| Ian Hunter – Michael Picasso Lyrics | 7 months ago |
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This is an emotionally raw and honest song about how it feels to lose a dear friend and comrade in arms way too young. It's about Mick Ronson, who died of liver cancer in 1993. I presume the name Michael Picasso is fictional, though the reference to the famously creative painter is obvious. This week I am going to the memorial of a longtime friend who just passed away suddenly. I would like to sing this song for him there - it would absolutely bring down the house. But I know I will still be way too choked up to do that then. Maybe someday, after I work through a few more Stages Of Grief. Ian Hunter is the last man standing, now having outlived every one of his old bandmates. I watched my dad do that too over the course of 90 years. If you live long enough you eventually become a man from another time, with everyone of your generation on the other side and no one left to attend your memorial. Only when you die young could an inspired and talented friend of long standing be able to write a song like this for you. It's hard to believe it's been almost a quarter century since Ian released 'Rant'. Time marches on and on, and the guy still tours a little bit from time to time. He's a rock 'n' roll legend. Rock on Mr Hunter! |
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| Camper Van Beethoven – Take The Skinheads Bowling Lyrics | 9 months ago |
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@teenymarie I think @Bootcut is right. I was in my early 20s and living in the SF bay area at the time. My impression of skinheads was that they were kind of angry, uneducated and dangerous, and also that their chosen style was kind of a throwback to pre-hippie days. So an old-school form of recreation like bowling seems like a good bet for something that might appeal to them. So when a bunch of skinheads show up at your house, what do you do? (a) Run away and hope they don't catch you? Or... (b) Try to fight them and probably get badly beaten? Or... (c) Take The Skinheads Bowling! The answer is obviously (c). What a good idea! CVB are geniuses! It has also been suggested that the central image of the song is the superficial resemblance between a skinhead's head and a bowling ball. That may be true. But David Lowery says the song was deliberately nonsensical, i.e. deliberately devoid of meaning. I think we have to take his word for that. |
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| Liz Phair – Whip-Smart Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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@[surferbeto:52752] @[surferbeto:52752] International jump rope competition? They're OK I guess. I like their early stuff. If you have known all these years and not shared your knowledge then why in the world have you been holding out on us? |
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| Liz Phair – Whip-Smart Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[surferbeto:52751] International jump rope competition? They're OK I guess. I like their early stuff. | |
| Liz Phair – Whip-Smart Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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OK people, I finally tracked it down. The lyric "When they do the double Dutch that's them dancing" is borrowed from the 1983 song "Double Dutch" by Malcolm McLaren from his pretty well-known album Duck Rock. Liz Phair was hipper than I was, so she was hip to this song back in the day. The early version of Whip Smart on the Girly-Sound Tapes album even includes the counter-refrain "Hey Ebo-Ebonettes!" You can see the Ebonettes doing the double Dutch in this very cool and fun video of the Malcolm McLaren song: https://youtu.be/FZ4jMSCBswY?si=LWpP995KE9biLQpE1 I've got to say that I find this video impressive on several levels. 1) It's a super catchy and fun world beat song. 2) Those girls are amazing athletes and dancers! I did some simple double Dutch jump-roping as a kid but we never ever did anything approaching what these girls are doing. I am so impressed by their performances. So there you have it. |
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| Liz Phair – Uncle Alvarez Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[Dogma72:52601] well said. The line about once being a beautiful dancer seems to imply a whole lot. Like maybe he romanced the mom's sister and won her heart by being a beautiful dancer. Or maybe he's the mom's brother and he was such a smooth dancer that he fooled some other woman into betting her future on him. And she married him, then had to live with the heartbreak of the under-employed confabulator he turned out to be. | |
| Liz Phair – Uncle Alvarez Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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@rikdad101@[yahoo:52600].com This is a very astute, emotionally perceptive, and articulate discussion. I think you are right on the money here. We do in fact "hear the affection...in her singing" several times. He's dead now but the singer apparently knew him when he was alive (and she was much younger - maybe even a kid?). She speaks with what sounds like first hand knowledge of the man. An uncle would have been of the same generation as her parents, so that kind of tracks. Seems like he's the ambitious and imaginative but not very smart brother who hatched a lot of schemes and talked a lot of talk but never really made good. And apparently he died younger than his siblings. Maybe a somewhat beloved but exasperating dumbass? I am reminded of the handsome and likeable but kind of worthless father in 'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.' Or of my own estranged grandfather who once sent us a letter with a cringingly obvious attempt at putting his name into a clipped newspaper article about someone who did something impressive and lucrative. Or of Paul Manafort, Trump's compulsively confabulating 2016 campaign manager who, when prosecuted, tried to flip on his handlers in exchange for a lighter sentence but told so many bald-faced lies that the FBI could not use any of his testimony in court. |
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| Liz Phair – Chopsticks Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[ClymClemClam:52470] I'm pretty sure the reference to jacks is not a reference to any kind of sex act. If "playing jacks" or doing anything with jacks is a slang expression for some kind of sex act then I could find no evidence of it on the internet. If you know otherwise then please tell us about it? | |
