| Steely Dan – Black Friday Lyrics | 3 days ago |
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@[alasdairforrest:55112] definitely made all the big points. There are a few more nice details in the lyrics: Colors are mentioned often. • The "gray" men are financial professionals, like the title character in "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit." But gray is not just a description of their clothing but also their lives, lacking in vitality. The lyricist sees himself as superior to them in personality and celebrates his inevitable victory in some scenario where everyone else is losing. • A "little black book" is often a list of social contacts, but when he speaks about striking "red" words, he seems to be talking about debts (written in red in ledgers). He has decided not to repay past debts. He is going to succeed, in essence, by cheating others, which is why, in the last line, he talks about changing his name. • Of course, the title begins with "Black," which here means tragic. The 1929 stock market crash had a pivotal "Black Tuesday" and here, he imagines the next such event might take place on a Friday. The choice of a small town in Australia is probably motivated by the fact that an American could get along without having to learn a new language, but would be able to escape from past responsibilities and debts, particularly if he adopts a new name. This is also likely why he picks a small, remote town, and not, say, Sydney. By waiting out in a hole, he seems to indicate that he will fake his death as part of evading responsibility. The Archbishop sanctifying him might mean that the world believes that he really is dead, but if not, he will continue in this new life regardless and hope that nobody connects him with his real identity. When he mentions being on a hill, he means prominent and prosperous in his new life. A song on the previous Steely Dan album, "Pretzel Logic," described Napoleon as being atop a hill. "Staking a claim" alludes to obtaining property for enriching one's self with mining, as in a gold rush. Here, though, his scheme is not literal mining but running off with assets and skipping out on debts. And, unstated in the lyrics: This is not a real scenario that has begun to play out but rather a hypothetical scenario that might. He is already planning on unscrupulous behavior for a scenario that he can't personally bring about, and he sees it as a huge personal victory to achieve prosperity through criminal means while others fail. What he values is not being in the right, but simply prosperity by any means, and he's clinging to a dream that probably won't even occur. The flaws in the lyricist's character stand out more than the other details. For what it's worth, the lyrics of "Pretzel Logic" are also about the unrealistic dreams of someone who wishes to be successful, which is why that song's title comments on the illogical thinking of that song's narrator… very similar to the thinking of this song's narrator. |
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| Jackson Browne – Chasing You Into the Light Lyrics | 11 months ago |
| It's a short time before sunrise and the singer is watching his lover who is lying next to him in bed, having a restless dream. During this time, he reflects on their whole relationship, which has not always been easy. He's worked for a long time to pursue her, and now they're together, but there's some turmoil remaining, and that is reflected by whatever is going on in her dream as he watches. He wants to bring her peace, and he thinks that what they both need is to go for a walk together, pre-dawn, of a city's waterfront, and everything will be better, symbolized by the light of the new day. Everything is ready for this to happen during the moments captured by the lyrics; only one thing remains, which he asks at the end of the song – for her to wake up. | |
| The Police – Bombs Away Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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This album was recorded months after the Soviets began a war in Afghanistan, so one might see this song as a pop critique of the Soviets in particular, but war "in old Bombay" is another country entirely, so perhaps it's poking fun at old military officers from every country. But it takes on a different scope when you note that the lyricist, Stewart Copeland, was the son of one of the founders of the CIA, and spent his childhood attending schools in Egypt and Lebanon while his father acted as the agent of a powerful country far away. So is he criticizing the Soviets of 1980 with a hint that his own dad needed to lighten up? Copeland has been pretty forthcoming about these details so we don't need to guess. In fact, his father's work as a U.S. agent in the Middle East was unknown to him while it was taking place. When he learned of it later, it came as a surprise to him, but not a negative one, and he considered trying to make a movie about it. There was never a movie, but there are many thoughts recorded in interviews, with some merely similar themes in this song. |
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| The Police – Born In The 50's Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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The Beatniks were born in the 20s. The Police are bragging about being the generation that they were, not the generation that was older. Overturning the "blatant… racism" etc. is what they're bragging about. What part of "born in" got misunderstood here? The culture of the 50s was created by the adults of the 50s, not the babies. They're bragging about being the generation that "knew better" and tried to end the racism, the Cold War, etc. Of course, the Beatniks were sure that they were smarter and more enlightened than the generation older than them, too. They were also anti-Cold War and anti-racism. Every generation has people who see the previous generations' flaws as something that need to be corrected. It's ironic if someone who commented on these lyrics in the 2000s saw the decades and centuries before as a divide between only two eras, when in fact each generation comes along and aspires to improve things. I promise that someone in the 2020s is looking askance at the 2000s, and someone in the 2040s, will look askance at the 2020s, ad infinitum. |
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| R.E.M. – It's the End of the World as We Know It Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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The central message here, which comes through in many R.E.M. songs of the era, is that the world at the time really had many very concerning problems that merited more attention than they were getting. There are two twists here: That those commenting on the problems in the media and elsewhere in the culture used the darker aspects of the world as entertainment, for laughs and ratings, and so the singer one-ups them by expressing downright delight that things are going so terribly wrong. Is the song about competitive debate? I don't think so. Reporters and the TV news are mentioned three times. The different news channels competing for ratings are the "tournament of lies." It's the news that came on at 6 o'clock, not a debate. The reporters on news stations were referred to as a "team." Cable news was new and everywhere in 1987; competitive debate is a school activity that few people thought of. But it wasn't just reporters and the news: They mention Lenny Bruce first, an early stand-up comedian who talked about politics and social issues with a known penchant for vulgarity that got him arrested repeatedly. Here, we have to think about the chronology of the topics and the album: Lenny Bruce was already dead 20 years before this song was recorded, and his heyday was a few years before that. In a much earlier era, Lenny Bruce (early 1960s) made light of the serious problems of his time. The song (mid 1980s) focuses more on how things have gone since, with the news playing up the worst aspects of the world's disintegration not for laughs but for ratings and spectacle. Note that cable news debuted a few years earlier with CNN, like R.E.M., coming