| Pet Shop Boys – Hit Music Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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I once read an interpretation of this song as being about "when you take the sex out of disco." In other words, you keep dancing all night and you're not going home with anyone. Given PSB's sexuality, and the era in which this song was made, I wonder if AIDS, and preventing it, is the broader context here. "When you dance with me we dance forever" All we're going to ever do is dance. "All night long til you're desperate" You want sex, but you can't have it. It's too risky. "We all need love and we want protection" "Protection" being the operative word. |
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| Bob Dylan – Idiot Wind Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| It's impossible for me to pick my favourite Dylan song, but this has to be among them. The lyrics are simply astonishing. He tells this story with such colourful imagery, such power, such anger. It has been said that the best art comes out of suffering, and this song certainly bears that out. | |
| The Beatles – Happiness Is a Warm Gun Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| Of all the bizarre lines in this song (and they are ALL bizarre), I think the best one is "Mother superior jumped the gun." It's just one of the best and most ridiculous things to come out of any Beatles song, and at this point I don't even want to know what it means, for learning its true meaning would surely ruin the humour of it. | |
| John Lennon – Woman Lyrics | 9 years ago |
| As much as I do like this song, the idea that he's singing about Yoko just gives me the willies. It cheapens it. | |
| Paul McCartney – 3 Legs Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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My dog he got three legs (Paul, George, Ringo) Your dog he got none (John) If it isn't that, then that's fine, but either way it's one of the best and silliest McCartney songs. Love it. |
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| Paul McCartney – Dear Boy Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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I love the part in the middle when he just sings "doo-doo" in place of lyrics. It's gotta be songs like this that infuriated Lennon. Paul never took himself too seriously, while John was ultra-pretentious during this time. Love it. |
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| Carole King – You've Got A Friend Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| She was never married to James Taylor. | |
| Bob Dylan – Do Right to Me Baby (Do Unto Others) Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Great song. I love the music, alternating between dominant seven chords. And I love this line: "Don't wanna play with nobody, don't wanna be waylaid." As with most of his songs, there is a clear message delivered with humour. He needed a word that rhymed with "betrayed" so he picks "waylaid." Who the hell says that? |
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| Bob Dylan – Slow Train Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| Yeah, this is a great album not just because of the great songs and lyrics, but it's one of Dylan's best musical albums. Knopfler & Co are the icing on the cake. I know it's not his most critically-acclaimed albums, but it's certainly one of my favourites to listen to. | |
| Donald Fagen – Walk Between Raindrops Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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I get the sad vibe too, despite the delightfully swinging, bouncy music. There is a profound undercurrent of nostalgia running through this song's dialogue. "That happy day, we'll find each other on that Florida shore." Well, I sincerely hope so. Honestly, Fagen's solo lyrics have never plumbed the same depths as Steely Dan's. But his albums are every bit as musically complex. Just check out the very rapid jazz chord changes that happen thru the two-and-a-half-odd minutes of this absolutely brilliant piece. Larry Carlton is the hidden master of this record. There really isn't a bad moment on this entire album. Like someone said on another song, bury me with this CD. It surely won't gather dust. Certainly it's one of my top ten desert island discs. Ohhhhhhhhh MIAMI! |
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| Donald Fagen – I.G.Y. (International Geophysical Year) Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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@tmjm If this were a Steely Dan song, I would agree. But for the most part, Fagen's lyrics are not nearly as cryptic as Becker's. Fagen is much more direct with his words, and far less cynical. He likes to paint ideal pictures and scenarios. He covers romantic relationships in his music, which SD would never have done. In this case, I think he really is discussing the subject matter with the album's notes in mind. He's a youngster envisioning a high-tech future and he's expressing his optimism for it. Although the song seems topical, to me it's actually personal, like most of his songs. |
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| Bob Dylan – Buckets of Rain Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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He deliberately throws people off during those interviews. He intentionally contradicts himself all the time. He's obtuse on purpose. This song most definitely has meaning, and it fits easily with the theme of the album. |