| Liz Phair – Whip-Smart Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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I came here hoping to find someone who could tell me what this means: "When they do the double dutch, that's them dancing" But no one has addressed that detail, and I have no idea. I think this song is about the same mom who wrote "Girls! Girls! Girls!" when she was younger, and now she has a son who she has very protective feelings about. She knows there are smoking hot, rapacious young women in the world who are just waiting for a chance to "...take full advantage of (her son) and get away ... with (what the girls call) murder." She knows this because she was (is still?) such a one. So she wants to lock her son up in a tower like Rapunzel for his own protection against these rapacious girls who might want to ravish him and then take advantage of him. She says she'll teach him to "keep a watch on every hand between his thighs", because these girls are going to put their hands there when they are doing their best to seduce her son. She doesn't want her son to end up as the (figuratively) whipped boyfriend of some girl who is playing him for all she's worth. She knows how ruthless and exploitative and high stakes the game can be, because she got really good at playing guys in her slightly younger days. OK, so what does the chorus mean? "When they do the double Dutch that's them dancing..." I presume Liz is talking about the double Dutch jump rope game and not the elaborately esoteric alternate meaning of "double Dutch" involving several hundred years of economic and cultural competition between England and the Netherlands (look it up). That being said, I'm not quite sure what jump rope has to do with the main theme of the song. I imagine her son as a kid, playing jump rope with (school?) friends. A couple things about double Dutch jump rope might be relevant: It is a more advanced form of jump rope. It takes some practice to learn how to spin the ropes and how to jump in that game. It takes at least three skilled people to do double Dutch jump rope - one to jump and two to spin the ropes. Sometimes there are songs you chant while doing it to help keep the rhythm. Maybe Liz is watching her son play on a playground with other boys and girls. The kids aren't really old enough for sexuality and boy-girl dancing yet, but they will be soon enough. In the meanwhile they can have fun being kids playing together and postpone all the hard stuff Liz has been fretting about until another day. So maybe jump rope for kids is a little like dancing for teens because boys and girls can do it together, and everyone moves their body and gets some exercise. But in jump rope no one is touching. Yet. I think this song is super catchy. The interplay of super clean rhythm guitar and loping bass is really cool. The gratuitous farty sound effects don't add much, in my opinion, unless the intent is to just lighten up the whole thing in a playful way. |
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| Lucinda Williams – Ventura Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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@[Spurio:51849] Hmm. I've thought about it a little more and I think she must be working through some kind of chemical dependency, probably self medication because she feels sad and/or depressed about something. In Verse 1 she definitely sounds depressed. She's been self-isolating, not eating regularly, doesn't get any joy from a thing that used to give her joy (going out with a friend to hear music). But she is rallying a bit - enough to feed herself with soup from a can. That's a start on the comeback trail. But she's not there yet and she can't pretend. Eventually she can start "faking it 'til she makes it." But right now her hurt is still too fresh and raw to do anything but feel sad and let the tears flow. Choruses: She wants to be swallowed up in an ocean of love! To me this sounds like she is really sad because she feels unloved, and she longs to feel loved again. Verse 2 starts with her feeling a lump in her throat and staring at her feet. So yeah, she definitely feels very sad about something. She's probably in the early stages of a post-breakup emotional recovery. Maybe she got dumped by her lover and she hasn't turned the corner to a new chapter of life yet. She really doesn't say what's ailing her, but she seems lovelorn. I presume it's not death of a loved one or else she would have mentioned this. She goes for a long drive (home from wherever she has been that is not home. Maybe she spent the night at the friend's house?). She enjoys listening to Neil Young's music in her car, so that sounds like progress. She's at least enjoying Neil's beautifully moody music in the privacy of her own car. She is working on self soothing in a realistic, here-and-now kind of way. She's not praying, or invoking angels, or asking for any supernatural intervention (maybe she's working a quiet and personal faith - she does speak of confession). She's listening to Neil Young and seeking the reassuring solitude of a sunset on the beach and the whispered reassurance of wind and waves. Verse 3 seems like she's maybe trying to kick an alcohol or an opiate addiction (or maybe that pregnancy as you mentioned, but I see little in the words to suggest that). She cleans, she cleanses, she throws up, she confesses. And above all, she wants to get swallowed up in an ocean of love. In other words, she feels unloved. And she's looking to nature for healing. She wants to feel loved and safe and embraced by something bigger than herself. We all can relate to this. The ocean is often a metaphor for various levels of consciousness. I think she's going to make it through. In the depths of her depression, Silvia Plath drowned herself in the ocean. But to Lucinda Williams it's an ocean of love, and that is something fundamentally positive and life-affirming. There is no talk of self harm in this song. Only self care. Maybe she needs to get a dog next. Dogs are great companions for beach walks. Though in Ventura half of our beaches are managed by CA State Parks and they don't allow dogs. That's a real world detail she could ignore in a song. |
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| Lucinda Williams – Ventura Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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@[Spurio:51848] The lyrics of this pretty song seem deliberately obscure. Yours are good ideas. The first two verses seem like she's feeling generally moody and dissatisfied, and is taking care of her head by getting down to the ocean to watch a sunset. I identify with those verses a lot. But verse 3 seems to take a darker turn. Cleaning up this dirty mess" seems like a slightly dramatic way to describe simply washing off the salt and sand after a trip to the beach. Is this a reference to self-loathing? Or maybe she's just indulging in being a bit of a drama queen? But vomiting in toilet, throwing up a confession, getting back her power all sounds like she's talking about something that's a bigger deal than just sweaty armpits and sandy feet. In addition to your good suggestions, it also occurs to me that opiate drugs infamously cause nausea (and constipation). I hate to invoke heroin gratuitously (in case it's really something else). But the last verse kind of sounds like someone who is using drugs while also longing to get clean. But no one generally wants to go drive their car all around when they're doing heroin, which makes me think it's probably not that. Last verse feels like kind of a buzzkill to me - going from dreamy pretty imagery about feeding her soul at the beach to puking in the toilet? I live in Ventura and I appreciate Lucinda Williams writing a song about my pretty beach town. |
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| David Bowie – Five Years Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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@[Mary:51781] Bob You are quite correct. The Sodom and Gomorrah story is in the book of Genesis early in the Old Testament. I'm pretty sure Jesus has exactly zero to say about homosexuality in the New Testament. By contrast, Jesus makes hundreds of references to being especially kind to the poor, the sick, and immigrants. The commonly referenced quotes about stoning gay men to death come from the book of Leviticus, also early in the Old Testament. And yeah, somewhere (when the Pharisees are trying to pin him down) Jesus says to follow all the old teachings too. And some take that to mean that Jesus wants us to keep stoning gay men to death like they did thousands of years before his time. But that is pretty obtuse reasoning. The whole idea of Jesus was that he was bringing a new, kinder vision of God based on forgiveness and tolerance, to replace the savage, vengeful old genocidal god of the Old Testament. |