from Georgia, and that on two later songs (Ignoreland and What's the Frequency, Kenneth?), R.E.M. goes after the network news from Dan Rather. While we're at it, don't think of the 1987 song as speaking of later (2010s, 2020s, etc) CNN: This was commentary in the present tense, not fortune telling. Getting 24 hour news was new at the time. And they did it loudly (an "aux speaker" is an amplifier) and for ratings ("your own needs"). The rest of it unashamedly lampoons how the real calamities of the 1980s (hurricanes, wars, imperial foreign policy ["government for hire"], overpopulation, environmental destruction ["slash and burn"]) might turn into an apocalypse of mythological proportions (birds and snakes are biblical plagues; the Furies are from Greek mythology) and the media would make entertainment out of it. It spins into the whole culture and world taking delight in its own end in a fun little stanza where they playfully rattle off several men with the same initials of LB, from the initial (long dead) Lenny Bruce to (then recently dead) Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, (aging, then soon-to-die) musician Leonard Bernstein, (then recently dead) music critic Lester Bangs. They all make light of it on the way to their own demise. The band was one of many that used music to call out the problems in the world. Here, they desperately try to get the world to take those real problems seriously but doubt that the world will, because even the news that discusses the problems does so for spectacle, for ratings, their "own needs." R.E.M. uses the same tactic a couple of years later to criticize pop music by making a "Pop Song 89" that exaggerates the shallowness of pop music that has no serious message. Decades later, I think it's fair to say that a dozen or so thoughtful R.E.M. songs didn't save either the world, the news media, or pop music, but they expressed some thoughtful statements worth looking back at now. |
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| Johnny Hates Jazz – Shattered Dreams Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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This one hurts, over and over. The melodies are just as beautiful as the dreams that the singer used to believe in, and the song repeatedly describes those dreams from the past and the pain in the present. The meter of the lines has a precision that adds to the cruelly inevitable outcome. Those first four lines all end on an emotional negative. We know from the second line (in fact, from the title) how the story ends, but the singer seems to find it most galling that his earlier expectations were so badly betrayed. Many songs repeat the hook because they don't have much to say, but in this case, the repetition comes across as the way a suffering person keeps reevaluating the unpleasant past and finds it just as bleak every time. But the sweetness of those soaring upbeats keeps setting us up for the heartache that immediately follows. |
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| INXS – The One Thing Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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It's straightforward to read that this is about a woman who's too attractive for the narrator's good. The first stanza only speaks of the relationship between the two of them. By the third, we get the big picture: Men are being lined up and disposed of in numbers and the narrator is just the latest. Whether the second stanza is about just him or her whole history depends on whether that word in the middle is "lover's" or "lovers'" – either way, it sounds the same and has the same ending. The thing is, the lyrics make it sound like the narrator might have gotten hurt, but the saxophone, the guitars, and the vocals make it sound like the experience was a worthwhile thrill either way. It's one for the music historians how the New Wave managed to come out of the UK, US, and Australia with similar sounds from all corners of the globe at once. I remember this in its original airplay and wondering at first if it was a Duran Duran song that we hadn't heard yet, but if this song's album, Shabooh Shoobah, was a response to Rio, it was a remarkably immediate one with the studio work coming only weeks after Rio's release. And, as both albums feature both high-energy tracks like this and more contemplative ones like "Don't Change," one has to credit the range and the creativity in any case. |
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| The Police – One World (Not Three) Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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While the general sentiments are timeless, some of the terms and details rest with the time the song was written in 1981. During the Cold War. when much of the world's power was divided into either the Soviet or the American spheres of influence, the "third world" referred to the rest of the world, which consisted largely (but not entirely) of countries at an unfortunately lower level of prosperity. The song's central point is that the term itself suggests a distance between the listeners (in the USA, UK, etc.) and many of the world's less fortunate people and the song tries to correct that. In that spirit, it further suggests that both national borders (lines on the world) and national identity (flags) create divisions that create conflict rather than compassion. Today, there is concern regarding carbon emissions; in 1981, the line "the third world breathes our air tomorrow" was motivated by other forms of air pollution by which industry in the "developed" countries could directly harm people located around the world. Smog, acid rain, and the destruction of the ozone layer were concerns at that time which received attention to some extent or another. The details are different with carbon dioxide but the theme is similar. This song is one of several examples of the band showing its consciousness of problems that society might aspire to address. If we look back, perhaps music played an identifiable role in helping with some of those issues. If not, at least the songwriters' hearts were in the right place. |
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| Robert Plant – White Clean and Neat Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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Robert Plant looks back at the entertainment of the 1950s, the years of his childhood, and how film, television, and music stars portrayed upstanding lives, " a community life centered around the church" symbolized by their laundry, "white, clean, and neat." But, as an adult, he knows that the celebrities of that time had secrets that were hidden from the public until they blew up in public scandals: Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds's marriage ending with an affair and divorce while Johnnie Ray was arrested more than once on laws that forbade homosexuality, and had a failed marriage intended to conceal his preference. The song includes some audio clips that alternately emphasize the more puritanical values and the not entirely hidden longings that typify real life, unlike the false moralizing portrayals the song calls "such a long way from the streets." So, the song calls out the enormous gap between public presentations of the celebrities' lives and the messier reality, and criticizes the morality of Pat Boone, who was an outspoken proponent of the kind of values that, the song, observes, are often not as real as they seem. |
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| INXS – The Stairs Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[Voodemar:51672] INXS is from Australia, so it definitely isn't only about America. It may not even be partly about America. | |
