Jello's crusade against Dianne Feinstein when she was the mayor of SanFran? She's one of the most powerful Liberals in the country now, and more totalitarian than ever. But I guess since they're not Christian fundies that makes them safe, right? Dumbasses. |
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| Dead Kennedys – Night of the Living Rednecks Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Since I'm an anal-retentive DK nerd, here's a few corrections: yes, they are playing the last bit of Chemical Warfare as the song starts. Somebody from the crowd (you can hear him) keeps yelling out "Rawhide!", Jello responds with "No we won't play Rawhide, we won't play anything." (since Ray's guitar is being re-stringed at the moment) It's either $5,000 or $9,000 truck, I can't tell which. Keep in mind this is in 1980 dollars. Adjusting for inflation, that's about $23,000. Sounds about right for a nice pickup truck. It's not $90,000, as somebody suggested. That's ridiculous. That'd be worth $241k now. So unless the truck's gold-plated and made by Maserati, I don't think so. At the end of the song, the last thing Jello says is "That's a true story too, just ask Bruce Loose." Bruce Loose, (sometimes spelled Lose) was the bassist/singer of the San Fran punk band Flipper that did a lot of gigs with DK in the early 80s. Jello and him were buddies as I understand it. |
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| Butthole Surfers – The Shame of Life Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Gibby was never into heroin. He did (and presumably still does) enough LSD on a daily basis to make the Merry Pranksters look like choirboys. | |
| Butthole Surfers – The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"There's a time to shit and a time for God, The last shit that I took was pretty fuckin' odd!" Easily the best line ever produced by a musician. I especially like how the entire end of the song is one of Gibby's characteristic LSD and alcohol-induced psychotic episodes. It's one thing to read about how his entire personality was pretty much one big drug-addled psychotic break with reality, but to hear it in person is a real treat :-P |
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| Tom Petty – Mary Jane's Last Dance Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| PS- See "The Boys of Summer" by Don Henley as a similar example, albeit not as "coded". | |
| Tom Petty – Mary Jane's Last Dance Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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It's all pretty much been said already. The first verse is (encoded) story of how Tom and his buddies got into weed back in the old days, in their sleepy little town. But, as the other verses show, those pot-fueled teenage years with no responsibility disappear eventually, leaving you with the sudden (and exceptionally bitter) realization that the sleepy little town where you had all you needed (buddies and bud) is suddenly a constant reminder that those days are over, and you're wasting your life doing nothing and holding on to a memory. Whether Mary Jane is an actual girl, or merely weed personified as a girl, the point of the song is that sometimes the thing you loved the most in your teenage years eventually comes to signify the bitter truth that things will never be the same again. |
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| Metallica – Disposable Heroes Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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In Don't Tread on Me, they say "To secure peace is to prepare for war", but based on this song they either had a 180-degree change of heart or are somehow confused about how ALL wars, even righteous ones, get won. As an Army infantryman, I can tell you that anyone with an IQ over 60 and a decent set of morals who goes Infantry knows he's just a tool in the end. Yes, the Army lies and manipulates their soldiers, but fact of the matter is, there's no consolation prizes in war. Infantrymen allow themselves to be fed propaganda and bullshit machismo because planned ignorance is the only way to build soldiers who can win. The truth about war would destroy most men's motivation before they even reached the battlefield. Those of us who are smart enough know this before we sign up, and we accept it as best we can. That's our unique burden to bear. And boy, does it suck. We get the shittiest, nastiest, most dangerous and undesirable job in the Army, and our one benefit is to be able to say: "I did it because it needed to be done, and I was the only one who would do it." |
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| Ben Folds Five – Missing The War Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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The song is about a guy who is stuck in what appears to be a purely physical relationship ("clothes all strewn around the bedroom floor") that has long since become suffocating for him. He can't sleep and he's full of self-disgust for his inability to end the relationship like he wants to ("He drove home again pissed and beaten") out of fear of hurting her. ("She's sleepin' like a baby, she doesn't know he wasn't meant for this.") "I'm missing the war, all my life" and "So much time, so little to say...time may fly, dreams may die" are all further proof that he's stagnating in a relationship and a lifestyle that makes him restless, regretful about the things he could have/should have done, and miserable that he doesn't have the strength to end it now ("The shaking voice that tells him go still thinks he might, but he knows he wont..."). |
