This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Aych ay see two (half a canyon too)
Increase Mather told her dad, yeah
"I roundly disagree with you
You're vocal style's to preachy
All the yokels mock your teaching."
But Cotton, he was just so oblivious
To all their cutting pleas
Soon the townfolk took to it,
In every pew they looked to him
For guidance just like eyeless lambs
Awaiting that ol' kabob stand
The skeptics formed
The nation's born
They want to have it, Cotton's dream
But Increase had them mounted
And they burned on open fires
So the word spread just like small pox
In the Sudan
The gentry cried:
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
Years and years have passed
Since the puritans invaded our soul
Just like those Arab terrorists
You'll never know
But today the gods can't make us quake,
We see our lives as situations
Eyes are eyes and teeth are teeth,
Well mine are rotten underneath
I got two ways we can separate from the clan
If I could fly, I could fry
I hope you profited from this bulletin
And it stabilized your land
You're drenched, you're fired,
(You gentrified?)
Your Alzheim clan, but
Your father is another one of them
I don't want to mention him again, cause
I talked to him last night,
He hates my guts
We had a fight
And he called you a slut girl,
Why's that?
What did you do to him to make him think
Increase Mather told her dad, yeah
"I roundly disagree with you
You're vocal style's to preachy
All the yokels mock your teaching."
But Cotton, he was just so oblivious
To all their cutting pleas
Soon the townfolk took to it,
In every pew they looked to him
For guidance just like eyeless lambs
Awaiting that ol' kabob stand
The skeptics formed
The nation's born
They want to have it, Cotton's dream
But Increase had them mounted
And they burned on open fires
So the word spread just like small pox
In the Sudan
The gentry cried:
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
"Give it a day!"
Years and years have passed
Since the puritans invaded our soul
Just like those Arab terrorists
You'll never know
But today the gods can't make us quake,
We see our lives as situations
Eyes are eyes and teeth are teeth,
Well mine are rotten underneath
I got two ways we can separate from the clan
If I could fly, I could fry
I hope you profited from this bulletin
And it stabilized your land
You're drenched, you're fired,
(You gentrified?)
Your Alzheim clan, but
Your father is another one of them
I don't want to mention him again, cause
I talked to him last night,
He hates my guts
We had a fight
And he called you a slut girl,
Why's that?
What did you do to him to make him think
Lyrics submitted by summerbabe
Give It a Day Lyrics as written by Stephen Malkmus
Lyrics © Hipgnosis Songs Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I think your first comment is closer to being accurate. The singer/song writers state "Millions of eyes can see, yet why am i so blind!? When the someone else is me, its unkind its unkind". I believe hes referring to the girl toying with him and using him. He wants something deeper with her, thats why he allows himself to be as a puppet (even though for her fun and games) as long as it makes her happy. But he knows deep down that she doesnt really want to be serious with him and thats what makes him.
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I love this song, and the lyrics are some of the best I've seen. At least part of the song is referring to organized religion in the U.S., but I'm still not sure about the "I hope you profited from this bulletin..." verse.
Hey, prettyrad...sorry it took me so long to get around to correcting the "CAN'T make us quake" error -- there's ALWAYS some nuance in an SM lyric that goes (sometimes badly) misinterpreted, until the day you're mashing avocados to make guacamole, then accidentally get jalapeno juice in your eye, which causes you to suddenly, inexplicably make sense of some Pavement lyric that had baffled you for years. It's just the way it works, you know what I mean. Anyways, thanks! :-D
increase mather was a minister in the 17th century during the salem witch trials who believed sexuality and witchcraft were linked. cotton mather was his more radical son.
Just have to say, I love this song, and it's probably the most well-constructed Pavement lyrics, up there with Shady Lane. Here are my thoughts:
The first verse concerns the Salem Witch trials, and actually Increase was Cotton's father. This really makes the first few lines confusing. If you ignore the fact that Increase was insanely Puritan and believed in witches, he was a rad dude, because he protested that the witch-burners were burning innocent civilians, and tried to get them to cut it out; whereas his father Cotton was a bit more zealous. The "smallpox in the Sudan" parallels Cotton's surprisingly progressive support of the new-fangled smallpox inoculation, at a time when smallpox was spreading throughout Boston.
The most annoying discrepancy in the lyrics as transcribed here completely alters the whole message. It should read: "But today the gods CAN'T make us quake" - the crux of the song is that man has less romantic notions, and everything is too real and un-magical nowadays... Times have changed, and we're far more scared of real things like terrorism, than evil spirits. That's not to say people aren't still evil, just a less exciting form of evil.
The last verse is also confusing, but it rolls off the tongue really well, in typical Malkmus style. I think it's just going back to the real world with its petty squabbles; juxtaposed next to the historics of the first verse, it's supposed to seem banal. It tails off exasperatedly.
This is an anti-male chauvinism song. Malk changes the birth order and sex of Increase to assist his narrative. Basically, the first verse sets out a young Puritan girl uncomfortable with all the fire and brimstone talk for good reason...it could lead to her and a bunch of other young girls on the fire pit. Eventually, the town gets swept up in the hysteria.
Later, the narrator indicates that he (we) are descendants of these Puritans and can't necessarily disown that heritage (see "the Puritans invaded our soul" and the bit about his rotten, i.e. English, teeth) even though it may be ugly.
The last part about calling the girl a slut brings it all home. This girl's father is a jerk for calling her a slut and her boyfriend is an insecure douchenozzle for letting it bothering him and actually calling her on it. Thus men are pigs as they were in the Puritan days.
This song is about how certain ideas can circulate society through tactics of enforcement by the governing body, like "arab terrorists". Juts like in the 17th century innocent people were burnt because of accusations of witches it still happens today even though "Years and years have passed" nothing has changed. The mainstream media being a good example from where false blame and group categorisation can stem, like giving arab's the reputation of being "terrorists". This in turn has the "yokels" sending their offspring as soldiers to war and it keeps the west supporting western imperialism in the east.
What's with the "Aych ay see two (half a canyon too)" in the lyrics at the very beginning?