| Talking Heads – The Lady Don't Mind Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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Like many enigmatic songs, there may not be enough of a crystal clear message in the lyrics to lock down an exact interpretation, but there is a mood that comes through clearly. Many lines and phrases say something that appears to be very serious, and then the very next lyric reverses the tone and somehow, even illogically, negates the concern that was raised earlier. The song opens with an extreme version of this, when it refers to the subject of the song jumping out of a window, which suggests a suicide attempt, but we are immediately told that she does so with a smile, and "last time" indicates that this is a repeated event, so there's no loss of life. Later, a stanza repeats "it's no trouble at all," which delivers that same reversal of mood: It implies that some situation might seem like it would be trouble, but it's not. That actually occurs first in the title: "The lady don't mind" implies that there is some circumstance that might make you expect that someone would mind… but she doesn't. Again and again, something seems like it conveys pain and suffering on some level, but the woman who is the subject of the song feels OK… or seems to. In the second half of the song, however, we have reason to suspect that the truth is not so rosy. When she looks in the mirror, she lets her feelings show, apparently regarding whether or not love is what she's after. And the song's final lines repeat the doubt ("Who knows what she's thinking") suggesting that overall, this is a woman who feels lack of love, and pain, but puts on a brave face, claims otherwise and (metaphorically?) smiles as she jumps out the window. There are enough hints here (especially "love is what she's after") to latch onto the interpretation that others have suggested, that sex is part of the unspoken context ("I go up and down" – perhaps the narrator is a man who has sex with her?). That all sounds right, but I think that first and foremost, Byrne's lyrics are deliberately avoiding specifics while the theme is clear: A woman who is struggling with life's difficulties seems not to, and perhaps we'd like to think so, but the way the challenges weight on her is there if you pay attention. |
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| Talking Heads – Mommy Daddy You and I Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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Most of this suggests The Great Migration – the movement of Black Americans north in the decades after Reconstruction. The era of slavery doesn't fit – there were no buses back then – but The Great Migration took place in the twentieth century, when some of the same problems from slavery, as well as new ones like Jim Crow laws and lynching, made life so undesirable in the South that many Black Americans moved north for better – not easy but better – lives in the North. That wraps up most of the details of the song… going north, not the only family to make the trip, A detail that doesn't fit perfectly… Baltimore. Baltimore is more middle than North or South; it was a city with slavery before the Civil War, but was a net destination during The Great Migration, and it has snow of its own, if not as often as places like Chicago and Boston. That's not a hard contradiction with the facts of the song: A family could still be moving from Baltimore farther north. As Byrne himself had lived in both Canada and Maryland, he could be thinking of Baltimore as the southern point of reference. However, The Great Migration is the one historical event that makes the other elements fit. And with Give Me Back My Name a shout-out to Malcolm X, it shows that Byrne's songwriting definitely has chosen one person whose life followed that pattern (Malcolm's family arc went from Georgia to Massachusetts by way of Nebraska). |
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| The B-52's – Moon 83 Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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This album appeared in 1983, hence the "83" in the song title, serving as a bouncy sequel to their 1979 song "There's a Moon in the Sky." This song's (heavily repeated) lyrics sample from that song, which first states that there are others like you, because repeating just the end, making "like" into a verb. This song plays the same trick in reverse order, and it's a fun little joke… There are others who do like you because there are others who are like you. |
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| The B-52's – There's a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon) Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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This is just a lot of fun with absurd and silly lyrics working the space theme into camp. This song, from 1979, and 1983's "Moon 83" are a pair, and do funny things with the line "Others like you." In this song, it is introduced with "There are others like you," but then the end of it is repeated (more or less manically yelled) as "Others like you" and it feels as though "like" has become a verb. There are many little jokes here. "Destination Moon" is a 1950 sci fi movie. The Van Allen Belt is a real zone of radiation surrounding the Earth, but here it sounds like it might be a fashion accessory. Red kryptonite is a feature of 1950s Superman comic books which has implausibly random effects on the hero whenever he encounters it. And the interspersed names of planets and the Moon make it sound like somehow we've got a vehicle that can take us around the solar system like we're cruising in a convertible. But the "others like you" line that anchors it has a sort of fourth wall mood; nobody listening to the song is actually going into space, but as fans of this band and the retro hipster culture they helped create, one might enjoy hearing from the band that you are not alone… there are others like you… And as a consequence of that: Others (so happen to) like you. |
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| R.E.M. – Catapult Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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A catapult launches something recklessly and destructively forward. This song is about kids watching television. Wiser parents would turn it off, but these kids beg for their parent to let them keep watching. Exposed to adult ideas that they shouldn't have seen at an early age, they are catapulted into confronting the harsher aspects of life before they are ready for that. |
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| R.E.M. – Sitting Still Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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Whether correct or not, I'd long heard the line that is transcribed here with "sun" as "I'm the son and you can read" and the line that is transcribed here with "making" as "baking" and I'd imagined this to be about a young boy spending the days at home with his mother, appreciating her attention. The details that have been posted about Stipe's sister and a lack of direction to the lyrics seem correct; I think the tone is similar – a woman's attention benefits the child(ren) in her care. One probably mis-transcribed word is "rid"… "well read" makes more sense than "well rid," particularly in that (1) reading is mentioned; (2) other lines end with "green" and "blue" and "read" is a homonym for "red" and makes a complete trio of the primary colors. Beyond the lyrics, the song is atypically hard driving and energetic for this album, for this era of R.E.M., and for the apparent topics… it gives the feeling of there being a lot at stake for the child(ren) who are receiving needed attention. Compare this with the later song "You Are the Everything," which also, I've imagined, is about a man's memory of the care his mother gave him as a child. However the details shake out, they each come at something sentimental from different directions. |
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| R.E.M. – Gardening At Night Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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Buck and Berry gave two different explanations that have been mentioned already. The lyrics don't lock in too much on either of those. A prayer line is some outdated technology that nobody has mentioned: People could call and hear a voice reading recordings of prayers and the caller would be charged money; the lyrics say that the rates are changing (which would mean rising) and the band clearly sees this as a way to scam ignorant, gullible people. Later, the lyrics indicate that such a call cost $2.51 – a lot of money then for such a trivial experience. Money that's wasted, a yard that's just a fence, gardening at night that didn't grow, feelings that didn't seem real – Every part of the song indicates a different effort that wasn't worth the energy that was put into it. That's what the song's about – wasted effort in general, not any one particular example but the effort that people waste. |
