submissions
| The Monkees – Circle Sky Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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The ballsiest song the Monkees ever did, IMO. Also the most thinly veiled song Michael Nesmith wrote about the trappings of fame.
The scene in Head where they play this song to screaming fans and then are literally ripped apart, revealing them as mannequins, is disturbing enough without the inserted imagery of violence from Vietnam, but it's a great juxtaposition of what matters and what doesn't.
Either way, the song itself is an asskicker. |
submissions
| Andrew W.K. – Party Party Party Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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These aren't the lyrics I added for this song - looks like they've been removed. These lyrics are for Party Hard, a work which clearly expresses sentiments that indubitably diverge from those inherent in the longing, sepia-toned hegemony of Party Party Party. WTF, Songmeanings? |
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| Weezer – Memories Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Pining for the good ol' days, in the nineties, when the band was actually good.
Let's see some of the rhymes he comes up with here: "sex/undigest," "time/life," "mowed/bored." No wonder he's nostalgic. |
submissions
| Iron & Wine – Lean Into the Light Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Somebody compared this to a Lionel Richie song. Haha.
Whatever man, it's great. Can't believe he left it off the album proper. Makes a better closing song than the actual closing song. It's beautiful. |
submissions
| XTC – Chalkhills And Children Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Stupendous song - it sounds like it jettisoned on an escape pod from Pet Sounds. Here's a link to an interview with Andy from the always-amazing Song Discussions series on chalkhills.org:
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=34883466&blogID=323301075
An excerpt:
"TB: So, why did you bring up Ermin Street? Was it the ancient quality of it?
AP: It's the ancient quality, and the fact that it's only a few miles away. You know, it runs right past Swindon. In fact, I think there are two of them in England -- but Ermin Street is an ancient trackway that Iron Age man would have trodden along with his horse or his cow. It just seemed to have a feeling of real permanence. There it is, in the chalk, up on the hill, trodden for thousands of years...
TB: Whereas fame is transitory.
AP: Fame will last you five minutes, and will not buy your groceries.
I still wrestle with that now. I know that what I do makes fans, but I don't want them to be fans of me. If anything, I just want them to be fans of the music that I do." |
submissions
| Grant Lee Buffalo – Crashing at Corona Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Lovely, somber song written from the perspective of an alien.
Wait, what??
Not the usual subject matter from Grant Lee, but a spectacular example of his range. Paul Kimble's production on this is phenomenal - deep, resonant, with an undertone of white noise and crackly radiowaves.
I love how they repeat the last three chords over and over to echo the closing reference to Trinity. |
submissions
| Basia Bulat – In the Night Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I can't stop humming it either. Not sure what it's about, though the reference to hiding away her "fortunate son" is intriguing. Is she singing about her son, who's far away at war? Or is it more literal, like she'll never let her little boy be a soldier? Or it could be a love song...I like that there's no clear interpretation.
Either way, this song is just beautiful. |
submissions
| Talking Heads – Mommy Daddy You and I Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Always figured this was about a disaster of some kind - something that would force a mass exodus. Either that or the narrator's parents joined a cult. |
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| XTC – Holly Up On Poppy Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Andy says this one's about his daughter Holly. She's in her twenties now, with her own band called the She-Beats. Boy, does that make me feel old. |
submissions
| Andrew W.K. – Party Party Party Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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This song seems to represent the dichotomous power struggle between the author and his seemingly debilitating gastrointestinal quandaries, made apprehensible by his appropriation of verbal totems representing a sense of responsibility, which clearly manifest themselves as an id-driven culpability with self-possessive tendencies mirrored by his contentious - yet tender and emotionally strident - relationship with his associate Marty, who apparently likes to party. |
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| Elvis Costello – Beyond Belief Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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I have no idea what he's talking about here, but he paints a picture in tiny, slashing strokes. I love the tricks he plays with these lines:
"Charged with insults and flattery"
"I might make it California's fault"
"My hands were clammy and cunning"
Mostly I love this tune because as it builds the verses become fractured. Then the bridge appears out of nowhere and falls back into another doubled verse. The chorus doesn't even make an appearance until the very end, where he repeats it over and over into the fade. It's wackadoo, but it works. |
submissions
| Fleet Foxes – Blue Spotted Tail Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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Listened to this one all summer, when the lights from the city made the night sky glow orange. For those of us who live in the city, you get used to the bile to face the fortune. For those who don't, it's hard to get used to it, and you start to wonder why people would choose to live there with such a short life to live.