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| Drive-By Truckers – Goddamn Lonely Love Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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This is one of the most beautiful heartbreakingly sad songs I've ever heard. Verse 1: He is sinking deeper in to depression. One aspect of depression is that it steadily consumes all our time and attention, leaving us increasingly unable to.see beyond ourselves. Our sadness gradually blinds us to the suffering.of others as we wallow more and mone deeply in our own pain. We become increasingly isolated, and the isolation fuels feelings of loneliness. Verse 2: Mostly about sex and feelings about it. Don't ne ashamed of things beneath your dress means it's OK to feel desire in your body. Don't shame yourself for feeling Belly up and arch your back sounds like "assume the position and let's get down to it." Home has changed since we were kids and we can never go back to the town that we remember . Loved ones and familiar people have died and/or moved away - either way they don't live there any more and you will not find them if you go back. Stop me if you've heard this one... sounds like a general lament about the shortness of our lives. A little existential dread makes everything a little worse. The sun's a desperate star... is a beautiful metaphor. We feel desperate too and we didn't do anything wrong - it's just in the fabric of the universe. I'll take all of what you've got... I'll lean heavily on you, my love. Like a drowning man, I might just drown you in my desperate fight for a lifesaving breath of air. You probably once thought that love would save you from loneliness. Then you found out how very lonely you can feel while in love. It is a profoundly sad and depressing life lesson to learn. What a beautifully sad song. |
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| The Rolling Stones – Soul Survivor Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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I think Mick set out to see how many nautical references he could cram into 3 verses about a standard blues rock theme: saying goodbye to an attractive woman who has proved to be way more trouble than she is worth. Add a triumphant life-affirming chorus (that has no nautical references at all) and Boom! You've written a solid song to end the album with. By the way, 'Soul Survivor' is a very widely used blues rock turn of the phrase. Check Wikipedia- there are a dozen other bands, books, and songs featuring those words. Not the most original thing ever. That being the case, the chorus of this song seems like a little bit of a lazily written throw-away phrase. If he'd worked harder he probably could have come up with some more nautical term expressing a similar sentiment that would have tied the whole thing together into more of a unified whole. As written, this song kind of feels like two unrelated leftover song fragments cobbled together to make one more pop song for the project. It works because Keith and Mick Taylor are so very good at their craft. This rocking good song succeeds despite the lyrics, not because of them. |
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| The Rolling Stones – Soul Survivor Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[Rankoutsider:51191] ha ha. Yes. I spent 40 years wondering what Mick meant when he sang, "When your walrus is rough..." He is not famous for his careful attention to pronunciation. He's pretty sloppy - slurry in many instances on this great great album. | |
| The Rolling Stones – Soul Survivor Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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@[velmaxcorgan:51190] I'm pretty sure it's a reference to old-fashioned (sailing era) sailor pants which were cut wide in the lower leg to facilitate rolling them up. Sailors commonly rolled up their pant legs in hot weather, or to keep them dry when performing wet chores like swabbing the decks. This song is filled with sailor metaphors, and I think this is just one more. OTOH Clapton's song Bell Bottom Blues was released less than 2 years before Soul Survivor was recorded. The Stones were surely aware of it. Clapton's song was about Pattie Boyd, who was George Harrison's wife at the time. The Stones surely knew the famous British model to some extent. Since Soul Survivor is about breaking up with a troublesome but attractive woman, it's not a big stretch to imagine that Mick was thinking about Pattie Boyd (among other women?) when he wrote Soul Survivor. |
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| The Dead Milkmen – Punk Rock Girl Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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@[mdwyer:50925] The Dead Milkmen are from Philadphia. The pizza company is a minor local landmark well known to their hometown fans. Apparently Mini Pearl.had a much longer career than I imagined. I only knew her from Hee Haw. And I had no idea that the Hee Haw tv show ran for so long. I remember watching it on TV with my mom for only its first year or so. It was really stupid and the stereotypical charactatures of rural southern people (and women) were so offensive that it was hard to watch even in 1971. My mom grew up in rural east Texas and she was offended. But Roy Clark and Buck Owen's were great musicians. |
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| Liz Phair – Cinco De Mayo Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| Returning to this song on May 5, 2024. It rocks pretty hard, but the lyrics are quite opaque. It seems like musings on a personal event (apparently a breakup with an older man). But the words are so deliberately obscure that to any listener they are fairly nonsensical. It seems to have nothing to do with the Mexican holiday, except that (maybe) the breakup happened to occur on or near that calendar date? Maybe on this sophomore album Liz was exploring being artsy and opaque? Just enjoy the rocking beat and don't think too hard about this one. | |