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| R.E.M. – King Of Birds Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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@[garbo215:47841] The "shoulders" line is certainly quoting Newton, but is the song about him or only making that one reference? It also says "my kingdom for a…" is quoting Shakespeare, Richard III, so with one reference apiece, we could start guessing if it's about Newton, Shakespeare, Richard, or some fourth person. What they all have in common is greatness (and being English). And as the first person says that standing on the shoulders of giants leaves him cold, he seems not to be Newton. I think as @[heythere81201:47842] suggested, it's about someone who wants to have an original idea. And, as he wishes to have "a voice," it is perhaps in the realm of art, politics, or something else. |
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| The Cars – You Wear Those Eyes Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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I'll always remember hearing this song for the first time, not knowing the artist, and thinking that I'd "discovered" a great new band, then finding out that it was The Cars, whom I had loved for years without knowing this album. "I'll be your mirror" is the title of a 1967 Velvet Underground song; the use of that in these lyrics may be a conscious homage to the earlier band. This is one of several Cars songs where the lyrics describe an intense infatuation, but the performance conveys calm verging on detachment. It creates a kind of coolness that is a big part of the band's legacy. |
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| The Cars – You Wear Those Eyes Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| @[ChrisBayer:46153] Really thoughtful, but one critical detail: This song was recorded in 1980 and Ocasek met Porizkova in 1984. Whoever the song is actually about, all of those details have to match otherwise. | |
| U2 – In God's Country Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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It's been fascinating to compare the comments here with the music video, which has a quality that nobody has mentioned: The largest number of images in the music video is from the Soviet Union. They are shots taken from Soviet propaganda films from the WW2 era, and the people in them are not (likely) prospective immigrants to the United States. Those images and the films they come from have a simple, and very different message: That Soviet industrialization and collective agriculture have accomplished great things, and that the setbacks and sacrifices experienced during the war are being met with great determination that will eventually beat the German invader. For example, there is an image of a study peasant woman lighting something on fire; that is, in fact a building that she's lighting on fire and she's doing so to deny it to the advancing Germans. There are images of intense nighttime searchlight activity and anti-air fire to counter German bombing. And, an image appears twice of a smiling, optimistic blonde girl, who represents the Soviet hopes and fortitude. I was surprised to see that nobody in these comments had noted this, or even mentioned the Soviet Union, but now, many years after I'd enthusiastically enjoyed the video, I conclude that people are probably right to overlook this background: The video is probably using that footage deliberately out of context to drive a very different message than the Soviet intentions! (Note that the music video for New Year's Day also uses Soviet WW2 film clips, likely for a very different reason.) The lyrics, like most of the non-Soviet images in the music video, allude to the United States, very obvious subjects such as Manhattan, Mount Rushmore, and the Statue of Liberty, and when Bono sings "she stands with naked flame," he holds his arm up to mirror the Statue of Liberty's pose, and this is probably to highlight (no pun intended!) the lyrics' central subject: as other commenters have noted, the imperfect haven that the United States provides for immigrants. This subject can also be heard on the earlier albums "War" (notably in The Refugee) and "The Unforgettable Fire." While one might imagine, for obvious reasons, the band would be thinking of Irish immigrants, there is no specific image, I think, of Ireland or Irish people anywhere in the video besides Bono himself, who is performing alone in a (probably American) industrial ruin. That location resembles a couple of shots from the video which are decades and thousands of miles away, Soviet targets of German bombing and/or artillery, and the visual association is misleading in fact, but probably intended. To walk things through the music video and the lyrics, they speak of the hopes of immigrants, who leave behind lives of desperation in their original country to lives of hope, hope for prosperity, and hope for love, in America. The lyrics hint at some very specific people, but provide only a few words here to anchor the narrative to them, at least one man, and a woman whom he might love, who end up in a desert location in America. They've come through New York, and thus, have come from across the Atlantic, but aside from those few specific words, the song could be about any immigrant to America, and how they have hope, but still must struggle in every way once they arrive. Sleep comes like a drug because the working day is very hard and without much reward. Hope, rather than prosperity, is what they have found. Yet, the song is not condemnatory of what America has offered them; it ends with that hope as a bright light that keeps the immigrants going, and they might find it in love if not in "gold." Again, the specific images are taken way out of context: The smiling girl represents in the original footage a confidence in Soviet resistance to the Germans, but in the music video must represent someone who might find a better life in America, and perhaps be the love that keeps someone else going. It is not surprising that the band had to use footage out of context for this message: It's not likely that the locations of poor European emigration would have produced film footage for the sake of saying, "Here are the poor people who suffer in our land"! And that's certainly not the Soviet message, which is, "Here are poor people who suffer in our land… but we will prevail, here, not by leaving." In the Soviet propaganda footage, the ugly images of industry (including one shot with an unbelievable number of oil derricks in tight proximity) are presented as themselves images of hope. In the Soviet films, the hopeful destination of poor Soviet peoples is in the new industry being built there in their own land. The video implies that the poverty is in Europe and perhaps the Near East (there are images that might be of Islamic areas in the USSR?) but the industry awaiting them would be in America. There are two Old Testament references (you can't forget that the band grew up Christian in Ireland) which other commenters have noted, but, I think, mishandled. In the Old Testament, the Exodus leads the suffering people of Moses to a promised land which is Israel, and in these lyrics there is a similar hope, but the land is America. It is a desert, but the American Southwest, not Israel. The siren calling (a Homeric reference!) is both Liberty and American prosperity, and perhaps some potential lover. In a savvier reference, the "sons of Cain" are simply those running away from a difficult past, whatever it is that the individual immigrants are leaving behind; for Cain it's a particular sin; for these immigrants it's perhaps simply poverty and hopelessness. Altogether, it's a great song and great video. Just as the video intentionally re-purposes old film clips, I remember a local restaurant in the 1980s using instrumental riffs from this song in their radio ad, re-purposing the song's energy as their own. One hopes that the immigrants whom the song is about found the better lives that they sought. As there were millions of them, it's safe to say that many did, while many did not. |
