| David Bowie – Slow Burn Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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I think this song is about New York, where Bowie lived. New York attracts people who are chasing dreams. For many, this means living shoulder-to-shoulder in "tenement halls", working a lot to make ends meet, while trying desperately to remember the dream that brought them there. And this can go on and on for years or decades, while your friends back home age and get married and move on, but the dream keeps you hanging on. That's the slow burn. "Here are we, at the center of it all" (NY is the center of the world in many minds) "Where the price for our minds shall squeeze them tight like a fist" - the cost of living keeps you tense "But we'll dance in their dark and they'll play with our lives" - "They" might be the landlords, the wallstreet brokers, the wealthy powers all around that seem to own the city, the building, the museum, the cultural institutions... It's their town, we're living in it, and they play with our lives. Bowie was probably wealthy enough to avoid some of the pitfalls described in the song, but maybe absorbed the atmosphere of the city and the feelings of the people around him. I think this does a great job of capturing the exhaustion and stress of living in that city for many people. As a former resident myself, this resonated. |
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| David Bowie – Love Is Lost Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Hearing this for the first time it sounds like a letter to his younger self at age 22, the year he broke up with the love of his life and threw himself into fame and career. Bowie would have been 22 in 1969, the same year he broke up with the love of his life, a dancer named Hermione Farthingale (see song "Letter to Hermione"). He's described this in interviews as a major and devastating event, but that a lot of artistic fuel came from their split. His career starts to take off around this point. New house, maid, accent... he described himself as someone who could adopt accents quickly and he moved often. "You are a beautiful girl" might refer to his old love, or perhaps suggesting a female narrator is a way of making the song less autobiographical. After all he has spent a career inventing characters to do just that. The video shows David Bowie dressed very simply and washing his hands, then peering into a dark room where a puppet version of his past selves (the clown from Ashes to Ashes and Thin White Duke) are lit by a spotlight and an image is projected around the room. I think it's a reference to his real self vs the hollow public self. My interpretation is that this is an older man looking back in regret at a turning point when he let himself grow bitter after a loss, and threw his soul into artistic greatness which, I suppose, is still empty at the end of the day compared to the real love whose loss sent him reeling. "Say hello to the greater men Tell them your secrets they're like the grave Oh what have you done, oh what have you done Love is lost, lost is love" |
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| Manic Street Preachers – Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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I think the 'small black flowers' is another name for 'the outside'. I looked up the lyrics to this song on azlyrics.com and it had the lyrics punctuated with a comma: "For the outside, the small black flowers that grow in the sky" From the perspective of a caged zoo animal, the faces that show up outside of its cage are like unwanted spots on what should be an otherwise clear sky. Those humans are the thing that mess its life up. "Here chewing your tail is joy" is the nagging knowledge that life could be better. |
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| Joanna Newsom – Colleen Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| I agree with this, and elaborated further on it in my comment. | |
| Joanna Newsom – Colleen Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I'm surprised that no comments really go into the theme of sexuality in this song. Colleen is a selkie who comes from the water, and the water represents sexuality, as it often does in stories across the world. Early in her life Colleen was wild and nameless and in touch with her instincts. But then she was thrown overboard for being a whore or a thief (of husbands? either way, for being wild), and was taught songs of chastity and domesticated. She tried to live by the rules on land but could not quite suppress her nature and overwatered everything. She longs for the sea which comes to her in dreams. The gray and sloping shouldered thing is a whale, perhaps described so depressively because at this point in her life it is an unwelcome reminder of her ocean origins. The whale asks if the corset she is wearing is made of his own baleen from the sea (corsets can be made of steel or baleen). Perhaps he's asking, is this corset domesticating you or is it part of you? Corsets are associated with both repressive domesticity and sexuality. It seems in Colleen's case it is repressive - it is not made of baleen, it does not connect her to the sea, has she forgotten everything? But then she meets sailors, one of whom shows her a photo of a narwhal with a long tusk (very suggestive in the context of this song) and she starts to blush. He sees she hasn't forgotten all of her instincts, and she asks if he has come to save her from the chaste civilized life. The sailor points out that Colleen is not a victim, rather that she chose this life willingly. Colleen realizes he is right, and that at one point she needed to learn about the laws that govern and how to feed kids and other parts of adult life but in the end she is a creature from the sea, and her and the sailor go diving back in. Together they set about forgetting about their life on land, instead of their life at sea. The version of the myth in Myrenna's comment could be interpreted as being about a woman who loses her own sexuality and identity within a marriage. The fisherman husband seeks to hide the very sexuality (seal skin) which drew him to her in the first place just because he wants to keep her by his side and is afraid it may draw her towards someone else. The selkie is of course unhappy until she recovers her true skin and this leads her back to the sea. I think Joanna's Colleen is unmarried and lost her self to the civilized world more broadly, not specifically to a marriage. It's a universal story... we're born wild and nameless and in touch with ourselves but we learn to live in the modern world and suppress some of our nature until hopefully we find our way back to it. |