| Fleetwood Mac – Gold Dust Woman Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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It's been nearly 50 years since I first experienced this song. I just read the transcribed lyrics for the first time and found that I've had a few phrases wrong all these years. I thought she sang, "Back off Gold Dust Woman..." I'd long taken that to be a warning to this groupie - like, "Get away from my man you self-destructive, poisonous little slut - you're gonna kill yourself and take him down with you." But now I learn that all this time she's really been singing, "ROCK ON Gold Dust Woman..." That sounds more like an endorsement. "Rock on" is something you say to someone you generally approve of and are encouraging to continue doing their thing because you are on their side and rooting for them. Huh? Taken at.face value that would seem to dilute the meaning and emotional impact of the song. It surely makes the meaning more ambiguous and difficult to parse. Is she being ironic? Is she being sarcastic? Maybe being bitter and lashing out to express the pain she feels watching this guy she loves falling into empty cycles of sex and drugs with these slutty, perky little wannabe coke whores? Or does she see herself in them at times? Apparently it's complicated. Yhe singer seems to bounce around to different points of.voew - she's talking to the groupies (the Gold Dust Woman) in the verses and talking to her ex that she still loves in the choruses (Did she make you cry...). I wonder if she may be talking to herself when she refers to the Ancient Queen? Surely the Ancient Queen is no young nubile groupie... "Wake up in the morning, see your sunlight- loves - to go down..." seems like a confusing reference at first. Is it a deliberate non sequitur? It could be taken several ways. Maybe she is so wasted that she sleeps all day and wakes up at sunset? Or are we talking about fellatio - like this girl follows up a night of sleezy sex and drugs by giving this strung-out rock star guy a morning BJ? Then it all makes literal sense. Or does it mean they stayed up all night snorting coke and boning and they don't fall asleep until the morning? Or is it a more general reference to the steady downward spiral of the sex-drugs-and rock 'n' roll lifestyle? Like the sun may come up in the morning but you are continuing to go down. I've worked out a pretty cool-sounding arrangement of this song on acoustic 12-string guitar in Drop D tuning. It really makes that main groove Dsus2 Bb/D ring out and get into all the corners of my brain. I don't hear any guitar like that in the studio version, but for a solo performer Drop D tuning seems like a good way to get some low droney tones without any keyboards. Rock on Gold Dust Woman. |
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| The Dead Milkmen – If I Had A Gun Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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I have long enjoyed this song. The irony of it used to feel fun and playful, if in deliberately poor taste (like so much of their work). But it was written before the days of ubiquitous ongoing mass shootings and the current tragic-crazy politics of guns in the USA. For this reason it seems kind of dated today. Before Columbine, mass shootings were barely on the public radar. The worst abuse of a gun the guys could think of was "would I suddenly go crazy and shoot my family, and see myself years later on some crime show on TV?" Since Sandyhook and all the gun slaughter that has occurred since then, this subject has gotten so raw and real and painful that no one would joke about it in a song any more. No one would laugh if you performed it. And no one would make a crime show about mass shooting events today because it's so damn common that it's not even news any more and we're all so numbed by the senseless horror of it that no one wants to watch a TV crime show about it anyway. And half the nation is trying to make it illegal to even examine the question. All that being said, this song would make a terrific bluegrass cover. God bless these sassy boys. |
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| The Dead Milkmen – Punk Rock Girl Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[yallRstupid:48822] Well he does say "you drive me wild - let's have a child..." I take that as a reference to sex, i.e. a polite and non-lascivious one. | |
| The Dead Milkmen – Shaft In Greenland Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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I don't think there are any deep meanings here. I think the guys just thought this was a funny idea and wrote a couple of throwaway verses about the famous black private detective getting out of his comfort zone a chilly ocean away from his NYC stomping grounds. And of course he can handle any situation that may arise 'cause he's Shaft (!) - one badass mother- (shut yo' mouth!). This song has a rockin' skankin' groove. In classic ska-punk form they go from upbeat on the verses to hard downbeat on the choruses and bridge. The horns add a lot of value and are evocative of the instrumentation of a TV theme song. |
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| David Bowie – All the Young Dudes Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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@[a3soggetti:48354] There are live versions on YouTube where Bowie sings "oh man I don't need TV when I've got T Rex." That makes more sense to me. If Bowie sang it both ways then maybe that just goes to show he wasn't taking his lyrics that precisely or literally. |
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| Joni Mitchell – Urge For Going Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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It gets damn cold up in the northern plains of North America when fall comes on. The weather can change very quickly. Big cold systems dip down and it 's Game Over for summer. One night it freezes and overnight all the bugs are gone. The little birds slip away unobtrusively in small flocks but the big waterfowl raft up noisily in marshes and fields sometimes there are tens of thousands of them. They are looking to places well beyond the horizon. You can feel their restlessness and yearning. It's an ancient earth process and we all feel it. The days are getting shorter and everyone's hormones switch modes. We all feel urges. The birds fly off southward and we are left behind to hunker down and endure yet another winter here on the ground. It's hard not to feel a little dejected and earthbound. Summer loves end. Summer lovers leave. Right when you really want someone to hold you and keep you warm, you may find yourself alone. Right when our bodies really want to be making babies for next summer when the living will be easy. There are so many songs about men leaving women at summer's end (think 'I Dreamed A Dream' from Les Miserables). In truth sometimes women leave too. Winter's closing in. It really does feel like that when you live at high latitude, as Joni did in her formative years. We don't exactly fear death and famine in winter as our ancestors once did, but we know it's going to be a long slog 'til spring and summer come again. All our modern human behavior is played out against an emotional backdrop colored by the way our brainstems respond to daylength and the way our pituitary glands respond to temperature. It's an ancient earth process and we all feel it. That's what this song is a about. In a beautifully poetic way, because Joni Mitchell. 💕 |
