| Elliott Smith – Alameda Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Like Elliott Smith (except with no talent and not nearly 1/1000 os his genius ) most of the times when I write something personal - song or text - I use the second person of the singular to point my thoughts at myself, like talking to a mirror. This helps a lot to get things out and understand what's inside, but Elliott did it as few could do. I'm pretty sure he's talking about himself there, as in many other songs. Thinking the way he seems to think, listening to this song is so true to me because I'´m exactly like the "you" he describes, walking down Alameda: I keep walking, thinking about how nice it would be to have great friends around but I end up pushing them far enough not to be too exposed. |
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| Manu Chao – King Of The Bongo Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Touché! That's what I see in the lyrics too. The last part to me means that after the sadness of not being special anymore, he realizes that despite the fact that "nobody wants to be in my place instead of me" could be actually good; no matter what the (rather racist) people in the big town think, he´s still a special human being and his culture is just as important as any other else. That´s a great song, Manu is a genius. |
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| Manu Chao – Bixo Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Manu lived in Brazil for quite a while and for me - a brazilian man - this song sounds pretty much like a foreigner trying to speak "brazilian portuguese" in many parts - "o bixo vai pegar" is a traditional (and rather outdated) expression in Brazil which means "things are going to get rough". His father was gallego, his mother was basque and he was born in France, so what we have here is a gallego/castellano/french accented man trying to speak portuguese (he certainly MEANS to sound like that). "cuando a cabeza fode o bixo vai pegar" Thiese lines mix spanish and portuguese with a certain french accent ("pegarrr") and mean "when the head is fucked, things get rough". "bixo do coco mandome matar bixo do coco mandome a cadea bixo do coco quito libertad bixo do coco deixome aquelado" This e enphasysis the fact that the song is about insanity. "Coco" in Brazil means coconut, but it´s also a slang (again very outdated) for head. So he says "The head bug told me to kill / the head bug sent me to jail / the head bug took away my freedom". "Aquelado", on the other hand, is a typical gallego expression. Manu Chao is a great artist and despite of the seemingly simplicity of his music and lyrics, there´s a lot a depth in it. |
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| Sneaker Pimps – Tesko Suicide Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I´ve always seen it as a get-over song, but recently I´ve been thinking it sounded more like a mockery to the ideal of getting over - like one had to go through some pre-defined steps in order to get over (but actually, what´s left is kinda pathetic). | |
| Goldfrapp – Strict Machine Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| One word: dildo. | |
| Symphony X – Masquerade Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| By the title (Masquerade) I thought I had something to do with Vampire: The Masquerade. The rest, though, doesn´t point that way. | |
| Kraftwerk – The Robots Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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The russian lines (well, as far as I heard, that´s russian!) "Ja tvoi sluga/ ja tvoi rabotnik" mean "I´m you slave/I´m your worker". Great instrumental, great lyrics. |
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| Kraftwerk – Numbers Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Which languages are those? I can see german, italian, japanese, english and, in a version I´ve been listening to, french. But in what languages are those numbers "adjin, dva,tri" and "li, tva, tri"? | |
| Chico Buarque de Hollanda – Brejo da Cruz Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Is it related to the Cesium-137 incident? | |
| Chico Buarque de Hollanda – Construção Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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That´s one of the greatest songs ever written in portuguese (and one of the best ever in any language, I believe). Many things, like in all of Chico´s work, are strongly related to brazilian culture, politics and society. Below I tried to translate in the best way I could. (Acutally, there´s a small part in the end that is very often sang after the lyrics above: "Por esse pão pra comer, por esse chão pra dormir A certidão pra nascer e a concessão pra sorrir Por me deixar respirar, por me deixar existir Deus lhe pague Pela cachaça de graça que a gente tem que engolir Pela fumaça, desgraça, que a gente tem que tossir Pelos andaimes, pingentes, que a gente tem que cair Deus lhe pague Pela mulher carpideira pra nos louvar e cuspir E pelas moscas-bicheiras a nos beijar e cobrir E pela paz derradeira que enfim vai nos redimir Deus lhe pague") In english, the whole lyrics must be a kinda like that: (warning 1: I don´t work with translations and have no formal education in this area; warning 2: that´s a free translation. I tried to keep the original sense, but that includes a lot of interpretation; warning 3: the lyrics are amazing