| Nick Drake – At The Chime Of A City Clock Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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No comments since 2009. About time for another, then. I've been listening to Drake since I first heard him in the late 70s. I've loved his music ever since. I'm a musician, guitarist and have written some pieces in his style with some of the tunings he used, they're really homages. At the Chime of a City Clock. I've always found this song Kafkaesque, not in the sense of the world being so strange that it is beyond comprehension, but about the anxiety that living in the big city induces. Yes, as others have mentioned, it's the voice of a country boy estranged in the city. He comments on the phoniness and trappings of the city, the deception of appearances (clown mask), and questionable values, the pressures of conformity, the need for protection (armor), "a stone in a tin can" and "pray for green paper" (false wealth and valuing that which has no intrinsic value), futility ("turn around and come back again"). The country boy knows how to navigate the range of the London streets because he knows what a face is for, not just to be a pretty thing but the face is what we read to know someone, to tell if they're honest or not. He knows that what is valuable is "the one you may confide in" who is willing to transcend the trappings of the city "fly to the city walls and take off with your bride". Yes, I know nothing I've said is particularly interesting, the song really needs no analysis, it's straight forward. Nick studied literature, among other things, at Cambridge and his lyrics do have literary allusions and, like the early romantic 19th century poets he was versed in, he shares with them a kind of pastoral sensibility. I appreciate the way Nick approaches the subject of love without being sentimental or too direct. Time Has Told Me is another love song, but it could be platonic love. He leaves that vague which is nice. He's never cloying, his method is circumlocution, coming from all directions at once except the most obvious one. We won't hear a voice (singing or lyrical) like his again. That's ok. I just wish he'd influenced more lyric writing. The world needs more lyricists of this caliber. |
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| The Beatles – Michelle Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I agree with the person who wrote that the lyric is likely just about an English guy, perhaps Paul himself while touring France, who is infatuated with a lovely French girl. The lyric mostly states very primal emotions about desire because anything more complicated is not possible due to the language barrier. The honesty is in that, despite the language barrier, there is really nothing more that could be said anyway. The cleverness is in using the French language, which not only sounds romantic to the English-speakers, but also uses the language barrier as a metaphor for what cannot be expressed through words about feelings, in any language. Using minor chords where he does also emphasizes the angst about wanting to say more than words allow. It's an amazing song in that, though the lyric is not sad, it produces an ambivalence of emotion, combining joy and melancholy. A rich palette in such a deceptively simple song. Between '66 and '67 Paul was at his peak that few writers can match. In my opinion, Paul wrote the 2nd and 3rd best American songs ever in Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby (the best being Mancini's and Merecer's Moon River). | |
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