submissions

Lucinda Williams – Pineola Lyrics	15 years ago
There's not much to explain here. "Sonny" was Frank Sanford a poet Lucinda knew in Austin who committed suicide in the early-1990s.

submissions

Lou Reed – Kicks Lyrics

15 years ago

This song is a concept piece, part of the larget concept album, Coney Island Baby. The song is set up to play like a nightclub song in a Coney Island nightclub. The background chatter is supposed to represent people moving about the club, or, perhaps, the microphone being moved around (perhaps the singer is carrying it.) The effect is extremely moody, and adds a lot of ambiance to the song. The song itself is about hedonism and sensuality. The singer is describing a person (a woman, in this case) who is searching for some new, exciting experience. "Kicks" is obviously a reference to enjoyment, or pleasure. The woman has had so many experiences that she can no longer get her "adrenaline flowing" from normal things like sex, or fast cars ("I love the way you drive your car"). She "get somebody to come on to [her]" and then, in search of her adrenaline fix, kills them. "It's the final thing to do" references the fact that she had done all other depravity and become desensitized to it, so needs to push the envelope to get her high. While in reality thrill killers were an extreme rarity, in the 1970s, several sensationalized accounts of people killing for pleasure or sexual satisfaction were circulating in the popular press, which may have inspired this song. Though the idea of being addicted to adrenaline highs is very real; the thrill may push people to extreme activities and deviant sexual behavior, though probably not murder.

submissions

Lou Reed – A Gift Lyrics

15 years ago

I think all the analyses so far miss the point of this song. Remember, this song appears on the Coney Island Baby album, which was at once both an examination of Lou Reed's formative years growing up in New York, and a concept album, where he details the seedier side of the area. Coney Island is often invoked as a metaphor for bygone American dreams. The concept of the album is that the different songs are sung by, or represent, stereotyped characters that inhabit Coney Island. For example, "Charley's Girl" explicitly tells the story of a down-on-her-luck Midwestern beauty turned stripper turned prostitute. This song is written from the perspective of a Coney Island male, predictably egocentric, and, who - obviously - thinks he is a gift to the women of the world. While the song itself is fairly straightforward, the meaning behind it is less so.

submissions

Lou Reed – Dirt Lyrics

16 years ago

One of my favorite Lou Reed songs. When just written, the lyrics don't nearly convey the bite and anger behind them that you get when you hear Lou sing them. I concur that this song is likely written about Dennis Katz, who was Lou Reed's manager during his "low" mid-seventies years, and was notable for his support of David Bowie early in his career. Pressure from RCA to release more radio-friendly music in the vein of Transformer may have led to the less-than-steller Sally Can't Dance album and most certainly was a major force behind the "fuck you" album, Metal Machine Music. In RCA, Reed found the same pressure to produce more commercial material as he had found in Atlantic Records, for which he had produced Loaded, the radio-friendly fourth Velvet Underground album. Moving to Aristra in 1976, Reed recorded Rock and Roll Heart, and, in 1978, Street Hassle, on which this song appears, under considerably less pressure. Tensions between Reed and Dennis Katz are likely the subject matter of the song, with particularly biting lines like "who'd eat shit and say it tasted good if there was some money in it for ya." The song Reed references as "by Bobby Fuller" is "I Fought the Law", which was actually written by Sonny Curtis, the singer who performed with The Crickets after Buddy Holly's death. There's no indication as to why Reed identified the song as Fuller's not Curtis', as he likely knew the true songwriter. Both Curtis and Fuller were from Texas. "I Fought the Law" was an unlikely punk hit when it was covered by British punk band, The Clash, who had been performing it live as early as 1976, but didn't release a radio single until 1979, a year after Street Hassle. The Clash version is similar to the original recording, and the Bobby Fuller Four recording, though they often changed the final refrain of "I fought the law and the law won" to "I fought the law and I won" when performing live.

submissions

Lou Reed – How Do You Think It Feels Lyrics

16 years ago

This song, and it's companion, "Oh JIm" are the centerpieces to Lou Reed's 1973 concept album, Berlin. In the album, Reed tells the story of two doomed lovers, Jim, the primary narrator of the album, and Caroline, his drug addicted wife. Jim narrates the album as a retrospective, explaining how Caroline became dependent on the external validation of others (called "two-bit friends," by Jim) and became a drug addict, selling herself to get another fix. In the story arc of the album, this song occurs just after Jim discovers that Caroline has begun prostituting herself to support her growing amphetamine addiction. The song is posed as a series of searing questions: "How do you think it feels when all you can say is 'if only: if only I had a little, if only I had some change, if only, if only if only...'" Here Jim mocks Caroline's drug seeking behavior when she's desperate for a fix. The interjections in the song "Come 'ere baby - Come down here, Mama" presumably come from men attempting to pick up Caroline. The song contains two of the most searing lines ever written, in my opinion: "How do you think it feels when you've been up for five days, hunting around always, 'cause you're afraid of sleeping" and "How do you think it feels to always make love by proxy?" All in all, this is one of the crown jewels of the Berlin album, an under appreciated album that I think highlights some of Reed's best lyrics ever. Is the song about Reed? Maybe, but probably not. He has held throughout the years that Berlin was an original work and not related to his life. Indeed, many of the songs were penned at discontinuous times in his life, and assembled and rewritten for the purpose of the album.

