submissions
| PJ Harvey – No Girl So Sweet Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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This seems to refer to Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own":
The story has a line 'Deep in the sky a storm' (...was preparing very slowly and without thunder as if it meant to drain every drop of air from the earth before it broke.)
Followed shortly by the main character (a man) saying: "My mother was an angel of Gawd..." – "...He took her from heaven and giver to me and I left her."
Also, in the story, a man leaves his newly wed wife (a mentally handicapped woman) sleeping in a small restaurant as they are on a road trip, and drives away fast and alone, as represented by the lines: "He drove it fast to make the night and
/ Looked down his angel where she lay / Resting her head and closed her eyes"
So yes, interpretations about a bad relationship and an abusive man are spot on. Can't say how much the first part of the song has to do with the story, though. Perhaps it's from the viewpoint of the abandoned bride?
Interesting sidenote: this song is preceded on the album by "The River", which is the name of the short story preceding "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" in O'Connor's novel collection "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (and THAT is the name of at least two songs, by Tom Waits and Sufjan Stevens). |
submissions
| The Tallest Man on Earth – Dark Bird Is Home Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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Some nice callbacks here. "there’s just leaving now" of course, in contrast to There's No Leaving Now, but perhaps, more importantly, this one, "So there were no higher mountains", contrasting Troubles Will Be Gone, which says:
But there's that sign up to a hill to see the far of the land
Well the sign will say, "There's still a higher one"
If the message of TWBG is something like 'you'll always have more mountains to conquer', here Mattson seems to have resorted to the conclusion that perhaps that greatest peak came and went. Kinda grim, but the whole song is hopeful in a sort of grim way. |
submissions
| Bill Callahan – Faith/Void Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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The ultimate anthem to a world where we no longer need God or the church to guide us, where we stand on our own two feet and find comfort in each other instead of a volatile being that only exists as a concept. The thought is as beautiful as the song.
If I were to rustle any jimmies here, I'd argue that perhaps certain people can't find Callahan's trademark humour here as it hits too close to home. |
submissions
| Angels of Light – Two Women Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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Presumably the two women are a mother and a daughter. Which kinda makes this a song about all the women in the world. We all know how integral the concept of motherhood is in Gira's lyricism.
I don't know if the theory of a mother and a companion/spouse holds up, but I wouldn't rule that out either. |
submissions
| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Rider Song Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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My take is that a man rides to the wilderness to kill himself. While he's gathering strength, the nature itself begs him not to do it (or at least he imagines so). But I'm not sure about the ending: if he decides not to do it after all (laid down his gun), why does he still say "yes"? |
submissions
| Joy Division – Twenty Four Hours Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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"Just for one moment I thought I'd found my way / Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away" might be one of the greatest lines he wrote. Maybe it was love, religion, art or a calling of any sort - it was a glimpse into a lifetime of happiness and fulfillment and then gradually it began to disintegrate and there was nothing he could do, nothing to stop the motion that took away everything that he believed to be his purpose here. |
submissions
| The Tallest Man on Earth – Kids on the Run Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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No, I'm pretty sure the guy with the theory about nuclear holocaust is on the right track. It's a metaphorical nuclear holocaust. It's about the self-destructing nature of humankind. Or maybe of certain kinds of people. They feed the fire till even the memory of them is gone. Their time is running out, as they know. And time passes and the fields turn wild. Everything destroyed by kids who really didn't know what they were doing.
Maybe it's environmental. Maybe it's about love, or society. Maybe it's spiritual. But yeah, it's the kind of total, mutually assured destruction of the topic of your choice. |
submissions
| Elbow – The River Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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So, let's see:
The theme of the album seems to be nostalgia, memories, growing old.
"The river" implies to life in general, I guess. It's an old metaphor here used by Garvey in a slightly more obscure way. "Walking beside the everchanging chain of events that shape you." You could not step twice into the same river, you know? After all is said and done, it feels like a dream. Clamour of rushes: all those wild times - deeply bowing trees: all those peaceful moments. Well, if the blossom isn't love then I don't know what it can be.
Then comes the second part. Confessions, replays, regrets, memories. "The sun in the west" is the end, the day is done, life has been lived to the end. The river shows him the sea: a common metaphor for death - that's where all the rivers flow. |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Prowl Great Cain Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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"The evil one is always alone", right?
He might have won again, he might have gotten away with it; he always does. But he's lost another friend, and now there aren't any left. Guilty but never ashamed, always on the move, and there is no rest for the wicked. |
submissions
| Local Natives – Shape Shifter Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Not drugs.
"your eyes, they swell like a riot, deranged
tomorrow you're laughing like a child again"
Means quick mood shifts: today the person is sad, crying so his/her eyes swell, tomorrow careless again. All human beings truly are shape shifters, always changing their mind, their opinions, their preferences. Second line of the song, "moods like you're pulled by the moonlight" references to human thoughts as tidal waves, controlled by external factors. |
submissions
| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Curse of Millhaven Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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I think the underlying message behind the "we all got to die" is Cave implying that, apart from being a full-blown psycho, the reason Loretta is doing all the killings is because she misinterpreted what her mother meant when she kept saying that. Like, she meant it in a "we will all die in the end, can't be prevented" way, Loretta took it as "we all HAVE to die". |
submissions
| The Antlers – Kettering Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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As much as I support different interpretations when it comes to songs, Hospice is obviously about a man who works in Kettering and falls in love with a dying patient.
Also, Bear isn't necessarily about pregnancy, more likely the thing living inside her is the cancer, but in that case there's at least a possibility for ambiguity. |
submissions
| Local Natives – Sun Hands Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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I think it's obviously CAN'T.
It hurts him so bad when he can only remember the power of the sun hands and the happiness he felt back then, so he swears to never let go again if he ever gets her back.