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| Bananarama – Robert De Niro's Waiting Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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@mozarts Sister I think that two people in the band giving two different statements about what the song is about is indicative that there may have been an original inspiration, some revision, and a resulting mishmash of the two in the final cut. There may be lines – even more than half of the lines – that began with a date rape inspiration, but however the songwriting process worked, the final version ended up with lines that don't support that. The novella "Heart of Darkness" is set in Africa, while the film "Apocalypse Now," inspired by it, is set in Vietnam. Is "Apocalypse Now" set in Africa? No. When you edit something, the final edit is what it's about. Perhaps apt to say that it was inspired by something, an original inspiration, but what reached listeners in the final version is something else. |
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| World Party – All Come True Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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This song has had me wondering about it since it came out. The lyrics indicate at least two different voices and it is a bit of a puzzle to work out where the shifts take place and what the backstory is. The two stanzas beginning with "Someone was 'round here asking questions…" are in the voice, apparently, of a woman, the "she" mentioned elsewhere. She is apparently speaking to the man who is doing the rest of the speaking. The male speaker is apparently being pursued by a man who has bad intentions for him, either because the first man, the second, or both are operating outside the law. By telling the pursuer where the male speaker is, the woman is "making it all come true," where "it all" is a lot of negative consequences that have been avoided in the past, but won't be avoided anymore. Aside from that, the rest is unspecified. Whether the male speaker is a fugitive from the law or on the run from criminals, he blames what's coming his way on the woman telling the pursuer where he is. In addition, someone is blaming someone else for greed, and says that their greed will not end until they "make possessions of the stars" (i.e., their greed is limitless), but it's hard to tell if this is one of the first two voices in the song or a third. It sounds like this could be inspired by the plot of a crime movie; probably more than a few fit the details in the song. Without more information, it's a vague but wonderfully moody snapshot of someone's desperation. |
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| Echo and the Bunnymen – My Kingdom Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[mliem411:42249] Thanks to you for the original thoughts and the speedy reply. The point about "born" also seems right on! I have loved this song for a long time and didn't need to understand it much to enjoy the raw emotion, but I think you've set upon the right way to understand the lyrics! | |
| Echo and the Bunnymen – My Kingdom Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| This song has long intrigued me and @[mliem411:41589] does some good work here. Not everything lines up between the lyrics and that interpretation; that can happen when lyrics get a bit figurative, but I wonder if there\'s an intention that is partly or even significantly different than that interpretation.\n\nFor starters, the Lord\'s Prayer deserves mention, as "Thy will be done" is right out of it – the archaic "thy" narrows it down as being not just a casual use of language. And it occurs in the Lord\'s Prayer just after the word "kingdom."\n\nThe Lord\'s Prayer begins with the words, "Our father," so I wonder if in a modest modification of your interpretation, this might be about the abuse of a child by their father, and the abuse, the father lording his power over the child, is the father\'s "kingdom" while this song, a response back, is the child\'s "kingdom," hence the "my" in the title. | |
| Steely Dan – Here At The Western World Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[taverner:40045] It\'s a big world and hard to know about all of it, but it doesn\'t seem like a brothel for Western expats would exist in the Communist Bloc. For local party cadres, yes. | |
| Berlin – The Metro Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[YearOfTheCat:39932] There\'s no relationship between the woman and the soldier; it\'s just a snapshot memory of the occasion. It suggests some alienation that there would be a soldier on the train and that one of the people around her would be asleep. | |
| The Pretenders – Time the Avenger Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[force:39203] The category of comment there is "My Interpretation" which ought to appear clearly on your display if you look. | |
| 10,000 Maniacs – Hey Jack Kerouac Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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@[danieln7o:38940] "Howling" is obviously a reference to Ginsberg's poem, Howl; Kerouac was present for the first public reading of it, and wrote a fictionalized account of that in Dharma Bums. That event happened to be in the Marina District, not San Francisco's Chinatown, but the Beats hung out in North Beach, which abuts Chinatown. The short alley between their old hangouts, the City Lights Bookstore and the bar Vesuvio, has been renamed Jack Kerouac Alley and it connects Columbus Avenue in North Beach and Grant Street in Chinatown. Simply saying that people who partied in Chinatown and Harlem were physically, geographically in Chinatown and Harlem is not calling out racism. There is not an atom in this song discussing racism, and your wall-to-wall 2017-isms like "privilege", "bye Felicia", and "slackers" are your perspective from yet another 30 years later, not in the song. This song mixes appreciation of their impact with frank criticism of their lifestyle; if she didn't appreciate them, she wouldn't have been writing a song about them thirty years later. In interviews, she says that she was "suspicious" of their activities, but she's looking at them with a mixture of admiration and empathy, not excoriating them. |
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| R.E.M. – Orange Crush Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[CorgiKid:38906] "I've got my spine" is probably on one level an ironic claim of courage, but undoubtedly it is also a reference to one of the ghastly effects of Agent Orange, a birth defect called spina bifida found in the children of people who were exposed to it. | |
| The Smiths – Death of a Disco Dancer Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[mourningglory:37648] I agree with all of that except the "American" part. The Smiths were very, very English… That may have been their exact message, but I doubt if they were thinking of America. | |