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| The Wallflowers – 6th Avenue Heartache Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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Jacob Dylan has said that he was writing literally about a homeless musician who used to hang out on the steps across from his apartment on 6th Ave. In NYC. I'll take him at his word. It has been suggested that the "black line" is a guitar strap over a man's shoulder and back. They both have one. I took the line "I had my world strapped against my back" to mean that the author is either traveling and living out of a backpack himself, or else he is just starting out in life and has so few possessions that the guitar he carries feels like his everything. Maybe he himself is a busker trying to make a living with music. The author identifies with this homeless guy because he also busks and plays some of the same songs. "Stood where he stands" seems to suggest that both have played music on the streets at times. The author is young and the homeless guy is much older. Either he's 50 years old, or maybe he's 50 years older than the author (= about 68yo?). The author seems to think that he could easily end up just like that homeless guy someday. Maybe the homeless guy got shot in verse one. Maybe it was someone else but he was involved by happenstance and had to flee or something. This song has a clear narrative so It seems like verse one relates an incident that somehow leads to the homeless guy's sudden departure in the last verse. There's nothing too supernatural here - straightforward cause and effect seem to guide the events in this song. I presume the homeless guy died. Homeless folks do not abandon their only possessions in the world for frivolous reasons. If he were still around then he'd come back for his stuff. The author clearly feels a connection to the homeless guy. This song reminds me of my relationship to one of the first homeless people I ever met, an apparently schizophrenic former academic guy who lived on the steeets of Berkeley. He disappeared abruptly one week and we learned that his body had been found floating in the cold, Rough ocean off of Point Reyes. He apparently went out to that beautiful wild place and just swam until he drowned. That's a gutsy, seriously poetic way to take your own life. The last verse of this song often gets me all choked up because the lines about the frailty of our lives remind me of the homeless guy I knew. There is a strong sense of, "There but for the grace of God go I." America is a tough place to make a living these days and it would only take a couple unlucky breaks for almost any of us to end up homeless on the streets and alone in our old age. It happens to people every day. There is a very real sense in which that homeless guy's music was helping to keep him alive. What is a man's life worth in the end? Maybe just a few unanswered questions and a small pile of stuff abandoned on a street corner. |
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| The Rolling Stones – Let It Loose Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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This beautifully moody song is about love like a cannon ball with your name on it coming out of the blue aimed straight at your heart - you see the incoming shot but you're powerless to avoid it. A good friend sees her coming too and tries to warn you, but it's no use. You are a goner. Her friends think you're just a one night stand (maybe that's what she told them), but they don't know how vulnerable you are and how hard you fell for her. You tell yourself to hide your tears, act like you're cool and in control, and pretend this woman you hooked up with didn't really get to you. But she did get to you and you can't lie to yourself about that. God knows you were feeling needy and she was oh so willing right when you needed her to be, but that doesn't change the basic math here: you fell for the wrong person (again) and now you're emotionally bereft. How long does it take for love to fly you to the moon and back and then turn your life into an emotional train wreck? "Give her just about a month or two..." You're getting drunk to try and feel better but you know that's a very temporary BandAid at best. The only way out is through. You've got to stop lying to yourself about how you feel. Admit that you cared. Admit that you got played. Admit that it hurts. Let it loose, let it all come down. It's going to take some time to get beyond your current lovelorn state, but you'll live through this. And yet... The One That Got Away took a little piece of your heart with her and a lifetime won't be long enough for you to truly forget her. |
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| Tom Waits – Ol' 55 Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| What do you do when your girlfriend abruptly dumps you very early in the morning? Well, you leave in a hurry. Then get in your trusty old car and drive slowly home. Thinking about your sudden change of life circumstances, you notice small details and have moments of poignant emotional clarity. Early morning commuters and truckers are in more of a hurry than you, so you take the slow lane and they pass you when they can. Driving through the pre-dawn darkness, you imagine the road as a metaphor for life and how to live it. How did you get here, and where will you go next? You liked this girl. You thought this was a girl you could be with for a long time. But then she dumped you without any warning and the relationship is over way too soon. Maybe if you\'d only given her more of your best quality time then she wouldn\'t have felt she needed to move on. You feel sad, but optimistic. You are "riding with Lady Luck" - betting on the future now, hoping for better luck with your next GF. "Dang!", you think, "I could write a great song about this..." | |
| Fountains of Wayne – Hey Julie Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[John:37359]-Paul2 I assume you are trolling. | |
| Elton John – Salvation Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[Dr:37358] Faust cool. I had no idea. Thanks for sharing. | |
| Robbie Fulks – She Took a Lot of Pills (& Died) Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@bstokes I initially assumed this song was about Marilyn Monroe. But the protagonist of this song apparently made it to 60yo (20+40). She could have been any of a half dozen Hollywood starlets. Maybe a little research would reveal a likely candidate - one from NYC who ended up living in obscure poverty on the lower east side? It doesn't really matter - the story could be apocryphal. It is a powerful metaphor in any case. The author is at once both sympathetic and flippant. Quintessential Robby Fulkes. It is an open question what the mercurial author of this song will choose to do when his own body gets old. I hope he chooses to stick around and make great music for a long time. |
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| Fountains of Wayne – Hey Julie Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[surferbeto:37354] The more I think about it, the more obvious it seems that Julie is a girl.and the doggie motif is a retcon. If he'd really intended Julie to be a dog when he wrote the song then Adam wouldn't have said, "He's got me running "round the office like a dog upon a track" because that would have been demeaning and offensive to Julie the dog. QED | |
| Fountains of Wayne – Hey Julie Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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I love this perfect pop song! I was sure that Julie was his girlfriend and that the video showing Julie to be his doggie was a joke. The FOW guys do like to joke around. But the more I watch the video and think about it the more sense it makes that Julie is actually his beloved dog. For one thing, Julie never says or does anything in this song except listen sympathetically while the protagonist vents about the emotional toll of his crappy job. HIs dog could do that just as well as a GF. If I'd written this song then maybe there'd be a verse where Julie helps her BF spruce up his resume and start looking for a better job. 'Cause that's the way out of this dilemma and Julie won't respect him in the long run unless he seizes the day and does something to fix this. But then this song would have too many verses and too many themes going on. Part of Adam Schlesinger's genius is how he writes compact songs that never lose their focus. This song makes me feel happy. Julie sounds like a sweetie. We should all be so lucky to have someone like Julie in our lives. RIP Adam Schlesinger - It's a crying shame that COVID choked you out of this world so young an full of great songs not yet written. May your music live on and on. I'll play it and think of you. |