in portuguese for the many forms to see them, in english it might have lost a lot of it´s best) "He made love that time like it was the last time He kissed his woman like it/she was the last (it´s nor clear whether he´s talking about the "last time" or the "last woman") And every child of his like he was the only one And went down the street through shy steps Climbed up the construction (building) like he was a machine. Made in a base four solid walls. Brick on brick in a magic design His eyes filled with cement and tears He sat to rest like it was Saturday And ate beans with rice like he was a prince And drank and hic-cupped like he was a castaway And danced and laughed like he was listening to music And stumbled in sky like he was a drunk man And floated in the air like he was a bird And smashed against the ground like a flaccid package And agonized in the middle of a public street And died on the wrong way disturbing the traffic. He made love that time like he was the last one He kissed his woman like she was the only one And each of his children like he was the prodigy one And crossed the street with his drunk pace Climbed up the construction like it was solid Made in a base four magic walls Brick on brick in a logical design His eyes filled with cement and traffic And sat to rest like he was a prince And ate beans with rice like it was the best Drank and hic-cupped like he was a machine And danced and laughed like he was the next one And stumbled in the sky like he was listening to music And floated in the air like it was saturday And smashed against the ground like a shy package And agonized in the middle of a castaway street And died in the wrong way disturbing the public. He loved that time like he was a machine Kissed his woman like it was logic Made in a base four flaccid walls And sat to rest like he was a bird And floated in the air like he was a prince And smashed against the ground like a drunken package And died in the wrong way disturbing saturday" Then there´s a final part recorded which is: "For the bread to eat, for this floor to sleep onto The certification to be born, the concession to smile For letting me breathe, for letting me exist May God pay you back For the free cachaça* that we have to swallow For this smoke, disgrace, that we have to cough For the swinging scaffolds from which we have to fall May God pay you back For the crying woman to praise us and spit on us For the flies to kiss us and cover us And for the peace which, at last, will come to redeem us May God pay you back." * cachaça is a kind of distilled alcoholic drink, kinda similar to vocka. What do I think the meaning is: all 3 paragraphs speak of a man falling from the top of a building under construction and I tend to belive they are 3 different men under 3 different circumstances. The first, a man who loves his family and tries to get the best from his hard life, but life itself is too hard for him. As he tries to deny reality, he stumbles and falls accidently (as he dances, so, as he was trying to cheer himself up), dying in the street. But as the last verse says, for everybody else, his death means nothing but a dead body disturbing the traffic. The second man seems to drink and cheat on his wife/woman; I´m not sure what´s the meaning of the fact that the walls are "magic" - is the construction imaginary? Maybe he isn´t even a worker there, he just climbed it to eat and drink and ended up falling - accidently like the first one, but for being drunk. Maybe falling from a construction is just a metaphore, for all I care. Anyway, he dies in a "shy" manner, which seems to disturb the public ("the crowd"). Were they expecting some spectacle? The third man seems completely numb. He loves like a machine, kisses his woman because it seems right, builds flabby walls (maybe for doing things so "auto-pilot"), falls and dies disturbing people´s saturday, when they should only be concerned about resting. The additional verses could be related with the military dictatorship in Brazil, in which people were forced into a hard life with no freedom and always threatened. Many people were tortured and "disappeared" during that time for being against the regime, so Chico, ironicly, thanks them for letting him live his life - full of misery, like the common men who die falling from the construction -, but enphasizing, "the last thing I can believe is that there will be some sort of divine justice. May God pay you back for what you´ve done". Anyway, it´s a trully amazing song, really hard to translate and even harder to analyze, but I hope my translation will help people who wondered what he was singing here. |
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| Amy Winehouse – I Heard Love Is Blind Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Amy´s really a witty songwriter. This sounds like a parody to what many men have always said to their wives through ages. The strangest thing is that I get the feeling that if a man sang this, people would laugh; since it´s a woman who does, many people feel disgusted by the lyrics. | |
| Arcade Fire – Black Wave/Bad Vibrations Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I´m amazed with so many experiences they´ve had in my country (Brazil) and the references from their stays here that they keep bringing up in songs and interviews. | |