| Michael McDonald – I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near) Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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People have already said what the lyrics are about, and they're right on the money, but there's something unusual about this song, and it didn't hit me until about the five hundredth time I heard it, and now it's the thing I think about most… Michael McDonald sings all of the lyrics until about 2:01, when his sister, Maureen McDonald, takes over. She's listed as "backing vocals" but that's not quite right. She simply becomes the lead vocalist for the rest of the song, and after that point, Michael is backing up her. She sings all of the main lyrics from 2:01 on and he chimes in backing phrases here and there. There are two ways to hear this: One, that the backing vocals from Maureen are a form of instrumentation to complement the lead vocalist, Michael. But what popped out to me all of a sudden was that you could also hear it as the woman from the first half of the lyrics providing a second perspective on the story, and saying basically the same things as the man. In other words, he is sorry about their breakup and wishes that they were both together, and then we learn that she feels the same way. Both of them wish they were still together but neither has let the other know. I don't really believe that the performers intended the second way of hearing it, but it's so poignant that I can't hear the song now and not think of this. It's a great song whatever you happen to be thinking of when you hear it. |
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| Berlin – The Metro Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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Berlin is an American band from Los Angeles, but if you heard their first hit, "The Metro," you'd never know it. The song mentions both London and Paris, the band is named Berlin, the Metro itself, the sirens you hear in the middle, the synthesizers, New Wave sound, even their haircuts say one word, over and over that doesn't appear verbatim in the song: "Europe." This song serves as some very heavy marketing that the band is striving for a European aesthetic, and the song is more about that aesthetic than a vehicle to narrate a plot about a couple that broke up. This song is from 1981 and there's a music video that adds a Cold War / spy plot not heard in the lyrics. The reference to a "soldier" is probably just another way to emphasize the then-current setting of the Cold War in Europe. The plot is pretty simple. A man has broken up with a woman and she's remembering that with regret. She's at home drinking and remembers it in layers… she remembers not only events of their relationship and breakup but also remembers being on the Metro on an earlier occasion thinking about their breakup, holding a letter that dated from the time that they were together. |
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| Prince – 1999 Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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It's key to understand the year that this came out, 1982. 1999 was 17 years off, Reagan was President and nuclear war was a common theme in art and music then. Other songs like "Seconds," "Red Skies at Night," and "99 Red Balloons" all came out in 1982 and 1983, and the movie "The Day After" aired in 1983. The song "New Frontier," about 1960s nuclear war fear, also came out in 1982. The feeling was intense. There was a general numerological superstition that the year 2000 had some special fate associated with it, and this song is not alone in tying together the specific fear of nuclear war (the song mentions bombs; it can't get more specific than that) and associates the then far-off 2000 with the time of the end ("two thousand zero zero, party over, oops, out of time"). So given that, yes, Prince is saying that one should party and enjoy life since it may be over soon anyway – not in 2000, but now (1982). And what comes before 2000? 1999. There's your title. |
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| Bananarama – Robert De Niro's Waiting Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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Late-to-come feedback, but Sara Dallin said in a 2019 interview that the song is *not* about rape. "It was just about hero worship. It wasn't about rape. I don't know where that came from. It's absolute rubbish." It's pretty clear that the lyrics are about a girl imagining herself with a man who is more interesting than the boys around her. If the song began with some other inspiration, which seems credible, it has been removed from the lyrics as performed. Only 34 years after the song was a hit, we have the answer. |
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| Yes – It Can Happen Lyrics | 4 years ago |
| @[grapefruitm00n:36397] The spoken passage is from The Importance of Being Earnest. It begins, "Come, old boy, you had much better have the thing out at once…" | |
| U2 – Zoo Station Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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Nobody has mentioned the timing! U2 began recording this album in Berlin the same week that German reunification became official. The news about the Berlin Wall opening was euphoric and optimistic in the West, but the band's experience in Berlin was dismal as uncertainty was more on people's minds than the potential for the future. The song captures the conflict between the optimism that they wanted to have for the new future and the warning signs that the change might not go well. The band was also going through intense turmoil parallel to but perhaps coincidental to the city's and continent's upheaval. The lyrics primarily emphasize optimism but the sound captures the alienation and weariness. Zoo Station is indeed a real station in the formerly West Berlin. This song is named for the station (which is, in turn, named for the nearby zoo, will the band perhaps liking the connotation in English of wildness) as well as a story that World War Two bombing allowed animals from the zoo to escape and roam the city. The album title, half German and half English, also reflects the setting, pairing a very serious German word with a very colloquial English one. Probably the key line is "Time is a train," taking the literal purpose of the station as a metaphor for the rapid and unforeseeable change then taking place. Despite the uncertainty for Germany, the world, and the band, and the fatigue in the vocal performance, the instrumentation is full of energy and the lyrics insist, "I'm ready." The future, as it turns out, went very well for Berlin, Germany, the album, and the band. I happened to visit Berlin two years later, and the Hard Rock Cafe already had a car with "Achtung Baby" painted on it, and the U-Bahn line U2 ran through the station. I only learned later that this was a coincidence; when the album was recorded, the line had been named U1. |
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| The 88 – At Least It Was Here Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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The band's website gives the last word of line 7 as "sea," not "scene." Subsequent lines are: "Tie me to dream," not "Time in a dream." and "Iʼm tied to the wait and sees," not "Iʼm tired of the wait and sees." This song is a tough one to crack. It is clearly about someone considering a decision. It is repeatedly unclear which lines are metaphors and which are concrete. It is repeatedly unclear when a pair of consecutive lines refer to the same idea, expressed twice, or when the second line refers to a contrasting idea. It is several times unclear when a quotation ends. But it is clear that it is about reaching a decision between two possible choices for what the singer will do next in his life. One involves staying in his present circumstance and the other involves moving to another one. One involves a love of the unnamed second person; by implication, the other means rejecting that love. So the question is, is the song about (1) staying with a love affair (or platonic love) vs. leaving to explore other options, or is the song about (2) staying in some solitary situation in life vs. leaving it to explore love? I think the evidence, such as it is, points towards (1), but the aforementioned ambiguity makes it hard to be certain. The title may be the best evidence we have: “At Least It Was Here” – itself quite the vague phrase! – seems to say, after a phase in someone’s life has ended, that though it did end (past tense “was”) there was a bright side (“at least”) to it having happened. That would make more sense if the love was the thing in the past, and the title is saying, well, at least it is good that there was a love, before it ended. So