Maybe that's what he's thinking, maybe it's not, but what an ethereal, gorgeous song. |
submissions
| Weezer – Troublemaker Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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Catchy as hell, but the lyrics are a freaking mess.
Half of it seems to be confessional, referencing his own life, and the other half seems to be a parody of Top 40 hacks who don't sing about anything meaningful. Since there's no differentiation between the two, it ends up being a confusing, simplistic, nursery rhyme-level failure. But since it's so catchy, it makes me even more upset with Rivers. He seems to be dumbing down his material with each successive album. Aaaaaaarg -- so much talent, so much of it squandered.
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| David Byrne – Independence Day Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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Been listening to this album almost twenty years now, and I just realized this song seems to be about gay rights. I’ve just always liked the tune and thought the lyrics were kooky David Byrne. |
submissions
| The Rentals – Little Bit Of You In Everything Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Arguably, this song has more depth than anything Weezer's put out since Pinkerton. Simple song, fun and wistful, about moving on and looking back at the same time.
"Tell me one thing that's worth saving from this nameless generation" might refer to connecting to one person out of a sea of faces. |
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| XTC – Snowman Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This song was apparently written about his relationship with his wife at the time. Hope things are going better for him now. |
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| Luna – I Want Everything Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This song is sooooo beautiful. There's a version with the guitar solo as it was originally recorded (i.e., not backwards) and it's amazing how perfect it is, both forwards and backwards.
Shocked, shocked there are no comments on this one yet.
Love how he's in a bad situation but he wants more. Love makes you want everything you see. |
submissions
| Weezer – The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn) Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Here's the deal. I think most of us agree that they haven't reached the heights of Blue or Pinkerton since those albums came out. Primarily because the songs just haven't been as catchy, but mostly because his lyrics used to have depth to them. Whatever the meaning, there was always something you could take away from the songs.
But over his latest couple of albums, the lyrics have been kinda shallow and meaningless. They could've been written by anybody with half a brain. And while this song is extremely catchy and melodic, and I love it, the lyrics sound as though they were written on a napkin in the space of about two and a half minutes.
Now, if he's going to be that lazy, it's no skin off my bones. That's his prerogative. But I know he has it in him. And until he comes up with something a bit more meaningful, he's not getting my money. I'll download it from HypeMachine and rock out to it though. |
submissions
| Weezer – The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn) Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Rivers went to Harvard, right? So why do these lyrics read at the 5th grade level? Can’t he do better than a parody of Vanilla Ice? I won’t even consider the possibility that this isn’t a parody. The music is killer, but these lyrics are clunky, lazy, boring, and stupid. Not funny, not clever, just stupid. Sorry about the vitriol, I’m just disappointed because the song could’ve been so much better. |
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| Donovan – Age Of Treason Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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I think that line about Kerouac and Ginsberg is actually "...well juiced." This might be my favorite Donovan song tho. Just really honest and forthright, perhaps the most honest song he hever wrote. |
submissions
| Phish – Brian And Robert Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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beautiful tune. apparently the title refers to Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, who collaborated on a couple of albums way back when. this one sounds a lot like the music they used to make together. definitely a highlight on the Ghost album. |
submissions
| Common – The People Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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um, i'm white and i don't have a dog or do yoga. generalizations like these are only going to perpetuate the problem. why would he say that? and i thought i liked you, common.
racism aside, this song is lazy...pretty weak overall. |
submissions
| Timbaland – Way I Are Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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somebody tell me, cuz i need to know. what's the point of it being "way i are" instead of "way i am"? is it somehow respectable to willfully make a club hit out of bad grammar? i seriously don't get it, i'm a white kid from the suburbs, and i need to be schooled. it just seems willfully ignorant to me, and not a very interesting thing to do.
anyway, no matter how good the beats are, the song's a ripoff of "push it" by salt-n-pepa, which was way better. twenty years ago. |
submissions
| John Lennon – God Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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One of John's many gifts was the ability to use simple, universal language to make profound statements that many people could relate to. This song is such a great example of this.
