| Future Clouds And Radar – Build Havana Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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In "Build Havana," the singer describes the fear that he and his romantic partner could build a life frozen in time, beautiful but historic, haunted by memories of a glorious past but not growing into a living future. He sees that fear most poignantly in the remote sadness of his partner, but he shares responsibility for the relationship, returning always to a fear of what "we" could build, and not blaming his partner. It's not a song of despair: the singer sees some hope. Rather, it's a song of warning of what they could build. The fact that he feels willing to express the warning implies a hope they could build something better. The warning is continually evoked in the refrain, "We could build, we could build Havana." Havana is one of the New World's most beautiful cities, built on the enormous riches of the early Spanish empire. It's also frozen in time, famous for its insular economy, decaying Spanish Colonial architecture, and preservation (through dire necessity) of 1950s machinery. (The actual Havana has changed a lot since the song was written, but the metaphor still holds, as do most of these details.) Aside from the refrain, explicit references to Havana are only hinted at in the song, somewhat obliquely. There are at least three details that feel tied to the city, each evoking a space eclipsed by time and progress. In the first reference, the singer fears, "Our love's in currency that I can't hold." Like the communist currency of Cuba, which is worthless off the island, his love seems to have little practical, translatable value. And yet, in the second reference, the speaker still sees a flash of the relationship's value, "Some gold between us next to all that hurt," just as Havana's frozen-in-time beauty hints at the immense Spanish fortunes that built the old city. the final reference is very oblique, when the speaker fears he'll spend his years "on someone's ghost," echoing the strain in Cuban politics of continually blaming current events on the ghost of the past. Set against these fears of frozen love, the speaker sees the consensual misery of his lover, who "gets so broken up, she can't mend," and whose "misery blows [him] off the midway." This mutual perception of sadness deepens the song, taking it beyond a simple anthem of blame and speaking to the pursuit of a mature love. The speaker doesn't want to live in Havana, on the echoes of their past romance, and he doesn't want to be a stop-gap fixture in her life — "someone here who burns [her] toast" — while she pines for past loves. By sharing the fear they could build Havana, a city frozen in time and space, he expresses the hope they'll build something more enduring and beautiful. And yet the beauty of Havana, a city in decay, reminds us that all living things, including romantic love, decay and die. A beautify and evocative song. |
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| Elliott Smith – Waltz #2 Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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There are two dominant interpretations of these lyrics here: 1) that the song is autobiographical about Elliott Smith's relationship to his distant, divorced mother, which is the majority opinion, or 2) that it's about his own relationships with women - either a specific relationship that started at a distance, or something more general. This is a minority opinion, but it's advanced by at least one person who seems to have some first-hand knowledge of how Smith viewed the song. There's no reason that both of these interpretations can't be true. A lot of the song's evocative quality, in fact, stems from its combination of a back-story about the singer's relationship to his mother mixed with a painful evocation of his distant attachment to a woman in the present. What shapes the way a man relates to women romatically? Well, in most cases his relationship to his mother is a good place to start, as far as influences go. To me, this song draws on images of the singer's guilt-ridden relationship to a remote, distant mother to evoke, simultaneously, the painful distance he faces — or one could say, replicates — in his attempt to connect with a specific woman as an adult. First, a note about the biographical interpretation: It's fascinating, and there can be no doubt that elements of Smith's biography inform this song on many levels: references to his divorced mother, the angry presence of a hostile step-father, and the boy's separation through distance. But it is often reductive to think of a song as just autobiographical. The power of this song doesn't seem to be that Smith is telling us his life story, but rather that he drew on images from his life to create something that resonates with people on many other levels. Just consider, for example, how many commenters here say they can relate to the idea of seeing someone and feeling a romantic connection, and yet realizing the somewhat pathetic absurdity that they don't know the person and never will. If we reduce the song to being just an autobiographical statement on his relationship to his mom, we miss this whole, rich interpretation. If instead you consider the song is about both his mother and his projected feelings toward a woman in the present, it opens up the lyrics and meaning on many levels. Haunted by complex emotions over separation from his mother at a young age - with images of fear she'll be abused, anger that she's so distant from him, jealousy of the new man in her life - the song also conjures a singer in the present who sees a woman in the venue where he's performing. The "dead china doll" could be a memory of his distant mother with her new husband years ago, or it could be a woman the singer sees in the bar in the present, someone he longs to be with. Conditioned to love an absent mother, the singer falls into the same exact pattern as an adult, ready to project his deepest romantic longings onto the blank slate of a distant woman, who is a emotionall present to him as a "dead china doll." The refrain applies equally to his feelings toward his mother and the remote, present woman: "I'm never gonna know you now, but I'm gonna love you anyhow" He loved his mother, though he could never know her the way a child is allowed to when living with their mother. And yet despite troubling emotions over her desertion, the singer can't help but feel an impulse of deep love for her. This is the human condition, the human impulse. And not surprisingly, he replicates this same approach to relationships as an adult, seeing a distant woman showing him "no emotion at all" and yet feeling impelled to love her, though he knows he will never actually know her. The song describes the woman calling "such a familiar name"? It could be his mother in the past calling his name, or the woman in the crowd in the present. Either way, the event triggers a painful memory which the singer is glad is "remote," as