Is it necessary a girl? Well, probably. But the Sun that he misses so much can be just about anything. Enlightment? Deep feeling of belonging somewhere? Whatever it is, he caught a glimpse and that perseverance is what makes him "endure the night for the promise of light". Pretty awesome optimism even if "the morning never comes". |
submissions
| Atlas Sound – Logos Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Logos is, well, the meaning of life. Something that gives you purpose, something that drives you. What started all this, what keeps it going. That's just it, and that's what Cox tells us here. |
submissions
| Secret Machines – The Walls Are Starting to Crack Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Alienation from the society and madness brought by it, gorgeously expressed as the noise section gets gradually meaner and stronger until exploding at 4:50 when the walls of mind finally shatter and waves of insanity break through. Or a positive interpretation: he finally gets the courage and ventures out into the world, free from his self-made prison. |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – Dinu Lipatti's Bones Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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"You were looking at the void and seldom blinking" is a great line. It gives you this feeling of someone who is confident and strong and in his/her own way fearless, laughing in the face of death and the emptiness that follows. Someone the narrator really loves and admires because of this (among other reasons). And who wouldn't? |
submissions
| The Hold Steady – Slapped Actress Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Yeah, this one's as meta as it gets. While Finn often makes these implicit shifts from the world of the characters to the world of the man singing about it, this one is on a completely different level.
For a second here the characters wake up from the story to realize they are fictional, mere actors in a Shakespearean tragedy but staggeringly important for us, the real people. They are sad for it, but they take the slap like Gena's Myrtle (another layer in the referenced meta-movie) because the show must go on.
Maybe Finn is even somewhat sorry for making it so hard for his characters, as he has obviously fallen in love with them. And this is his apology - but the audience must hear the story. Gorgeous. |
submissions
| The Mountain Goats – New Monster Avenue Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Serial killer, anyone? At the end of his run, about to be caught and somehow already waiting for it. Maybe because he looks at his bloody hands and realizes what a monster he has become. |
submissions
| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Red Right Hand Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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What is this stuff about some character by Stephen King? Flagg and the man with the Red Right Hand are both definitely representations of the same being, which is (debatably) Antichrist, Belial or Lucifer, but this song is not about Flagg himself. Also, not simply about a drug addiction, but that can be part of what "evil" does to humans. |
submissions
| She Wants Revenge – Rachael Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I have to agree with the Blade Runner explanation, considering the instrumental before this is called "All those moments", a part of Rutger Hauer's amazing monologue about the ultimate emptiness of life and the vanity of memories that one gets when he is about to die. ("All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.")
Also, the later chorus is addressed to Deckard, who himself might be a replicant. This, as well as BR itself, basically questions existence in whole. |
submissions
| The National – Squalor Victoria Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I think the title is enough proof that it is at least semi-political, with undertones of war, but more likely just about how out of touch people get with their insignificant, deceiving triumphs in life while they grow more and more numb at the same time. They got their victory now, but there is nothing great about it - it's filthy, undeserved, selfish and will turn into a downfall someday. |
submissions
| The National – Son Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I'm pretty sure it's about someone who has just died. "your weight will turn to sunlight", "girl still inside the world", "...when you were under the sky". |
submissions
| Porcupine Tree – The Seance Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Nah, it's about a spiritism session (that's what the name of the song means, too). They do make a contact with the ghost, that's for sure. Maybe it didn't end up being what they wished it would be like. |
submissions
| TV on the Radio – Let the Devil In Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Bees are dying of extinction, which could lead to the end of the humankind too, according to some scientist. That's just the obvious level, of course. I think it's about humanity working very hard to destroy itself and this planet. So a end-of-the-world song, kinda. Only crickets left yawning. |
submissions
| Genesis – Ripples Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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"The ripples are the waves of time created by the falling tearsdrops of a woman lamenting the loss of her youthful beauty. Each ripple sadly carrying away a relection of the face as it is succeeded by the next ripple, and the next, as time and tide pass on."
Perfectly summed up, Voodoo_Tattoo. |
submissions
| Mew – Reprise Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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This is good. Basically I think that it's a parent talking to his/her newborn child, saying that it is important to be close to people and give them love and to dream that you can change the world. The last lines might mean that he is too old to have dreams anymore, so he "passes it on" to the next generation. |
submissions
| Do Make Say Think – A with Living Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Yeah, I think it's like getting grade "A" in school. So in that sense it could be about (maybe an old?) person who has understood what life is about; how small we are compared to the almost limitless universe; how everything must eventually die and how to accept it; that everything, light and dark, will always be in a perfect balance.
Once we really understand this, perhaps in the end of our lives we get an "A" in living. :-) |
submissions
| Pink Floyd – Echoes Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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One of the greatest songs ever, just about how amazing life on Earth is. How something as beautiful as humankind slowly turned out to exist, as if the early forms of life were just driven by some unexplainable urge to climb towards the sun, which is the basis of all life. And even if there are dark times, we are all part of that miracle, children of the sun, we belong together. |
submissions
| Secret Machines – You Are Chains Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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The rock to which "you are bound" is Earth. I think this is basically about everyday life as someone pointed out. Kinda trying to say that "boring" reality hides from us the fact that there is something bigger than our life, at work outside our consciousness. |
submissions
| Secret Machines – The Road Leads Where It's Led Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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What? How can anyone find any clues that this is about fighting against the record labels?
It's about a real war and there are no hints to prove anything else. Seraph, semaphore, ones in the ground... It's pretty obvious IMO. |
submissions
| Joy Division – Day of the Lords Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I don't think it's about any specific situation, just how oppressive governments, 'evil' movements or bad times can turn normal, nice people into cold-hearted killers who see nothing wrong in their actions. And it can happen to anyone. |
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