my reading is that this is about a man who has decided to leave a relationship and is going on to try new things in life. All of that said, I find myself toying with a very specific interpretation that makes sense of some of the very unusual references to rope (four!) and the sea, and as far as I can tell, this reading is original to me: Is this song about The Odyssey?!? In Homer’s Odyssey, a man spends ten years returning home after the Trojan War, The trip is made primarily by sea. He is delayed by many obstacles put in his way by Poseidon, including three times when female figures seduce him, to try to: He spends one year on land as the lover of Circe; he sails by the Sirens, whose songs would draw his ship to doom if he could not resist; he then spends seven years on land as the lover of Calypso before choosing to leave and return home to his wife, Penelope. The Odyssey has far more situations in it than this song could possibly contain, but it may refer to two or three of them: 1) Give me your hands Show me the door I cannot stand To wait anymore With Circe for a year, Odysseus tires of waiting and decides to leave. (Alternately, this could refer to his time with Calypso, but there are more lines indicative of Circe.) 2) Somebody said Be what you'll be Hermes delivers a message to Odysseus, telling him how to avoid being turned into an animal by Circe. “Be what you’ll be.” Hermes would be the “someone.” 3) We could be old and cold and dead on the sea If Odysseus and his men stay, they could grow old until they die in the seaside of Aeaea, Circe’s home. 4) But I love you more than words can say Odysseus’s love for Penelope compels him to move on and leave. 5) I can’t count the reasons I should stay There are no reasons to stay with Circe, so he leaves. The next lines seem to describe Odysseus’s predicament with the Sirens, and how he resolves it, by having his men physically tie him to a mast on the ship so that he is unable to steer the ship towards them. 6) Give me some rope Tie me to dream Odysseus orders his men to tie him to the mast so that, while he hears the dream song of the Sirens, he cannot be driven to act on it. 7) Give me the hope to run out of steam By being tied to the mast, the energy he would use to make the wrong decision is spent uselessly and harmlessly in a struggle against the ropes; his will to do the wrong thing runs out of steam. 8) Somebody said it can be here Hermes visits Odysseus twice in the Odyssey; the second time, it is to recommend that Odysseus leave Calypso to return home by sea. “Somebody said,” both times, may refer to Hermes delivering messages. 9) We could be roped up, tied up, dead in a year To be honest, this one line is where the Odyssey interpretation may fall apart; it may refer to the year he spends with Circe, but the “rope” reference which is literal with the Sirens would be metaphorical here, and this seems to be out of sequence with all of the other passages, which otherwise match the Odyssey quite nicely. 10) I can't count the reasons I should stay One by one they all just fade away Just as before with Circe, he finds that he has no real reason to stay with Calypso. 11) Iʼm tied to the wait and sees Iʼm tired of that part of me That makes up a perfect lie To keep us between But hours turn into days So watch what you throw away And be here to recognize Thereʼs another way “Tied” appears again as the fifth reference to rope. This may summarize Odysseus’s time spent with Calypso, where waiting and seeing binds him to a “lie” – this is not where he belongs, and though a great deal of time passes (seven years), he eventually recognizes that there is another way, and escapes by sea to end up back home. It would be somewhat appropriate if the title song for a TV series about college had such a literary inspiration. The extremely specific references to rope, the sea, and leaving behind love seem to work very well at times, but I’ll admit that I suspect that this is probably just clever pattern-matching and that the band, if they read this, would have a laugh or an eye-roll. If they intended no specific reference to the Odyssey, however, I think that nonetheless, the song captures the same general circumstance of Odysseus: A man is in a long-lasting love that is keeping him from moving on in life, but in time, after someone’s words prompt him to do so, he decides to move on. |
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| Beck – Hell Yes Lyrics | 5 years ago |
| One of many Beck songs where the singer creates the persona of a "hipster dufus." The persona thinks he's cool, but is extremely self conscious and awkward. Somebody who's dancing impressively is probably not thinking, "I'm working my legs" or "my beat is correct" while they're on the dance floor. The whispering girl, voiced by Christina Ricci, is just as awkward, though – and maybe a nonnative speaker struggling with English – and into him, so maybe the loser found romance. The synthesized voice replying "YES" to her compliments might be the same persona as the singer, with alienation reminiscent of The Cars' Candy-O. And making this all work, Beck actually is the cool nerd that he pretends to be. | |
| Asia – Sole Survivor Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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A warrior or adventurer achieves the end of a quest. It's implied that he was part of a larger force but the rest have perished and he is… well, the title says what he is. This could plausibly be from a war, but there are mythological overtones, with "hounds of hell" suggesting Cerberus, and arising from wreckage perhaps suggesting a phoenix. Perhaps there is a specific myth being alluded to, but I suspect that this is an original, sparingly-sketched story. |
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| Steely Dan – Here At The Western World Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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Everything points to a location where expats and Western tourists indulge in sex and drugs in a country with lax local laws. The unstated "here" is a brothel, and there's sex (skinny girls) for sure, and whatever alcohol or drugs led the sailor to pass out. It is a short trip uphill from the Lido (the original is in Italy but it's a name that's often borrowed for waterside entertainment), which has less illicit pleasures than the brothel. Sausage, beer, and Klaus tell us that Germans are common in this location. The use of a Jackson (American $20 bill) tells us that Americans are, too. Where is this? It could be Southeast Asia, Latin America, or a tropical island anywhere. Some have tried to link "Klaus" specifically to Klaus Barbie, but it doesn't fit… "sailor" and "Lido" imply the coast and Bolivia is landlocked; this is somewhere that people are using American currency (Jackson) and the sausage and beer are being provided to the public, not one specific German. All of this implies tourism by a coast. This location, catering to tourists, is being called "the Western world" because the clients are men from Western countries living out their fantasies ("the madman you're longing to be") in a place where local laws ('the mayor and all his friends; and nobody cares") or the lack thereof don't prohibit the things going on here. To make the men feel welcome, they even give the girls names that sound familiar ("Ruthie" – not a name you'd find often in Bolivia). Writing in 2020, one may note the similarity in name and theme - sans science fiction - to the show Westworld, where wealthy men live out fantasies of sex in a place where laws don't apply. In fact, the song was written not long after the 1973 film Westworld where those same general conditions applied, and who knows, it may have helped inspire the song's title, although the song's story is pure decadence, no robots. |
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| Steely Dan – Here At The Western World Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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@[myocco:34835] Mayans are indigenous to Mexico, not Bolivia. One Google result uses the word "rooster" in reference to Suarez, but that is just one writer using imagery in one sentence – it wasn't his nickname. Klaus is not a rare first name. I think commenters have looked too hard for this being a specific reference.. |