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| New Order – Chosen Time Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I don't know, I think FAC33 is right on this one. "What brought the last reaction, I'll never know." To me that says, I don't know what went thru his mind in the final hours. Now, some of the other lines here are ambiguous and/or underdeveloped, but I can't imagine what else he's talking about. Curtis's death certainly gave them plenty of inspiration. |
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| Level 42 – Children Say Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I think this song is about his feelings associated with NOT having children. Anyone who has children can relate to some of these lyrics: "it seems they traded the years for mere complications" Oh yeah. Life is a lot more complicated when you have children. Nothing is easy anymore. "they've felt it before when the man in their pocket counted the cost of their material gains" Children are expensive. Very expensive. "as one more day slips away, who ever thought we could be so lonely?" Despite all his sound reasoning, is he regretting not having children? |
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| Pet Shop Boys – Invisible Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Great track, easily the best on Elysium. It's kind of depressing too. My life is kind of in a funk right now, and I understand exactly how NT feels. The song deals with a failing relationship, which in itself is not relevant to my situation, but I can still relate to what he's saying. My favourite lyric is: "Look at me, the absentee, disappearing finally. Goodbye." He is slinking silently from view, becoming a shell of a person, unneeded by anyone for anything. He's putting up no fight, he's a jellyfish. |
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| Level 42 – It's Over Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Great song. Very sad lyrics, but awesome chords, especially during the last 2-3 minutes. Mike Lindup's falsetto on the final refrain is spine-tingling. | |
| Pink Floyd – Empty Spaces Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Thanks for including this. Seems to me these lyrics simply address the drudgery of performing. | |
| The Rolling Stones – Paint It Black Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Yellow Submarine, obviously :) | |
| Bob Dylan – Sara Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| The divorce was finalized in 1977. They were separated (for good) long before that. | |
| Bob Dylan – Slow Train Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| No, I think he really means astronomy. But it's not because he really doesn't care about astronomy. He needed a humourous rhyming word. He does it all the time, including on this album -- "might live in a dome." | |
| The Beach Boys – Wouldn't It Be Nice Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Great song, and used to great effect in Roger & Me. | |
| Pink Floyd – Dogs Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Probably not. This album was recorded in 1976. The fan-spitting incident occurred in Montreal in July 1977. | |
| Dire Straits – Once Upon A Time In The West Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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"Wild West End" was definitely about London's West End. But this? I don't know. I think this one may really be about the United States, and maybe even the real Old West. The lyrics seem to talk about lawlessness. But does it matter? This could be an instrumental for all I care. The song has a beautiful dark, warm sound, with spine-tingling guitar from Knopfler. Fabulous. |
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| Steely Dan – Here At The Western World Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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It could be about a hiding Nazi. It's an interesting story. The lyrics here are among their most cryptic. This is simply one of Steely Dan's most lovely meditations, both lyrically and musically. One of my favourite verses of their entire catalogue is "Ruthie will give you the silver key to open the red door / Lay down your Jackson and you will see the sweetness you've been crying for." Just a wonderful, beautiful, evocative lyric. I have no idea what it means and almost prefer not to. It reminds me of a certain time in my life that had high highs and low lows. |
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| U2 – The Fly Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I'm guessing it means that even when one reaches success, a nagging ambition leaves one restless. We're never satisfied, in other words. | |
| Pet Shop Boys – Saturday Night Forever Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Completely agree with JamesLove. Great pop song. In fact, Bilingual has a number of outstanding PSB tracks. Unfortunately two of the three singles ("Se a Vida E" and "Red Letter Day") are two of their very worst songs. "Before" is a great song though. I also really like "Up Against It" and "It Always Comes as a Surprise." |
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| Pink Floyd – Corporal Clegg Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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One of the better songs on this album, which as a whole is rather weak. The subject matter really sets it apart from all other pop music of the time, and maybe of ALL time. The Vietnam War was obviously addressed by musicians, but what other bands talked about World War II? Anyway, I think the kazoo is intended to be ironic. It's a complete send-up of the tragic and depressing situation in which Clegg and his wife find themselves. Found his medal in the zoo? (That's probably just a rhyming word), but...received it in a dream? The guy obviously has no medal. What he DOES have is the thousand-yard stare. The song makes that pretty clear. Seeing as it's the first song in the Floyd catalogue to address the loss of Roger's father, can you even imagine for one second what would have become of the band had he not lost his dad? I think they might have folded after this album (which wouldn't have included this song). Even though records like Dark Side of the Moon did not directly address this theme, I believe they're still informed by it. |