submissions

Lou Reed – Lady Day Lyrics

16 years ago

This is my favorite track from Berlin, and one of the most telling. The song is told from the perspective of Jim, one of the three characters in Berlin (the others being Caroline, and The Waterboy, who is probably an alter ego of Jim), and it describes the downfall of Caroline. "thebodiesobtained"'s analysis was good: the song does indeed describe how Caroline is sucked in to the downward spiral that is the album's central focus. Throughout the album, Reed asserts that Caroline is insecure and damaged, seeking out external validation, first from Jim, and later from her "two-bit friends," as Jim calls them. Here, she walks down the street, meekly ("a child starin' at her feet"). The warm allure of a bar, which Reed sets up in the noisy and tragic opening sequence "Berlin", draws her in. It starts out innocently enough, as she goes in merely to sing, but by the second stanza, we see her exhibitionist side coming out, as "she climbed down off the bar". This is the side that Jim objects to: that Caroline finds affirmation in people other than himself. While he correctly identifies and is rightly concerned by Caroline's problems, it is not her that he is truly concerned about, but rather him losing control over her. The song ends with one of the most brief and yet affecting four lines in the album: "...to the hotel that she called home. It had greenish walls, a bathroom in the hall." In less than twenty lines, Reed has painted an indelible and perfect image of the squalor that Caroline lives in. One of the great songs in the album, by how much it conveys versus how much is actually says. Songwriters should study the paucity of words here in comparison to the richness in images. Perfect.

submissions

Lou Reed – Sword of Damocles Lyrics

16 years ago

I agree, not too many shades of meaning here, but some back story: the sword of Damocles is a Greek legend, concerning the king Dionysius II and Damocles, a member of Dionysius II's court. Damocles was smitten with the power and privilege of afforded to the king and told him. Dionysius offered to switch placed with Damocles for a day. Damocles greatly enjoyed the wealth and power of being the king, until he looked up and saw a razor sharp sword hanging above his neck, tied with a single horse hair. At the moment, Damocles lost all taste for the banquets and privilege of being in power, and Dionysius successfully conveyed the constant tension a man in power bears. In the context of this song, Reed makes use of the Damocles legend as a metaphor in two distinct instances: 1) to demonstrate the tension between treating cancer and causing more harm than good, as is often the case with radiation or chemotherapy treatments. Second, Reed uses the sword as a metaphor to show the tension between maintaining hope, and being cut down by the disease. As with much of the Magic & Loss album, this song references the recent deaths of several of Reed's close friends, in this case most likely Doc Pompus, a blues songwriter, who died of lung cancer shortly before this album was written. Pompus is referenced elsewhere in the album, by lines like "isotopes introduced his lungs to stop the cancerous spread..."

submissions

Lou Reed – The Blue Mask Lyrics

16 years ago

Like a lot of songs on The Blue Mask album, there is hidden meaning behind "The Blue Mask." On the surface, it's a song about violence, torture, and pain. However, on closer inspection, the song may really be Reed's response to the critics who attacked him throughout his storied 1970s career for, essentially, not making Velvet Underground music. In this light, lines like "They tied his arms behind his back to teach him how to swim" take on new meaning, possibly indicating Reed's feeling that critics wanted to tie his future creativity to his past, essentially tying him down while telling him to go forward. Further lines like "I've made love to my mother, killed my father and my brother...when the sin goes to far it's like a runaway car; it cannot be controlled" make a mockery out of Reed's perennial fascination with alternative sexuality and fringe elements of society. The latter half of the line especially lends credence to this analysis, as Reed felt that he was trapped inside the expectation of perversity that critics both praised and sneered at in his 1970s work. The blue mask here is a metaphor, the mask Reed wore so often in his career shelter himself from critics and fans who wanted less an artistic endeavor and more a regurgitation of Transformer or The Velvet Underground and Nico. Taking it off is symbolic for Reed to move forward in the music he wanted to make; indeed, the 1980s were the most profound years for Reed since 1967-1969. In short, I believe this song is a watershed moment for Reed, both in shedding the spectre of his 1970s catalogue, skewering his critics, and setting the stage for the future (He produced 5 great albums in the 1980s). The music cuts like a scythe; truly impressive guitar work from both Reed and Robert Quine, and impeccable bass by Fernando Saunders. In my opinion, this is the best song ever written, and only competes with "Heroin" as my favorite song penned by Lou Reed.

* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.