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| Paul Simon – The Late Great Johnny Ace Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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You're absolutely right, Will26. Two other things I didn't know/notice when I posted my first comment: 1) All three Johnnys were shot. Johnny Ace shot himself. The other two cases, we all know. 2) "The Late Great Johnny Ace" was the title of a biography written about Johnny Ace. |
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| Liz Phair – Uncle Alvarez Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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This is a powerful, poignant song. It's third person until near the end when "as you write your resume" pops us out of a woman's thoughts about her uncle and we realize what the moment is: She's writing a resume, thinking of elaborate half-truths that she can use to make herself sound better, when the dishonesty of that reminds her of Uncle Alvarez, who told elaborate self-aggrandizing lies. There's an error in the lyrics above: It should be "We feel sorry for the wall." Uncle Alvarez is dead and only his portrait remains. The family never thought much of him, due to his confabulations, and their dismissal of him extends to feeling sorry for the wall that has to put up with him. His lies seem to go beyond exaggeration, however, and straight on to delusion. Anyone who fought in the Civil War would have been dead long before Liz's generation could remember them. And so, she looks back on him not with disdain so much as pity, and you hear the affection several times in her singing. Finally, she sees him as a cautionary tale. All of his lies and delusions made others look down on him and isolated him from them. And at the moment she considers a few embellishments on her resume, she wonders if that would put her on the path to being like Uncle Alvarez, and she decides to be truthful instead. |
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| Liz Phair – Go West Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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The singer is leaving behind an old relationship and the rest of her old life in New York, just approaching Los Angeles in her car. There are a few clever double meanings in the lyrics: The "parking brake" is a metaphor for the previous stasis in her life, and "another state" is a way of living as well as one of the fifty states of the union. She's guided by a piece of advice famously directed as some unspecified "young man," letting someone else do her thinking for her, both the famous "go west" line and Soul Asylum's singer Dave Pirner on the radio. There's unmistakable uncertainty whether she is making a good decision, with most lines either rehashing a reason for the move, and even whether it's "just something to do." A quirk that stands out is the line – a pair of lines, as sung – "sixty-nine in the afternoon." If she's in her car, just crossing the state line, is she remembering sex with the partner whom she's leaving? A long pause and change of tone in the performance, almost as though "sixty" and "nine" are sung by different vocalists, creates the odd phrase "nine in the afternoon," which doesn't exist. And maybe this is just Liz Phair being clever, rebellious, and sexual, to take you out of the fiction (she never moved from New York to LA) to remind you that this is still Liz Phair speaking. |
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| Donald Fagen – New Frontier Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| @[rash67:32722] The half life of Uranium 236 is 23 million years, but that's not a common isotope in bomb fallout, anyway. Surviving after emerging from a nuclear shelter is not impossible, even after a thermonuclear blast, @[Skavius:32723], but it depends upon the details. | |
| The Cars – Bye Bye Love Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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It's hard to find a song from the era with a more earnest expression of feeling. There's beauty here and pain, and then some more beauty. After hundreds (maybe thousands of listens), it's striking to me to see how incomplete the narration is: We get impression after impression of how the woman seems to the man, but no more than the slightest hint of how he seems to her, how they have interacted, what their history is, or how that is changing. In line after line, we are told how he sees her and how he hears her, but he is virtually absent from the narration, like he's a camera watching her, and responding internally, and then reporting his internal feeling to us, but not necessarily to her, like he's infatuated and deeply introverted. What's clear is that it isn't going well for him; the innuendo and the "other guy" indicate that he's either at risk of losing her or perhaps he never had her, but whichever it is, he's so wrapped up in the angst of this perfect woman being unattainable that he's not sure he can "survive." It's clear that they are in some sort of recurring social situation. At midnight, music is playing: Are they out as a couple, or as two single people in a larger group? They get close enough for him to look into her eyes, and for him to hear her describe herself. His admiration for her looks and her vivacity are undercut by apparent bitterness that she has such a positive self image. At song's end, it's still not clear: Are they in a failing relationship? Is it an unrequited crush? Is "Bye bye" her possible departure from a relationship or is it him silently and privately giving up on a one-sided infatuation that he hasn't even told her about? Maybe things would have a chance if he opened up and told her. On the other hand, if he's just infatuated with her looks and thinks she's stuck on herself, maybe he's being too shallow. What the lyrics don't show is the soaring, energetic, and triumphant solos from the instruments, in counterpoint to the painful romantic dynamic. Maybe the song's highest calling is telling the lyricist – and the listener – that there are things to look forward to even when one romance or another doesn't work out. This is a song I've called my favorite. Thanks for the good times, Ric Ocasek, and R.I.P. |
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| Iggy Pop – Look Away Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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These lyrics are missing, at least, the first lines that begin, "I slept with Sable when she was thirteen" which are apparently an accurate account of Iggy Pop's statutory rape of Sable Starr, who was still underage when she became attached to Johnny Thunders. Starr and other "baby groupies" describe sexual encounters with David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Jeff Beck, and other Seventies rock stars when the girls were still in middle school, according to some accounts as young as 12. The authenticity of some claims have been questioned, and it's long past time when any legal liability exists, but these stories and this song's lyrics point to horrific sexual abuse of children by some of rock's most famous male performers. |
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| Village People – YMCA Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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Besides the music delivering simple fun that's proven timeless, the lyrics are a masterpiece of ambiguity that could allow the song to get on the air in the Seventies but still shout out a message (in remarkably few phrases here and there) that's clear to anyone who hears it. By the way, not everyone in the band was gay, but nobody's judging. |
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| U2 – Trip Through Your Wires Lyrics | 6 years ago |
| @[SongMeany:32201] This song came out years before Internet dating began. Telephone wires may have been in U2's minds, but not Internet. | |
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