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| Duran Duran – The Wild Boys Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I got the 7-inch single of Wild Boys in 1985 for my seventh birthday. I was a huge Duran fan, but this song never really did it for me, even then. As bubbletea said, it's way overdone. Its video was way overdone too. The breakup of the original group just needed to happen. It was obvious with this song and video that they'd reached the limit. Luckily it ended and the band's music became much stronger as a result. They began focusing more on the music and less on the image. Whilst the Arcadia album was not all that memorable, Notorious and Big Thing both have great album tracks that few people ever hear. |
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| Toto – It's A Feeling Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I've always loved the mood of this song. I'm sure the lyrics are vaguely about infidelity or lost love, but it's the music that's key. I can listen to this on endless repeat and never tire of it. It's a great yet almost unknown song. I'm not aware of a video; it was not released as a single. |
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| The Cure – All Cats Are Grey Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I thought this was a decent song when I first heard it a few years ago, but didn't think much of it. It took on an important and personal meaning for me around the time my aunt died of cancer. She was just 53, having suffered horribly for two years. She finally died on 25 April 2009; it was one of the saddest days of my life. I recall coming to this site in the months before that, reading the interpretations here, and thinking that this song represents the shock and surprise of finding one's self suddenly and prematurely dead. I couldn't get this song out of my head. It upset me so much that I couldn't bring myself to listen to it after she died. At the time, I thought I may never listen to it again. It was that terrible of an association. Things went from bad to worse. My mother (my aunt's sister) because very unexpectedly and gravely ill that October. She died two days later, on 21 October 2009, aged 59. So I lost two of the very dearest people in my life over the span of just six months. Still I could not listen to the song, though luckily I had associated it more strongly with my aunt's death. Finally, on 26 April 2010, a year and a day since she passed, I listened to All Cats Are Grey. Very loud. In my office after everyone had left for the day. It was a tremendous relief for me to find that, somehow it didn't carry with it the same awful emotional resonance as a year earlier. The time that had passed since those deaths had also healed, in some ways, the weight of this song. Now I can listen to the song somewhat freely. I'll always associate it with tremendous loss, but at least I no longer fear it. I'm a pretty casual Cure fan, but there have been very few songs in my life that can compare with the impact that this one made. It is truly unforgettable. |
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| Nirvana – Sifting Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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This is pretty much exactly the over-analyzing of lyrics that Cobain is documented to have hated. He's also documented to have worked on melody and music first, and lyrics came a distant second. The lyrics in the song are just rhyming words, sometimes humourous or aggressive, but rarely meaningful. Great song, passable lyrics, the end. |
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| Pink Floyd – Nobody Home Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Sick of all the drugs comments. Very, very few Floyd songs deal at all with drugs. It is such a cliche to naively think this song is about drugs. "I've got a silver spoon on a chain" He's a rich kid. "I've got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains" This line is about Rick Wright. |
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| Pink Floyd – Hey You Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| One of the bleakest songs on the album, but also one of the best, and among the most emotionally affecting. | |
| Steely Dan – Here At The Western World Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| This is one of Steely Dan's very best songs. Sentimental, cryptic lyrics and complicated chords (check out the piano chart sometime). Pure brilliance. | |
| Steely Dan – The Second Arrangement Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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This is an excellent song. I'm just listening it to it for the first time. Honest to god, hearing this is like unearthing a treasure buried long ago. With its subzero cold music and lyrics, it would fit perfectly on Gaucho. Absolutely perfect. The lyrics are uncharacteristically non-cryptic. (Obviously there's a better way to say that, I just don't know what it is right now.) I especially like the yellow Jag part. The music is pure disco. Eighth-note hi-hat on the offbeat. The chord changes just before "Stashed in the yellow Jag" and "Old friends abandon me" totally date this song. But god damn, I love it. |
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