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| Blaze Foley – Clay Pigeons Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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@[surferbeto:34746] I have learned some new things that cause me to reevaluate and revise the last paragraph of my original interpretation. If you Google search on "birds eating clay" you will find a small number of scientific research papers and other popular press accounts of birds eating clay. A certain place in Peru is locally famous as a place where parrots come to eat clay. We think the clay helps birds detoxify secondary plant compounds in certain foods they eat. And we think birds may use clay as a nutritional supplement to get certain essential minerals that are otherwise scarce in their diets. If pigeons do this too, and if Blaze knew of this, then maybe that last verse has a whole new meaning. Feeding pigeons some clay would be an act of kindness that helps the pigeons live better. It's not a direct subsidy, like feeding them birdseed might be. But it's giving them something they can use, something they need to be their best. Viewed in this light, the last verse makes a lot of sense. Blaze is continuing to do gentle good deeds of public service that feed his soul while helping others. Not only does he help people, he even helps pigeons he meets. The protagonist of this song is a gentle soul who is kind to animals. And he recognizes the healing power of kindness for both the giver and the receiver. |
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| Elton John – Salvation Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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Devout Christians may feel the need to declare overt ownership of this song for Jesus. But I don't think Bernie or Elton were super fervent Christians when they wrote this Gospel Lite tune, long on feelings and short on doctrine. "The devil" is mentioned, but no particular frame of God is named. It could just as easily be a humanist-derived message as one coming from God. And that is just fine! The basic message is one of solidarity, caring for ourselves by caring for each other, and investing ourselves in the collective good will of a faith community. This pop song is the product of a couple young Englishmen enjoying American gospel musical conventions and (probably) drawing on what they learned about American slavery in High School. It lacks the deep emotional authenticity that someone who had actually lived this life might have brought to the subject (think "Amazing Grace") because these guys grew up in reasonably comfortable circumstances in a reasonably civilized time. But it is still really good because they are musical geniuses. Bernie nailed a simple, uncomplicated mission statement for morality and human emotional health. Basic Sermon of the Mount stuff. We've all got darkness inside that could drag us down. We need to find a way to transcend that. The great power of living a life of service to others i(the great Gospel theme) is that, in working to help others, we help ourselves. When groups of people all dedicate themselves to living like this then the distinction between helping others and helping ourselves becomes blurred. In the big picture there is really no difference between the two. This song is chock-a-block full of great metaphorical imagery. Life as an ongoing pilgrimage down a long road that no one makes it all the way through on their own. How do we resist the darkness in our own minds? By keeping hope alive through faith, feeding the hungry children, helping the needy, and keep fueling our souls with Gospel music and the gospel ideas and faith upon which that tradition is based. "What we need are willing hands." No one else is going to save our world and our lives for us- it is up to us. "You must feel the sweat in your eyes." Labor builds character. The things we build with our own hands and our own sweat are worth more than the same products would be if someone just gave them to us. The experience of laboring together can transform us into better people. And we get to live in the world we create. We have met the enemy and he is us. But "Salvation spreads the gospel round And frees you from yourself." I have to say, my friends: These are words to live by. |
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| Elton John – Salvation Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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Devout Christians may feel the need to declare overt ownership of this song for Jesus. But I don't think Bernie or Elton were super fervent Christians when they wrote this Gospel Lite tune, long on feelings and short on doctrine. "The devil" is mentioned, but no particular frame of God is named. It could just as easily be a humanist-derived message as one coming from God. And that is just fine! The basic message is one of solidarity, caring for ourselves by caring for each other, and investing ourselves in the collective good will of a faith community. This pop song is the product of a couple young Englishmen enjoying American gospel musical conventions and (probably) drawing on what they learned about American slavery in High School. It lacks the deep emotional authenticity that someone who had actually lived this life might have brought to the subject (think "Amazing Grace") because these guys grew up in reasonably comfortable circumstances in a reasonably civilized time. But it is still really good because they are musical geniuses. Bernie nailed a simple, uncomplicated mission statement for morality and human emotional health. Basic Sermon of the Mount stuff. We've all got darkness inside that could drag us down. We need to find a way to transcend that. The great power of living a life of service to others i(the great Gospel theme) is that, in working to help others, we help ourselves. When groups of people all dedicate themselves to living like this then the distinction between helping others and helping ourselves becomes blurred. In the big picture there is really no difference between the two. This song is chock-a-block full of great metaphorical imagery. Life as an ongoing pilgrimage down a long road that no one makes it all the way through on their own. How do we resist the darkness in our own minds? By keeping hope alive through faith, feeding the hungry children, helping the needy, and keep fueling our souls with Gospel music and the gospel ideas and faith upon which that tradition is based. "What we need are willing hands." No one else is going to save our world and our lives for us- it is up to us. "You must feel the sweat in your eyes." Labor builds character. The things we build with our own hands and our own sweat are worth more than the same products would be if someone just gave them to us. The experience of laboring together can transform us into better people. And we get to live in the world we create. We have met the enemy and he is us. But "Salvation spreads the gospel round And frees you from yourself." I have to say, my friends: These are words to live by. |