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| Joanna Newsom – In California Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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It seems to be a song about the hesitation surrounding leaving your past behind. Betraying one's roots, losing one's youth, leaving home, the changes time brings. Tied up with that, it also seems to be a song about growing apart from an ex-lover, who is part of this old life. My heart became a drunken runt on the day I sunk in this shunt, to tap me clean of all the wonder and the sorrow I have seen, since I left my home Her heart as a "drunken runt" is aimless and lost since she got stuck in the shunt (move towards an alternate course), and strayed from her home. This theme of aimlessness and excess is in a lot of of her lyrics. My home, on the old Milk Lake, where the darkness does fall so fast, it feels like some kind of mistake (just like they told you it would; just like the Tulgeywood). The darkness is a symbol for time, and age which comes too fast, or perhaps just the darkness that comes with losing your direction in life. Others (elders) warned her of this when she was younger, but she didn't believe them When I came into my land, I did not understand: neither dry rot, nor the burn pile, nor the bark-beetle, nor the dry well, nor the black bear. Dry rot, burn pile, bark beetle (which feeds on decaying trees), dry well… these things all reference decay. This decay is part of the cycle of life and is always present around us, but when we're young, we ignore these things and believe somehow we'll be immune. When she came into the land (was born), she too ignored all of these truths around her But there is another, who is a little older. When I broke my bone, he carried me up from the riverside. To spend my life in spitting-distance of the love that I have known, I must stay here, in an endless eventide. I imagine this person as a lover. Perhaps by being a little older, he understands what she's going through having already gone through it himself, and takes care of her. Being with him puts her in close distance of the love she knew as a child, because their love is deep and intimate, of a kind that is harder to find in adult life. She feels she "must stay here", marry this person Endless eventide = the time of day doesn't change, to stay would be for an eternity And if you come and see me, you will upset the order. You cannot come and see me, for I set myself apart. But when you come and see me, in California, you cross the border of my heart. She's addressing an ex lover. Because he carried her back from the riverside to her roots, back to the love she has known, and she doesn't want him to see that she has strayed anyway. Or this person resides outside of California, thus this whole song is about choosing between her old life in Cali or her new life with him Well, I have sown untidy furrows across my soul, but I am still a coward, content to see my garden grow so sweet & full of someone else's flowers. Her heart has become complicated by desires ('I have sown untidy furrows across my soul'), she has strayed. She has betrayed him by moving on, and by being content to build a life with someone else ('content to see my garden grow so sweet & full of someone else's flowers'). But sometimes I can almost feel the power. Sometimes I am so in love with you (like a little clock that trembles on the edge of the hour, only ever calling out "Cuckoo, cuckoo"). She's drawn in by the appeal of her old life, she wants to return. Parallel to how she's hesitating on the threshold of two worlds, is the cuckoo, which trembles on the edge between two hours. Someone on the milkymoon forums pointed out this Shakespeare sonnet: When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men; for thus sings he, Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! "When I called you, you, little one, in a bad way, did you love me? Do you spite me?" The person that picks her up from the riverside with a broken bone earlier in the song is described as being a little older, so this must be him talking to her, addressing her as the little one. He feels betrayed by her leaving, so he is asking if she ever loved him "Time will tell if I can be well, and rise to meet you rightly." This is Joanna's reply. Will she mend from her broken bone, and rise up to their life together? While, moving across my land, brandishing themselves like a burning branch, advance the tallow-colored, walleyed deer, quiet as gondoliers, while I wait all night, for you, in California, watching the fox pick off my goldfish from their sorry, golden state – and I am no longer afraid of anything, save the life that, here, awaits. Meanwhile in her world, everything is changing, the landscape is being filled by these rather alien life forms of curious deer The fox is a predator, destroying life at its golden peak. The fox is time, the golden state is youth. I don't belong to anyone. My heart is heavy as an oil drum. I don't want to be alone. My heart is yellow as an ear of corn, and I have torn my soul apart, from pulling artlessly with fool commands. Now she has left her lover, and her home… she's alone and lost and doesn't know if she'll ever find her way again. Her heart is ripe like an ear of corn, she is