| Arcade Fire – Brazil Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Cover or not, I can tell for sure they´ve been to Brazil and stood under the moonlight; during their stay here in Porto Alegre, opening for The Strokes, they performed a great show and went to a party at the Ocidente Bar. This is traditional "alternative" bar, mostly frequented by artists, writters, film makers, poets, musicians, etc., and stays at the heart of Bom Fim, a bohemiam jewish neighbourhood. Will danced as a maniac, Sarah asked the DJ - which is related to me - to play The Cure and at some point of the night, invited by the bar´s owner (a cinema art director), they went to the roof of the building and sat under the moonlight, turned to the Farroupilha Park. I honestly can´t say whether some of the guys was with a brazilian girl or not, but I swear all I tell here is true. |
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| Billy Idol – Neuromancer Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| It´s certainly about Gibson´s (amazing) novel. Idol was a great fan of cyberpunk literature; too bad the movement was buried after the failure of the Johnny Mnemonic movie. | |
| Cansei de Ser Sexy – Alala Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I thought it was "meu cu", which means "my ass". The sentence would be meaningless if that was the the lyrics, though. | |
| Massive Attack – Future Proof Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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In some passages it sounds like it´s about people who do drugs in order to prevent from having feelings of anxiety, fear, pain, sickness, sexual impotency and, what somehow sticks a little more in my head by listening to the song, aging. Just impressions... |
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| Tricky – Excess Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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"I believe that's why I'm running" Isn´t it about "keep living" in society through all the nasty habbits humans, inheritly have? |
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| Cansei de Ser Sexy – Alala Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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Not sure why, but I´ve always thought of "fazer a íntima" as "to shave the genital parts" :) Somehow that line connected to "I´m doing all the talking but I don´t get nothing", as the girl was desperatly trying to hook up with a guy who´s not giving her any attention. So, she asks someone to warn when she can actually give up being prepared for "something" that could happen. Anyway, it doesn´t make it sense anymore :) |
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| Peaches – Fuck the Pain Away Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I´m from Brazil and I´m honestly sick of listening to "Rio Funk" stuff, a kind of music which has as main caracteristic the explicit sex language. It took courage to many women to sing those words long ago, but these days it´s just trivial, easy and cheap. Can´t schock me with bad languages anymore. | |
| Sparklehorse – Painbirds Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| The first line pops on my head very frequently , especially in days like these in a town like mine. Makes me think of that feeling of so much exhaustion that you get divided between sadness and angryness. Great song. | |
| Arcade Fire – Une Annee Sans Lumiere Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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Amazing song, made me want to know more and more about this great band. My thoughts on the lyrics: - I think the horse is only an illustration; he talks about the horse wearing blinders to compare it´s situation to the father, who can´t (doesn´t want to) see anything which isn´t lying right in front of him. - this "not seeing state" might as well mean the father has pre-conceived ideas that he won´t give up, even though there are things (the shadows) indicating there´s something different. - It looks like the narrator has taken the role of the one who´s gonna make the father see; since the father can´t see anything which is on his side (for teh blinders), the sparkles lighting the night make shadows so the "old man" can see. I think who suggested to take a look at the Myth of the Cave was on the right track. Anyway, it´s a beautiful song and, just like all Arcade Fire´s lyrics, very deep and meaningful. |
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| Portishead – Glory Box Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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Me and my girl were "playing" before we get togheter - we knew both wanted, but we were pretending nothing was happening cause we were both afraid, I guess. Then I was at her place once and this song came up on the playilist, and she looked at me like she meant every single word of the song being sang. And so I kissed her :-) This is really the sexiest song ever written. |
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| Arcade Fire – Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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Beautiful song. I agreed with many opinions here... I think it´s about loving someone so much that you could leave everything else behind, confront any problem and/or forget about the rest of the world so the two can live togheter. I think I´m on that stage right now, so this song really appeals to me ;) |
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