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| Harry Chapin – Sniper Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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The song is about Charles Whitman who killed 17 people from the observation deck of the clock-tower at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966. He'd also murdered his mother and wife right before he went to the tower. They discovered in his autopsy he had a brain tumor in the judgement section of his brain and was under the influence of amphetamines when he started his shooting spree. |
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| Harry Chapin – Cats In The Cradle Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I think a lot of people are totally missing the point of this song. It's about a father who was always too busy to spend time with his son, even though his son always promises to grow up just like him. Till one day many years later he sees his son acting the same way he used to, not making time for his family at all, and realizes too late that he really did grow up just like his father... It's a cautionary tale about spending time with your kids. It's sad. It's not supposed to be something you're proud of, jeez... |
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| Beck – Devil's Haircut Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Like almost every single Beck song, (with a few notable exceptions, like Where It's At) this one has no basis in reality or common sense. He's said publically many times before, there is no meaning. He pulls the lyrics straight out of his ass and puts them together so they flow nice. |
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| Green Day – American Idiot Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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A punk-pop band made up of millionaires who fill their album with shitty ignorant political rants against whoever their demographic of angry, idle, dope-smoking teenagers seem to hate most on any given day of the week. Hooray! Just what I want to shell out $14.95 for! Where's my car keys? I'm going to Sam Goody! |
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| Dead Kennedys – Pull My Strings Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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They composed and played this song specifically for the Bay Area Music Awards in (I believe) 1981. They were set to recieve the award for Best New-Wave Band of 1981 along side The Knack, who the DKs despised as corporate media-whores. So they came out on stage in white dress shirts with big letter S's spraypainted on them, and their black ties over their shoulders. When they decided to spring the surprise, they dropped the ties, forming a dollar sign on their chests, and started playing Pull My Strings. This whole fiasco went down on live TV and radio. Besides violating FCC regulations for all the vulgarities they used, it was a huge and intentional loogie in the eye of everyone at the awards. I.e, "We know who you are, and we know who we are, so you can shove your f***ing award." |
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| Metallica – Harvester Of Sorrow Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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I'm thinking this is either a generalized Grim Reaper/Final Judgement song like Metallica is so fond of, or a bloody-justice teenage revenge anthem. I'm leaning towards the latter. Why you ask? I'll explain. The song clearly indicates a strong feeling of victimhood and unjustified abuse. A person of formerly pure intentions ("Planting Seeds of Hate, I've Loved, Turned to Hate, Trapped Far Beyond My Fate") has been driven into vengeful bloodlust by a lifetime of mistreatment ("I Give, You Take, This Life That I Forsake, Been Cheated of My Youth, You Turned this Lie to Truth). The person in question is now motivated only by pure rage and pain ("Anger, Misery, You will Suffer unto Me", Distributor of Pain, Your Loss becomes my gain" etc.) and he proceeds to exact bloody payment ("All Have Said Their Prayers, Invade Their Nightmares, See into My Eyes, You'll Find Where Murder Lies) on those who planted the seeds of hate in his heart, pushed him beyond his normal limits of morality, took from him when he did nothing but give to them, and robbed him of his innocence. He has become the Harvester of Sorrow. So basically, take your average school shooter's life story and make a song out of it, and this is what you get. |
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| Elliott Smith – Between the Bars Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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This song is clearly about a woman and how she sees alcohol as her only means of covering up the pain and trouble she feels. "Between the bars" is a double-entendre, indicating both her constant alcoholic cycle from one bar to another and her imprisonment behind the jail bars that her life has become. The alcohol is actually singing the song to her, as it urges her to get drunk and forget about her wasted potential, her broken promises, the pressure she feels in her life and all of the bad memories ("people you've been before that you don't want around anymore") she can't cope with. It promises to numb all of her problems. And, with the line "drink up one more time, and I'll make you mine" she's clearly reaching the point of no return. RIP Elliott. |
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