he struggles to cope in the present, where he's "doing just fine hour to hour, note to note." He says "note to note," because singing itself is the act that balances these powerful emotions for the singer. It's therapy and evasion at the same time. And yet darkness and self-loathing lurk right around the corner, banging at the doors of his psyche. The whole experience of loving a distant, icy figure he will never know reinforces the singer's self-hatred, the voice inside his head that tells him, "You're no good you're no good you're no good / Can't you tell that it's well understood?" He's tired of this painful process of loving a distant figure. But the phenomenon lives on, even taunting him with a chipper, somewhat false sign off, just as his mother signed off on her letter: "Still going strong / XO, mom." And what of the image of "Looking out on the substitute scene"? In the biographical interpretation, that's a reference to his mother's work as a substitute teacher. Fine - but consider also that the "substitute scene" is a reference to what's happening in the singer's present. Looking at the distant beloved who he doesn't know is a "substitute scene" for the same longing-without-knowing he experienced with his mother as a child. His feelings of self-loathing return in the figure of "mr. man with impossible plans." While Mr. Man could surely be a reference to a reviled step father, and the singer could be telling his mom to get the guy to back off, there's a deeper, less literal interpretation. Mr. Man is also connected to that self-loathing inner voice, a part of the singer's psyche that makes "impossible plans" causing frustration and pain, like the plan to connect with the woman who is with another man. The singer's escape from this torment of impossible plans is to be "In the place where I make no mistakes / In the place where I have what it takes," which is with the microphone, singing to keep the wolves at bay. In the end, he has to live with the painful pattern, repeating the song's beautiful refrain, "I'm never gonna know you know, but I'm gonna love you anyhow." The singer cannot escape the pattern, but he can make it manifest - he can make it known to himself - and in that act, the very act of singing his song, he achieves a measure of self-knowledge, a deeper awareness of the pain of existence. To me, the song is universal because Smith is giving voice very deeply to his own experience, one rooted in the particulars of his life, but which millions of people can relate to. The autobiographic details gave him the raw material, but the song is beautiful because it transcends autobiography to become art. |
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| Elvis Costello – Blame It on Cain Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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This song is hard to interpret, but I don't think it's about war. Elvis has plenty of songs about war, but this is one of his songs in an opaque, cryptic vein where he sparks some mystery and forces us to cast about for meaning. The main character is either deflecting blame from himself to Cain -- that's the manic energy of the refrain, especially when you hear it as Elvis belt it out. Blame it on Cain, not me. Did the narrator actually do something wrong, i.e., something worthy of blame? According to him, no: "It's nobody's fault, we just need somebody to burn." Like razajac said, this seems to show the narrator deflecting responsibility or even blaming "it" (whatever "it" refers to) on our sinful nature. You might feel the narrator's using that nature as an excuse for his behavior - but it's hard to say whether it's a lame excuse or a joyful one. The humor and energy of the song could take it either way. It could be Elvis speaking in the voice of a slime-bucket justifying his own nefarious behavior, or he could be speaking closer from his own heart and telling someone/society to leave him the fuck alone and "Blame it on Cain," not him, since he's only human. So what did the narrator do that he wants us to blame on Cain? The song doesn't answer that question, and there's really not a whole lot of concrete detail we can decipher. One thing that recurs is the need for money. The main character had money but "government burglars took it away," suggesting someone with taxing authority got it, like the English version of our Internal Revenue Service. The money's also tied to the character's relationship to someone who sounds like a lover, "the only one." Whatever the speaker wants to blame on Cain seems to involve this money, since he says if the "man with the ticker tape," i.e., an auditor/accountant who might be coming for his taxes, comes to get that money, he's going to tell him effectively piss off, blame it on Cain, not me. The second verse continues the theme of needing money to keep the couple afloat. If the speaker were a saint (which by implication he's not), he could get money by trading in his silver cup. Again, it's ambiguous -- is it good to be a saint who has silver cups to trade in, or is that decadent? Either way, the speaker doesn't have that option. The "radio to heaven" allusion is interesting, even raising the idea this is a song about songwriting -- that if Elvis were a facile pop star, his radio to heaven would be wired right to his purse, and he'd have plenty of money. The last verse feels great to listen to and sing, and it really releases the pent-up tension of the song, but frankly, I have no solid idea what it means. The speaker is in some kind of exile "on the outskirts of town," talking to himself, and he's living with a vague kind of guilt or social stigma, either for something he did or just because society doesn't like him. He seems anxious, talking to himself, but says he's "never been accused," suggesting there's nothing specific he actually did wrong. So what's really going on here, and why is this such a great song? In addition to the wonderful phrasing and pent-up rythms, I think part of the charm lies in the final verse's mystery. Not having money is, for many people, tied up with thoughts about relationship, success, one's own virtue, and social approval. Without a radio to heaven and a full purse (or socially approve saint's silver cup), many of us feel anxious, inferior, exiled, guilt-ridden -- especially in the younger stages of adult life, which was Elvis' audience at the time. Jumpbling up irresponsible and irrepressible joy, anger, rebellion, moral justification, and even moral purpose, Elvis' persona rejects the stigma being thrown his way and belts out in self-defense, "Blame it on Cain!" not me. Is that the right move? Maybe not, he admits -- there's a bitter randomness to blaming Cain. We need somebody to burn -- someone to blame things on -- and it "just seems to be his turn." So maybe the speaker is a bit of a slime-bucket -- but who hasn't sought relief from the anxiety and misplaced guilt of human life? That's why it's so fun to sing along with this song. |
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