What he seems to be saying here is that we depend on, and believe in, many things to cope with life and to decipher its mysteries. He's essentially saying that of all the things we believe in, he's chosen to forsake these in favor of believing in himself and in the transformative effects of love.
It also serves as a Dear John letter (pardon the pun) to his fans, to the ideal of the Sixties, and to his own disillusionment.
But what's so interesting about Lennon's solo work in the Seventies is that it chronicles everything that happens in his life after he makes a grand statement such as this. We can make as many grand statements as we'd like, but life always throws us into new situations that challenge our earlier beliefs. Listen to John's solo stuff and you'll see how someone so wise can be thrown for a loop on a regular basis.
He mentioned in his Rolling Stone interview with Jann Wenner that he only felt comfortable when he wrote songs about himself. It says a lot about humanity that we can all relate to so many things that were personal to him. |
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| Built to Spill – Conventional Wisdom Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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Moses19, so true. There always seems to be a key song that unlocks the rest of a difficult album, and this is it. So cool that BTS can still create a song this explosive after a decade of doing their thing. Great statement on our current state of polical punch-drunkenness too. |
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| Nick Drake – Leaving Me Behind Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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Take a look at the photo on the back cover of Five Leaves Left, the one with him up against a wall and the guy running past him. Nick was always observing a world that just went way too fast for him. You can hear that discomfort in many of his songs -- the one that comes to mind for me is Place to Be. But this tune is my favorite of his early ones. |
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| Nick Drake – From The Morning Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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Have fun, 'cause you're not gonna be here long. That pretty much sums up Nick Drake for me. He deals with the big, eternal themes of life, death, and love. Every feeling, whether it's joy or sorrow, is transient. But it's almost like he's resigned to all of it. This song reminds me of staying up all night every night during a summer years ago, falling in love every night...the best time i've ever had. He has a way of capturing that kind of thing. Visited his grave in Tanworth, and that inscription is there on his headstone. He's everywhere now, isn't he? |
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| Nick Drake – Courting Blues Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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A Bert Jansch cover. Kinda creepy, no? I love Nick's choices of covers. What was it about this song that drew him to it? |
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| Nick Drake – Suicide Is Painless Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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Nick Drake never covered this song...he covered many songs in his lifetime, but this wasn't one of 'em. LimeWire, by the way, has this available, and it's attributed to Nick. But it ain't him. |
submissions
| XTC – Travels In Nihilon Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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Just discovered this song. XTC's back catalog is so deep, it's astounding. They were doing things in the late 70's and early 80's that people are killing themselves trying to reproduce successfully today. ANYWAY, I've never heard anything like this song...it's horrific, tribal clang is perfectly matched with the tone of the lyrics. It approaches the futility of keeping up with trends, trying to be in touch with youth culture, fashion, consumerism, etc. "You've learnt no lessons." Let it go, grow up, be yourself. |
submissions
| U2 – Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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Totally thought this song was about an incestuous father and his daughter, and his efforts to pay for her "crashed car", i.e., her abortion. Hope that doesn't make me twisted. But reading some of your ideas, the drug thing, especially Daddy being the drug itself, makes a whole lotta sense. |
submissions
| Built to Spill – Now and Then Lyrics
| 19 years ago
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One of my favorite Built to Spill songs...an outtake from Keep it Like a Secret. I love how he phrases the line "how friend...ships came in one evening." Really worth seeking out -- such a beautiful song. |
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