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"
the best thing i ever saw on tv was that s.q. (securite quebec) cop catching a bullet with his teeth. condolence, madame canadiana, but your husband was a fucking (stuck) pig. but this song's not about some romantic account of history. it's not about martyrs or mythos or heroes or burnings-in-effigy. it's about a native kid flipping her lid just trying to keep some self-respect intact. it's about an oka the size of a fist in resistance and a will to fight back... and the girls at work, they still deny their racism. they claim tolerance for all. but it seems the degree of (only) racial slurs is their gauge (and it defines tolerance as hate). and there's 27 million "girls-at-work" here. imagine fighting that for 500 years. and golly-gee! how valient! how the white oppressor makes allowance for calculated gestures of insurgence (all tightly tethered to their purses/purpose). oka had this orchestra(tion) aborted. oka fucked their rules to choose a future self-determined and i, for one, support it... ...and the smartest thing i think i ever said: "if a kevin kostner kavalry is your means to their end, then the struggle is dead". why do we pretend that our approval is upon what they depend?
Lyrics submitted by PLANES
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The Night We Met
Lord Huron
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Holiday
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@[Diderik:33655] "Your a holiday!" Was a popular term used in the 50s/60s to compliment someone on their all around. For example, not only are they beautiful, but they are fun and kind too ... just an all around "holiday".
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.
Mountain Song
Jane's Addiction
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Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
No Surprises
Radiohead
Radiohead
Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
Ok. This song is about the OKA crises, which happened in Canada. A golf course wanted to expand its property onto native reserve land. And they did. But a group of Indians living on the reserve took their hunting guns and made the workers stop jopping down trees. The police came in and the natives and the police faught. The police tries to gas them but the wind pushed it back in their faces. 1 cop died (hence the start of the song). Anyway more natives took places over all over quebec. Riots occured and alot of anti-native racism starting coming out. If you were a native in quebec you couldn't go to town because they'd push your car over and beat you up and shit. Anyway the army came in. The feud was settled, the canadian government bought the land and then gave it back to the natives. This song focuses on how its wrong to take someones sacred land just for some shitty golf course. And Oka was either the golf club name or the reserve name or something....i forget.
what is oka?
wow.. thanks!
Oka was the town.
So yes, this is about the armed standoff between Indigenous peoples and police / troops near a town in the Canadian province of Quebec called Oka, often refferred to as the "Oka Crisis." The "girls at work" segment of the lyrics, if I had to make an educated guess, is kind of talking about how in Canada, there is an ugly underbelly of racism but it tends to be less obvious than in other places like the US. Also I think it speaks to how Canadians have a reputation for being polite and nice but in reality that sometimes hides more negative attitudes towards minorities. The "imagine fighting that 550 years" I believe refers to how at the time this song came out, it had been roughly 500 years since Columbus first landed in the Americas, and started his genocide of the local Indigenous population, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Arawaks and enslaving many more.