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| David Bowie – Five Years Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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I’ve got to say, this song is hitting closer and closer to home, and feeling more and more relevant In a directly personal way every year as the climate change’s dire consequences become more and more clear. More and more clearly we hear newsmen describing the mounting evidence that our world and everything in it will face very real days of reckoning. It’s easier and easier to imagine hearing stories like the one described in the song being for real on the actual evening news. That said, this is still a beautiful song that I have long loved. It just feels less fictional and more inadvertently prophetic now than when it was written. I mean, last week was a news story about an oceanographic expedition to study the underside of a huge melting glacial ice sheet in Antarctica. When it breaks off and melts in the sea, that single event is expected to raise sea level 11 feet worldwide. And it seems to be melting faster than they thought. “... Five years, what a surprise. Five years, my brain hurts oh Lord...” |
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| David Bowie – Soul Love Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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@[Child:28643] Of Music your interpretation reminds me of a common theme from the original Star Trek series: human emotion is so engrossing, important, and significant that aliens are willing to go to great lengths to experience it however briefly. In Star Trek aliens lie, cheat, kill, betray their deepest principles to experience human emotions for a while. Ziggy is a gentler kind of alien. He’s more like a hungry waiting outside a restaurant looking in and watching people dine. Watching with growing interest and longing. The line “Idiot love will spark the fusion” sounds like biology: human beings are created by spectacularly random series of events leading to fusion of two gametes. People make babies in conspicuously reckless ways that are driven by something he envisions as an implacable kind of love driving us together regardless of our personal needs or wishes. But at the end of the day, we are all (?) in love with the idea of love. Brilliant , hard hitting poetry straight from the world weary heart of a beautiful man who had the world throwing itself at his feet. God bless David Bowie. |
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| David Bowie – Soul Love Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| @[aquarella:28642] I like your interpretation. Love gets young men killed in defense of a slogan, love moves people powerfully to do many things, we presume that God is made of love, but love is not really on our on our side in every instance. | |
| Blaze Foley – Clay Pigeons Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| @[oliver_cfc:24044] that is a really clever idea. Blaze is the clay pigeon, and he feeds himself some clay (what else would a clay pigeon eat after all?). Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I think that must be it. | |
| David Bowie – Space Oddity Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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@[surferbeto:14919] And you are right, of course @[ziggytwig:14920] The song is not meant to be taken very literally. It's not about ideas nearly as much as it.is about feelings. Specifically the feelings ordinary romantically imaginative young people on Earth were having about astronauts in space at the dawn of humanity's first amazing trips there. |
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| David Bowie – Space Oddity Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| @[surferbeto:14918] I think this song is basically about nitrogen narcosis (rapture of the deep) in space. Divers who go too deep and stay too long get stoned on the saturated nitrogen in their blood and do stupid stuff like take off their facemasks and die trying to kiss imaginary mermaids. The imagery in the video shows Major Tom doing exactly that with spacemaids. Last verse he says goodbye to all, turns his ship loose like a horse that knows how to find its way home, and goes into the last chorus "By my tincan" no longer "in my tincan." It's Rapture of the Heights. Tragic death presumably soon to follow but Major Tom may not even notice. | |
| Blaze Foley – Clay Pigeons Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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This is a song about personal redemption, emotional housekeeping, picking yourself up from a fall and starting over again. The singer's life has hit a rough patch- just what is not explained- maybe a good relationship gone bad and ending in heartbreak. Maybe some alcohol abuse as self medication. Maybe losing a job or getting beaten up and knowing he deserved it for something he did. Probably the first, with some other collateral damage attached. Sitting next to a mom with kids is going to be an act of service and surrender. Most people wouldn't want to sit next to them, but the single mom could definitely use the kindness of a friendly well intentioned stranger to make it through a long bus ride with her kids. And he's feeding his humanity by choosing to do that. He's not planning to hit on her- he's planning to sing songs and help them pass the time on a long ride. He describes a whole series of basic, functional, attainable short term goals that will help him process his hurt, pull himself together, fake it 'til he makes it, and begin another chapter of his life. It's a wistful but fundamentally healthy and positive song. And it's a humanist approach- he's not praying, or asking for help from angels, or invoking fate or destiny, or channeling new agey energy, or talking about any supernatural influence- he's cultivating the good in people, beginning with himself, looking to familiar comfortable things like southern hospitality, and building himself a new foundation one brick at a time. The reference to feeding pigeons some clay seems deliberately obscure. I thought immediately of target practice with clay pigeons- discs meant to be shot at once, broken into bits, and discarded. Maybe how he feels right now. Maybe more hopeful than that because he's really talking about living birds that can fly away from trouble. Changing night into day sounds more hopeful- like emotional healing from a dark night of the soul. Also connects to the idea of staying up through nights and days on a long bus ride. All in all a beautiful song. |
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| Robert Johnson – Cross Road Blues Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I think most of y'all are overthinking this song! Dontwealldigmusic is right: It's a simple blues song. No Devils signing sulfurous music contracts in these lyrics. Bob's at a low spot in his life and he's trying to get out of town, to go try his luck somewhere else. He feels desperate, so he prays. As in the song, "Nobody knows you when you're down and out," no one wants to help him when he is really needy. In those days only people the same color as he is would ever give him a ride, but apparently the black folks won't help him either. He is out there all day- from sunrise to sunset. It's probably more dangerous to be out there at night. Today hitchhiking at night is much harder than in daylight. Don't know who Willie Brown was, but Bob asks someone to take word to him of his plight. Maybe he's trying to cash in a favor and get a friend to come pick him up. And not only does he not have a ride (or any money, or other prospects), he is also spurned by women. 'Cause nobody loves you when you're down and out. Simple. This song is meaningful to me because I'm a white man who once hitchhiked across Belize (on a holiday- no bus service). I spent hours and hours on the roadside watching many dozens of local black drivers pass me by while giving rides to other black folks. I eventually got rides from a Guatemalan farmer, a Mexican family with a box of chickens in the back, a pimple-faced British army kid driving a giant RAF military truck, a white Mennonite dairyman, and a pair of white college guys from Texas on Spring Break. And finally(!)- at the very end of the day- as the sun was sinking low- a ride from a pair of black guys. They were missionaries from my village, and they knew me by sight. Hitchhiking can be a real test of your self esteem when you get stuck. Sit out there for a few hours and almost anyone would start praying for God to move the next driver's heart to help you. And feeling let down when they do not. |
