| Anaïs Mitchell – Why We Build the Wall Lyrics | 7 months ago |
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Something I think people overlook in Hadestown, is that Hades is NOT the archetypical modern capitalist. He's a sincerely paternalistic, company town owner, something that hardly exists today. We had such people where I live, apostles of the pietist preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge. They genuinely believed that all "worldly" happiness was pointless since it would all end in sorrow anyway ("each moment of joy you had on earth will be paid in sorrow" as one playwright described it), and that the only escape from the existential dread and dark thoughts of this certainty, was to work yourself to utter exhaustion, so you couldn't think. It also fits nicely in with the mythological Hades: he wants them to let go of all their hopes, desires, longings, that keep them tethered to the world. So they can drink the water of Lethe and forget everything, so they can be reborn. The wall Hadestown Hades makes them build blocks out both the joys and suffering of the world, and what they get in return is the blissful oblivion of exhaustion. But there's a crack in the wall. His wife undermines his effort, and tempts the dead with pale memories of the world they left. She may be the goddess of spring and rebirth, but Persephone has a bit of a cruel streak too. Make no mistake, she likes being queen of the underworld too. Those pomegranates taste good. |
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| Guided by Voices – Hold On Hope Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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"Look at the talkbox in mute frustration" This pretty clearly is about watching TV, and being frustrated by what you see on it. But what's there to be frustrated about about a cowboy? I think it's actually a reference to George W. Bush, who was then a presidental candidate with an (incredibly phony) cowboy image. |
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| Kraja – Så vandra vi Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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This is another old Swedish burial hymn, or maybe as much a preparation-for-death hymn, like the one they used for the album title. It was written by the Swedish clergyman Johan Olof Wallin in 1809. He was a proponent of women's education, and also of educating and preaching to the Sami. Kraja simply repeat the first verse three times: So we walk all the ways of the world, the one with the other Remember who you are, and consider where you soon will wander You build a house, you wish for peace Behold, the house where you will live The bed in which you will rest As all the songs on this album, it has an original melody, not the one that is traditionally used. When I hear this, I think of my grandmother's ancestors, who left their farms in Norrbotn and Lappland during years of famine and strife, to seek a new life in the fjords of Northern Norway. |
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| Kraja – Jag kommer av ett brusand hav Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| The text was written in 1686 by Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, a Swedish count. Kraja starts with the 3rd verse, then the 1st, then the 3rd again. The melody is Kraja's own, written by Lisa Lestander I believe. | |
| Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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To me it sounds like a kind of materialistic disillusionment. Sweet dreams are made of these, someone says. Made of what? pills? yoga exercises? I picture a tabloid headline "It's scientific: THIS makes you happy". The author doesn't really believe it, but feel she has no standing to disagree. Why? Maybe because it's an authority saying it - or maybe because she hasn't found happiness, so what does she now. All over the world, you will meet people selfishly seeking happiness in various messed up ways, and all the advice she can give you is to keep you head up and move on. (So yes, the song may reference S&M, but in that case it's a pretty disillusioned take on the phenomenon.) |
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| Fleet Foxes – Blue Ridge Mountains Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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The Blue Ridge Mountains is a place in Tennessee, all right, but it's also the distant blue mountains, the "happy hunting grounds" so to say. I suspect that to "miss your flight to the Blue Ridge Mountains" is a poetic way to say failing at a suicide attempt. The narrator tries to convince his brother to choose life, by recalling their childhood together, their grandfather's cabin (nest? aye?) in the woods, the river freezing over. He admits this is terribly selfish and childish of him, although the brother doesn't mind. |
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| Lambchop – Up with People Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Wagner speaks about his own generation, and ambivalently praises it and laments it. "The booming sound" is a reference to the baby boomers. The generation who came of age under Nixon, who had many "deliberate monologues", but most certainly left the doing undone. They are screwing up today, and counting on the next generation to follow up on what they planted. | |
| Guided by Voices – Twilight Campfighter Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I think it's pretty clear these two (Twilight Campfighter and Sunspot Soldiers) are idealists of some sort, keeping up hope in a time when things aren't looking so good. They confront what's painful (build a fire into an open wound) and have integrity, aren't bribable with either money or comfort (accept no pay). While most of us are content to dream about brighter days and dance to the sound of money, they look in our eyes, see though the silent lies that everything is OK with ourselves and the world. But it's not too late to wake up and go with them. | |
| Jimmy Webb – The Moon's A Harsh Mistress Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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"The moon is a harsh mistress" is the name of a book by Heinlein, but that is pretty incidental, I don't think Webb meant to allude to it in any particular way. Rather, both it and Heinlein's title is an related to the old biblical phrase "the law is a harsh master" and the many similar phrases ("X is a harsh master/mistress") it inspired. The moon, however, is a symbol of periodic change, change of fortune, and of mental illness, in particular mood swings. People used to think that people with mood swings had their mood change in sync with the phases of the moon, but that erroneous belief is probably from someone taking a poetic phrase too literally ("his humours changes like the moon", etc.) The song uses powerful images to describe both big ups and deep depression ("The sky is made of stone") and the theme is that being a "slave to the moon" isn't easy, nor is admitting and accepting it ("call your own"). The middle verse is mostly interpreted as being about being abandoned by a lover. For instance, most female singers switch the genders on that verse so that it becomes "I fell out of his eyes". But it is quite possible, likely even, that the "she" referred to throughout is the same, namely the moon, mood swings personified. Also, the experienced songwriter Webb probably knows more people can relate to romance and rejection than periodic depression and mania, and put in the double meaning/interpretation deliberately. Webb has stated that the song is about the wild ups and downs he experienced in that part of his life. |
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