ready to love and wants to be in love. But she has changed so much, she no longer knows who she is or what she wants. She has 'sown untidy furrows' across her soul; 'torn her soul apart' by pulling artlessly at it Some nights I just never go to sleep at all, and I stand, shaking in my doorway like a sentinel, all alone, bracing like the bow upon a ship, and fully abandoning any thought of anywhere but home, my home. Sometimes I can almost feel the power. And I do love you. Is it only timing, that has made it such a dark hour, only ever chiming out, "Cuckoo, cuckoo"? She is haunted by what she has left behind, hesitating symbolically in the doorway, between the old life and the new. She hast struck out for new lands but turns around hestitating. My heart, I wear you down, I know. Gotta think straight, keep a clean plate; keep from wearing down. If I lose my head, just where am I going to lay it? Her indecision wears both her and her lover down. She is afraid of losing her direction forever and getting lost in the Tulgeywood of this aimless life of hers (For it has half-ruined me, to be hanging around, here, among the daphne, blooming out of the big brown; I am native to it, but I'm overgrown. I have choked my roots on the earth, as rich as roe, here, down in California.) Here, only in the last verse, she sounds bolder and she stops lamenting why she left her home in California, and tries to remind herself why: she is native to it, it's her home, and she has gotten rich nourishment from it, but she's overgrown, and must grow up, move on, or be ruined by not moving forward |
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| Rufus Wainwright – Out of the Game Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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My interpretation is different from Dollymay's. This narrator is looking around at young people living the promiscuous lifestyle he once had... and realizing he's changed, and doesn't want the same things anymore. It's a bittersweet celebration, but ultimately triumphant. I like the way his tone changes when he sings "suckers!", illustrating this point. He starts out saying - look at you, look at you - as if impressed, but then he turns around and laughs, Suckers! Does your mother know what you're doing? They're just kids, they don't have what he has. Sometimes he still misses the games he used to play, and wants a whiff of the old life - 'come here and let me smell you', he says, to this youth about to play his old game. They're just beginning their sexual age, still seeking the attention of the world, about to sleep with seas of men for attention and experience. But what is all that worth? Being the hottest person in the room at a party, breaking hearts, these are people you haven't invested much of your life in, shallow relationships that will fall easily. That's what "making the thin cards fall" means. It's a house of cards, this youthful world of fleeting romances, they are thin and easy to collapse. The video to me has a different tone- the narrator doesn't mean all these things about being happier in their settled life and is only trying to convince themselves. A librarian, walking around reprimanding wild youths - until desire breaks through her denial. |
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| Radiohead – Bodysnatchers Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I think it's about aging, and losing yourself over time to society, to compromises, and losing the plot to such an extent that you wake up one day and wonder how you got into this body, this life. I think anyone old enough to have started the physical aging process understands the feeling of being trapped in a body that doesn't feel like your own. You think of yourself as you were when you're young and it's a shock to look in the mirror one day and find that person isn't there anymore. (I've heard countless times people justifying plastic surgery as 'just wanting to feel like yourself again'). "All the lines wrapped around my face, and for anyone else to see". But of course you knew this would happen - "I seen it coming" - which only makes the failures more painful. Of course physical aging is only one part of it. More broadly it's about looking around at your life, mid-life, and wondering how you got there. Feeling suddenly useless, lost, having sold out on your own integrity. Perhaps obligations, work, the daily toll of modern life are what wore you down - "It is the 21st century... and it brought me to my knees" You've become a corporate puppet over the years, supporting your family, paying the bills - eventually the light's gone out, and "Your hand only moves with someone's hand up your ass". Suddenly you feel like a corpse, dead in your skin - "check for pulse, blink your eyes..." "A pale imitation with the edges sawn off" - how so many people feel when they look around years later and realize their lives pale in comparison to their youthful ambitions. I guess it doesn't have to be about an individual's decline, it could be about society's as a whole, but this is how I relate to it. The panic and frenzy in the song is the fight against this downward slope, and in that way, I find it really touching. As well as being a bitchin' rock song. |
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| Elliott Smith – Abused Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I agree with Bloomington. I think it's interesting how this is about the conflict over hiding one's own abused past, as many victims do. They're kids sitting in a Sunday church, listening to the priests in teach them to behave and be truthful yet the kids know that the truth is not in their best interest, the priests and parents and people around them could very likely not believe them, and they've been screwed over by adults before. They may not want to believe it themselves, out of desire to avoid the victim stigma, or out of sympathy for the abuser (who probably had a troubled past themselves). They get into the habit of telling themselves some other story about their own lives, yet from the outside, people see the abuse more clearly as something evil. When the abuser is someone close to you, it is less clear that they are evil, emotions get mixed up and so many abused people stand up for their perpetrators. And yet by the time he realized the label of abused applies to his life, it doesn't matter that he did not consider himself abused, everyone else thinks of him as a victim, and he fits all of the symptoms. Sad inability to escape, no matter what story you try to write for yourself. "Other people see some evil intention But the closer you get The more you get confused how..." |
