| Blue Öyster Cult – Don't Fear The Reaper Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[ZinbobDan:44365] And I've got some swamp land in Florida... 40,000? Romeo and Juliet? All the imagery about how death is the answer? Songwriters do this all the time - create a song about something edgy, and just avoid acknowledging that in public so they don't get castigated by the public. They know their fans "get it", and it becomes their little inside joke. | |
| Blue Öyster Cult – Don't Fear The Reaper Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[JayoftheDead:44364] Honestly, that is "word smithing". When you are a successful rock band, and your lyrics romanticize the suicide of a couple, even comparing it to Romeo and Juliet, you are indeed promoting suicide. The lyrics make it sound like suicide is a reasonable, peaceful, even beautiful solution. You can't write a song that makes it sound like things turned out great for a couple who committed suicide, and then say you're not promoting it. | |
| Simon and Garfunkel – America Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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@[thejabrother:38651] I know exactly what you mean. Even when I sing this song to myself with a guitar, that line does this to me. You can't help but hear it and feel, "Wow... that's sad..." That line is crafted very carefully. It's not just what's going on in the background while they roll along on the bus. He says "I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine". They are already unhappy, and isolating from each other. They start out as a couple on an adventure. They feel like they are special and America is just out there waiting for them. But now it's just him and her, each alone on the bus. The "moon" line emphasizes that America isn't special for them anymore. They are just small, and alone, and just like everyone else who sees the moon rise in the sky. |
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| Keith Urban – The Hard Way Lyrics | 5 years ago |
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@[enigma07:29567] Curiously, I do not read these lyrics as meaning that the two people have to end it. On the contrary, it sounds more like they know that their personalities lead to conflict, but regardless, the fact that they love each other is more important than the conflict, so they will stick it out, even it means it will never be easy. |
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| Toad the Wet Sprocket – Something's Always Wrong Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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I always saw this song as being written from one partnet to another, talking about how they are together now, and they stay together, but they are unhappy because they have drifted apart. I don't see the whole idea of breaking up another couple at all (that some interpreters have alluded to). There are some serious problems in the relationship, and they both know it, and yet they can never bring themselves to talk about it, ("Another day, I call and never speak" means, to me, that he never speaks about what's bothering them. And also, "Another day for putting things aside" - they keep putting off what they need to talk about because it's painful). And yet they still have a strong bond and they keep meeting in the spaces "in between", but they fail to "meet and mend". Have you known couples, even married couples, who have been together for years, and they know they have grown apart, but they can never bring themselves to talk about it. They go on and on, staying together, but "something's always wrong." |
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| Del Amitri – Always The Last To Know Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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It's a great song not just because it's touching and has a nice melody hook, but because it is bitingly honest and confessional. It does lead you through a bit of deception, feeling sorry for the writer as though he has lost his lover and he was "the last to know", but the final stanza makes it clear that it is a confessional. All along, *she* feared she would be the one to get hurt (... "if the bomb drops, baby, I want to be the last to know"). And indeed, that's just what happened. He cheated on her and ruined it. And now he gets it. He understands what it's like to no longer have any right to know what she's doing, how she's feeling. Even if he's sorry, and even if he wishes her well or would be genuinely concerned if her new mate is being bad to her (all of these are ideas expressed in the verses), he no longer has any right to those feelings. It's much deeper and more powerful than just "cheating" or "losing your girlfriend". It's the idea that when we give up the power to be close to somebody, even to be good to them or help them, we have lost a lot more than just a "girlfriend". We have lost a bit of ourselves. He traded away a bit of his soul by cheating on her. Heavy stuff, and darn true. People are precious things. |
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| Jackson Browne – For Taking the Trouble Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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The song's meaning is quite plain, but I still find it cute and a story delicately told. Someone is talking to a friend, who has split up with his girlfriend (or wife). The girlfriend was cheating (or at least "lying" since the lyrics clearly say that he really should have let her go when she began to lie). The writer is telling his friend "Good on ya" for putting up the good fight, for "hanging on and trying" (for trying to make the relationship work, for being honorable). There's a part about how the bad girlfriend was making his friend change for the worse. He tells his friend that being in the relationship was dragging him down, making him somebody he wasn't. I think we have all experienced this. When you have a partner who is not being good to you, you may change your behavior in unpleasant ways to try to please and keep them. And meanwhile, you are not yourself and you alienate your friends. ("Lovin' that girl next thing you knew, you'd turned away from the thing you do") Finally, there's encouragement. ", living without her gonna make you free" and "Somewhere down the line You'll find her eventually " In short: "Who needs her? There are plenty of fish in the sea. You'll find the right girl. Glad to have my friend back!" |
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| Jackson Browne – Farther On Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I agree that this is probably one of the best songs Jackson Browne ever wrote, and I am a big fan of his. But I see it as sadder than some of the other opinions posted in here. Consider these phrases: "Heaven's no closer than it was yesterday" It sounds like he has not made one bit of progress toward happiness in all the time he has been struggling and moving on. "The reasons I once had are gone" This means to me that his search and struggle has practically been a waste of time because all the reasons he ever had to keep going turned out to be misguided. "But the angels are older. They can see that the sun's setting fast" By far, the saddest line in the song. It sounds like he is running out of time and will never find happiness. In all, the impression I get in my heart whenever I listen to this song is that he continues to soldier on simply because there is no other option. The angels will go along with him as long as far as he can go, but he has not seen any sign of success and time is running out. It's a magnificent, beautiful song. But I always hear it as rather sad. |
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| Jackson Browne – These Days Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Seeing as the song was on the "Saturate Before Using" album in 1972, when Darryl Hannah was 12 years old, and was written in 1965 when she was 5, and he most definitely hadn't even met her, it is impossible for the song to have anything to do with her. It is quite a mature song of regret and accepting blame for one's actions for such a young writer (as he was at the time). Always been one of my favorites. |
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| Jackson Browne – For Everyman Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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How 'bout that! wearydreamer's interpretation is what mine has always been. I have always heard it to mean that people go through life expecting Jesus to extend his hand and save everybody, when in fact Jesus has told us to go through life helping each other. In other words, God helps mankind THROUGH us, and we are his agents. We shouldn't be sitting around waiting for somebody else to do it. WE have to do it. I always think of that quotation from the Bible: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" I am not religious - not in the least. But this has always been the way I hear the song. |
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| Sarah Harmer – Silver Road Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This song is hypnotically beautiful. It is DECEPTIVELY simple. Note how the verses aren't the same in their phrasing, and the band (at least on her "All of our Names" album) plays and stops in different places. The elegance and finesse of her lyrics, and of the band's playing, make this song spectacular. She is one of those rare songwriters who can somehow paint feelings through words - they aren't just words, they connect the meaning and FEELINGS of those words right to your soul when you hear them. Bravo, Sarah. |
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