| Modest Mouse – Blame It on the Tetons Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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"Blame it on the web but the spider's your problem now. Language is the liquid that we're all dissolved in. Great for solving problems, after it creates a problem. Blame it on the Tetons. God, I need a scapegoat now." I'm pretty sure that this part's referencing a poem by Robert Graves, The Cool Web: "[...] There's a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility. But if we let our tongues lose self-possession, Throwing off language and its watery clasp Before our death, instead of when death comes, Facing the wide glare of the children's day, Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums, We shall go mad no doubt and die that way." Personally I think this song's about apathy and emotional disengagement - always looking for someone else to blame the problem on, or cloaking it in words and avoidant behaviour. Everyone's a burning building, but people all around them are just standing there, too scared to just reach out and try to help. |
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| Stars – Barricade Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| It might be a reference to Lord of the Flies? The whole idea of anarchic youth revelling in destruction is very reminiscent of LOTF. The book's about a plane-load of young boys being evacuated from a war who crash on an island, who initially try to act in a civilised manner but eventually descend into mindless savagery and the thrill of destruction. "Stalking the streets like animals" fits the way the boys on the island hunted perfectly. | |
| Tegan and Sara – Like O, Like H Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I think this song's about someone growing up confused and hurt by the world thanks to a damaged childhood and adolescence, and how she adapts to try to survive. In the first verse, the growth of nerves "like steel in [her] palm", a process that is painful and bewildering to her, represents growing up knowing that there's something different about you; in growing up, she's undergoing a strange and terrible transformation of self that she does not know how to deal with. So she deals with it the way she knows how; "make a map of what you see/direct pain effectively". The line "direct pain effectively" implies that the deep pain will never go away, and she's merely learning how to deal with it and cope. It's in this part that it is implied that apart from being the pain which hurts her and forces her to adapt, the pain she feels might also be her reaction/adaption to the world itself, which is what lets her know she's different as she grows up. The phrase "nerves of steel" is commonly used to someone who does not let pain or fear affect them. With her nerves of steel, this eight-year old is already learning how to or ignore, though not erase, her pain when she cannot understand hurtful change. In the next verse, she repeats the theme of growth again, this time saying that she was sure she was "growing pains". "Growing pains" is a common experience which everyone has when growing up, and might be used to trivialize the deep pain she feels. "SOS to my mother" is the child desperately reaching out for help, which as a child is usually done through pleas to her mother. Yet the fact that the mother does nothing as the song progresses reflects the child's sense of betrayal and hurt by the world. My favourite line in the whole thing is "take the hinges off the door". The image of a locked door represents the barriers the narrator puts up between herself and the world, barriers necessary to push people away and allow her to survive. Yet the fact that she's still pleading for help shows that she isn't truly as strong as she pretends to be, that no matter how tough she acts, she still wants someone to help because she knows that life doesn't always have to be like this, that the pain can not only be redirected but actually be erased. Yet the door remains locked, perhaps from the inside. The plea to her mother, or to anyone, to take the hinges off the door represents the longing for someone to push through her barriers, to care enough to know that her seeming toughness and imperviousness is really a disguise for an inner vulnerability. No matter how clearly she spells it out, "like O, like H", her pleas are ignored. The phrase "in your gut" imples that this need for help, this longing for someone who can be trusted that is present since a traumatic childhood, never really goes away, even though the narrator tries to push it down and pretend to be strong. In the next verse, the narrator has grown up, and she is now "four plus a ten". I feel that the breaking down of "fourteen" into two smaller numbers represents how she is the sum total of all the experiences she's been through since she was a child. As a child, she felt hurt by the world, but now that she's a teenager, she's started lashing out and "swinging back". Sara apparently said before a show that it was about her dropping acid; the striking back at the world the narrator carries out could be interpreted as rebellious behaviour. The "nerves of steel", something which allowed her to endure, have now turned into "nails in a board", sharp tools that allow her to hurt others. Yet the outward show of toughness and aggression cannot compensate for the real pain she feels inside; by "pull[ing] [her] hands inside of [her]", she is retreating into herself, again repeating the theme of simply enduring; "six years until I'll be through". Six years after fourteen is twenty, an age when she will stop being a teenager and perhaps be free from the trouble she is going through, not needing to pretend any longer. Heh, sorry for writing an entire essay. But I really love this song. As a gay teenage girl (some people have suggested that "take the hinges off the door" could refer to a closet door, which adds another nuance to the idea of an inner vulnerability that must be disguised) who is growing up in an unaccepting society, I can totally empathize. T |
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| Dogs Die in Hot Cars – I Love You 'Cause I Have To Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| *I meant embarrassed | |
| Dogs Die in Hot Cars – I Love You 'Cause I Have To Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I kind of thought that this song is about someone who's psychologically unable to love, possibly due to past emotional trauma (and also possibly asexual). "Green are my eyes, they’ve seen so much compassion". Green eyes could be a metaphor for how the narrator's jealous of all the compassion that he's seen, especially because he can't feel compassion or love himself. It's backed up more by the line "and wishing I was loving like most of my friends oh I am so ashamed," where his inability to feel love makes him feel embarassed and abnormal, especially because all of his friends are able to love. And the emotional trauma is talked about in the second line, where he says that he might not have been this way if not for "too much suffering inside". He /has/ to have this relationship to convince himself that he's normal, that's why he (or she, of course) loves him/her because he has to. But the problem is that he doesn't really love him/her. In the chorus, I also thought that the lines weren't broken-up sentences; as in, it wasn't meant to be "I love you because I have to make everything OK, I love you because I have to go away". Rather, the "I love you because I have to" is just a repeating line throughout the song, like in the verses, and the real meaning is if you remove it; he's telling the other person to "make everything OK" by stirring some kind of emotion within him, but at the same time he just wishes that it would end and go away. Uh, yeah, just my opinion ^__^ |
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| Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| i agree that the theory that he was originally innocent makes the most sense. i can't help wondering, however, if the "remembering the music of my lover's call" line is a reference to the girl's dying screams as he raped and killed her, and how it was music to his ears. .__. i feel kind of twisted for thinking that. | |
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