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| Emmylou Harris – Abraham, Martin And John Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Yes, Bobby Kennedy. Very clearly. It was written in 1968, shortly after Bobby's assassination. See wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham%2C_Martin_and_John You know when John was killed and then Martin was killed, many folks said, "Well, thank God we've still got Bobby Kennedy..." You know the rest. |
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| Emmylou Harris – Boulder To Birmingham Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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You know, I listened to this song for 10 years before I learned who Gram Parsons was. I've since become very well acquainted with his music, life, and his legacy. So many things come back to Gram, don't they? That tragic, brilliant, charismatic dumbass. It makes sense, of course, that this song is about him. But it works equally well as a regular, ordinary heartbreak song of one who loved too hard, or put too much of themselves into a relationship with the wrong person. The one you love doesn't have to die to feel this desolate (although it certainly helps). It reminds me also of the feelings I've had for a friend who committed suicide in a rather more direct and straightforward way than Gram did. A combination of love, tragic loneliness, and anger at the beloved. Hauntingly, achingly beautiful. A classic. |
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| David Bowie – Five Years Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Um, no cokiedough88. Jesus did not hate gays. In fact he says not one single specific word about them, though he mentions other subjects (like how to treat the poor) scores of times. He does make a broad statement about keeping the old testament rules. But on that basis I wouldn't say he hates gays any more than he hates people who wear cotton poly shirts or people who do not shun menstruating women in any context. I find your three points to be little better than non sequiturs, but the point about cops kissing church butt (or foot) has some merit. This is a brief passing reference in a beautiful song. don't think about it too hard. peace, Surferbeto |
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| David Bowie – Space Oddity Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Kizz clearly has a grasp of the situation. Why oh why does this song just *have* to be about heavy drugs to so many of you? Go read the book, then watch the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and come back and tell me if you still think this song is about heroin. It came out the year after the movie 2001: a space odyssey, based on the fantastic Arthur C Clark book the same name, written of a few years earlier. The song predates the real Apollo 13 incident by a year or so. it predates the song Ashes to Ashes by about a decade. The movie and book are about a guy (named Dave, FWIW) who goes on a long space voyage, experiences near death at the hands of his psychotic (but friendly) onboard computer Hal, has a very surreal experience at the hands of unknown, ancient extraterrestrial being(s), and is transformed into a strange new kind of space/energy/human/cosmic being seen in the final scene to be floating above the Earth as a space fetus and saving humanity from nuclear armageddon just in the nick of time. A quantum evolutionary leap for humanity mediated by those mysterious, ancient, inscrutable, benevolent alien(s). The human adventure continues. Dave comes back, but not in his previous form. The song is a rather simple, beautiful musing on this story with a rather obvious, slightly ironic title to get a laugh. The song banks very heavily on Rick Wakeman's beautiful, soaring, floating keyboard parts that in years to come would help give wings to many a great Yes song. No heroin. Yes, ten years later David Bowie would write a little throwaway ditty called Ashes to Ashes that mines the success of this song in which he asserts "Major Tom's a junkie" but that itself is a figurative reference at most and one that does not inform us at all about what David B was thinking about when he wrote the original song. Right? Right! |
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| David Bowie – Five Years Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I think "A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer through up at the sight of that" sounds like more of a commentary on gay community's aversion to mainstream religious sentiment. Like, a gay man who is so estranged from religion that the sight of anyone having a tender, spiritually menaingful moment with a priest makes him want to vomit. This, of course, is many years before the Catholic church became mired in its current scandals and we learned that many priests were themselves homosexual after some weird twisted fashion. Man- I've loved this song for 25 years and I always thought the lyric was "Newsguy wept and told us LOVE (emphasis mine) was really dying." That is a more abstract meaning than "earth is really dying," but feels sort of similar. |
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| David Bowie – Rock 'n' Roll Suicide Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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(1) I assume the poster discussing Cobain's influence on Bowie is not really stupid, but rather is trolling. (2) This is a haunting, beautiful, bittersweet song. One of my favorite Bowie tunes (and that's saying a lot from a big fan) (3) El Vez, the Mexican Elvis impersonator sings a great version of this song near the end of his shows. He loves it for all the right reasons and sings it like he means it. (4) I'm fascinated by the assertion that Marc Bolan is/was Lady Stardust. Why do you think so? Rock on! |
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| Robbie Fulks – God Isn't Real Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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Wow. This is like the ultimate "the emperor has no clothes" story. This may be the most powerfully subversive song I've ever heard. I heard this and thought, "Damn! It really takes balls to write such an honest song." It really says the unsayable that I think a lot of people really know in their heart of hearts but don't dare say- even to themselves. Robbie says folks walk out of his shows when he plays this. It's not hard to imagine. It reminds me of some of the things the main character says in the great novel "Judas My Brother" by Frank Yarby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas,_My_Brother Surfer Beto |
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