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| Radiohead – Weird Fishes/Arpeggi Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| What if... the weird fishes are notes? Like music notes, they have little tails and look like fishes. I always took this to be a love song as well, but maybe it's about using music to escape when love doesn't work out. Arpeggi are note structures radiohead use a lot on their music, the title of the song suggests weird fishes / arpeggi are interchangeable. | |
| Radiohead – Scatterbrain. (As Dead as Leaves.) Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I'd say it's about escapism. The world described is stormy and vicious (birds thrown around, bullets for hail, yesterday's headlines blown by the wind), but something is calling you away- "Your voice is rapping on my windowsill" - could be a person, memory, anything. Making your escapist rabbit hole is easy (Any fool can easy pick a hole) but to get there is hard. (I only wish I could fall in.) A scatterbrained person is not fully in the present moment, they're lost in their head somewhere ("somewhere I'm not"). The sorrow is at being unable to get there. I always imagined that the voice rapping on the windowsill is the same as the unborn chicken voices in Paranoid Android, so, it represents inspiration itself. The song's about conducting lightning - being a conduit, channeling something powerful from the stormy world around but unable to get to manifest the place in your imagination (elusive, "a moving target in a firing range"). Fuses and powercuts all protect from too much power surging through a system, so, being shocked back to sober reality. Scatterbrain is a person who can't concentrate. Here's what Thom said about it: "It's a really, really difficult song to describe. My favourite type of weather in the whole wide world is extreme winds. It is a bit dangerous. I have a house in the middle of nowhere and the house next door, the roof blew up and we just watched it and it was exactly like 'The Wizard of Oz'. It was fantastic. And this was a similar incident in the city. But it's kind of a love song as well, in a way." |
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| Thom Yorke – Jetstream Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| About going against the grain and being scared of it, scared of the path that you're on, fantasizing about jumping off and going with the flow (jetstream) because it's easier. | |
| Radiohead – The Butcher Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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To me, this song is about the way things fall apart under the touch of "cold philosophy", our worry, over-analysis, and need to deconstruct everything - the butcher in our brains. Here's a portion of Lamia by John Keats which summarizes the kind of emotion I think this song is talking about: "Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? 
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
 We know her woof, her texture; she is given 
In the dull catalogue of common things.
 Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, 
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
 Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
 Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade." The song is about looking back on your life, realizing you have been a butcher to the tender, important things in life, and have grown lonely, unable to feel much of anything because of it. Perhaps you have become this way because you feared "beauty will destroy your mind". I'm not sure what "gift wrap for the man with everything" means, but perhaps the "gift wrap" is the philosophy, the summary, the container, the "dull catalogue of common things" as the poem puts it. Yet your "heart's still pumping", you wish to overcome this critical part of your thoughts. |
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| Radiohead – The Butcher Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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To me, this song is about the way things fall apart under the touch of "cold philosophy", our worry, over-analysis, and need to deconstruct everything - the butcher in our brains. Here's a portion of Lamia by John Keats which summarizes the kind of emotion I think this song is talking about: "Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? 
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
 We know her woof, her texture; she is given 
In the dull catalogue of common things.
 Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, 
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
 Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
 Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade." The song is about looking back on your life, realizing you have been a butcher to the tender, important things in life, and have grown lonely, unable to feel much of anything because of it. Perhaps you have become this way because you feared "beauty will destroy your mind". I'm not sure what "gift wrap for the man with everything" means, but perhaps the "gift wrap" is the philosophy, the summary, the container, the "dull catalogue of common things" as the poem puts it. Yet your "heart's still pumping", you wish to overcome this critical part of your thoughts. |
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